Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb. We're doing some vaults this week as
Speaker 1: we are on a little bit of a summer break,
Speaker 1: so we want to give you the dream Fall into
Speaker 1: the Dark series. This is going to be part one
Speaker 1: and it originally published six fifteen, twenty twenty three. Enjoy.
Speaker 2: If dreaming really were a kind of truce, as people claim,
Speaker 2: a sheer repose of mind, why then, if you should
Speaker 2: waken up abruptly, do you feel that something has been
Speaker 2: stolen from you? Why should it be so sad the
Speaker 2: early morning? It robs us of an inconceivable gift, so
Speaker 2: intimate it is only knowable in a trance which the
Speaker 2: night Watch guilds with dreams, dreams that might very well
Speaker 2: be reflections, fragments from the treasure house of darkness, from
Speaker 2: the timeless sphere, that it does not have a name,
Speaker 2: and that the day distorts in its mirrors. Who will
Speaker 2: you be tonight in your dream Fall into the Dark?
Speaker 2: On the other side of the wall.
Speaker 3: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
Speaker 2: is Robert.
Speaker 4: Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick.
Speaker 2: That was, of course a dream by Jorge Luis Borges,
Speaker 2: an author that we cite and refer to with some
Speaker 2: degree of regularity on the show, because he was fascinated
Speaker 2: with many of the things we're fascinated with on Stuff
Speaker 2: to Blow Your Mind, Mirrors, dreams, strange creatures, stabbings sometimes
Speaker 2: that sort of thing. And in this episode we're going
Speaker 2: to be discussing the dream world a bit more. This
Speaker 2: is a topic that we also come back to with
Speaker 2: some regularity on Stuff to Blow Your Mind, and for
Speaker 2: good reason, right because there is a universality to dreaming,
Speaker 2: and it constitutes an altered and highly subjective mental state
Speaker 2: that runs the gamut from the mundane and the frankly
Speaker 2: boring to the other worldly, from the specific to the ineffable,
Speaker 2: and from the comforting to the just absolutely terrifying. It's
Speaker 2: at once entirely shut off from the waking world and
Speaker 2: yet can greatly impact it. And we've spent a considerable
Speaker 2: portion of our conscious history as a species trying to
Speaker 2: make sense of it and to figure out to what
Speaker 2: extent these two worlds are connected or to what extent
Speaker 2: they're disconnected, and the enigma in many respects still remains now.
Speaker 1: Rob.
Speaker 4: When you first told me you wanted to talk about this,
Speaker 4: it was in the context of looking at a specific
Speaker 4: mythical monster, I believe one from Japan, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2: That was kind of I guess the White Rabbit that
Speaker 2: I followed into all of this because it's an interesting
Speaker 2: monster and it ties in with so of practices and
Speaker 2: superstitions concerning the manipulation of dream on our side in
Speaker 2: the Waking world, and I think we are going to
Speaker 2: get back to that monster, perhaps in a forthcoming episode.
Speaker 2: But as I was reading about this creature from Japanese tradition,
Speaker 2: I started reading more about how some of these ideas
Speaker 2: extended back through Chinese tradition as well, and so I thought, well,
Speaker 2: I should maybe go a little broader and looking at
Speaker 2: the larger slice of Sino Japanese thought concerning dreams, and
Speaker 2: I ended up picking up this really fascinating book titled
Speaker 2: The Dreaming Mind and the End of the Ming World
Speaker 2: by Lynn A. Struve, published in twenty nineteen by the
Speaker 2: University of Hawaii Press. It's an incredible book, and I
Speaker 2: was particularly taken by Struve's discussion early on about the
Speaker 2: mystique of dreams in various global cultures across time, with
Speaker 2: particular times and places in which the focus of intellectual
Speaker 2: and or theologic sections of the populace are just particularly
Speaker 2: focused on the dream world and what is going on
Speaker 2: in dreams, and what we should draw from dreams, and
Speaker 2: how much of our waking effort and time and thought
Speaker 2: should be dedicated to dreams.
Speaker 4: So you mentioned in the title of the book, it
Speaker 4: makes reference to the end of the Ming world. She
Speaker 4: seems to draw attention to the especially the late Ming
Speaker 4: period in China, as a time when there was a
Speaker 4: lot of writing produced about dreams and focus on the
Speaker 4: meaning of dreams, compared to maybe the same region of
Speaker 4: the world in earlier or later times.
Speaker 2: Exactly. Yeah, And this is something I had never really
Speaker 2: thought about before, because obviously, to some degree, it's like
Speaker 2: everyone is fascinated with dreams. If nothing else, you're going
Speaker 2: to be interested in your own dreams, and then any
Speaker 2: given culture is going to have some degree of ideas
Speaker 2: about what they mean or what they don't mean, and
Speaker 2: then you know, there's going to be sort of a
Speaker 2: global trend towards you know, modernization and rational interpretation of dreams.
Speaker 2: But I'd never really thought about this idea that there
Speaker 2: are going to be times and places where if you
Speaker 2: are looking at I don't know, some sort of a
Speaker 2: mechanism that was giving you the readings. All right, this
Speaker 2: is what dream fascination is looking like. Oh we have
Speaker 2: a spike. Why is it spiking it certain? Or does
Speaker 2: it seem to spike at certain points? And so Struve
Speaker 2: is making a point largely for this period of time
Speaker 2: at the end of the Ming dynasty and it's decline,
Speaker 2: as it's about to fall an end and another dynasty
Speaker 2: is about to come to power. But this argument that
Speaker 2: there are some other places as well where all the
Speaker 2: elements are just in proper place to sort of push
Speaker 2: people inward, and particularly to push intellectuals of the day inward,
Speaker 2: those who have more time to devote to these matters,
Speaker 2: and then also you know, the ability to write about
Speaker 2: them and have their words passed on to subsequent generations.
Speaker 2: So in the book she naturally discusses the subjective nature
Speaker 2: of dreams, their wide variety, and how the quote deficit
Speaker 2: of logic and rationality unquote in dreams has inspired both
Speaker 2: suspicion and celebration, which is this duality will come back
Speaker 2: to several times in this episode. Also key to all
Speaker 2: of this, of course, is that dreams arise unbidden. Certainly
Speaker 2: we have no power over what other people may dream,
Speaker 2: but generally we lack control over what our own dreams
Speaker 2: are going to consist of. And this can prove again
Speaker 2: a source of great inspiration, even divine inspiration. You know,
Speaker 2: look what the dream world has given to me, Look
Speaker 2: what the powers beyond the dreams have given me. But
Speaker 2: in some cases and some worldviews, it may also be
Speaker 2: seen as threatening or truly terrifying, especially within worldviews where
Speaker 2: rigorous control of thought, desire, and emotion are key. You know,
Speaker 2: it's like, perhaps you're a person and in your religious
Speaker 2: devotion you spend a lot of time denying yourself say
Speaker 2: lustful thoughts, and then you enter into the dream world,
Speaker 2: and there are no guarantees that those lustful thoughts will
Speaker 2: not arise there and take on forms that may seem
Speaker 2: at odds with what you're trying to do with your
Speaker 2: waking self.
Speaker 4: Yes, and of course that can be threatening and unsettling
Speaker 4: to people. But coming back to the first half of
Speaker 4: what you said about dreams being an inspiration and having
Speaker 4: a kind of power or authority. I think that is
Speaker 4: linked to the fact about them seeming to be unbidden,
Speaker 4: the fact that they seem to come from somewhere other
Speaker 4: than your own thoughts. I mean, you could say that,
Speaker 4: we'll wait, where do your waking thoughts really come from? Those,
Speaker 4: if you examined them more closely, might come to seem
Speaker 4: as unbidden as dreams. But at least we have a
Speaker 4: sense more like our thoughts in our waking state are
Speaker 4: more under our control, and our thoughts in the dream
Speaker 4: world are not, And because they feel like they're not,
Speaker 4: they're less under our control than thoughts in the way state.
Speaker 4: They can take on a kind of third party authority.
Speaker 4: So it's like you can report the contents of your dreams,
Speaker 4: or even just contemplate the contents of your dreams, without
Speaker 4: the sort of self doubt and anxiety that you might
Speaker 4: have about if you were just, say, like, offering your
Speaker 4: personal opinion about something. When it's a dream, it's like
Speaker 4: you're reporting something you read in another source. It has
Speaker 4: a kind of third party authority. And often because dreams
Speaker 4: are ascribed to gods or literal powerful figures or ancestors
Speaker 4: or other you know, beings that have senses and information
Speaker 4: and powers beyond what we have in waking life. The
Speaker 4: contents of dreams can be interpreted to have power and
Speaker 4: authority over other people like you, I can tell you
Speaker 4: my dreams, and that might have a message that you
Speaker 4: think you should pay heed to, because I'm not just
Speaker 4: saying my opinion. I'm reporting what was revealed to me
Speaker 4: in a dream.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's interesting to sort of self analy over this,
Speaker 2: Like if either of us were to tell our spouses
Speaker 2: to report in the morning, Hey, I had a dream
Speaker 2: in which I was wearing this green suit. It's weird.
Speaker 2: I don't own a green suit, and then you kept
Speaker 2: reporting this same dream over and over again, Like how
Speaker 2: would they interpret it? How would you interpret it? Like
Speaker 2: at some point would you just be taking it apart,
Speaker 2: trying to think of what does green mean to me?
Speaker 2: And like where is this coming from? Or they might think, well,
Speaker 2: maybe my spouse really needs a green suit. Maybe that's
Speaker 2: what the root of this is, like deep down they
Speaker 2: desire it. Like there's so many ways to sort of
Speaker 2: tease it apart and try and make sense of it
Speaker 2: when ultimately, like the signal itself is irrational.
Speaker 4: Of course, it gets even more complicated when the dream
Speaker 4: is interpreted to include an exhortation or some kind of
Speaker 4: guide to action, because consider the contrast between a couple
Speaker 4: of other things. What if, on one hand, I just
Speaker 4: say to my family, I think I'm going to shoplift
Speaker 4: a green suit out of the clothing store, and I
Speaker 4: just present that as my idea. It seemed like a
Speaker 4: good idea to me. Versus I say, I have a
Speaker 4: dream in which I take a green suit out of
Speaker 4: the clothing store without paying for it, and I keep
Speaker 4: having this dream. Well there, it kind of seems like, look,
Speaker 4: it's not It wasn't my idea. You know, it came
Speaker 4: to me from the dream. So it's like somebody else
Speaker 4: is telling me I need to do it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. This idea that there's something about the dream that
Speaker 2: does not seem to fully originate in ourselves. This is
Speaker 2: a This is a theme that we'll return to again
Speaker 2: and again here, and something that various interpreters of dreams
Speaker 2: and sort of dream theorists over time have latched onto. Now,
Speaker 2: coming back to Lynn A. Struve's book, she says that
Speaker 2: while in some rare cases, dreams have allegedly and allegedly
Speaker 2: is important because the nature of other people's dreams is
Speaker 2: always alleged, and even our own accounts of dreams that's
Speaker 2: subject to interpretation, remembrance and reporting and so forth. In
Speaker 2: some cases you have dreams of allegedly directly informed history,
Speaker 2: but otherwise, like what does it matter that people are
Speaker 2: having dreams and reporting them and focusing in on them.
Speaker 2: There's sort of like two major areas that she looks
Speaker 2: out at here. One, as we'll explore, is like what
Speaker 2: happens when you're fascination with dreams kind of like bubbles
Speaker 2: over into making decisions about the waking world. But the
Speaker 2: other one that she touches on has to do with
Speaker 2: ultimately with like how a given society viewed consciousness, how
Speaker 2: a society views its dreams, Especially in highly intellectual and
Speaker 2: authoritative cultures. You know, you can look to the surviving
Speaker 2: writings on dreams dream journals, and they can ultimately reveal
Speaker 2: much about that culture and the individuals doing the dreaming
Speaker 2: and the writing, as well as the inner workings of
Speaker 2: the mind. She writes, I submit that dream writing can
Speaker 2: indirectly contribute to a history of consciousness, not in the
Speaker 2: sense of what people were conscious awe of over time,
Speaker 2: such as class identity, but in the sense of what
Speaker 2: people thought consciousness was and how they experienced it. Delving
Speaker 2: into this can illuminate how they felt and understood themselves existentially,
Speaker 2: which underlay other actions and endeavors. Consciousness at its most
Speaker 2: primal is a sense of being an observant entity, and
Speaker 2: it builds and modifies selfhood by the agency of narrating
Speaker 2: what is observed. Attempts to narrate that most ineffable kind
Speaker 2: of observation of what occurs to us in dreams expose
Speaker 2: this process at the most elemental level that is accessible
Speaker 2: to others and therefore on which self interacts with society.
Speaker 2: So dream talk can give us valuable information on how
Speaker 2: people probed awareness itself, under what circumstances they were moved
Speaker 2: to do so, and how their evolving selves negotiated narratologically
Speaker 2: with their sociocultural milieu.
Speaker 4: Okay, this is interesting. So Struve is making the argument
Speaker 4: that even if you don't have people, say, writing philosophical
Speaker 4: treatises on what they believe the nature of consciousness to be,
Speaker 4: you can infer a lot of things about what certain people,
Speaker 4: at certain times thought believe the nature of consciousness to be.
Speaker 4: By reading their reports about dreams and how they talked
Speaker 4: about dreams, because in a sense, dreams are a dreams
Speaker 4: are relating an experience of consciousness separated from action and
Speaker 4: waking life.
Speaker 2: Right right, Yeah, it provides this this sort of distance
Speaker 2: on inner thought process. That's and again I never really
Speaker 2: really thought about this either. It's easy to sort of
Speaker 2: think of of accounts of other people's dreams as either
Speaker 2: you know, interesting or boring, or interesting only to them,
Speaker 2: or perhaps interesting in terms of like exactly how it
Speaker 2: is interpreted based on everything else and all that's valid,
Speaker 2: but this added level of like, yeah, to some degree,
Speaker 2: these are accounts of people thinking about their own consciousnes. Now.
Speaker 2: In this book, Struve ultimately dives into the particularities of
Speaker 2: Late Ming Dynasty China during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
Speaker 2: but she also highlights other times in places that seem
Speaker 2: particularly focused on the power of dream So, you know,
Speaker 2: it's all interesting, I think, coming from our current place
Speaker 2: in the consideration of dreams, sort of the tail end
Speaker 2: of what she classifies as an accelerating Western decline in
Speaker 2: the belief of prophetic and oracular dreams. And she argues
Speaker 2: that this decline has been accelerating, at least among the
Speaker 2: educated since the seventeenth century. I mean, we're still obsessed
Speaker 2: with our dreams. We still talk about our dreams, right.
Speaker 2: They still have the power to fascinate us, terrifies and
Speaker 2: all that, but we're generally more inclined it seems to
Speaker 2: me anyway, to dismiss them as nonsense or the scrambled
Speaker 2: remnants of waking experience, thoughts and feelings. I remember David
Speaker 2: Eagleman when I initially interviewed him the interview before last,
Speaker 2: he said that he mentioned the he always thought of
Speaker 2: it as sticking his head in the night blender, which
Speaker 2: I thought was rather apt. You know, this idea that yeah,
Speaker 2: this is what you this is what you get. You know,
Speaker 2: these are just the mental leavings from the previous day,
Speaker 2: and you can pick through them. You can, you know,
Speaker 2: maybe you'll find something useful that is, you know, you know,
Speaker 2: provide some inner reflection. But ultimately the thing itself has
Speaker 2: no meaning. It is like a waste product that is
Speaker 2: extruded from the mind.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Eagleman's particular theory about the adaptive function of dreaming
Speaker 4: was that it is a defensive action of the visual
Speaker 4: center of the brain to prevent takeover of that tissue
Speaker 4: in the brain by other senses during the dark period
Speaker 4: and the night, so that when you know it's nighttime
Speaker 4: and you have your eyes closed so you're not using
Speaker 4: the visual centers of your brain, those brain cells don't
Speaker 4: start to get recruited too much by other functions of
Speaker 4: the brain because our brains are very plastic. And part
Speaker 4: of the evidence he produced for that was that there
Speaker 4: seems to be across the human life span and across
Speaker 4: different animals, there appears to be a negative correlation between
Speaker 4: the plasticity of brain tissue and how much dreaming you do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it was an interesting hypothesis that he came
Speaker 2: to after initially seeing it as the night blender. But
Speaker 2: you don't hear someone like David Eagleman talking about dreams
Speaker 2: being the vehicle or the instrument through which God is
Speaker 2: speaking to him or to us, or to random people.
Speaker 2: I mean, you will find it in the modern world,
Speaker 2: but for the most part, we don't really lean into
Speaker 2: that on the whole.
Speaker 4: I mean, I guess technically, I want to say those
Speaker 4: are two separate scientific questions. One would be what is
Speaker 4: the adaptive function of dreaming in the first place, Like
Speaker 4: why do we dream? And I think that's the main
Speaker 4: question that Eagleman was answering when we talked to him
Speaker 4: about that. The purpose of dreaming is to prevent the
Speaker 4: nighttime takeover a visual tissue by other functions. But there's
Speaker 4: a totally separate question, which is what determines the actual
Speaker 4: contents of dreams. And you could have a you know,
Speaker 4: in a way that's kind of unrelated to the other theory.
Speaker 4: You could just say, well that you know, the fact
Speaker 4: that we need to prevent the takeover of that brain
Speaker 4: tissue means you've got to have something going on in there.
Speaker 4: What's going on in there? What kinds of stuff you
Speaker 4: see and imagine in a dream? I mean, it could
Speaker 4: be anything. So why do we see the things we see?
Speaker 4: And that's an interesting psychological question that seems somewhat separate.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I see what you're saying. Yeah, I mean, certainly
Speaker 2: you could have a situation where if the Eagleman's hypothesis
Speaker 2: was correct, that you could still have God speaking through
Speaker 2: the content of the dreams, because it's like the brain
Speaker 2: just needs something to keep the to keep things visually
Speaker 2: powered up, but it doesn't particularly care what is in there,
Speaker 2: and then yeah, you could have God or God's slipping
Speaker 2: a message in to the stuff. In the same way
Speaker 2: you might be able to cut up open the entrails
Speaker 2: of an animal and supposedly determine the future based on
Speaker 2: what they contain.
Speaker 1: Ah.
Speaker 4: Yes, so it's technically there's no conflict between you being
Speaker 4: able to read the future in the in the guts
Speaker 4: of a chicken and the fact that the guts of
Speaker 4: a chicken are used for digestion by the chicken.
Speaker 2: Yes, all right. Coming back to these different periods in
Speaker 2: times where there's been an uptick in interest in the
Speaker 2: contents of dreams and this idea that there's something meaningful
Speaker 2: there to really latch onto. One of the periods that
Speaker 2: Struve touches on is the Romantic period in Europe, particularly
Speaker 2: late eighteenth through early nineteenth centuries. Truve writes that the
Speaker 2: quote felt limitations of an Enlightenment rationalism and mechanism, especially
Speaker 2: as a concerned the human body and the inner workings
Speaker 2: of the mind, led to a kind of increased interest
Speaker 2: in the non rational and the mysteries of the self
Speaker 2: consciousness and the unconscious mind. She writes, quote with growing
Speaker 2: interest in dreaming as a medium through which to link
Speaker 2: these compulsions. Dreams came to feature prominently in natural philosophy,
Speaker 2: medical thought, the budding field of anthropology, art in art theory,
Speaker 2: personal notes, and especially creative writing and literary criticism. This
Speaker 2: occurred as intellectuals responded with elan and or anxiety, hope
Speaker 2: or dismay to the epical French Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars,
Speaker 2: rising nationalisms, and socio environmental changes attendant on the Early
Speaker 2: Industrial Revolution.
Speaker 4: If I understand Struve's argument correctly, this seems to fit
Speaker 4: with the pattern of the late Ming period in that
Speaker 4: I think she understands an increased focus on dreaming among
Speaker 4: the people producing writing as a common feature of periods
Speaker 4: where there is a lot of where there is a
Speaker 4: lot of strife and rapid change.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think so. And I think that's one
Speaker 2: of the main reasons that the Romantic period here is
Speaker 2: such a nice parallel exam Now, in bringing up Romanticism,
Speaker 2: the mind instantly goes to particular authors of that period,
Speaker 2: say Samuel Taylor Cooleridge, who lived seventeen seventy two through
Speaker 2: eighteen thirty four, whose work often explored dreams, as well
Speaker 2: as those visions brought about through the use of opium.
Speaker 2: So I wanted to look at like another text that
Speaker 2: dealt with this topic, and I ran across a very
Speaker 2: interesting book from nineteen ninety eight titled Coolridge on Dreaming
Speaker 2: by Jennifer Ford, and it explores this naturally in the
Speaker 2: specifics of the poet's work, but also in the larger
Speaker 2: context of eighteenth and nineteenth century dream fascination in the West.
Speaker 2: You see examples of this in the work of other
Speaker 2: notable Romantic authors as well, like Lord Byron and Thomas
Speaker 2: de Quincy, who of Cose, of course, also famously imputed opium.
Speaker 2: Ford writes that there was no consensus concerning the nature
Speaker 2: of dreaming at the time during the Romantic Romantic period,
Speaker 2: with opinions are really centering on the big three interpretations.
Speaker 2: So one potentially vine visions you know, could be could
Speaker 2: be God sneaking in a voice or a message there
Speaker 2: or some you know, supernatural entity with our interests at heart.
Speaker 2: I guess you could also look at that is too,
Speaker 2: a font of creativity and inspiration, a natural place for
Speaker 2: the poets in the writer's mind to go, in the
Speaker 2: artist's mind or three dreams as residue or byproduct, which is,
Speaker 2: you know what, We've been discussing this idea that maybe
Speaker 2: dreams are nothing but just sort of the reassembled contents
Speaker 2: of things we thought about or observed, et cetera during
Speaker 2: the course of our day. Now, Coolridge was much inspired
Speaker 2: by the writings of Antiquity on the matter, considering the
Speaker 2: idea of prophetic dreaming especially, but he also consumed contemporary
Speaker 2: writings that included both serious attempts to understand dreaming from
Speaker 2: the vantage point of of current medicine and physiology, as
Speaker 2: well as magical and mystical strains of thought. Now this
Speaker 2: is kind of an aside here, but one of the
Speaker 2: things that Ford points out is that one of the
Speaker 2: off is that he would have, of course read from Antiquity,
Speaker 2: would be Homer, and who in the Odyssey describes the
Speaker 2: two gates from which dreams may arise quote four. Two
Speaker 2: are the gates of shadowy dreams, and one is fashioned
Speaker 2: of horn, and one of ivory. Those dreams that pass
Speaker 2: through the gate of saun ivory deceive men, bringing words
Speaker 2: that find no fulfillment. But those that come forth through
Speaker 2: the gait of polished horn bring true issues to pass
Speaker 2: when any mortal sees them.
Speaker 4: Well in a way that belief is not very helpful.
Speaker 4: So it's like some dreams could contain prophetic content and
Speaker 4: other dreams are there to deceive and misguide you, but
Speaker 4: you can't you can't know which or which.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it reminds me a little bit of the ideas
Speaker 2: presented by the gomork and the Never Ending Story, you know,
Speaker 2: the idea of this link bit and creative creativity and
Speaker 2: deception between dream and creations of imagination and lies. And
Speaker 2: I guess this get touches on like one of the
Speaker 2: real problems of value you wing the content of dreams
Speaker 2: is that like, sometimes dreams are just stupid. I mean,
Speaker 2: there are gonna be maybe some there's some versions of
Speaker 2: it where you're like, okay, there's always something there might
Speaker 2: be cryptic, but there's something there that might be your
Speaker 2: viewpoint regarding dreams. But at times you're gonna have an
Speaker 2: uphill battle because you're gonna have that dumb dream where
Speaker 2: you're what like in the the the words of Mitch Hedberg,
Speaker 2: you know, had a joke about a dream in which
Speaker 2: he had to build a go kart with his old
Speaker 2: boss or something like that. You know you're gonna have
Speaker 2: dreams that you're really gonna have to have to try
Speaker 2: hard to find some sort of prophetic interpretation or meaningful
Speaker 2: interpretation of what's there. So easier to say, well, you know,
Speaker 2: sometimes they come through this gate and they mean something.
Speaker 2: Sometimes they come through the other gate and it's just
Speaker 2: complete crap. Now Ford has a section here where she
Speaker 2: briefly goes through mentioning. You know what other writers of
Speaker 2: antiquity had to say about it, like Hippocrates and much
Speaker 2: later Gallan, both agreed that dreams mattered and they were
Speaker 2: connected to health. They also wrote that Galen and the
Speaker 2: Roade that they could contain divine messages of healing contained
Speaker 2: in dream symbols and so forth. But for both of
Speaker 2: these individuals, however, food and digestion were deeply linked with dreaming.
Speaker 4: Hmmm, yeah, you might be an undigested bit of.
Speaker 2: Beef for cheese exactly. Yeah, it's exactly the example I
Speaker 2: thought of as well from a Christmas carol. Now, Plato, Aristotle,
Speaker 2: and Cicero, for the most part, and with some notable exceptions,
Speaker 2: argue that dreams were not prophetic. Apparently, Cicero kind of
Speaker 2: was wishy washy on this. Aristotle, however, was pretty firm
Speaker 2: on the matter, Ford writes, quote, he explained sleep as
Speaker 2: the rising to the head of vapors from digestive processes.
Speaker 2: Dreams could be explained by their relation to the material
Speaker 2: world and to waking thoughts, and not as a result
Speaker 2: of prophetic messages from gods totally in the Potato camp.
Speaker 4: Here, there's more of gravy than grave about you.
Speaker 2: That's Aristotle, yeah, now, But still idea of prophetic dreaming
Speaker 2: cast a long shadow across Western history. And of course,
Speaker 2: you know, outside of what's going on in the like
Speaker 2: intellectual realms of it in given culture, obviously you have
Speaker 2: kind of deeply rooted folk traditions and so forth as well,
Speaker 2: which you know, none of the Don't Think's authors particularly
Speaker 2: get into that as much. But with the Christian tradition,
Speaker 2: Ford points out, there was always a lot of back
Speaker 2: and forth on the matter, because the Bible itself seemed
Speaker 2: to be of two minds on prophetic dreaming, sometimes championing
Speaker 2: the prophetic power of dreams and other times denouncing it,
Speaker 2: in fact casting out the dream observers with the soothsayers
Speaker 2: and the wizards. In the Book of Deuteronomy.
Speaker 4: Well, I feel like this, this is a repeating pattern,
Speaker 4: and I think this will come up again in some
Speaker 4: stuff we'll we'll talk about later, either in this episode
Speaker 4: or in the next one in the series. But there's
Speaker 4: always sort of a tension in the practice, in the
Speaker 4: reception of the practice of receiving revelations, whether that's through
Speaker 4: divination or whether that's visions and dreams and so forth,
Speaker 4: because many religions will have that type of content in
Speaker 4: a sanctioned way, like maybe some of its orthodoxy or
Speaker 4: its history, its stories, its current priesthood will practice things
Speaker 4: that involve some methods of knowledge of that form, and
Speaker 4: that will be the sanctioned version. But then there is
Speaker 4: sort of an unsanctioned version that is not promoting orthodoxy
Speaker 4: or is subverting the power of the priesthood or whatever,
Speaker 4: and well, you don't want to allow that stuff. So
Speaker 4: it's kind of like, you know, well, there were some
Speaker 4: there were some visions and dreams that were legitimate, and
Speaker 4: that's part of what we believe now. But if somebody
Speaker 4: is telling you new information from visions and dreams, then
Speaker 4: you've got to be careful about that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's not canon. But anyway, during the time of
Speaker 2: the Romantics. A lot of this increased interest and confusion
Speaker 2: about dreaming had to do Ford stresses with quote the
Speaker 2: perceived unsatisfactory factory, mechanical and associationistic explanations of dreams offered
Speaker 2: by John Locke, David Hartley, George Berkeley, and others. Interest
Speaker 2: in the forces and features of psychic life began to increase,
Speaker 2: and a concept of the unconscious mind began to emerge.
Speaker 2: So it seems like a lot of these unsatisfactory ideas
Speaker 2: involved digestion. So I guess, you know, ultimately it's not
Speaker 2: very romantic to for someone to say, look that dream
Speaker 2: you had. I know it was really inspiring, but it
Speaker 2: was essentially like you passing gas in the night. You
Speaker 2: shouldn't give it a lot of attention unless it is,
Speaker 2: you know, interfering with your ability to sleep. But it
Speaker 2: also comes back to what you said earlier about like
Speaker 2: a time of change, a time of like changing ideas
Speaker 2: and emerging ideas, and sometimes this kind of feeling of like, well, no,
Speaker 2: that that can't be right. That's not how I feel
Speaker 2: about it. That's not what these voices from the asked
Speaker 2: have necessarily agreed with. Now Coolidge himself wrote that he
Speaker 2: thought much of these discussions were too dismissive of the personal, psychological,
Speaker 2: mysterious nature of dreams, as well as their overall value
Speaker 2: to the dreamer. But he also read the writings of
Speaker 2: Scottish metaphysical rationalist Andrew Baxter and was particularly taken by
Speaker 2: his arguments that dreams did not originate in one's own soul,
Speaker 2: but were brought on by external beings. So dream spirits
Speaker 2: were to blame, because otherwise, how could we dream something
Speaker 2: that we had never witnessed or thought or felt in
Speaker 2: the waking world. How could we meet someone in dreams
Speaker 2: that we had never met in reality.
Speaker 4: This seems like an odd thing for Coleridge to be
Speaker 4: enticed by, because, like, he was a writer, so you'd
Speaker 4: think he'd be more familiar with the concept of creative imagination.
Speaker 4: And how like, yes, a character can start talking back
Speaker 4: to you in your mind and you haven't met them.
Speaker 4: You made them up. This is part of the creative process.
Speaker 2: I yeah, it's a good point. I kind of interpreted
Speaker 2: those being like again to her point, like recoiling a
Speaker 2: little bit from this. You know what the rational world
Speaker 2: is saying about dreams? You know that it's it is potato.
Speaker 2: And then on the other hand, you know, wanting this
Speaker 2: idea that's more in keeping with the muses, that dreams
Speaker 2: are overpowering, that they that they are are coming to
Speaker 2: us and giving us something, giving us a creative gift
Speaker 2: that we might run with. And apparently this was this
Speaker 2: is the kind of thing that Baxter was talking about.
Speaker 2: You know, the idea that the dreamer is visited during
Speaker 2: sleep and that quote dreaming may degenerate into possession.
Speaker 4: Oh okay, So you could imagine it being attractive for
Speaker 4: Coleridge and other romantic writers to think like this in
Speaker 4: the same way it might have been attractive for writers
Speaker 4: who literally believed in the muses as entities, because it
Speaker 4: gives that same kind of third party authority to what
Speaker 4: you're writing that I was talking about with dreams earlier,
Speaker 4: Like you know, if oh I didn't just make this up,
Speaker 4: this was given to me by a divine being.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it reminds me a bit of some
Speaker 2: of our past discussions about the bicameral mind hypothesis. You know,
Speaker 2: it's sort of like, Okay, there's the idea that a
Speaker 2: god might speak to you, but here's this other idea
Speaker 2: that kind of gets you to a similar place, but
Speaker 2: through a different, different strain of more rational thinking. Though
Speaker 2: I guess at the end of the day you're still
Speaker 2: talking about some sort of entity outside of your own
Speaker 2: being in the case of Baxter's writing. So I don't know,
Speaker 2: but I guess I tend to sort of interpret it
Speaker 2: here as being like you know, it's the irrational in
Speaker 2: the rational insight any given person's mind, and certainly you're
Speaker 2: able to hold on to and be attracted to conflicting ideas,
Speaker 2: but still from that idea, it's a short walk to
Speaker 2: pre existing concepts of dreams brought on by demons and
Speaker 2: the like. Believe Baxter wrote about the incubus and the
Speaker 2: succubists a bit at least the general concepts. The link
Speaker 2: is made between nightmare and madness, and Ford makes special
Speaker 2: mention of this quote. The notion of dreams as possessing
Speaker 2: the dreamer provides a rich source of anxiety and thoughtful
Speaker 2: deliberation for Coleridge and many others who ventured into the
Speaker 2: often hostile territory of the dream. Dreams were involuntary events
Speaker 2: and could not be controlled. Often, the dream itself was
Speaker 2: perceived as the controlling force.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I know.
Speaker 2: In my case, oftentimes I will sort of think, you know,
Speaker 2: vaguely about like there being something that is programming my dreams,
Speaker 2: Like there's a little person in my head that makes
Speaker 2: a lot of programming choices, like it's a TV channel
Speaker 2: and often makes just illogical programming choices, like like I'll
Speaker 2: look at it and'll be like, well, think of all
Speaker 2: the things that I did yesterday, that I read about,
Speaker 2: or experienced or watched on television, and this is the
Speaker 2: dream you gave me. This was the programming that was
Speaker 2: selected for my night's entertainment.
Speaker 4: We're rerunning transfers five, five times in a row.
Speaker 2: I would love transfer five dreams, but no, it's generally
Speaker 2: a lot more boring. It's like, I don't think you
Speaker 2: know the target audience here, But anyway, one sees this
Speaker 2: idea of dreams possessing the dreamer and the works of
Speaker 2: Coleridge to Quincy, Wordsworth and others. But Coleridge again also
Speaker 2: kept abreast of modern medical writings as we as the
Speaker 2: writings of people like the physician Erasmus Darwin who's stress
Speaker 2: quote the terror of involuntary thoughts, sleep and dream as
Speaker 2: a sub human state in which we cannot fully exert
Speaker 2: our will. So, you know, I guess this seems to
Speaker 2: be just a common theme that everyone who's thinking about
Speaker 2: dreams has to come up against. Is that there we
Speaker 2: can't fully control it. And what does that lack of
Speaker 2: control mean?
Speaker 4: Well, again, when I really think about it, the question
Speaker 4: it raises is what does it mean when we do
Speaker 4: feel like we're in control of our thoughts? What causes
Speaker 4: that sensation? Because again, like I feel like the closer
Speaker 4: you look at the moment to moment functioning of your
Speaker 4: waking mind, the more mysterious the origin of your thoughts becomes,
Speaker 4: and it can start to feel like a dream. We're like,
Speaker 4: wait a minute, why did I just think about that?
Speaker 4: Did I? Did I really have control of thinking about that?
Speaker 4: What made me say transfers five? Where did that come from?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Though I know what you mean, though, I guess at times,
Speaker 2: so there are waking thoughts, and you know, if we
Speaker 2: have a really active, you know, default mode network, we
Speaker 2: can kind of self analyze and we'd be like, oh, well,
Speaker 2: this is why my mind went here, and then you know,
Speaker 2: we can sort of try and trace it. But dreams
Speaker 2: often are more difficult to interpret along those lines like
Speaker 2: they they're less easy to interrogate.
Speaker 4: Well, I guess sort of what I'm getting at is
Speaker 4: that it seems like maybe the difference is that in
Speaker 4: dreams we have less of the illusion of control over
Speaker 4: the direction of our own thoughts that we feel we
Speaker 4: have during waking states.
Speaker 2: Yes, absolutely so. You can see a number of these
Speaker 2: ideas reflected in a poem by the romantic author Lord Byron.
Speaker 2: This is a This is a piece at Ford also
Speaker 2: references in the book, but I thought it might be
Speaker 2: nice to read just a portion of it here. Again,
Speaker 2: this is from Lord Byron's The Dream. Joe, do you
Speaker 2: do the honors? Since I read the Borets at the beginning?
Speaker 4: Oh sure, let's see. So this is an excerpt from
Speaker 4: the Dream. They pass like spirits of the past, They
Speaker 4: speak like sybols of the future. They have power, the
Speaker 4: tyranny of pleasure and of pain. They make us what
Speaker 4: we were, not what they will, and shake us with
Speaker 4: the vision that's gone by, the dread of vanished shadows?
Speaker 4: Are they so? Is not the past all shadow? What
Speaker 4: are they? Creations of the mind?
Speaker 2: All right, Well, on that note, we're going to go
Speaker 2: ahead and close out this episode, but we'll be back
Speaker 2: in part two and we'll continue to discuss this idea
Speaker 2: of the mystique of dreaming these different places where in
Speaker 2: time where there seems to have been a surge and
Speaker 2: interest in the power of dreams and the like the
Speaker 2: practicality even of dreams. So we'll look at a few
Speaker 2: other different cultures, including the Ming dynasty example that Struve
Speaker 2: is directly mentioning, and eventually we'll get to that monster.
Speaker 2: I don't know that may be even further along. But
Speaker 2: at the end, there's a monster at the end of
Speaker 2: this book, is what I'm saying.
Speaker 4: Will it steal my dreams?
Speaker 1: It might?
Speaker 2: It meant very well, might, or it might just help
Speaker 2: you build ikea furniture for all night long?
Speaker 4: Will it steal a green suit for me?
Speaker 2: Ooh, one would hope, One would hope that monster has
Speaker 2: connections all right.
Speaker 4: Well.
Speaker 2: In the meantime, if you want to write in about
Speaker 2: your dreams, hey, We're always happy to hear them. Our
Speaker 2: listener mail episodes published on Mondays, Core episodes on Tuesdays
Speaker 2: and Thursdays. On Wednesdays we do a short form monster
Speaker 2: fact or artifact episode, and on Fridays we set aside
Speaker 2: most serious concerns to just talk about a weird film
Speaker 2: on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 4: Huge thanks to our excellent audio producer, JJ Posway. If
Speaker 4: you would like to get in touch with us with
Speaker 4: feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a
Speaker 4: topic for the future, or just to say hello, you
Speaker 4: can email us at contact Stuff to Blow your Mind
Speaker 4: dot com.
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