Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
Speaker 3: My name is Robert Land, and I'm Joe McCormick.
Speaker 2: This is the third episode and what I believe is
Speaker 2: going to be a four part series about dream mystique,
Speaker 2: dream culture. We're going to have one more episode that
Speaker 2: is going to focus on Japanese dream.
Speaker 3: Culture and finally get to that monster that is the
Speaker 3: reason we started looking at this.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, we've been chasing after that monster and ultimately
Speaker 2: we will chase it across the sea and discuss its
Speaker 2: form and function. In this one, we're going to get
Speaker 2: more properly into the main focus of the Dreaming Mind
Speaker 2: of The End of the Main World by Lynn A. Struve,
Speaker 2: which we've been referring to in these episodes. This was
Speaker 2: published in twenty nineteen by the University of Hawaii Press. Naturally,
Speaker 2: we're not going to cover everything in that but rather,
Speaker 2: you know, highlight some of the key points, some interesting
Speaker 2: bits that stand out and leave you to explore the
Speaker 2: book yourself if you want to go deeper in on it.
Speaker 3: But in the.
Speaker 2: Previous episodes two episodes, we we mostly discussed other dream
Speaker 2: cultures from around the world highlighted lighted by Stroove as
Speaker 2: being sort of hot beds of focus on the potential
Speaker 2: of dreams to impact our daily lives.
Speaker 3: Yeah, particularly times and places when a lot of dream
Speaker 3: writing was produced. A lot of literature that still comes
Speaker 3: down to us, whether that's individual like from journals and
Speaker 3: diaries and letters and stuff, or you know, published works
Speaker 3: that concern dreams and often invest kind of some significance
Speaker 3: beyond just psychological curiosity in dreams.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because there's always going to be some sort of
Speaker 2: dream culture in play. There's going to be you know,
Speaker 2: dream or are a reality among all us, you know,
Speaker 2: I mean, it's just it's a human, universal, human experience.
Speaker 2: We're going to have these strange visions, mundane visions, comforting visions,
Speaker 2: disturbing visions, or traumatizing visions come to us in the night.
Speaker 2: It is the you know, we talk so much, you know,
Speaker 2: on the show, but in the culture in general about
Speaker 2: you know, visions brought on by things that are less
Speaker 2: every day you know that be it some sort of
Speaker 2: a you know, peculiar encounter or the use of some
Speaker 2: sort of substance that creates a vision. But the thing
Speaker 2: about dreams is the dreams open up the door to
Speaker 2: visions pretty much every night, like it's just with with
Speaker 2: regular frequency, and something is always going to be made
Speaker 2: of that in a given culture. But these are those
Speaker 2: periods of times where they really went all in, especially
Speaker 2: among like the the literary, you know, the the upper
Speaker 2: echeligne of the like the theological branch of a given culture.
Speaker 3: Now, in the introduction to Struve's book about the dream
Speaker 3: arc in the End of the Ming Dynasty in China,
Speaker 3: she does talk about how, basically like any time and
Speaker 3: place she has examined, there seems to be a trichotomy
Speaker 3: of explanations for dreams. There's always sort of in the mix,
Speaker 3: a way of saying, well, that dream is just sort
Speaker 3: of a natural phenomenon. Maybe it's a result of you
Speaker 3: digesting a bit of mustard or cheese. There is a
Speaker 3: way of saying that the dream is given to you
Speaker 3: by a demonic force or bad spiritual entity. And there's
Speaker 3: a way of saying that a dream is given to
Speaker 3: you by a heavenly force or it's some kind of inspiration,
Speaker 3: it's a positive supernatural gift, and that kind of does permeate.
Speaker 3: You can find those three explanations all around the world
Speaker 3: at basically all times in places.
Speaker 2: Yeah, God, devil or potato, and I guess at times
Speaker 2: that you know, you may lean more towards one of
Speaker 2: the other, though I guess seems to be the case
Speaker 2: that you know, all three are going to be in
Speaker 2: play to some degree, because I mean, how all in
Speaker 2: can you go on say the devil or evil spirit
Speaker 2: understanding of dreams without having to sort of release the
Speaker 2: pressure a little bit and saying, you know, not all
Speaker 2: of these are the devil, some of these are just
Speaker 2: a potato, and you know, maybe some of these are
Speaker 2: actually useful as well. Now, one thing I wanted to
Speaker 2: touch on here at the start is coming back to
Speaker 2: something we discussed towards the end of the last episode,
Speaker 2: is the idea that when you have a given culture
Speaker 2: that really like opens the gates on dreaming, that that says,
Speaker 2: in one way or another, dreams matter, Dreams are important,
Speaker 2: and we all have access to them. You know this,
Speaker 2: this can open the floodgate, and this can perhaps require
Speaker 2: some individuals to sort of move in and individuals and
Speaker 2: positions of power, et cetera to sort of say, well,
Speaker 2: let's let's reconsider that or let's let's maybe think about
Speaker 2: what this particular dream means. And for the main candidate
Speaker 2: here would be anytime dreams are interpreted as being the
Speaker 2: will or revelations of a God, or God's dreams as
Speaker 2: revelations of the future.
Speaker 3: The main context in which this came up was our
Speaker 3: discussion of the role of dreams in early Quakerism, where
Speaker 3: a lot of meetings of the religious Society of Friends
Speaker 3: and publications by this fledgling religious group would discuss dreams
Speaker 3: people had as prophetic revelations from God. But of course
Speaker 3: that gives any individual person a lot of power and
Speaker 3: authority to say like, oh, I had a dream. This
Speaker 3: might be from God, and the dream could say anything.
Speaker 3: It might say something really destabilizing to your social group,
Speaker 3: or it might give a kind of really destabilizing political exhortation,
Speaker 3: maybe we need to do something that could get us
Speaker 3: into trouble with the authorities. So yeah, you had to
Speaker 3: have a kind of dream police, as it were, Like
Speaker 3: leaders of the early Quakers ended up kind of steering
Speaker 3: dream interpretation and selective publication of dreams to rock the
Speaker 3: boat less essentially, to to be like, oh, let's not
Speaker 3: let's not do anything too crazy. Now, how about we
Speaker 3: just interpret these dreams as you know, applying to individual
Speaker 3: moral behavior rather than having any kind of radical, broader
Speaker 3: social or political implications.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so there are There are two examples from
Speaker 2: from Chinese history and Chinese considerations of dream that I
Speaker 2: want to share here from from her book that tie
Speaker 2: into this. The first is an example that far precedes
Speaker 2: the Ning dynasty. Struve shares an account of one Zao
Speaker 2: xi Lang, a disciple of the great polymath Tao hong
Speaker 2: Jing of the fifth and sixth centuries BCE. So hong
Speaker 2: Jing insisted that most of his disciples visions. This is
Speaker 2: the man that had various visions and would write about
Speaker 2: these visions. We're waking visions. These were visions he's having
Speaker 2: during the day, you know, the kind of thing that
Speaker 2: we might think of as being brought on by like
Speaker 2: meditation or something of that nature. But Zao's own dream records,
Speaker 2: it seems, are just increasingly dream focused if you look
Speaker 2: at them in chronological order, until all of his alleged
Speaker 2: visitations with Dallas deities are conducted via dream as opposed
Speaker 2: to waking visions of one sort or another, and he
Speaker 2: ultimately believes himself summoned to the celestial realm, so he
Speaker 2: intentionally overdoses on poison in order to obey those summons.
Speaker 2: So ultimately kind of a haunting tale, but one of
Speaker 2: these where you can see like this push and pull,
Speaker 2: the one individual pulled strongly into the dream visions, and
Speaker 2: this kind of attempted course correction, either course correction or
Speaker 2: or some attempt to sort of alter the account a
Speaker 2: little bit and say, well, you know, actually they weren't
Speaker 2: all dream visions. Most of them were or are waking visions,
Speaker 2: and those are ultimately more important. And this will become
Speaker 2: essential when we talk a little bit more about this
Speaker 2: idea of what dreams represent and what the waking world
Speaker 2: represents in sort of the larger Chinese cosmology. Now, she
Speaker 2: also shares an interesting situation concerning a prominent Jesuit missionary
Speaker 2: to China by the name of Guglio Alini who lived
Speaker 2: fifteen eighty two through sixteen forty nine, and this individual
Speaker 2: enacted a strict policy of rationalistic dream and sleep interpretation
Speaker 2: among Christian followers in China at the time. In other words,
Speaker 2: the idea was no divine dreams even for the devout,
Speaker 2: and one reason for this would seem to be that
Speaker 2: the people of maritime Fujan Province were said to have
Speaker 2: a strong zeal for the power of dream, very strong
Speaker 2: dream culture, and that this particular missionary had to contend
Speaker 2: with quote, a virtual cult of sainthood concerning the dream
Speaker 2: accounts of a convert to Christianity named zang Shi. It
Speaker 2: would seem that Jesuit records of this time insisted that
Speaker 2: these dreams occurred during periods of ill health, to further
Speaker 2: push them aside into that dismissable realm of dreams as
Speaker 2: byproduct or residue, the potato realm, as opposed to the
Speaker 2: divine realm. Though of course this is of course again
Speaker 2: a Jesuit missionary. So this is an outsider with an
Speaker 2: outside faith that has been introduced into China. It's contending
Speaker 2: like a with a local indigenous dream culture.
Speaker 3: Well right, yeah, So as a Catholic missionary, he would
Speaker 3: want to be presenting a sort of a stable theology
Speaker 3: to people. It's like, this is what comes from the
Speaker 3: Bible and from the Church, and you can't like change
Speaker 3: anything by having a dream and getting a new revelation
Speaker 3: from God. It's all already here for you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, obviously, the Catholic Church is kind of
Speaker 2: like the poster child of top down religion, top down theology,
Speaker 2: and historically they have not reacted well to new revelations
Speaker 2: among the lower tiers. Now, to move on to the
Speaker 2: Ming Dynasty period, the late Ming Dynasty period in particular,
Speaker 2: that's the main focus of the book, it's probably necessary
Speaker 2: to add just a little historical context. So the Ming
Speaker 2: Dynasty was an imperial dynasty of China ruled by the
Speaker 2: Han people. They had overthrown the Mongol led Yuan dynasty
Speaker 2: in thirteen sixty eight and would ultimately succumb to the
Speaker 2: Manchu led Qing dynasty in sixteen forty four. The Qing
Speaker 2: Dynasty would be the last imperial dynasty of China. And
Speaker 2: so Struve is dealing mostly with the Late Ming Empire,
Speaker 2: this period that she describes as a time of disintegration,
Speaker 2: the empires in decline, it's threatened and ultimately overthrown by outsiders.
Speaker 2: And then also she's dealing with the immediate period thereafter,
Speaker 2: the early Qing dynasty, in which you have all of
Speaker 2: these people who have the you know, the Han people
Speaker 2: within this dynasty who have gone through all this change
Speaker 2: and are dealing at times with the trauma all of
Speaker 2: that change. And incidentally, she also gets we're not gonna
Speaker 2: have time to get into any of this, but she
Speaker 2: has a number of mentions of the writings of pousong Ling,
Speaker 2: who wrote the Strange Tales from the Chinese studio. He's
Speaker 2: born shortly after the fall of the Ming dynasty in
Speaker 2: that period of transition. So if you're interested in pusong Ling,
Speaker 2: this is also a book we're picking up.
Speaker 3: Referenced frequently on this show.
Speaker 2: Yeah, pusong Ling a lot of weird tales he shares
Speaker 2: concerning everything from ghosts and trolls and goblins to you know,
Speaker 2: at times just kind of there's more than one sort
Speaker 2: of body story thrown in there as well. Now, other
Speaker 2: key factors during this time period, according to Struve, she says,
Speaker 2: there is a trend toward moral ethical subjectivity in spiritual exploration.
Speaker 2: There was a mounting dysfunctionality of the state system in
Speaker 2: political culture, which meant that you had a lot of
Speaker 2: individuals that would you know, otherwise have been focusing their
Speaker 2: energy on advancing themselves and applying themselves in official state positions,
Speaker 2: but they're unable to so they're left to engage personal projects,
Speaker 2: they're left to indulge inward gazing in this pursuit of
Speaker 2: dream and fed by all of this, there was also
Speaker 2: a general questioning of the rationalism and emotional control that
Speaker 2: was part of sort of the dominant mean philosophy and
Speaker 2: politics up to that point. And just in general again
Speaker 2: the line of one dynasty and the pending emergence of
Speaker 2: a new dynasty, there's this growing sense of a loss
Speaker 2: of control for many, she says, a sense of uncertainty
Speaker 2: that leads to an increased focus on cosmic answers and
Speaker 2: inward reflections, both of which, as we've been discussing, are
Speaker 2: sort of universally sometimes sought out through the world of dreams,
Speaker 2: and this is very much part of dream culture in
Speaker 2: China of the day as well. Now Streff discusses the
Speaker 2: legacy of Chinese dream interpretation at length, going back well
Speaker 2: before this period, of course, into shamanistic traditions of old,
Speaker 2: similar to some of what we discussed concerning the Ottoman
Speaker 2: dream culture, but she explains that the understanding of dreaming
Speaker 2: at its most basic and Chinese tradition was considered in
Speaker 2: terms of course of yen and yang and in two
Speaker 2: sort of broad ways of looking at it. So, in
Speaker 2: one school of thought, which she calls the partheid model,
Speaker 2: wakefulness is the Yang state and sleep or dream is
Speaker 2: the Yen state. So it's in the yen state that
Speaker 2: one's two souls, the terrestrial soul and the aerial soul,
Speaker 2: become disconnected, allowing the end state of the soul to
Speaker 2: explore without anchor of the yang. And if these two
Speaker 2: souls don't recouple upon waking, well, then you die. And
Speaker 2: thus there's this long standing connection between sleep and death
Speaker 2: in Chinese thought, I guess I'm assuming also coupled with
Speaker 2: the with the obvious observation that when we sleep it's
Speaker 2: kind of like we're dead. Also in dream, it's said
Speaker 2: via this model, the drifting soul might encounter quote, avatars
Speaker 2: of the forces of justice and fate that one would
Speaker 2: not normally encounter in the mundane world, but you might
Speaker 2: encounter them in dream, and therefore you might suffer ill
Speaker 2: dreams and nightmares as punishments.
Speaker 3: But basically the idea that when the material like the
Speaker 3: grounded soul and the aerial souls separate during sleep, the
Speaker 3: aerial soul can kind of wander and have encounters with
Speaker 3: other like ghosts or ancestors or other beings.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and also just more broadly, that the waking world
Speaker 2: is the yang world and the dream world is the
Speaker 2: yen world. But then this other model, which she calls
Speaker 2: the phasic model, it takes a different approach to yin
Speaker 2: and yang and dreams and wakefulness. In this one, the
Speaker 2: idea is that a sleeping individual will cycle in and
Speaker 2: out of different phases of yin and yang throughout one's
Speaker 2: sleep at night, and this would be in the form
Speaker 2: of dreamlessness and dreaming. So in this what goes on
Speaker 2: in our sleep mirror mirrors just all the other patterns
Speaker 2: in our life, just a pattern of yin and yang,
Speaker 2: and you know, and ultimately you want these to be
Speaker 2: in balance with each other. This school of thoughts, she writes,
Speaker 2: stress natural causes of dreams and nightmares rather than the supernatural,
Speaker 2: so not saying that it was just all potato, but
Speaker 2: leaned more potato than the other model.
Speaker 3: That's interesting because obviously it mirrors the true fact that
Speaker 3: we don't dream the entire time we're asleep, that there
Speaker 3: are specific phases of sleep during which we dream or
Speaker 3: during which dreaming is heightened.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's also interesting concerning some other things that come
Speaker 2: up in the book about just thinking about different ways
Speaker 2: that a night's sleep may go. And indeed this sort
Speaker 2: of idea that some positive that you could have an
Speaker 2: entire night's sleep that is completely dream free, that you
Speaker 2: can avoid dreams entirely, or you can avoid all sorts
Speaker 2: of one type of dream in favor of another.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, well that brings up another way of thinking
Speaker 3: about dreams that is different than I think anything we've
Speaker 3: discussed in this series so far. We focused a lot
Speaker 3: on people attaching various kinds of supernatural, revelatory or prophetic
Speaker 3: power to the contents of their dreams. But you know,
Speaker 3: another thing that seems to be fairly common in the
Speaker 3: world is just having beliefs about ways to have a
Speaker 3: good dream, like when you want to have a good
Speaker 3: dream as opposed to a bad one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think this is like a lot of
Speaker 2: what's going on, and particularly in the Chinese example, is
Speaker 2: occurring again among the elites, among the intellectual elites and
Speaker 2: theological elites of the day, and it gets, you know,
Speaker 2: it gets rather complex. But I think like when you
Speaker 2: get down to some of the more like shamanistic roots
Speaker 2: of all of this and sort of like the average
Speaker 2: individuals like sort of base understanding of dreams. You kind
Speaker 2: of come down to those some of the like the
Speaker 2: really key questions. And obviously one question is is this
Speaker 2: real or is it not? And if it's not real,
Speaker 2: where does it come from? If it is real, where
Speaker 2: does it come from? And what does it mean? That
Speaker 2: sort of thing. But then also like coming down if
Speaker 2: you ask the average individual just on the street, hey,
Speaker 2: what do you think about dreams? Even today? They might
Speaker 2: be like, I don't know, you know, dreams or dreams whatever.
Speaker 2: But if you ask them what do you think about
Speaker 2: what is your opinion on nightmares? Most people are going
Speaker 2: to say I don't care for them. I would prefer
Speaker 2: not to have them. And so there's I think there's
Speaker 2: always going to be that level of a dream culture
Speaker 2: as well, like can we do something about these nightmares?
Speaker 2: I mean, this is nice that you have all these
Speaker 2: thoughts about like where these are coming from, But I
Speaker 2: would tell me how to not have the nightmare.
Speaker 3: Whether Scrooge is being tortured by the actual ghost of
Speaker 3: Jacob Marley or it is just the bit of mustard
Speaker 3: or the crust of bread that is causing it. Either way,
Speaker 3: it is unpleasant.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean this is I'm sure preaching to the
Speaker 2: choir universally among our listeners here. But you know, nightmares suck.
Speaker 2: They disrupt your night's sleep, and by disrupting your night's sleep,
Speaker 2: you're gonna inevitably disrupt your waking day to follow, not
Speaker 2: only like on a physiological level, but also a potentially
Speaker 2: on a mental or emotional level. And we have to
Speaker 2: bear in mind that like bad dreams and nightmares can
Speaker 2: also be intensified via stress and trauma in life. So
Speaker 2: you know, it's like this boulder rolling down a hill,
Speaker 2: and I think we can all, you know, understand that
Speaker 2: that desire to want to stop that boulder or to
Speaker 2: diminish it somehow before it lands into us. And that's
Speaker 2: without even getting into some of the more extreme examples
Speaker 2: of Paris on the night terrors and so forth, Like
Speaker 2: just sort of like normal nightmares can be horrible. They're
Speaker 2: horrible for us and then certainly as parents, you know,
Speaker 2: they're horrible when you're having to deal with someone, especially
Speaker 2: a young child, but also to other loved ones when
Speaker 2: they're experiencing them, because there's this kind of kind of
Speaker 2: helplessness to it, right, Like you can't protect them in
Speaker 2: their dreams. So we'll get back to this general topic
Speaker 2: of like traditions and customs regarding the prevention of bad
Speaker 2: dreams and sort of opening the door for more positive dreams.
Speaker 2: But this also brings up something that I'm sure a
Speaker 2: number of you have been thinking about listening to these episodes,
Speaker 2: and you've probably been wondering why it hasn't come up yet,
Speaker 2: and that is the topic of so called lucid dreaming.
Speaker 2: Lucid dreaming is, of course, you know, the idea that
Speaker 2: you can take the wheel of your dreams, that within
Speaker 2: your dream you can realize you are dreaming and say, hey,
Speaker 2: I'm going to flip the script here, I'm going to
Speaker 2: do whatever I want.
Speaker 3: Essentially, it's interesting because it often seems to hinge on
Speaker 3: the question of whether you can realize when you are dreaming.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know, it's something that my understanding from
Speaker 2: having you know, discussed on the show in the bast
Speaker 2: is that it's something you got to work at. People
Speaker 2: do apply themselves to it, and people do report results.
Speaker 2: I've never applied myself to it, and therefore the few
Speaker 2: times that I do have lucid moments in my dreams
Speaker 2: where I realize that I am dreaming. I immediately follow
Speaker 2: out of it. So I'll have a dream where I'm like, hey,
Speaker 2: this is a dream, and then I'll be like, what
Speaker 2: did I just think? I don't remember, and then I'm
Speaker 2: back under the spell of the dream, and this will
Speaker 2: happen the times that it's happened like this, It'll just
Speaker 2: happen like several times in a row, and I'm unable
Speaker 2: to shake the delusion of the dream.
Speaker 3: I think I've shared this on the show before, but
Speaker 3: my experience is every time in a dream I start
Speaker 3: to wonder if I'm dreaming or not, I think, no,
Speaker 3: this is definitely real. It seems to imply I don't know.
Speaker 3: I wonder if that means I'm especially prone to delusions.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's hard for me to like in the dream.
Speaker 2: I'm always like, I bring my own like waking sort
Speaker 2: of cautiousness to the dream. So I was thinking earlier
Speaker 2: about like substances within dreams, drugs within dreams, for example,
Speaker 2: which I've read some wonderful fictional treatments of this before.
Speaker 2: But the times where I've been offered, say a drug
Speaker 2: within it. I'm always like, no, thank you, I don't
Speaker 2: know what's in that will I will politely decline, And
Speaker 2: then afterwards I'm like, well that, why didn't. It's a
Speaker 2: dream like that, this is the place to try strange substances,
Speaker 2: the dream world. But no, I don't realize it's a dream,
Speaker 2: so I don't give it a go.
Speaker 3: Dream cocaine can't hurt you.
Speaker 2: So, as we've discussed on the show before, the term
Speaker 2: itself lucid dreaming originates in nineteen thirteen with Dutch psychiatrist
Speaker 2: Frederick van Eaton, but he was hardly the first person
Speaker 2: to recognize that the dreamer can become aware that they
Speaker 2: are in a dream and then influence the shape of
Speaker 2: that dream. That this basic idea had been written about
Speaker 2: in Europe for centuries, and in ancient times you have
Speaker 2: the likes of Saint Augustine, Galen, Aristotle. They all wrote
Speaker 2: about it. In Asia of The concept was also understood
Speaker 2: among ancient Hindus and early Buddhists, and so this was
Speaker 2: certainly recognized in the dream culture of the Latening period
Speaker 2: as well. Interestingly, we've only mentioned lucid dreaming once in
Speaker 2: the book, but it's still notable. In one section, she
Speaker 2: is discussing leang ying Ming, an important Neo Confucian thinker
Speaker 2: of the Ming dynasty. He is said to have followed
Speaker 2: a Taoist practice of deep meditation that minimized both sleep
Speaker 2: and dream. And I suppose in this we see a
Speaker 2: reflection of that idea that you know, there is a
Speaker 2: threat posed by the irrational dreams. You know, this is
Speaker 2: these are to be avoided because this is where I
Speaker 2: do not have like intellectual and emotional control. So I
Speaker 2: take it to mean he was just maybe not a
Speaker 2: big fan of dreams anyway. He wrote very little about
Speaker 2: dreams himself, but he was a big proponent of something
Speaker 2: known as the lug shi, which Struve describes as the
Speaker 2: infant mind, an innate sense of right and wrong. That
Speaker 2: you can think of this as a kind of innate conscious.
Speaker 2: This is infected if you put it into translators. This
Speaker 2: is how it'll be translated in the modern sense. It's
Speaker 2: kind of a it's your conscious. It's you know, this
Speaker 2: innate sense of right and wrong. And it's said to
Speaker 2: be present even when we are infants. So it's something
Speaker 2: that is not you don't learn in books or school.
Speaker 2: It is something sort of innate and pure within the human.
Speaker 3: Psyche conscience without the law.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which, and where it gets interesting with concerning dreams
Speaker 2: is that Youngming insists that the lang Gie is active
Speaker 2: all the time in both waking and sleeping, making sure
Speaker 2: that any dreams you have are going to be prescient
Speaker 2: rather than mere delusions of dream sleep. I guess you
Speaker 2: would maybe agree that the reason I'm turning down the
Speaker 2: dream cocaine is because of my lang Gee or some
Speaker 2: semblance of my lang Gi.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: But more importantly, to his teachings, specifically, it was meant
Speaker 2: that the core of spiritual truth was not something limit
Speaker 2: to intellectuals, but something available to everyone from birth. And therefore,
Speaker 2: you know, it had wide popularity and would be the
Speaker 2: kind of the idea that you know, non intellectuals would
Speaker 2: also gravitate towards. But here's where the lucid dreaming comes.
Speaker 2: In one of his contemporaries, lou Honkshin wrote of a
Speaker 2: dream he had as a young boy to demonstrate the
Speaker 2: importance of Langzi, and in particular, this account involves his
Speaker 2: five year old self channeling the Langhi in order to
Speaker 2: overcome the delusions of dream and instead lucid dream his
Speaker 2: way out of it. And Struve also says that this
Speaker 2: was a way to illustrate the importance of Buddha Dallas
Speaker 2: thought even among less radical followers. There's a full account
Speaker 2: of the dream in the book, and the dream itself
Speaker 2: is pretty simple. It's not you know, it's not crazy.
Speaker 2: He dreams himself on a wide, busy street full of
Speaker 2: carts and people, and there, I guess the one like
Speaker 2: implied dream world aspect of it is that the mansions
Speaker 2: towering overhead are kind of dizzying, so I'm imagining something
Speaker 2: more like times Square as opposed to something that would
Speaker 2: actually be appropriate for the time period. But then he
Speaker 2: realizes it's all a dream, and he starts shouting at
Speaker 2: all the people, saying something along the lines of hey, dummies,
Speaker 2: don't you know this is a dream, And they don't listen.
Speaker 2: They just kind of shrug it off and keep doing
Speaker 2: their things. So he laughs at them, he claps his hands,
Speaker 2: and he wakes up, and then as an adult, he
Speaker 2: goes out. You know. In retelling this, he also uses
Speaker 2: this to sort of compare it to the waking world
Speaker 2: as well, which of course, is a common motif.
Speaker 3: This reminds me of one of my favorite Twilight Zone episodes,
Speaker 3: when we talked about in a Halloween show we did
Speaker 3: a few years back, where there is a character who
Speaker 3: keeps insisting to everyone around him that he is dreaming
Speaker 3: and they only exist right now because they are in
Speaker 3: his dream, and whenever he wakes up, they're going to
Speaker 3: cease to be, so it's in their interest for him
Speaker 3: him to keep dreaming. And it turns out he's like
Speaker 3: on death row about to be executed for a crime.
Speaker 3: He's like, don't execute me, because then you will no
Speaker 3: longer exist.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that was a good one. Yeah, we did.
Speaker 2: We discussed that in one of the Anthology of Horror episodes,
Speaker 2: I believe.
Speaker 3: But hang Jan doesn't make that case to the people
Speaker 3: around him.
Speaker 4: He's just like, you don't know, you're in a dream right.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: To bring things back into like sort of wider consideration
Speaker 2: of dreams during the ming period, again, there's this idea
Speaker 2: that waking is yang and dream as yin only in
Speaker 2: the waking state do you have like true clarity and penetration.
Speaker 2: Though with a number of caveats, you know, we get
Speaker 2: into this idea, like we say in the Three Varieties
Speaker 2: of Dreams, and I saw these discussed elsewhere in Strew's
Speaker 2: book with the confusion Take on Everything, idea of true
Speaker 2: dreams or dreamless dreams, those non delusional dreams which are
Speaker 2: said to arise spontaneously versus strange dreams or nightmares, which
Speaker 2: I think we can compare to the infernal interpretation. And
Speaker 2: then stirrings which arise in response to life experiences, which
Speaker 2: of course is clearly the potato category. But by the
Speaker 2: seventeenth century there is also this idea that in sleep,
Speaker 2: some part of the dream is allowed to wander like
Speaker 2: an unbridled horse, a horse that is still tame, though,
Speaker 2: and may report back to the body with wisdom. Again
Speaker 2: touching into some of these ideas we've discussed already about
Speaker 2: half the soul wandering and having these encounters, opening the
Speaker 2: possibility for divine visions and so forth. S True summarizes
Speaker 2: that all of this begins with a general trend towards
Speaker 2: subjectivity and neo Confucianism, but then it gains more momentum
Speaker 2: through Dallast and Buddhist thought and ming intellectual circles. These are,
Speaker 2: of course the three major teachings, and then the dream
Speaker 2: could permeates the literary and visual arts of the time period,
Speaker 2: producing apparently more dream related works of art and literature
Speaker 2: in China than any other period. And everything is then
Speaker 2: sort of wrapped up in the vortex of a dynasty
Speaker 2: at its end, and then ultimately the aftermath of that end.
Speaker 2: And she says that while all cultures have their dream cultures,
Speaker 2: dreams are not considered with equal seriousness across all of them,
Speaker 2: especially among the educated elite. But one of her core
Speaker 2: arguments is that the Late Ming period is the most
Speaker 2: radical period of Chinese dream culture, and given that, one
Speaker 2: could make a good case for it being the most
Speaker 2: radical period of dream culture in recorded human history. And
Speaker 2: here's one more interesting tidbit. Struve argues the quote, the
Speaker 2: total effect of these changes was to weaken the distinction
Speaker 2: that people normally drew between waking and non waking awareness
Speaker 2: and to make doubts about parsing reality and unreality emblematic
Speaker 2: of the age.
Speaker 3: Is this real life?
Speaker 2: Yeah? So yeah, just such a fascinating look at this
Speaker 2: time period, which again we check out the book if
Speaker 2: you want to really go go and deep on it.
Speaker 2: It's it's very readable, very interesting stuff. But just the
Speaker 2: take home, yeah, is that that perhaps arguably like this
Speaker 2: may be the period certainly in Chinese tradition, in Chinese history,
Speaker 2: but maybe even larger, maybe with thin human culture recorded
Speaker 2: human history entirely, like this is the period of time
Speaker 2: where the focus on dreams becomes like like so pronounced
Speaker 2: that that you're like weakening our popular understanding of the
Speaker 2: day between reality and unreality. It's it's fascinating to think
Speaker 2: about it.
Speaker 3: And ultimately, what is the argument Struve makes about why
Speaker 3: the literature and art of this period is so dream focused?
Speaker 2: You know, I think it comes down to those converging
Speaker 2: elements you know that we touched on earlier. You know
Speaker 2: that you have a dynasty at its end, you have
Speaker 2: the intellectual circle. Within the intellectual circle, you have all
Speaker 2: these individuals who aren't able to apply themselves to state
Speaker 2: craft and state function, and then these various sort of
Speaker 2: theological and intellectual trends that are converging as well. So
Speaker 2: it's you know, it's comparable to some of the other
Speaker 2: examples we've pointed out where it's like you have a
Speaker 2: mix of sort of things that are going on within
Speaker 2: the zeitgeist and then within the intellectual circle, and then
Speaker 2: things going on in the external world that are kind
Speaker 2: of forcing this narrowing thought or focusing a thought on
Speaker 2: dreams and the power of dreams.
Speaker 3: I was thinking about ways to compare and contrast with
Speaker 3: the features of the Quaker example that we talked about
Speaker 3: in the previous episode, And if this makes any sense
Speaker 3: to you, let me know. I was kind of noticing
Speaker 3: an interesting difference, which is that both seem to be
Speaker 3: very dream focused cultures that arise when they're is a
Speaker 3: lot of political and social change. Again, the founding of
Speaker 3: the Quakers coming out of the period of the English
Speaker 3: Civil War and the Interregnum period, and then everything you
Speaker 3: just discussed about the Late Ming example. But one difference
Speaker 3: seems to me that at least the way Strove characterizes
Speaker 3: a lot of the dream obsession of the Late Ming period,
Speaker 3: it seems to be kind of a retreat. It's like
Speaker 3: avenues of earthly material focus might be kind of closed off,
Speaker 3: so there is a retreat to looking for significance and
Speaker 3: purpose in the dream world, whereas for the Quakers, it
Speaker 3: almost seems like the focus on dreams is more of
Speaker 3: an advance mode or an attack mode, rather than a retreat.
Speaker 3: You know, it's like there is intense focus on dreams
Speaker 3: as a way of getting guidance for the next step
Speaker 3: forward for a growing and very exuberant, enthusiastic religious group. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think case could be made for that. I mean,
Speaker 2: I guess in both cases it does seem like people
Speaker 2: are turning to dreams at least in part for answers
Speaker 2: and understanding for either self reflection or like a cosmic
Speaker 2: understanding of what's going on in the world. But yeah,
Speaker 2: there's something about or at least in these writings, we've
Speaker 2: looked at the way that the Quaker approach does feel
Speaker 2: like dream tonight, act tomorrow, whereas a lot of the
Speaker 2: way it's discussed by Streuve concerning the late Ming dynasty,
Speaker 2: it's like dream tonight and maybe dream the next several nights,
Speaker 2: less focus on like what is the immediate action, or
Speaker 2: so it seems to me.
Speaker 3: Though, to bring up another example we talked about you
Speaker 3: in the first episode on this in the series focused
Speaker 3: on like the Romantic period in English literature, like the Romantic,
Speaker 3: the British Romantic poets and so forth, which I think
Speaker 3: are largely interpreted in some ways as a reaction to
Speaker 3: the Industrial Revolution and to modernity. Like the literature of
Speaker 3: the English language Romantic period, is often interpreted as an
Speaker 3: attempt to escape the realities of the modern world and
Speaker 3: especially industrialization.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so dream dream tonight, write poetry tomorrow, or create
Speaker 2: visual art tomorrow. And that, of course we see that
Speaker 2: reflected in the main example as well the creation of
Speaker 2: all of this dream literature and also dream visionary arts
Speaker 2: as well. Yeah, and I can't help but come back to,
Speaker 2: you know, wondering about you know, where we are now,
Speaker 2: I mean we, as we've discussed, you know, our modern
Speaker 2: understanding of dreams is largely potato based, you know, with
Speaker 2: some forays into these other worlds, but also today.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry to interrupt you, but just to clarify if
Speaker 3: you happen to tune in late on this series, we're
Speaker 3: using potato as a shorthand just for naturalistic explanations of
Speaker 3: dreams based on a passage and Scrooge. We're not literally
Speaker 3: saying that everybody thinks it's caused by digest of issues,
Speaker 3: though that has been one of the naturalistic explanations people
Speaker 3: have used over the years. I think today a lot
Speaker 3: of people would say the contents of dreams are just
Speaker 3: I don't know, kind of obscure psychological causes. It's things
Speaker 3: you've been thinking about and so forth.
Speaker 2: Though, I am brought back once again to our Beans
Speaker 2: episode talking about like the link between beans and I
Speaker 2: remember us getting into that a little bit, like perhaps
Speaker 2: like beans digestion, beings, association with the spiral world, and ghosts.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, but I mean today, not only do we
Speaker 2: have beings still and certainly we still have dreams, but
Speaker 2: we also have all of these technological means of throwing
Speaker 2: ourselves down the chasm of other worlds, you know. I
Speaker 2: mean we have virtual worlds, we have various video game
Speaker 2: worlds and so forth. So I don't know how we
Speaker 2: would factor all of that into it as well. M Yeah,
Speaker 2: Like to what extent is the creation and the not
Speaker 2: only the creation of, but the yearning for digital virtual worlds,
Speaker 2: A yearning for like a dream world of our own design,
Speaker 2: A like that's sort of a lucid or semi lucid creation.
Speaker 3: Sold's a dream realized as a nightmare.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's this like straight up matrix stuff
Speaker 2: right here, I guess, Like, yeah, but so it's not
Speaker 2: a wholly original thought. But yeah, I can't help, but
Speaker 2: but wonder about it.
Speaker 3: Well, Fortunately, if you are stuck in an Internet bad dream,
Speaker 3: you can log off. Always remember that you can. You
Speaker 3: can detach from the device.
Speaker 2: That's right. All right, Well, we're going to gohe and
Speaker 2: close out this episode, but join us Tuesday, I believe,
Speaker 2: for the final episode in this series. In the meantime,
Speaker 2: if you want to go back and listen to any
Speaker 2: other episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, you'll find
Speaker 2: them in the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed
Speaker 2: Core episodes published on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Mondays, we
Speaker 2: do a listener mail episode where you know, we'll inevitably
Speaker 2: be discussing everybody's dreams some more, as we've done in
Speaker 2: the past and we'll continue to do in future. On Wednesdays,
Speaker 2: we do a short form artifact or monster fact episode.
Speaker 2: In fact, the monster then inspired the the series was
Speaker 2: originally going to be a monster fact episode, but it
Speaker 2: just got too big. And then on Fridays we set
Speaker 2: aside most serious concerns to just talk about a weird
Speaker 2: film on Weird House SEMA.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway. If
Speaker 3: you would like to get in touch with us with
Speaker 3: feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a
Speaker 3: topic for the future, or just to say hello. You
Speaker 3: can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your
Speaker 3: Mind dot com.
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