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