That all dreams do not originate in one section or at one level of the mind
is quite evident. The range extends from those which almost merge with
waking thought to creations strangely remote and primitive. When I dream
that Goethe is a guest at my home and I am trying to ask him in regard to
Faust, Wilhelm Meister and Mignon,--when after reading of x-rays, ether
waves and electrons wake with the thought, "To solve the problem of matter
would prove materialism,"--when I dream that I am conversing with a
conservative friend who says that he does not like new religions and I reply
that Moses and Jesus were new once, it is plain that a different stratum of
mind is operative than when I dream that I am in an old fort and chased by
three rats, or that a snake is on my bed and my father kills it with a
pitchfork, or strangest of all, that I throw an egg at the plug of a sap
bucket which it hits and then flies to the left; it is rotten. Again, a
very vague dream, I, see two eggs and then am climbing inside a kind of
tower. A dream which immediately preceded the menstrual period, is as
follows:--I pass a narrow, dark canal which seems to be under cover. On the
very brink is a child and I fear it will fall in. A man is there whose
business it is to save the child but be does not. That this indicates the
impending passage from the body of the ovum can hardly be doubted. Under
like conditions--this before sleep--I see a doorway filled with flowers.
It was natural that after a time I should wonder what event of the day would
be woven into a dream; as I performed certain acts I found myself wondering,
will this appear tonight, and how? One Sunday I walked across lots to church
and on the way picked a twig of balm of Gilead poplar keeping it with me
through service for its fragrance. That night I dream that I am in a
pasture looking for fertile fronds of the cinnamon fern which I fail to
find. I see cows and am afraid.--This based on reality of a few days
before.--At length by a stone I find a fern coiled as in spring. This
becomes a squirrel, the male comes, and then they are lions. The male has a
sprig of leaves which he lays at the feet of the female and which she eats.
I want to know what the leaves are but fear to look closely because of the
lion. I found it difficult to deliberately influence dreams by suggestion.
The dream-self is not to be coerced and usually I over-did the matter. Most
of my examples deal with flowers and perhaps the most apposite is the
following:--I plucked a stem of blossoms of white everlasting and wore it
inside my waist on my bosom all day, asking as I fastened it in,--How will
this reappear in my dream? The following morning as consciousness returned,
I had a vision of a baby's bottle filled with milk and beyond it, more
faint, another similar bottle. It is fair to say that this outcome was
entirely unexpected. Another night after watching Venus, low in the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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