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[Vol. III. No. 4, January, 1882.]
[To the Editor.
(1) ARE dreams always real?
If so, what produces them? If not real, may they
not nevertheless have in themselves some deep
significance?
(2) Can you tell me something
about antenatal states of existence and the transmigration
of the soul?
(3) Can you give me anything that is worth knowing
about psychology as suggested by this article?*
Yours most fraternally and obediently,
JEHANGIR CURSETJI
TARACHAND.
Bombay, Nov. 10th, 1881.]
To put our correspondent’s request more
exactly, he desires The Theosophist to
cull into the limits of a column or two the facts
embraced within the whole range of all the sublunar
mysteries with "full explanations."
These would embrace:
(1) The complete philosophy of dreams, as deduced
from their physiological, biological, psychological
and occult aspects.
(2) The Buddhist Jâtakas (rebirths and
migrations of our Lord Shâkya Muni), with
a philosophical essay upon the transmigrations
of the 387,000 Buddhas who "turned the wheel
of faith," during the successive revelations
to the world of the 125,000 other Buddhas, the
saints who can "overlook and unravel the
thousand-fold knotted threads of the moral chain
of causation," throwing in a treatise upon
the Nidânas, the chain of twelve causes
with a complete list of their two millions of
results, and copious appendices by some Arhats,
"who have attained the stream which flows
into Nirvâna."
(3) The compounded reveries of the world-famous
psychologists; from the Egyptian Hermes and his
Book of the Dead; Plato’s definition
of the Soul, in Timæus; and so on,
down to Drawing-Room Nocturnal Chats with a
Disembodied Soul, by the Rev. Adramelech Romeo
Tiberius Toughskin from Cincinnati. Such is the
modest task proposed.
Our physical senses are the agents by means of
which the astral spirit, or "conscious something"
within, is brought, by contact with the external
world, to a knowledge of actual existence; while
the spiritual senses of the astral man are the
media, the telegraphic wires by means of which
he communicates with his higher principles, and
obtains therefrom the faculties of clear perception
of, and vision into, the realms of the invisible
world. The Buddhist philosopher holds that by
the practice of the Dhyânas one may reach
"the enlightened condition of mind, which
exhibits itself by immediate recognition of
sacred truth, so that on opening the Scriptures
[or any books whatsoever?] their true meaning
at once flashes into the heart." (Beal’s
Catena, p. 255.)
In dreaming, or in somnambulism, the brain is
asleep only in parts, and is called into action
through the agency of the external senses, owing
to some peculiar cause; a word pronounced, a thought,
or picture lingering dormant in one of the cells
of memory, and awakened by a sudden noise, the
fall of a stone, suggesting instantaneously to
this half-dreamy fancy of the sleeper walls of
masonry, and so on. When one is suddenly startled
in his sleep without becoming fully awake, he
does not begin and terminate his dream with the
simple noise which partially awoke him, but often
experiences in his dream a long train of events
concentrated within the brief space of time the
sound occupies, and to be attributed solely to
that sound. Generally dreams are induced by the
waking associations which precede them. Some of
them produce such an impression that the slightest
idea in the direction of any subject associated
with a particular dream may bring its recurrence
years after.
Tartini, the famous Italian violinist, composed
his "Devil’s Sonata" under the
inspiration of a dream. During his sleep he thought
the devil appeared to him and challenged him to
a trial of skill upon his own private violin,
brought straight from the infernal regions; which
challenge Tartini accepted. When he awoke, the
melody of the "Devil’s Sonata"
was so vividly impressed upon his mind that he
there and then noted it down; but on getting as
far as the finale all further recollection
of it was suddenly obliterated, and he had to
lay aside the incomplete piece of music. Two years
later he dreamt the very same thing, and in his
dream tried to make himself recollect the finale
upon awaking. The dream was repeated owing
to a blind street-musician fiddling on his instrument
under the artist’s window.
Coleridge in a like manner composed his poem,
"Kublai-Khan," in a dream. On awaking,
he found the now-famous lines so vividly impressed
upon his mind that he wrote them down. The dream
was due to the poet falling asleep in his chair
while reading the following words in Purchas’
Pilgrimage: "Here the Khan
Kublai commanded a palace to be built . . . enclosed
within a wall."
The popular belief, that among the vast number
of meaningless dreams there are some in which
presages are frequently given of coming events,
is shared by many well-informed persons, but not
at all by science. Yet there are numberless instances
of well-attested dreams which were verified by
subsequent events, and which, therefore, may be
termed prophetic. The Greek and Latin classics
teem with records of remarkable dreams, some of
which have become historical. Faith in the spiritual
nature of dreaming was as widely disseminated
among the Pagan philosophers as among the Christian
fathers of the church, nor is belief in soothsaying
and interpretations of dreams (oneiromancy) limited
to the heathen nations of Asia, since the Bible
is full of them. This is what Éliphas
Lévi, the great modern Kabalist, says of
such divinations, visions and prophetic dreams,
in his Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie
(i. 356, 357):
Somnambulism, premonitions and second sight
are but a disposition, whether accidental or
habitual, to dream, awake, or during a voluntary,
self-induced, or yet natural sleep; i.e.,
to perceive [and guess by intuition] the analogical
reflections of the astral light. . . . The paraphernalia
and instruments of divinations are simply means
for [magnetic] communications between the divinator
and him who consults him; they serve to fix
and concentrate two wills [bent in the same
direction] upon the same sign or object; the
queer, complicated, moving figures helping to
collect the reflections of the astral fluid.
Thus one is enabled at times to see in the grounds
of a coffee cup, or in the clouds, in the white
of an egg, etc., fantastic forms having their
existence only in the translucid [or the seer’s
imagination]. Vision-seeing in the water is
produced by the fatigue of the dazzled optic
nerve, which ends by ceding its functions to
the translucid, and calling forth a cerebral
illusion, which makes the simple reflections
of the astral light appear as real images. Thus
the fittest persons for this kind of divination
are those of a nervous temperament whose sight
is weak and imagination vivid, children being
the best of all adapted for it. But let
no one misinterpret the nature of the function
attributed by us to imagination in the art of
divination. We see through our imagination
doubtless, and that is the natural aspect of
the miracle; but we see actual and true things,
and it is in this that lies the marvel of the
natural phenomenon. We appeal for corroboration
of what we say to the testimony of all the adepts.
*A dream-story from Chambers’
Journal.
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