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
Our psychical research people give us conclusive proof of mental
telepathy or telegraphy between finite minds. Thus communications
or impressions are conveyed many miles from one mind to another.
This phenomenon is easier when one or both of the subjects are
in a state of somnambulence or asleep.
In thought transference or mind reading it is absolutely
necessary to have a positive and a negative subject.
Through the same law that mental impressions are telegraphed
from one finite mind to another a man may place himself in harmony
with the infinite mind and thus receive true and healthful
warnings of coming evil or good. Homer, Aristotle and other
writers of the ancient classics thought this not improbable.
The statesman, the poet, the philosopher of the Bible were
unanimous in attaching prophetic significance to dreams.
Has the law of ethereal vibrations undergone any recent
changes to debar or molest the communion of the soul with its
spiritual father, any more than it has debarred contact with its
material mother or environments?
We only understand the great laws of nature by effects.
We know that vegetation planted in native soil and properly attended
with light, heat and moisture, will grow and yield a certain
species of fruit. We may infer how it does this, but we cannot
explain the process of transformation any more than we can explain
why certain tropical birds are burnished with glowing colors,
and that other birds under the murky skies are gray and brown,
while in the Arctic regions they bleach.
In sleep we see, without being awakened, the angry lightning rend
the midnight clouds, and hear the explosive thunder hurl its fury at us;
but can we explain it any more than our scientist can explain the natural
forces of thought, of love and hate, or the subtle intuition of woman?
What of the silhouette or the anthelion of the Scandinavian Alps,
and the aerial cities so often seen by explorers and travelers?
Do not they defy the law of optics? Must we understand the intricacies
of articulation and the forces back of it before we can appropriate speech?
Must we discard all belief in an infinite mind because we cannot
understand it, and therefore say we are not a part of it because there
is no Infinite? Should we discard the belief in the infinitude of number,
because we cannot understand it, and therefore say that finite number
is not a part of the infinite?
No scientist or naturalist is so grossly stupid as to deny
the infinite expansion of numbers? If this be so, it establishes
the infinite of number, of which every finite number is a part,
and thus we have a parallel in mathematics, the very cornerstone
of the exact sciences, for a finite and an infinite mind.
It is from the prototype of this infinite of number, namely,
the infinite of intelligence, that spiritual dreams proceed.
They are, therefore, the reflection of truth upon the dream mind
and occur with less frequency than do dreams of the other two classes.