WEBVTT - Dreamfall into the Dark, Part 3 0:00:03.040 --> 0:00:06.840 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:13.000 --> 0:00:14.640 Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. 0:00:14.680 --> 0:00:17.239 My name is Robert Land, and I'm Joe McCormick. 0:00:17.640 --> 0:00:20.000 This is the third episode and what I believe is 0:00:20.040 --> 0:00:24.400 going to be a four part series about dream mystique, 0:00:25.079 --> 0:00:29.159 dream culture. We're going to have one more episode that 0:00:29.280 --> 0:00:31.920 is going to focus on Japanese dream. 0:00:31.720 --> 0:00:34.559 Culture and finally get to that monster that is the 0:00:34.600 --> 0:00:36.000 reason we started looking at this. 0:00:36.440 --> 0:00:39.480 Yes, yeah, we've been chasing after that monster and ultimately 0:00:39.520 --> 0:00:43.520 we will chase it across the sea and discuss its 0:00:43.760 --> 0:00:46.559 form and function. In this one, we're going to get 0:00:46.560 --> 0:00:49.760 more properly into the main focus of the Dreaming Mind 0:00:49.760 --> 0:00:51.839 of The End of the Main World by Lynn A. Struve, 0:00:51.960 --> 0:00:56.040 which we've been referring to in these episodes. This was 0:00:56.080 --> 0:01:00.600 published in twenty nineteen by the University of Hawaii Press. Naturally, 0:01:00.640 --> 0:01:03.240 we're not going to cover everything in that but rather, 0:01:03.280 --> 0:01:05.440 you know, highlight some of the key points, some interesting 0:01:05.480 --> 0:01:08.440 bits that stand out and leave you to explore the 0:01:08.440 --> 0:01:10.920 book yourself if you want to go deeper in on it. 0:01:10.959 --> 0:01:11.360 But in the. 0:01:11.600 --> 0:01:17.160 Previous episodes two episodes, we we mostly discussed other dream 0:01:17.200 --> 0:01:20.920 cultures from around the world highlighted lighted by Stroove as 0:01:20.959 --> 0:01:27.080 being sort of hot beds of focus on the potential 0:01:27.360 --> 0:01:31.160 of dreams to impact our daily lives. 0:01:31.720 --> 0:01:35.000 Yeah, particularly times and places when a lot of dream 0:01:35.200 --> 0:01:39.080 writing was produced. A lot of literature that still comes 0:01:39.120 --> 0:01:42.880 down to us, whether that's individual like from journals and 0:01:42.920 --> 0:01:46.280 diaries and letters and stuff, or you know, published works 0:01:46.760 --> 0:01:51.600 that concern dreams and often invest kind of some significance 0:01:51.680 --> 0:01:54.840 beyond just psychological curiosity in dreams. 0:01:55.240 --> 0:01:57.280 Yeah, because there's always going to be some sort of 0:01:57.360 --> 0:01:59.640 dream culture in play. There's going to be you know, 0:01:59.720 --> 0:02:03.520 dream or are a reality among all us, you know, 0:02:03.560 --> 0:02:06.400 I mean, it's just it's a human, universal, human experience. 0:02:07.040 --> 0:02:11.639 We're going to have these strange visions, mundane visions, comforting visions, 0:02:11.800 --> 0:02:15.280 disturbing visions, or traumatizing visions come to us in the night. 0:02:15.360 --> 0:02:19.000 It is the you know, we talk so much, you know, 0:02:19.240 --> 0:02:21.680 on the show, but in the culture in general about 0:02:21.720 --> 0:02:27.280 you know, visions brought on by things that are less 0:02:27.320 --> 0:02:29.400 every day you know that be it some sort of 0:02:29.440 --> 0:02:34.799 a you know, peculiar encounter or the use of some 0:02:34.840 --> 0:02:38.840 sort of substance that creates a vision. But the thing 0:02:38.840 --> 0:02:41.320 about dreams is the dreams open up the door to 0:02:41.520 --> 0:02:44.800 visions pretty much every night, like it's just with with 0:02:44.960 --> 0:02:49.160 regular frequency, and something is always going to be made 0:02:49.160 --> 0:02:52.639 of that in a given culture. But these are those 0:02:52.639 --> 0:02:56.200 periods of times where they really went all in, especially 0:02:56.240 --> 0:02:59.600 among like the the literary, you know, the the upper 0:02:59.600 --> 0:03:04.160 echeligne of the like the theological branch of a given culture. 0:03:04.520 --> 0:03:08.840 Now, in the introduction to Struve's book about the dream 0:03:09.040 --> 0:03:11.919 arc in the End of the Ming Dynasty in China, 0:03:12.880 --> 0:03:15.840 she does talk about how, basically like any time and 0:03:15.919 --> 0:03:19.720 place she has examined, there seems to be a trichotomy 0:03:19.800 --> 0:03:23.280 of explanations for dreams. There's always sort of in the mix, 0:03:24.320 --> 0:03:26.560 a way of saying, well, that dream is just sort 0:03:26.560 --> 0:03:29.000 of a natural phenomenon. Maybe it's a result of you 0:03:29.120 --> 0:03:33.240 digesting a bit of mustard or cheese. There is a 0:03:33.280 --> 0:03:35.320 way of saying that the dream is given to you 0:03:35.400 --> 0:03:38.920 by a demonic force or bad spiritual entity. And there's 0:03:38.920 --> 0:03:40.600 a way of saying that a dream is given to 0:03:40.640 --> 0:03:44.320 you by a heavenly force or it's some kind of inspiration, 0:03:44.680 --> 0:03:49.440 it's a positive supernatural gift, and that kind of does permeate. 0:03:49.480 --> 0:03:52.400 You can find those three explanations all around the world 0:03:52.440 --> 0:03:54.800 at basically all times in places. 0:03:54.720 --> 0:03:58.240 Yeah, God, devil or potato, and I guess at times 0:03:58.280 --> 0:03:59.880 that you know, you may lean more towards one of 0:03:59.920 --> 0:04:02.240 the other, though I guess seems to be the case 0:04:02.240 --> 0:04:04.440 that you know, all three are going to be in 0:04:04.560 --> 0:04:08.040 play to some degree, because I mean, how all in 0:04:08.240 --> 0:04:11.800 can you go on say the devil or evil spirit 0:04:12.520 --> 0:04:15.960 understanding of dreams without having to sort of release the 0:04:16.400 --> 0:04:18.480 pressure a little bit and saying, you know, not all 0:04:18.520 --> 0:04:20.279 of these are the devil, some of these are just 0:04:20.360 --> 0:04:22.400 a potato, and you know, maybe some of these are 0:04:22.400 --> 0:04:26.320 actually useful as well. Now, one thing I wanted to 0:04:26.480 --> 0:04:29.719 touch on here at the start is coming back to 0:04:29.760 --> 0:04:32.920 something we discussed towards the end of the last episode, 0:04:33.000 --> 0:04:36.040 is the idea that when you have a given culture 0:04:36.080 --> 0:04:40.159 that really like opens the gates on dreaming, that that says, 0:04:40.240 --> 0:04:44.000 in one way or another, dreams matter, Dreams are important, 0:04:44.040 --> 0:04:48.400 and we all have access to them. You know this, 0:04:48.400 --> 0:04:52.200 this can open the floodgate, and this can perhaps require 0:04:52.320 --> 0:04:57.320 some individuals to sort of move in and individuals and 0:04:57.360 --> 0:05:00.320 positions of power, et cetera to sort of say, well, 0:05:00.440 --> 0:05:04.719 let's let's reconsider that or let's let's maybe think about 0:05:04.760 --> 0:05:09.080 what this particular dream means. And for the main candidate 0:05:09.120 --> 0:05:11.919 here would be anytime dreams are interpreted as being the 0:05:12.000 --> 0:05:16.520 will or revelations of a God, or God's dreams as 0:05:16.880 --> 0:05:18.520 revelations of the future. 0:05:19.080 --> 0:05:21.880 The main context in which this came up was our 0:05:21.920 --> 0:05:26.239 discussion of the role of dreams in early Quakerism, where 0:05:26.360 --> 0:05:29.400 a lot of meetings of the religious Society of Friends 0:05:29.440 --> 0:05:35.880 and publications by this fledgling religious group would discuss dreams 0:05:35.920 --> 0:05:39.719 people had as prophetic revelations from God. But of course 0:05:39.760 --> 0:05:43.039 that gives any individual person a lot of power and 0:05:43.080 --> 0:05:45.440 authority to say like, oh, I had a dream. This 0:05:45.520 --> 0:05:48.920 might be from God, and the dream could say anything. 0:05:48.960 --> 0:05:53.239 It might say something really destabilizing to your social group, 0:05:53.640 --> 0:05:57.280 or it might give a kind of really destabilizing political exhortation, 0:05:57.400 --> 0:05:59.520 maybe we need to do something that could get us 0:05:59.520 --> 0:06:02.159 into trouble with the authorities. So yeah, you had to 0:06:02.200 --> 0:06:04.840 have a kind of dream police, as it were, Like 0:06:05.200 --> 0:06:08.120 leaders of the early Quakers ended up kind of steering 0:06:08.200 --> 0:06:13.200 dream interpretation and selective publication of dreams to rock the 0:06:13.240 --> 0:06:16.480 boat less essentially, to to be like, oh, let's not 0:06:16.640 --> 0:06:18.960 let's not do anything too crazy. Now, how about we 0:06:19.120 --> 0:06:23.720 just interpret these dreams as you know, applying to individual 0:06:23.800 --> 0:06:27.599 moral behavior rather than having any kind of radical, broader 0:06:27.640 --> 0:06:29.400 social or political implications. 0:06:30.160 --> 0:06:35.480 Yeah, yeah, so there are There are two examples from 0:06:35.520 --> 0:06:40.000 from Chinese history and Chinese considerations of dream that I 0:06:40.040 --> 0:06:42.960 want to share here from from her book that tie 0:06:42.960 --> 0:06:45.200 into this. The first is an example that far precedes 0:06:45.200 --> 0:06:48.799 the Ning dynasty. Struve shares an account of one Zao 0:06:49.240 --> 0:06:52.240 xi Lang, a disciple of the great polymath Tao hong 0:06:52.360 --> 0:06:57.000 Jing of the fifth and sixth centuries BCE. So hong 0:06:57.080 --> 0:07:01.480 Jing insisted that most of his disciples visions. This is 0:07:01.520 --> 0:07:04.280 the man that had various visions and would write about 0:07:04.279 --> 0:07:07.920 these visions. We're waking visions. These were visions he's having 0:07:09.040 --> 0:07:10.920 during the day, you know, the kind of thing that 0:07:10.960 --> 0:07:12.760 we might think of as being brought on by like 0:07:12.840 --> 0:07:17.520 meditation or something of that nature. But Zao's own dream records, 0:07:17.880 --> 0:07:22.360 it seems, are just increasingly dream focused if you look 0:07:22.360 --> 0:07:27.480 at them in chronological order, until all of his alleged 0:07:27.560 --> 0:07:33.120 visitations with Dallas deities are conducted via dream as opposed 0:07:33.120 --> 0:07:36.280 to waking visions of one sort or another, and he 0:07:36.400 --> 0:07:40.320 ultimately believes himself summoned to the celestial realm, so he 0:07:40.400 --> 0:07:44.720 intentionally overdoses on poison in order to obey those summons. 0:07:45.000 --> 0:07:47.360 So ultimately kind of a haunting tale, but one of 0:07:47.360 --> 0:07:49.960 these where you can see like this push and pull, 0:07:50.080 --> 0:07:56.320 the one individual pulled strongly into the dream visions, and 0:07:56.440 --> 0:07:59.920 this kind of attempted course correction, either course correction or 0:08:00.080 --> 0:08:03.240 or some attempt to sort of alter the account a 0:08:03.240 --> 0:08:05.960 little bit and say, well, you know, actually they weren't 0:08:05.960 --> 0:08:09.960 all dream visions. Most of them were or are waking visions, 0:08:09.960 --> 0:08:13.360 and those are ultimately more important. And this will become 0:08:13.480 --> 0:08:15.280 essential when we talk a little bit more about this 0:08:15.440 --> 0:08:19.840 idea of what dreams represent and what the waking world 0:08:19.920 --> 0:08:25.120 represents in sort of the larger Chinese cosmology. Now, she 0:08:25.200 --> 0:08:31.440 also shares an interesting situation concerning a prominent Jesuit missionary 0:08:31.480 --> 0:08:36.760 to China by the name of Guglio Alini who lived 0:08:36.800 --> 0:08:41.400 fifteen eighty two through sixteen forty nine, and this individual 0:08:42.120 --> 0:08:46.239 enacted a strict policy of rationalistic dream and sleep interpretation 0:08:47.320 --> 0:08:53.080 among Christian followers in China at the time. In other words, 0:08:53.160 --> 0:08:56.040 the idea was no divine dreams even for the devout, 0:08:56.360 --> 0:08:58.760 and one reason for this would seem to be that 0:08:59.240 --> 0:09:03.160 the people of maritime Fujan Province were said to have 0:09:03.200 --> 0:09:06.920 a strong zeal for the power of dream, very strong 0:09:07.000 --> 0:09:11.840 dream culture, and that this particular missionary had to contend 0:09:11.880 --> 0:09:15.320 with quote, a virtual cult of sainthood concerning the dream 0:09:15.360 --> 0:09:19.880 accounts of a convert to Christianity named zang Shi. It 0:09:19.880 --> 0:09:24.080 would seem that Jesuit records of this time insisted that 0:09:24.200 --> 0:09:28.160 these dreams occurred during periods of ill health, to further 0:09:28.240 --> 0:09:31.440 push them aside into that dismissable realm of dreams as 0:09:31.520 --> 0:09:35.120 byproduct or residue, the potato realm, as opposed to the 0:09:35.160 --> 0:09:38.720 divine realm. Though of course this is of course again 0:09:38.800 --> 0:09:42.160 a Jesuit missionary. So this is an outsider with an 0:09:42.160 --> 0:09:46.520 outside faith that has been introduced into China. It's contending 0:09:47.120 --> 0:09:50.800 like a with a local indigenous dream culture. 0:09:51.679 --> 0:09:54.559 Well right, yeah, So as a Catholic missionary, he would 0:09:54.559 --> 0:09:57.959 want to be presenting a sort of a stable theology 0:09:58.000 --> 0:10:00.160 to people. It's like, this is what comes from the 0:10:00.160 --> 0:10:04.080 Bible and from the Church, and you can't like change 0:10:04.080 --> 0:10:07.079 anything by having a dream and getting a new revelation 0:10:07.200 --> 0:10:09.720 from God. It's all already here for you. 0:10:10.440 --> 0:10:14.600 Yeah, I mean, obviously, the Catholic Church is kind of 0:10:14.640 --> 0:10:18.640 like the poster child of top down religion, top down theology, 0:10:18.679 --> 0:10:23.280 and historically they have not reacted well to new revelations 0:10:23.320 --> 0:10:28.640 among the lower tiers. Now, to move on to the 0:10:28.760 --> 0:10:31.960 Ming Dynasty period, the late Ming Dynasty period in particular, 0:10:32.000 --> 0:10:35.040 that's the main focus of the book, it's probably necessary 0:10:35.040 --> 0:10:38.080 to add just a little historical context. So the Ming 0:10:38.160 --> 0:10:41.280 Dynasty was an imperial dynasty of China ruled by the 0:10:41.320 --> 0:10:45.480 Han people. They had overthrown the Mongol led Yuan dynasty 0:10:45.600 --> 0:10:48.920 in thirteen sixty eight and would ultimately succumb to the 0:10:48.960 --> 0:10:53.839 Manchu led Qing dynasty in sixteen forty four. The Qing 0:10:53.920 --> 0:10:57.719 Dynasty would be the last imperial dynasty of China. And 0:10:57.800 --> 0:11:01.520 so Struve is dealing mostly with the Late Ming Empire, 0:11:01.760 --> 0:11:05.240 this period that she describes as a time of disintegration, 0:11:06.240 --> 0:11:10.959 the empires in decline, it's threatened and ultimately overthrown by outsiders. 0:11:11.559 --> 0:11:15.000 And then also she's dealing with the immediate period thereafter, 0:11:15.760 --> 0:11:17.920 the early Qing dynasty, in which you have all of 0:11:17.960 --> 0:11:21.720 these people who have the you know, the Han people 0:11:21.760 --> 0:11:24.600 within this dynasty who have gone through all this change 0:11:25.760 --> 0:11:28.520 and are dealing at times with the trauma all of 0:11:28.559 --> 0:11:33.120 that change. And incidentally, she also gets we're not gonna 0:11:33.120 --> 0:11:34.360 have time to get into any of this, but she 0:11:34.640 --> 0:11:37.480 has a number of mentions of the writings of pousong Ling, 0:11:38.559 --> 0:11:41.600 who wrote the Strange Tales from the Chinese studio. He's 0:11:41.840 --> 0:11:45.400 born shortly after the fall of the Ming dynasty in 0:11:45.480 --> 0:11:50.760 that period of transition. So if you're interested in pusong Ling, 0:11:51.120 --> 0:11:52.880 this is also a book we're picking up. 0:11:53.440 --> 0:11:55.079 Referenced frequently on this show. 0:11:55.880 --> 0:12:00.720 Yeah, pusong Ling a lot of weird tales he shares 0:12:00.800 --> 0:12:06.200 concerning everything from ghosts and trolls and goblins to you know, 0:12:06.240 --> 0:12:09.000 at times just kind of there's more than one sort 0:12:09.000 --> 0:12:12.319 of body story thrown in there as well. Now, other 0:12:12.400 --> 0:12:15.920 key factors during this time period, according to Struve, she says, 0:12:15.960 --> 0:12:20.559 there is a trend toward moral ethical subjectivity in spiritual exploration. 0:12:21.480 --> 0:12:25.280 There was a mounting dysfunctionality of the state system in 0:12:25.360 --> 0:12:27.760 political culture, which meant that you had a lot of 0:12:27.760 --> 0:12:31.280 individuals that would you know, otherwise have been focusing their 0:12:31.360 --> 0:12:35.920 energy on advancing themselves and applying themselves in official state positions, 0:12:36.559 --> 0:12:40.800 but they're unable to so they're left to engage personal projects, 0:12:40.840 --> 0:12:45.160 they're left to indulge inward gazing in this pursuit of 0:12:45.240 --> 0:12:48.959 dream and fed by all of this, there was also 0:12:49.040 --> 0:12:52.600 a general questioning of the rationalism and emotional control that 0:12:52.800 --> 0:12:55.520 was part of sort of the dominant mean philosophy and 0:12:55.600 --> 0:12:59.200 politics up to that point. And just in general again 0:12:59.720 --> 0:13:04.400 the line of one dynasty and the pending emergence of 0:13:04.440 --> 0:13:07.480 a new dynasty, there's this growing sense of a loss 0:13:07.520 --> 0:13:10.839 of control for many, she says, a sense of uncertainty 0:13:11.160 --> 0:13:15.079 that leads to an increased focus on cosmic answers and 0:13:15.200 --> 0:13:18.560 inward reflections, both of which, as we've been discussing, are 0:13:18.640 --> 0:13:23.000 sort of universally sometimes sought out through the world of dreams, 0:13:23.040 --> 0:13:25.200 and this is very much part of dream culture in 0:13:25.280 --> 0:13:28.240 China of the day as well. Now Streff discusses the 0:13:28.280 --> 0:13:31.840 legacy of Chinese dream interpretation at length, going back well 0:13:31.880 --> 0:13:35.680 before this period, of course, into shamanistic traditions of old, 0:13:36.400 --> 0:13:39.080 similar to some of what we discussed concerning the Ottoman 0:13:39.200 --> 0:13:43.200 dream culture, but she explains that the understanding of dreaming 0:13:43.400 --> 0:13:47.080 at its most basic and Chinese tradition was considered in 0:13:47.160 --> 0:13:50.480 terms of course of yen and yang and in two 0:13:50.520 --> 0:13:53.360 sort of broad ways of looking at it. So, in 0:13:53.400 --> 0:13:56.400 one school of thought, which she calls the partheid model, 0:13:56.840 --> 0:14:01.080 wakefulness is the Yang state and sleep or dream is 0:14:01.120 --> 0:14:04.000 the Yen state. So it's in the yen state that 0:14:04.080 --> 0:14:07.199 one's two souls, the terrestrial soul and the aerial soul, 0:14:07.280 --> 0:14:11.760 become disconnected, allowing the end state of the soul to 0:14:11.880 --> 0:14:15.360 explore without anchor of the yang. And if these two 0:14:15.440 --> 0:14:19.800 souls don't recouple upon waking, well, then you die. And 0:14:19.840 --> 0:14:23.200 thus there's this long standing connection between sleep and death 0:14:23.200 --> 0:14:28.360 in Chinese thought, I guess I'm assuming also coupled with 0:14:27.520 --> 0:14:32.320 the with the obvious observation that when we sleep it's 0:14:32.400 --> 0:14:36.240 kind of like we're dead. Also in dream, it's said 0:14:36.440 --> 0:14:40.560 via this model, the drifting soul might encounter quote, avatars 0:14:40.600 --> 0:14:43.720 of the forces of justice and fate that one would 0:14:43.800 --> 0:14:46.360 not normally encounter in the mundane world, but you might 0:14:46.440 --> 0:14:49.080 encounter them in dream, and therefore you might suffer ill 0:14:49.160 --> 0:14:51.160 dreams and nightmares as punishments. 0:14:52.440 --> 0:14:55.880 But basically the idea that when the material like the 0:14:56.600 --> 0:15:00.200 grounded soul and the aerial souls separate during sleep, the 0:15:00.240 --> 0:15:03.560 aerial soul can kind of wander and have encounters with 0:15:03.640 --> 0:15:06.680 other like ghosts or ancestors or other beings. 0:15:07.120 --> 0:15:11.160 Yeah, and also just more broadly, that the waking world 0:15:11.240 --> 0:15:13.160 is the yang world and the dream world is the 0:15:13.240 --> 0:15:17.280 yen world. But then this other model, which she calls 0:15:17.320 --> 0:15:19.720 the phasic model, it takes a different approach to yin 0:15:19.800 --> 0:15:25.040 and yang and dreams and wakefulness. In this one, the 0:15:25.160 --> 0:15:29.400 idea is that a sleeping individual will cycle in and 0:15:29.440 --> 0:15:33.560 out of different phases of yin and yang throughout one's 0:15:33.840 --> 0:15:37.080 sleep at night, and this would be in the form 0:15:37.120 --> 0:15:41.480 of dreamlessness and dreaming. So in this what goes on 0:15:41.560 --> 0:15:44.160 in our sleep mirror mirrors just all the other patterns 0:15:44.160 --> 0:15:46.040 in our life, just a pattern of yin and yang, 0:15:46.480 --> 0:15:49.120 and you know, and ultimately you want these to be 0:15:49.160 --> 0:15:52.240 in balance with each other. This school of thoughts, she writes, 0:15:52.280 --> 0:15:56.520 stress natural causes of dreams and nightmares rather than the supernatural, 0:15:57.120 --> 0:15:59.360 so not saying that it was just all potato, but 0:15:59.520 --> 0:16:02.880 leaned more potato than the other model. 0:16:03.240 --> 0:16:07.520 That's interesting because obviously it mirrors the true fact that 0:16:07.560 --> 0:16:10.120 we don't dream the entire time we're asleep, that there 0:16:10.120 --> 0:16:13.960 are specific phases of sleep during which we dream or 0:16:14.040 --> 0:16:15.560 during which dreaming is heightened. 0:16:15.840 --> 0:16:17.880 Yeah, it's also interesting concerning some other things that come 0:16:17.920 --> 0:16:21.080 up in the book about just thinking about different ways 0:16:21.240 --> 0:16:25.000 that a night's sleep may go. And indeed this sort 0:16:25.000 --> 0:16:29.320 of idea that some positive that you could have an 0:16:29.480 --> 0:16:32.840 entire night's sleep that is completely dream free, that you 0:16:32.880 --> 0:16:37.040 can avoid dreams entirely, or you can avoid all sorts 0:16:37.080 --> 0:16:39.880 of one type of dream in favor of another. 0:16:41.120 --> 0:16:43.240 Oh yeah, well that brings up another way of thinking 0:16:43.240 --> 0:16:46.920 about dreams that is different than I think anything we've 0:16:46.960 --> 0:16:49.120 discussed in this series so far. We focused a lot 0:16:49.160 --> 0:16:54.680 on people attaching various kinds of supernatural, revelatory or prophetic 0:16:54.800 --> 0:16:57.600 power to the contents of their dreams. But you know, 0:16:57.640 --> 0:16:59.760 another thing that seems to be fairly common in the 0:16:59.760 --> 0:17:03.840 world is just having beliefs about ways to have a 0:17:03.920 --> 0:17:06.640 good dream, like when you want to have a good 0:17:06.760 --> 0:17:08.240 dream as opposed to a bad one. 0:17:08.760 --> 0:17:11.000 Yeah, And I think this is like a lot of 0:17:11.040 --> 0:17:13.040 what's going on, and particularly in the Chinese example, is 0:17:13.080 --> 0:17:16.639 occurring again among the elites, among the intellectual elites and 0:17:16.680 --> 0:17:19.919 theological elites of the day, and it gets, you know, 0:17:19.960 --> 0:17:23.239 it gets rather complex. But I think like when you 0:17:23.320 --> 0:17:26.000 get down to some of the more like shamanistic roots 0:17:26.000 --> 0:17:28.760 of all of this and sort of like the average 0:17:28.800 --> 0:17:33.680 individuals like sort of base understanding of dreams. You kind 0:17:33.680 --> 0:17:35.399 of come down to those some of the like the 0:17:35.480 --> 0:17:38.199 really key questions. And obviously one question is is this 0:17:38.280 --> 0:17:40.560 real or is it not? And if it's not real, 0:17:40.720 --> 0:17:42.400 where does it come from? If it is real, where 0:17:42.400 --> 0:17:43.840 does it come from? And what does it mean? That 0:17:43.920 --> 0:17:46.399 sort of thing. But then also like coming down if 0:17:46.400 --> 0:17:48.600 you ask the average individual just on the street, hey, 0:17:48.640 --> 0:17:50.760 what do you think about dreams? Even today? They might 0:17:50.840 --> 0:17:53.960 be like, I don't know, you know, dreams or dreams whatever. 0:17:54.280 --> 0:17:55.560 But if you ask them what do you think about 0:17:55.600 --> 0:17:58.359 what is your opinion on nightmares? Most people are going 0:17:58.440 --> 0:18:00.720 to say I don't care for them. I would prefer 0:18:00.840 --> 0:18:03.480 not to have them. And so there's I think there's 0:18:03.480 --> 0:18:06.120 always going to be that level of a dream culture 0:18:06.160 --> 0:18:09.120 as well, like can we do something about these nightmares? 0:18:09.160 --> 0:18:10.760 I mean, this is nice that you have all these 0:18:10.760 --> 0:18:13.080 thoughts about like where these are coming from, But I 0:18:13.119 --> 0:18:16.120 would tell me how to not have the nightmare. 0:18:16.240 --> 0:18:19.480 Whether Scrooge is being tortured by the actual ghost of 0:18:19.560 --> 0:18:22.320 Jacob Marley or it is just the bit of mustard 0:18:22.480 --> 0:18:25.240 or the crust of bread that is causing it. Either way, 0:18:25.280 --> 0:18:26.400 it is unpleasant. 0:18:27.080 --> 0:18:29.639 Yeah, I mean this is I'm sure preaching to the 0:18:29.680 --> 0:18:34.200 choir universally among our listeners here. But you know, nightmares suck. 0:18:34.600 --> 0:18:40.560 They disrupt your night's sleep, and by disrupting your night's sleep, 0:18:40.560 --> 0:18:45.320 you're gonna inevitably disrupt your waking day to follow, not 0:18:45.359 --> 0:18:48.360 only like on a physiological level, but also a potentially 0:18:48.400 --> 0:18:51.040 on a mental or emotional level. And we have to 0:18:51.240 --> 0:18:54.960 bear in mind that like bad dreams and nightmares can 0:18:55.000 --> 0:18:59.680 also be intensified via stress and trauma in life. So 0:19:00.040 --> 0:19:03.880 you know, it's like this boulder rolling down a hill, 0:19:04.200 --> 0:19:07.960 and I think we can all, you know, understand that 0:19:07.960 --> 0:19:12.000 that desire to want to stop that boulder or to 0:19:12.640 --> 0:19:16.440 diminish it somehow before it lands into us. And that's 0:19:16.520 --> 0:19:18.720 without even getting into some of the more extreme examples 0:19:18.760 --> 0:19:21.600 of Paris on the night terrors and so forth, Like 0:19:21.720 --> 0:19:25.280 just sort of like normal nightmares can be horrible. They're 0:19:25.280 --> 0:19:28.840 horrible for us and then certainly as parents, you know, 0:19:29.040 --> 0:19:32.159 they're horrible when you're having to deal with someone, especially 0:19:32.200 --> 0:19:34.560 a young child, but also to other loved ones when 0:19:34.560 --> 0:19:37.280 they're experiencing them, because there's this kind of kind of 0:19:37.359 --> 0:19:41.119 helplessness to it, right, Like you can't protect them in 0:19:41.200 --> 0:19:54.040 their dreams. So we'll get back to this general topic 0:19:54.119 --> 0:19:59.000 of like traditions and customs regarding the prevention of bad 0:19:59.119 --> 0:20:03.040 dreams and sort of opening the door for more positive dreams. 0:20:03.640 --> 0:20:06.920 But this also brings up something that I'm sure a 0:20:07.000 --> 0:20:09.520 number of you have been thinking about listening to these episodes, 0:20:09.720 --> 0:20:13.080 and you've probably been wondering why it hasn't come up yet, 0:20:13.200 --> 0:20:17.040 and that is the topic of so called lucid dreaming. 0:20:18.040 --> 0:20:20.200 Lucid dreaming is, of course, you know, the idea that 0:20:20.240 --> 0:20:23.600 you can take the wheel of your dreams, that within 0:20:23.680 --> 0:20:26.680 your dream you can realize you are dreaming and say, hey, 0:20:26.880 --> 0:20:28.560 I'm going to flip the script here, I'm going to 0:20:28.640 --> 0:20:29.600 do whatever I want. 0:20:30.040 --> 0:20:33.840 Essentially, it's interesting because it often seems to hinge on 0:20:33.880 --> 0:20:37.120 the question of whether you can realize when you are dreaming. 0:20:37.920 --> 0:20:41.160 Yeah, and you know, it's something that my understanding from 0:20:41.160 --> 0:20:43.280 having you know, discussed on the show in the bast 0:20:43.400 --> 0:20:45.440 is that it's something you got to work at. People 0:20:45.440 --> 0:20:49.680 do apply themselves to it, and people do report results. 0:20:50.200 --> 0:20:53.600 I've never applied myself to it, and therefore the few 0:20:53.640 --> 0:20:56.760 times that I do have lucid moments in my dreams 0:20:56.800 --> 0:20:59.960 where I realize that I am dreaming. I immediately follow 0:21:00.080 --> 0:21:02.240 out of it. So I'll have a dream where I'm like, hey, 0:21:02.240 --> 0:21:04.320 this is a dream, and then I'll be like, what 0:21:04.440 --> 0:21:06.440 did I just think? I don't remember, and then I'm 0:21:06.480 --> 0:21:08.680 back under the spell of the dream, and this will 0:21:08.720 --> 0:21:11.000 happen the times that it's happened like this, It'll just 0:21:11.040 --> 0:21:15.720 happen like several times in a row, and I'm unable 0:21:15.760 --> 0:21:18.240 to shake the delusion of the dream. 0:21:18.560 --> 0:21:20.479 I think I've shared this on the show before, but 0:21:21.480 --> 0:21:24.280 my experience is every time in a dream I start 0:21:24.320 --> 0:21:27.159 to wonder if I'm dreaming or not, I think, no, 0:21:27.480 --> 0:21:32.479 this is definitely real. It seems to imply I don't know. 0:21:32.520 --> 0:21:35.199 I wonder if that means I'm especially prone to delusions. 0:21:35.640 --> 0:21:36.479 I'm not sure. 0:21:36.920 --> 0:21:40.760 Yeah, it's hard for me to like in the dream. 0:21:40.840 --> 0:21:44.400 I'm always like, I bring my own like waking sort 0:21:44.440 --> 0:21:47.719 of cautiousness to the dream. So I was thinking earlier 0:21:47.800 --> 0:21:53.040 about like substances within dreams, drugs within dreams, for example, 0:21:53.080 --> 0:21:56.359 which I've read some wonderful fictional treatments of this before. 0:21:56.440 --> 0:21:59.480 But the times where I've been offered, say a drug 0:21:59.600 --> 0:22:02.280 within it. I'm always like, no, thank you, I don't 0:22:02.280 --> 0:22:05.960 know what's in that will I will politely decline, And 0:22:05.960 --> 0:22:07.960 then afterwards I'm like, well that, why didn't. It's a 0:22:08.080 --> 0:22:11.720 dream like that, this is the place to try strange substances, 0:22:12.000 --> 0:22:14.480 the dream world. But no, I don't realize it's a dream, 0:22:14.520 --> 0:22:15.840 so I don't give it a go. 0:22:16.320 --> 0:22:17.679 Dream cocaine can't hurt you. 0:22:19.480 --> 0:22:22.120 So, as we've discussed on the show before, the term 0:22:22.119 --> 0:22:27.240 itself lucid dreaming originates in nineteen thirteen with Dutch psychiatrist 0:22:27.359 --> 0:22:30.399 Frederick van Eaton, but he was hardly the first person 0:22:30.440 --> 0:22:33.800 to recognize that the dreamer can become aware that they 0:22:33.840 --> 0:22:36.159 are in a dream and then influence the shape of 0:22:36.160 --> 0:22:40.119 that dream. That this basic idea had been written about 0:22:40.200 --> 0:22:43.439 in Europe for centuries, and in ancient times you have 0:22:43.480 --> 0:22:47.600 the likes of Saint Augustine, Galen, Aristotle. They all wrote 0:22:47.600 --> 0:22:50.360 about it. In Asia of The concept was also understood 0:22:50.400 --> 0:22:54.080 among ancient Hindus and early Buddhists, and so this was 0:22:54.119 --> 0:22:58.199 certainly recognized in the dream culture of the Latening period 0:22:58.240 --> 0:23:02.040 as well. Interestingly, we've only mentioned lucid dreaming once in 0:23:02.080 --> 0:23:06.560 the book, but it's still notable. In one section, she 0:23:06.680 --> 0:23:10.760 is discussing leang ying Ming, an important Neo Confucian thinker 0:23:10.800 --> 0:23:13.680 of the Ming dynasty. He is said to have followed 0:23:13.720 --> 0:23:19.080 a Taoist practice of deep meditation that minimized both sleep 0:23:19.280 --> 0:23:22.000 and dream. And I suppose in this we see a 0:23:22.000 --> 0:23:24.119 reflection of that idea that you know, there is a 0:23:24.119 --> 0:23:27.199 threat posed by the irrational dreams. You know, this is 0:23:27.840 --> 0:23:29.840 these are to be avoided because this is where I 0:23:29.840 --> 0:23:34.800 do not have like intellectual and emotional control. So I 0:23:34.840 --> 0:23:37.919 take it to mean he was just maybe not a 0:23:37.960 --> 0:23:41.200