WEBVTT - From the Vault: Dreamfall into the Dark, Part 3 0:00:06.000 --> 0:00:09.320 Hello, and welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My 0:00:09.440 --> 0:00:12.119 name is Joe McCormick and it is Saturday, so we 0:00:12.200 --> 0:00:14.800 are going down into the vault for an older episode 0:00:14.960 --> 0:00:19.079 of the show. This one originally published on June twenty second, 0:00:19.200 --> 0:00:22.160 twenty twenty three, and it's part three of our series 0:00:22.200 --> 0:00:30.520 called Dreamfall into the Dark. I hope you enjoy. 0:00:29.400 --> 0:00:33.400 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:39.320 --> 0:00:41.000 Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. 0:00:41.040 --> 0:00:43.600 My name is Robert Land and I'm Joe McCormick. 0:00:44.000 --> 0:00:46.360 This is the third episode and what I believe is 0:00:46.360 --> 0:00:50.800 going to be a four part series about dream mystique, 0:00:51.440 --> 0:00:55.480 dream culture. We're going to have one more episode that 0:00:55.600 --> 0:00:58.279 is going to focus on Japanese dream. 0:00:58.040 --> 0:01:00.880 Culture and finally get to that monster that is the 0:01:00.920 --> 0:01:02.320 reason we started looking at this. 0:01:02.800 --> 0:01:05.800 Yes, yeah, we've been chasing after that monster and ultimately 0:01:05.840 --> 0:01:09.880 we will chase it across the sea and discuss its 0:01:10.120 --> 0:01:12.880 form and function. In this one, we're going to get 0:01:12.920 --> 0:01:16.080 more properly into the main focus of the Dreaming Mind 0:01:16.080 --> 0:01:18.160 and the end of the Mean World by Lynn A. Struve, 0:01:18.319 --> 0:01:22.400 which we've been referring to in these episodes. This was 0:01:22.400 --> 0:01:26.960 published in twenty nineteen by the University of Hawaii Press. Naturally, 0:01:27.000 --> 0:01:29.600 we're not going to cover everything in that, but rather 0:01:29.640 --> 0:01:31.800 you know, highlight some of the key points, some interesting 0:01:31.840 --> 0:01:34.800 bits that stand out, and leave you to explore the 0:01:34.800 --> 0:01:37.280 book yourself if you want to go deeper in on it. 0:01:37.319 --> 0:01:41.920 But in the previous episodes two episodes, we mostly discussed 0:01:42.480 --> 0:01:46.600 other dream cultures from around the world, highlighted lighted by 0:01:46.600 --> 0:01:51.040 Stroove as being sort of hot beds of focus on 0:01:52.080 --> 0:01:57.520 the potential of dreams to impact our daily lives. 0:01:58.040 --> 0:02:01.320 Yeah, particularly times in places when a lot of dream 0:02:01.520 --> 0:02:05.120 writing was produced, a lot of literature that that still 0:02:05.160 --> 0:02:09.120 comes down to us, whether that's individual like from journals 0:02:09.120 --> 0:02:12.240 and diaries and letters and stuff, or you know, published 0:02:12.280 --> 0:02:16.960 works that concern dreams and often invest kind of some 0:02:16.960 --> 0:02:21.200 some significance beyond just psychological curiosity in dreams. 0:02:21.600 --> 0:02:23.639 Yeah, because there's always going to be some sort of 0:02:23.720 --> 0:02:26.000 dream culture in play. There's going to be you know, 0:02:26.120 --> 0:02:29.880 dreams are a reality among all of us, you know, 0:02:29.919 --> 0:02:32.760 I mean, it's just it's a human, universal, human experience. 0:02:33.200 --> 0:02:36.440 You know, we're going to have these strange visions, mundane visions, 0:02:36.919 --> 0:02:41.160 comforting visions, disturbing visions, or traumatizing visions come to us 0:02:41.160 --> 0:02:43.400 in the night. It is the you know, we we 0:02:43.400 --> 0:02:46.240 we talk so much, you know, on the show, but 0:02:46.320 --> 0:02:49.800 in the culture in general about you know, visions brought 0:02:49.840 --> 0:02:54.800 on by things that are less every day, you know that, 0:02:54.880 --> 0:02:59.720 be it some sort of a you know, peculiar encounter 0:03:00.120 --> 0:03:03.079 or the use of some sort of substance that creates 0:03:03.080 --> 0:03:06.600 a vision. But the thing about dreams is the dreams 0:03:06.680 --> 0:03:09.720 open up the door to visions pretty much every night, 0:03:10.040 --> 0:03:14.840 like it's just with regular frequency, and something is always 0:03:14.880 --> 0:03:16.680 going to be made of that in a given culture. 0:03:17.680 --> 0:03:21.000 But these are those periods of times where they really 0:03:21.040 --> 0:03:25.280 went all in, especially among like the literary, you know, 0:03:25.480 --> 0:03:29.680 the upper echelon of the like the theological branch of 0:03:29.680 --> 0:03:30.480 a given culture. 0:03:30.840 --> 0:03:35.160 Now, in the introduction to Struve's book about the dream 0:03:35.360 --> 0:03:38.280 arc in the End of the Ming Dynasty in China, 0:03:39.240 --> 0:03:42.200 she does talk about how, basically, like any time and 0:03:42.280 --> 0:03:46.080 place she has examined, there seems to be a trichotomy 0:03:46.160 --> 0:03:49.360 of explanations for dreams. There's always sort of in the 0:03:49.400 --> 0:03:52.680 mix a way of saying, well, that dream is just 0:03:52.720 --> 0:03:55.200 sort of a natural phenomenon. Maybe it's a result of 0:03:55.240 --> 0:03:59.240 you digesting a bit of mustard or cheese. There is 0:03:59.440 --> 0:04:01.520 a way of saying that the dream is given to 0:04:01.560 --> 0:04:05.000 you by a demonic force or bad spiritual entity. And 0:04:05.040 --> 0:04:06.840 there's a way of saying that a dream is given 0:04:06.840 --> 0:04:09.720 to you by a by a heavenly force, or it's 0:04:09.720 --> 0:04:13.400 some kind of inspiration, it's a positive supernatural gift, and 0:04:14.360 --> 0:04:17.080 that kind of does permeate. You can find those three 0:04:17.120 --> 0:04:21.159 explanations all around the world at basically all times in places. 0:04:21.040 --> 0:04:24.599 Yeah, God, devil or potato, and I guess at times 0:04:24.600 --> 0:04:26.360 that you know, you may lean more towards one or 0:04:26.360 --> 0:04:28.359 the other, though I guess it seems to be the 0:04:28.360 --> 0:04:29.960 case that you know, all three are going to be 0:04:30.720 --> 0:04:34.200 in play to some degree, because I mean, how all 0:04:34.320 --> 0:04:37.760 in can you go on say the devil or evil 0:04:37.800 --> 0:04:42.159 spirit understanding of dreams without having to sort of release 0:04:42.240 --> 0:04:44.520 the pressure a little bit and saying, you know, not 0:04:44.680 --> 0:04:46.480 all of these are the devil, some of these are 0:04:46.560 --> 0:04:48.600 just a potato, and you know, maybe some of these 0:04:48.600 --> 0:04:52.600 are actually useful as well. Now, one thing I wanted 0:04:52.600 --> 0:04:55.960 to touch on here at the start is coming back 0:04:55.960 --> 0:04:58.760 to something we discussed towards the end of the last 0:04:58.800 --> 0:05:02.000 episode is the idea that when you have a given 0:05:02.040 --> 0:05:05.880 culture that really like opens the gates on dreaming. That 0:05:05.880 --> 0:05:09.640 that says, in one way or another, dreams matter. Dreams 0:05:09.680 --> 0:05:13.560 are important, and we all have access to them. You know, 0:05:14.120 --> 0:05:18.560 this can open the floodgate, and this can perhaps require 0:05:18.680 --> 0:05:23.680 some individuals to sort of move in and individuals and 0:05:23.720 --> 0:05:26.680 positions of power, et cetera, to sort of say, well, 0:05:26.760 --> 0:05:31.080 let's let's reconsider that, or let's let's maybe think about 0:05:31.120 --> 0:05:34.360 what this particular dream means. And of course the main 0:05:34.960 --> 0:05:38.160 candidate here would be anytime dreams are interpreted as being 0:05:38.200 --> 0:05:41.840 the will or revelations of a God or God's or 0:05:42.000 --> 0:05:44.880 dreams as revelations of the future. 0:05:45.440 --> 0:05:48.240 The main context in which this came up was our 0:05:48.279 --> 0:05:52.640 discussion of the role of dreams in early Quakerism, where 0:05:52.720 --> 0:05:55.760 a lot of meetings of the religious Society of Friends 0:05:55.760 --> 0:06:02.200 and publications by this fledgling religious group would discuss dreams 0:06:02.240 --> 0:06:06.040 people had as prophetic revelations from God. But of course 0:06:06.120 --> 0:06:09.359 that gives any individual person a lot of power and 0:06:09.440 --> 0:06:12.040 authority to say, like, I had a dream. This might 0:06:12.080 --> 0:06:15.360 be from God, and the dream could say anything. It 0:06:15.440 --> 0:06:19.599 might say something really destabilizing to your to your social group, 0:06:20.000 --> 0:06:23.640 or it might give a kind of really destabilizing political exhortation. 0:06:23.720 --> 0:06:25.880 Maybe we need to do something that could get us 0:06:25.920 --> 0:06:28.520 into trouble with the authorities. So yeah, you had to 0:06:28.520 --> 0:06:31.159 have a kind of dream police, as it were, Like 0:06:31.560 --> 0:06:34.440 leaders of the early Quakers ended up kind of steering 0:06:34.560 --> 0:06:39.560 dream interpretation and selective publication of dreams to rock the 0:06:39.600 --> 0:06:42.839 boat less, essentially to to be like, oh, let's not 0:06:43.000 --> 0:06:45.320 let's not do anything too crazy. Now, how about we 0:06:45.480 --> 0:06:50.080 just interpret these dreams as you know, applying to individual 0:06:50.120 --> 0:06:53.960 moral behavior rather than having any kind of radical, broader 0:06:54.000 --> 0:06:55.760 social or political implications. 0:06:56.520 --> 0:07:02.040 Yeah. Yeah, So there are there are two examples from 0:07:02.279 --> 0:07:06.560 Chinese history in Chinese considerations of dream that I want 0:07:06.600 --> 0:07:09.680 to share here from her book The Tie into This. 0:07:09.760 --> 0:07:12.440 The first is an example that far precedes the Ming dynasty. 0:07:12.960 --> 0:07:16.440 Struve shares an account of one Xiao xi Lang, a 0:07:16.520 --> 0:07:20.160 disciple of the great polymath Tao hong Jing of the 0:07:20.280 --> 0:07:24.440 fifth and sixth centuries bcee. So, hong Jing insisted that 0:07:24.560 --> 0:07:28.240 most of his disciples visions. This is the man that 0:07:28.320 --> 0:07:31.920 had various visions and would write about these visions were 0:07:31.960 --> 0:07:36.120 waking visions. These were visions he's having during the day, 0:07:36.320 --> 0:07:37.800 you know, the kind of thing that we might think 0:07:37.800 --> 0:07:40.520 of is being brought on by like meditation or something 0:07:40.720 --> 0:07:44.800 of that nature. But Zhao's own dream records, it seems, 0:07:44.960 --> 0:07:49.000 are just increasingly dream focused if you look at them 0:07:49.000 --> 0:07:55.160 in chronological order, until all of his alleged visitations with 0:07:55.400 --> 0:08:00.040 Dallas deities are conducted via dream as opposed to waking 0:08:00.160 --> 0:08:03.720 visions of one sort or another, and he ultimately believes 0:08:03.760 --> 0:08:07.920 himself summoned to the celestial realm, so he intentionally overdoses 0:08:07.960 --> 0:08:12.040 on poison in order to obey those summons. So ultimately 0:08:12.120 --> 0:08:14.240 kind of a haunting tale, but one of these where 0:08:14.480 --> 0:08:17.640 you can see like this push and pull, one individual 0:08:18.080 --> 0:08:23.320 pulled strongly into the dream visions, and this kind of 0:08:23.360 --> 0:08:27.200 attempted course correction, either course correction or some attempt to 0:08:27.240 --> 0:08:30.480 sort of alter the account a little bit and say, well, 0:08:30.520 --> 0:08:33.319 you know, actually they weren't all dream visions. Most of 0:08:33.360 --> 0:08:37.200 them were or are waking visions, and those are ultimately 0:08:37.240 --> 0:08:40.640 more important. And this will become essential when we talk 0:08:40.679 --> 0:08:44.079 a little bit more about this idea of what dreams 0:08:44.160 --> 0:08:47.480 represent and what the waking world represents in sort of 0:08:47.520 --> 0:08:53.199 the larger Chinese cosmology. Now, she also shares an interesting 0:08:53.559 --> 0:09:00.360 situation concerning a prominent Jesuit missionary to China the name 0:09:00.440 --> 0:09:04.880 of Guglio Alini who lived fifteen eighty two through sixteen 0:09:05.000 --> 0:09:10.000 forty nine, and this individual enacted a strict policy of 0:09:10.160 --> 0:09:17.520 rationalistic dream and sleep interpretation among Christian followers in China 0:09:17.800 --> 0:09:20.240 at the time. In other words, the idea was no 0:09:20.360 --> 0:09:23.720 divine dreams, even for the devout. And one reason for 0:09:23.760 --> 0:09:26.959 this would seem to be that the people of Maritime 0:09:27.400 --> 0:09:30.680 of Fujian Province were said to have a strong zeal 0:09:30.840 --> 0:09:35.040 for the power of dream, very strong dream culture, and 0:09:35.440 --> 0:09:39.000 that this particular missionary had to contend with quote a 0:09:39.080 --> 0:09:42.760 virtual cult of sainthood concerning the dream accounts of a 0:09:42.800 --> 0:09:47.000 convert to Christianity named zang Shi. It would seem that 0:09:47.240 --> 0:09:51.640 Jesuit records of this time insisted that these dreams occurred 0:09:51.720 --> 0:09:55.520 during periods of ill health, to further push them aside 0:09:55.520 --> 0:09:59.319 into that dismissable realm of dreams as byproduct or residue, 0:09:59.480 --> 0:10:02.920 the potato realm, as opposed to the divine realm. So 0:10:03.080 --> 0:10:06.080 of course, this is of course, again a Jesuit missionary. 0:10:06.120 --> 0:10:09.480 So this is an outsider with an outside faith that 0:10:09.520 --> 0:10:14.280 has been introduced into China. It's contending with like a 0:10:14.400 --> 0:10:17.160 with a local indigenous dream culture. 0:10:18.000 --> 0:10:20.880 Well right, yeah, so as a Catholic missionary, he would 0:10:20.920 --> 0:10:24.280 want to be presenting a sort of a stable theology 0:10:24.320 --> 0:10:26.480 to people. It's like, this is what comes from the 0:10:26.480 --> 0:10:30.400 Bible and from the Church, and you can't like change 0:10:30.440 --> 0:10:33.400 anything by having a dream and getting a new revelation 0:10:33.559 --> 0:10:36.040 from God. It's all already here for you. 0:10:36.760 --> 0:10:40.880 Yeah, I mean very obviously, the Catholic Church is kind 0:10:40.880 --> 0:10:44.120 of like the poster child of top down religion, top 0:10:44.160 --> 0:10:48.480 down theology, and historically they have not reacted well to 0:10:48.640 --> 0:10:53.439 new revelations among them, like the lower tiers. Now, to 0:10:53.800 --> 0:10:56.960 move on to the Ming Dynasty period, the late Ming 0:10:57.040 --> 0:10:59.920 Dynasty period in particular, that's the main focus of the book, 0:11:00.360 --> 0:11:03.359 it's probably necessary to add just a little historical context. 0:11:03.720 --> 0:11:07.040 So the Ming Dynasty was an imperial dynasty of China 0:11:07.120 --> 0:11:09.960 ruled by the Han people. They had overthrown the Mongol 0:11:10.040 --> 0:11:14.520 led Yuan dynasty in thirteen sixty eight and would ultimately 0:11:14.559 --> 0:11:18.440 succumb to the Manchu led Qing dynasty in sixteen forty four. 0:11:19.880 --> 0:11:23.120 The Qing dynasty would be the last imperial dynasty of China, 0:11:23.920 --> 0:11:27.880 and so Struve is dealing mostly with the late Ming Empire, 0:11:28.120 --> 0:11:31.599 this period that she describes as a time of disintegration, 0:11:32.600 --> 0:11:37.319 the empires in decline, it's threatened and ultimately overthrown by outsiders. 0:11:37.880 --> 0:11:41.400 And then also she's dealing with the immediate period thereafter 0:11:42.360 --> 0:11:44.280 the early Qing dynasty, in which you have all of 0:11:44.280 --> 0:11:49.240 these people who have the Han people within this dynasty 0:11:49.280 --> 0:11:52.959 who have gone through all this change and are dealing 0:11:53.040 --> 0:11:57.840 at times with the trauma of that change. And incidentally, 0:11:57.880 --> 0:11:59.719 she also gets we're not going to have time to 0:11:59.720 --> 0:12:01.840 get in any of this, but she has a number 0:12:01.840 --> 0:12:05.440 of mentions of the writings of pousong Ling, who wrote 0:12:05.640 --> 0:12:09.000 the Strange Tales from the Chinese Studio. He's born shortly 0:12:09.040 --> 0:12:12.480 after the fall of the Ming dynasty in that period 0:12:12.520 --> 0:12:17.640 of transition, So if you're interested in pousong Ling, this 0:12:17.679 --> 0:12:19.240 is also a book worth picking up. 0:12:19.800 --> 0:12:21.400 Referenced frequently on this show. 0:12:22.240 --> 0:12:26.480 Yeah, pousong Ling a lot of weird tales that he 0:12:26.600 --> 0:12:31.920 shares concerning everything from ghosts and trolls and goblins to 0:12:32.360 --> 0:12:34.200 you know, at times just kind of there's more than 0:12:34.240 --> 0:12:38.400 one sort of body story thrown in there as well. Now, 0:12:38.520 --> 0:12:41.160 other key factors during this time period, according to struve. 0:12:41.800 --> 0:12:45.280 She says, there is a trend toward moral ethical subjectivity 0:12:45.480 --> 0:12:50.800 in spiritual exploration. There was a mounting dysfunctionality of the 0:12:50.800 --> 0:12:53.760 state system in political culture, which meant that you had 0:12:53.800 --> 0:12:56.640 a lot of individuals that would you know, otherwise have 0:12:56.800 --> 0:13:00.880 been focusing their energy on advancing themselves and applying themselves 0:13:00.880 --> 0:13:04.960 in official state positions, but they're unable to, so they're 0:13:05.040 --> 0:13:10.600 left to engage personal projects. They're left to indulge inward gazing, 0:13:10.720 --> 0:13:14.640 in this pursuit of dream and fed by all of this, 0:13:14.760 --> 0:13:17.760 there is also a general questioning of the rationalism and 0:13:17.800 --> 0:13:20.520 emotional control that was part of sort of the dominant 0:13:20.600 --> 0:13:24.560 mean philosophy and politics up to that point. And just 0:13:24.640 --> 0:13:28.360 in general again, the decline of one dynasty and the 0:13:29.640 --> 0:13:32.920 pending emergence of a new dynasty, there's this growing sense 0:13:32.960 --> 0:13:35.960 of a loss of control for many, she says, a 0:13:36.040 --> 0:13:39.679 sense of uncertainty that leads to an increased focus on 0:13:39.840 --> 0:13:43.679 cosmic answers and inward reflections, both of which, as we've 0:13:43.720 --> 0:13:48.680 been discussing, are universally sometimes sought out through the world 0:13:48.720 --> 0:13:51.040 of dreams, and this is very much part of dream 0:13:51.040 --> 0:13:54.040 culture in China of the day as well. Now Strepp 0:13:54.080 --> 0:13:57.680 discusses the legacy of Chinese dream interpretation at length, going 0:13:57.720 --> 0:14:01.560 back well before this period, of course, to shamanistic traditions 0:14:01.600 --> 0:14:04.880 of old, similar to some of what we discussed concerning 0:14:05.000 --> 0:14:08.880 the Ottoman dream culture, but she explains that the understanding 0:14:08.920 --> 0:14:12.880 of dreaming at its most basic and Chinese tradition was 0:14:12.920 --> 0:14:16.240 considered in terms of course of yin and yang, and 0:14:16.280 --> 0:14:19.480 in two sort of broad ways of looking at it. So, 0:14:19.600 --> 0:14:22.720 in one school of thought, which she calls the Partheid model, 0:14:23.160 --> 0:14:27.400 wakefulness is the yang state and sleep or dream is 0:14:27.480 --> 0:14:30.360 the yin state. So it's in the yin state that 0:14:30.440 --> 0:14:33.520 one's two souls, the terrestrial soul and the aerial soul, 0:14:33.640 --> 0:14:38.120 become disconnected, allowing the yen state of the souls to 0:14:38.240 --> 0:14:41.720 explore without anchor of the yang. And if these two 0:14:41.760 --> 0:14:46.120 souls don't recouple upon waking, well, then you die. And 0:14:46.160 --> 0:14:49.520 thus there's this long standing connection between sleep and death 0:14:49.560 --> 0:14:54.720 in Chinese thought, I guess I'm assuming, also coupled with 0:14:53.840 --> 0:14:58.680 the with the obvious observation that when we sleep it's 0:14:58.760 --> 0:15:02.600 kind of like we're dead. Also in dream, it's said 0:15:02.760 --> 0:15:06.920 via this model, the drifting soul might encounter quote avatars 0:15:06.960 --> 0:15:10.080 of the forces of justice and fate that one would 0:15:10.160 --> 0:15:12.680 not normally encounter in the mundane world, but you might 0:15:12.760 --> 0:15:15.400 encounter them in dream and therefore you might suffer ill 0:15:15.480 --> 0:15:17.520 dreams and nightmares as punishments. 0:15:18.760 --> 0:15:22.240 But basically the idea that when the material like the 0:15:22.920 --> 0:15:26.520 grounded soul and the aerial soul separate during sleep, the 0:15:26.560 --> 0:15:29.920 aerial soul can kind of wander and have encounters with 0:15:30.000 --> 0:15:33.040 other ghosts or ancestors or other beings. 0:15:33.480 --> 0:15:37.520 Yeah, and also just more broadly, that the waking world 0:15:37.560 --> 0:15:39.520 is the yang world and the dream world is the 0:15:39.600 --> 0:15:43.640 yen world. But then this other model, which she calls 0:15:43.680 --> 0:15:46.120 the phasic model, it takes a different approach to yin 0:15:46.120 --> 0:15:51.400 and yang and dreams and wakefulness. In this one, the 0:15:51.480 --> 0:15:55.760 idea is that a sleeping individual will cycle in and 0:15:55.760 --> 0:15:59.840 out of different phases of yin and yang throughout one's 0:16:00.200 --> 0:16:03.440 sleep at night, and this would be in the form 0:16:03.480 --> 0:16:07.840 of dreamlessness and dreaming. So in this what goes on 0:16:07.880 --> 0:16:10.480 in our sleep mirror mirrors just all the other patterns 0:16:10.520 --> 0:16:12.360 in our life, just a pattern of yin and yang 0:16:12.800 --> 0:16:15.560 and know and ultimately you want these to be in 0:16:15.640 --> 0:16:18.600 balance with each other. This school of thoughts, she writes, 0:16:18.640 --> 0:16:22.840 stress natural causes of dreams and nightmares rather than the supernatural, 0:16:23.480 --> 0:16:25.720 So not saying that it was just all potato, but 0:16:25.880 --> 0:16:29.200 leaned more potato than the other model. 0:16:29.600 --> 0:16:33.840 That's interesting because obviously it mirrors the true fact that 0:16:33.880 --> 0:16:36.480 we don't dream the entire time we're asleep, that there 0:16:36.480 --> 0:16:40.320 are specific phases of sleep during which we dream or 0:16:40.360 --> 0:16:41.920 during which streaming is heightened. 0:16:42.200 --> 0:16:44.240 Yeah, it's also interesting concerning some other things that come 0:16:44.280 --> 0:16:47.440 up in the book about just thinking about different ways 0:16:47.600 --> 0:16:51.360 that a night's sleep may go. And indeed this sort 0:16:51.360 --> 0:16:55.680 of idea that some positive that you could have an 0:16:55.800 --> 0:16:59.160 entire night's sleep that is completely dream free, that you 0:16:59.200 --> 0:17:03.400 can avoid dreams entirely, or you can avoid all sorts 0:17:03.400 --> 0:17:06.240 of one type of dream in favor of another. 0:17:07.440 --> 0:17:09.560 Oh yeah, well, that brings up another way of thinking 0:17:09.600 --> 0:17:13.280 about dreams that is different than I think anything we've 0:17:13.320 --> 0:17:15.480 discussed in this series so far. We've focused a lot 0:17:15.520 --> 0:17:21.000 on people attaching various kinds of supernatural, revelatory or prophetic 0:17:21.119 --> 0:17:23.960 power to the contents of their dreams. But you know, 0:17:24.000 --> 0:17:26.199 another thing that seems to be fairly common in the 0:17:26.200 --> 0:17:30.159 world is just having beliefs about ways to have a 0:17:30.280 --> 0:17:33.040 good dream, Like when you want to have a good 0:17:33.119 --> 0:17:34.560 dream as opposed to a bad one. 0:17:35.119 --> 0:17:37.359 Yeah, And I think this is like a lot of 0:17:37.359 --> 0:17:39.880 what's going on, particularly in the Chinese example, is occurring 0:17:40.080 --> 0:17:43.520 again among the elites, among the intellectual elites and theological 0:17:43.600 --> 0:17:46.399 elites of the day, and it gets, you know, it 0:17:46.440 --> 0:17:49.880 gets rather complex. But I think like when you get 0:17:49.920 --> 0:17:52.439 down to some of the more like shamanistic roots of 0:17:52.480 --> 0:17:55.959 all of this and sort of like the average individuals 0:17:56.200 --> 0:18:00.000 like sort of base understanding of dreams, you kind of 0:18:00.160 --> 0:18:02.119 come down to those some of the like the really 0:18:02.200 --> 0:18:04.960 key questions. Obviously, one question is is this real or 0:18:05.000 --> 0:18:07.440 is it not? And if it's not real, where does 0:18:07.440 --> 0:18:08.960 it come from? If it is real, where does it 0:18:09.000 --> 0:18:10.760 come from? And what does it mean? That sort of thing. 0:18:11.119 --> 0:18:13.119 But then also like coming down if you ask the 0:18:13.160 --> 0:18:15.240 average individual just on the street, hey, what do you 0:18:15.240 --> 0:18:18.119 think about dreams? Even today? They might be like, I 0:18:18.160 --> 0:18:20.919 don't know, you know, dreams or dreams whatever. But if 0:18:20.920 --> 0:18:22.159 you ask them what do you think about what is 0:18:22.200 --> 0:18:25.120 your opinion on nightmares? Most people are going to say 0:18:25.400 --> 0:18:27.480 I don't care for them. I would prefer not to 0:18:27.560 --> 0:18:30.280 have them. And so there's I think there's always going 0:18:30.320 --> 0:18:32.960 to be that level of the dream culture as well, 0:18:33.119 --> 0:18:35.719 like can we do something about these nightmares? I mean, 0:18:35.760 --> 0:18:37.760 this is nice that you have all these thoughts about 0:18:37.800 --> 0:18:40.480 like where these are coming from, But I would tell 0:18:40.480 --> 0:18:42.040 me how to not have the nightmare. 0:18:42.560 --> 0:18:45.840 Whether Scrooge is being tortured by the actual ghost of 0:18:45.920 --> 0:18:48.720 Jacob Marley or it is just the bit of mustard 0:18:48.840 --> 0:18:51.600 or the crust of bread that is causing it. Either way, 0:18:51.640 --> 0:18:52.720 it is unpleasant. 0:18:53.400 --> 0:18:56.000 Yeah, I mean, this is I'm sure preaching to the 0:18:56.040 --> 0:19:00.520 choir universally among our listeners here. But you know, nightmares suck. 0:19:00.920 --> 0:19:06.880 They disrupt your night's sleep, and by disrupting your night's sleep, 0:19:06.920 --> 0:19:11.680 you're gonna inevitably disrupt your waking day to follow, not 0:19:11.720 --> 0:19:14.760 only like on a physiological level, but also a potentially 0:19:14.760 --> 0:19:17.520 on a mental or emotional level. And we have to 0:19:17.600 --> 0:19:21.320 bear in mind that like bad dreams and nightmares can 0:19:21.359 --> 0:19:25.879 also be intensified via stress and trauma in life. So 0:19:26.280 --> 0:19:30.240 you know, it's like this boulder rolling down a hill, 0:19:30.560 --> 0:19:34.320 and I think we can all, you know, understand that 0:19:34.320 --> 0:19:38.359 that desire to want to stop that boulder or to 0:19:39.000 --> 0:19:42.800 diminish it somehow before it slends into us. And that's 0:19:42.840 --> 0:19:45.080 without even getting into some of the more extreme examples 0:19:45.080 --> 0:19:48.440 of parasomnia, night terrors, and so forth, like just sort 0:19:48.440 --> 0:19:52.520 of like normal nightmares can be horrible. They're horrible for us, 0:19:52.680 --> 0:19:56.840 and then certainly as parents, you know they're horrible when 0:19:56.880 --> 0:19:59.560 you're having to deal with someone, especially a young child, 0:19:59.560 --> 0:20:02.679 but also other loved ones when they're experiencing them, because 0:20:02.720 --> 0:20:05.560 there's this kind kind of helplessness to it, right, like 0:20:05.600 --> 0:20:19.120 you can't protect them in their dreams. So we'll get 0:20:19.119 --> 0:20:22.560 back to this general topic of like traditions and customs 0:20:22.640 --> 0:20:27.080 regarding the prevention of bad dreams and sort of opening 0:20:27.119 --> 0:20:31.159 the door for more positive dreams. But this also brings 0:20:31.240 --> 0:20:33.919 up something that I'm sure a number of you have 0:20:33.960 --> 0:20:36.760 been thinking about listening to these episodes, and you've probably 0:20:36.760 --> 0:20:39.880 been wondering why it hasn't come up yet, and that 0:20:40.040 --> 0:20:45.200 is the topic of so called lucid dreaming. Lucid dreaming is, 0:20:45.240 --> 0:20:47.520 of course, you know, the idea that you can take 0:20:47.560 --> 0:20:50.600 the wheel of your dreams, that within your dream you 0:20:50.640 --> 0:20:53.480 can realize you are dreaming and say, hey, I'm going 0:20:53.560 --> 0:20:55.480 to flip the script here, I'm going to do whatever 0:20:55.520 --> 0:20:55.920 I want. 0:20:56.400 --> 0:21:00.159 Essentially, it's interesting because it often seems to hinge on 0:21:00.240 --> 0:21:03.480 the question of whether you can realize when you are dreaming. 0:21:04.240 --> 0:21:07.480 Yeah, and you know, it's something that my understanding from 0:21:07.520 --> 0:21:09.639 having you discussed it on their show in the bast 0:21:09.760 --> 0:21:11.720 is that it's something you got to work at. People 0:21:11.800 --> 0:21:16.040 do apply themselves to it, and people do report results. 0:21:16.560 --> 0:21:19.920 I've never applied myself to it, and therefore the few 0:21:19.960 --> 0:21:23.119 times that I do have lucid moments in my dreams 0:21:23.160 --> 0:21:26.359 where I realize that I am dreaming, I immediately fall 0:21:26.400 --> 0:21:28.600 out of it. So I'll have a dream where I'm like, Hey, 0:21:28.600 --> 0:21:30.679 this is a dream, and then I'll be like, what 0:21:30.760 --> 0:21:32.800 did I just think? I don't remember, and then I'm 0:21:32.840 --> 0:21:35.359 back under the spell of the dream, and this will happen. 0:21:35.760 --> 0:21:37.680 The times that it's happened like this, It'll just happen 0:21:37.920 --> 0:21:42.199 like several times in a row, and I'm unable to 0:21:42.240 --> 0:21:44.600 shake the delusion of the dream. 0:21:44.880 --> 0:21:46.840 I think I've shared this on the show before, but 0:21:47.800 --> 0:21:50.639 my experience is every time in a dream I start 0:21:50.680 --> 0:21:53.480 to wonder if I'm dreaming or not, I think, no, 0:21:53.840 --> 0:21:58.800 this is definitely real. It seems to imply I don't know. 0:21:58.840 --> 0:22:01.520 I wonder if that means I'm a specially prone to delusions. 0:22:01.960 --> 0:22:02.840 I'm not sure. 0:22:03.240 --> 0:22:07.119 Yeah, it's hard for me to like in the dream. 0:22:07.160 --> 0:22:10.760 I'm always like, I bring my own like waking sort 0:22:10.800 --> 0:22:14.120 of cautiousness to the dream. So I was thinking earlier 0:22:14.160 --> 0:22:19.360 about like substances within dreams, drugs within dreams, for example, 0:22:19.440 --> 0:22:22.719 which I've read some wonderful fictional treatments of this before. 0:22:22.800 --> 0:22:25.840 But the times where I've been offered, say, a drug 0:22:25.960 --> 0:22:28.359 within a dream, I'm always like, no, thank you, I 0:22:28.400 --> 0:22:32.200 don't know what's in that will I will politely decline, 0:22:32.200 --> 0:22:34.240 And then afterwards I'm like, well that, why didn't It's 0:22:34.280 --> 0:22:36.480 a dream like that, this is the place to try 0:22:36.560 --> 0:22:40.320 strange substances the dream world. But no, I don't realize 0:22:40.359 --> 0:22:42.159 it's a dream, so I don't give it a go. 0:22:42.680 --> 0:22:44.040 Dream cocaine can't hurt you. 0:22:45.800 --> 0:22:48.960 So, as we've discussed on the show before, the term itself, 0:22:49.080 --> 0:22:54.040 lucid dreaming originates in nineteen thirteen with Dutch psychiatrist Frederick 0:22:54.119 --> 0:22:56.879 van Eaton, but he was hardly the first person to 0:22:56.960 --> 0:23:00.320 recognize that the dreamer can become aware that they are 0:23:00.320 --> 0:23:03.080 in a dream and then influence the shape of that dream. 0:23:04.200 --> 0:23:07.159 That this basic idea had been written about in Europe 0:23:07.200 --> 0:23:10.359 for centuries and in ancient times. You have the likes 0:23:10.400 --> 0:23:14.400 of Saint Augustine, Galen, Aristotle. They all wrote about it 0:23:14.680 --> 0:23:17.359 in Asia of The concept was also understood among ancient 0:23:17.440 --> 0:23:22.200 Hindus and early Buddhists, and so this was certainly recognized 0:23:22.240 --> 0:23:26.159 in the dream culture of the late Ming period as well. Interestingly, 0:23:26.200 --> 0:23:28.959 Streve only mentions lucid dreaming once in the book, but 0:23:29.000 --> 0:23:34.000 it's still notable. In one section, she is discussing Juan 0:23:34.119 --> 0:23:38.280 ying Ming, an important Neo Confucian thinker of the Ming dynasty. 0:23:38.760 --> 0:23:41.639 He is said to have followed a Taoist practice of 0:23:41.920 --> 0:23:47.320 deep meditation that minimized both sleep and dream And I 0:23:47.320 --> 0:23:49.520