DREAMS.

Hokitika Guardian, 5 April 1930, Page 2

DREAMS.

(By R. L. Megroz, in London “Daily

Mail”)

The universal interest in .the “prophetic dream ’ accounts for the numerous gods of Sleep and Dreams in the ancient religious. In religion was expressed the community’s response towards the deepest mysteries of life, and the temple naturally came to be regarded as the best place to sleep if you wanted a prophetic dream . Naturally, also, a temple with an oracle was favoured; the profounest, oracles were those where a priest or ' priestess spoke out of a trance or rapture which was- akin to the dieam state.'

AMONG SAVAGES

Anthropologists have asserted that man in a state of savagery dreams more constantly-and vividly than in civilisation, but the truth appears to be that the savage, merely thinks less critically and is unable to distinguish between dream events and the facts of waking life which we are pleased to call “reality.” It is still true of us, as of. the savage, that our sleep, in Sir Thomas Browne’s words, “is peered out with visions, and fantastical objects.” To-day it ’is becoming increasingly difficult to regard dreams as of or no significance; we re-read the poets, those inheritors of many of the functions of the fincient priests, with- a fresh idealisation that there ate various kinds of truth and that perhaps the truths most valuable to us are those of the imagination, A great deal of the, finest literature lives because it is rooted in the dreamworld of the human race.

It is in dreams that the individual is most akin to his fellows. Such a testimony as Catherine Linton’s, in “Wntliering Heights,” does not merely come in with dramatic appropriateness to explain her temperament: it helps to explain the power over other minds'of the frail and “inexperienced” Emily Bronte. Catherine 'Linton declared :

“I’ve dreamt,in my life dreams that tavc stayed with me. ever affer, and changed, my ..ideas:, they’ve gone through me like wine through water, and altered the colour of my mind.” -

STEVENSON’S VIEWS

“The past is all of one texture,” said Stevenson, “whether acted out in three dimensions, or only witnessed in that small theatre of the brain which we keep brightly lighted all night long

. . . . but which of them is what we call a dream, there is not one hair to prove.”

Is this just a litterateur’s fancy ? But many great poets have said it in the authentic tone that cannot be captured- without sincerity. Strangely enough, the sceptic is ready to be impressed by a great scientist even when a great poet is lightly dismissed, Hear then* Sir J. H. Jeans in “Astronomy and Cosmogony.”:

“What is-the meaning, if any there be which is intelligible to us, .of the vast accumulations of matter which appear, on our present interpretation of space arid time, .to have been created only in order that they may destroy themselves? Are they perchance only i dream while we are brain-cells in the mind of a dreamer?”

Leaving the rest of the universe to carry on its rhythmical processes, we may .well ask if the progress of human evolution is- not simply the expression >f man’s dreaming mind. May not “civilisation” be comparable. to a work of art by the race, the concrete and external symbol of spiritual energies? It was a famous Chinese philisopher who said: “Last night I dreamed that f was a butterfly • now Ido not know whether I am a\ man dreaming that he was a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming it is a man.”

To some people this will seem just a whimsical bit of humour. Others may be led to reflect on what strange “apocalypse of soul” awaits mankind in the furture.