Ten Thousand Dreams Interpreted; Or, What's in a Dream: A Scientific and Practical Exposition — John Stuart Mill — John Shaqi
Ten Thousand Dreams Interpreted; Or, What's in a Dream: A Scientific and Practical Exposition
John Stuart Mill · en
Man has also a spiritual body, subjective to, and more ethereal
than the soul. It is an infinitesimal atom, and is related
in substance to the spiritual or infinite mind of the universe.
Just as the great physical sun, the center of visible light,
life and heat, is striving to purify the foul miasma of the marsh
and send its luminous messages of love into the dark crevices
of the earth, so the Great Spiritual Sun, of which the former
is a visible prototype or reflection, is striving to illuminate
with Divine Wisdom the personal soul and mind of man, thus enabling
him to become cognizant of the spiritual or Christ presence within.
The heresy and Herod of wanton flesh, degenerate victim of
the sensuous filth and fermentation of self-indulgence, is ever
striving to exile and suppress, from the wilderness of sin,
the warning cry of the Nazarite voice by intriguing with the cunning,
incestuous daughters of unholy thoughts and desires.
The objective mind is most active when the body is awake.
The subjective influences are most active, and often fill
the mind with impressions, while the physical body is asleep.
The spiritual intelligence can only intrude itself when
the human will is suspended, or passive to external states.
A man who lives only on the sensual plane will receive his
knowledge through the senses, and will not, while in that state,
receive spiritual impressions or warning dreams.
Men and women rarely ever degrade themselves so low that
the small voice of the desert does not bring them a message.
Sodom and Gomorrah, vile with the debauchery of a nameless crime,
were not deserted by the angel of love until the fire
which they had lighted in their souls had consumed them.
The walls of Jericho did not fall until Rahab, the harlot,
had been saved and the inmates had heard for several days
the ram's-horn and the tramp of Joshua's infantry.
The evangelist Jonah, the Sam Jones of Hebrew theology,
exhorted the adulterous Nineveh many times to repentance
before it fell.
David, while intoxicated with the wine of love, from languishing
in the seductive embrace of the beautiful bathing nymph, Bathsheba,
heard the voice of Nathan. Surely God is no respecter of persons,
and will speak to all classes if the people will not stiffen their
necks or harden their hearts.
Women dream more often and more vividly than men, because their dream
composition is less influenced and allied to external environments.
All dreams possess an element of warning or prescience;
some more than others. This is unknown to the many, but is known
to the observing few. There are many people who have no natural
taste for music, and who do not know one note from another.
There are also those who cannot distinguish one color from another.
To the former there is no harmony of sound, and to the latter
there is no blending of colors.