Dreams are a mystery in part because we give them only fleeting attention. I’ve given them a lot of heed over the years—as might be expected of a person of my temperament. What I may say here, to be sure, is the subjective view of one. I offer them as hypotheses—to be subjected to personal verification by others.
I classify dreams into five categories as follows: (1) morning, (2) deep, (3) significant, (4) telepathic, and (5) precognitive. Bear with me. We’re entering a thicket. The categories may be quite meaningless, but I hope to give them some flesh below.
Morning Dreams. These are dreams we have in the morning just before we awaken. Most of these, I find, may be described as ordinary thoughts that, however, employ “dream grammar” to make themselves understood. Very few people have the necessary skill or patience to translate morning dreams into concepts, but when they bother, their dream unravels relatively easily into something of current concern. The skill required is symbolic analysis—easier said than done. The dream content is usually simply a sentence of this sort: “I wonder if Close Relation has gotten the dreaded Test Result yet?” Not infrequently, the dream itself echoes thoughts we fell asleep with—and as the brain comes awake again, it replays those thoughts again, presented to the not-yet fully awakened personality in symbolic form.
Deep Dreams. These are the dreams of the night from which we awaken because they woke us up in fright or pleasure, usually the former. They tend to be large, confusing dramatic series in which many different events take place, separated by odd discontinuities. We can recognized a discontinuity or shift when people say, relating the dream: “Then suddenly I was downtown, and this bus was coming toward me…” Or: “Then things changed. I wasn’t by the river anymore but at a market…” These dreams tend to be visually vivid; we are active participants, completely absorbed in actions, often seeking difficult objectives. All sorts of people may be present, all manner of interactions may take place, the environment may be very odd, and yet we accept it, or weird things in it whereas, in a waking state, we’d be paralyzed by astonishment. I think such dreams are in the same category as extended daydreams when we’re contemplating past events or projecting to the future—angrily reliving some past problem, usually with people, and rehearse what we should’ve said or done…or daydreams of what we hope to do in the future. Thus deep dreams, like morning dreams, are more or less spontaneous streams of consciousness, but because our sleep is deeper, they are more extensive, elaborated, and richer in content. The discontinuities are caused by new associations produced spontaneously by the brain and presented to us in the form of another scene.
Significant Dreams. These are dreams of the deep kind, usually, but distinguished from those by a peculiar coherence and united thematics. They are significant precisely because, on awakening, we are immediately and fully aware of their meaning or portent. I’ll present such a dream soon and return to this subject them. Significant dreams are of great interest to me because they seem to transcend the two earlier categories. Something else is present in them—call it the presence of another agency at work, possibly another higher level of ourselves. These dreams are artfully constructed. They’re rich with meaning. The other two kinds are just mental operations as usual, but conducted with the self only half or not at all aware. The brain is awake enough, however, to store memories.
“Telepathic” Dreams. This is a category I’m not yet entirely comfortable including. My experiences are somewhat limited, but the few dreams I’ve had have been striking. The label itself isn’t very satisfactory. I’ve had a number of dreams of being in situations where I was a person I could not really identify with, doing and saying things I would never do or say in real life—and, even in the dream itself, I am quite aware of this. These have tended to be “morning” dreams. They put me in very realistic situations with not a shred of the fantastic. What is fantastic is to be in the situation at all. Only the minority of these dreams involve me being an extremely stupid person doing very stupid and usually more or less criminal things. In the majority of these telepathic dreams I experience being in unusual occupations or very interesting but quite alien family situation. I’ve tried to explain these dreams to myself by saying that, somehow, I’m tuning in the lives of other people somehow, experience slices of them (of memories? of actual experiences taking place now?), but feel identified with a person who isn’t really me. Telepathy is a handy explanation.
Precognitive Dreams. This is a well-known category. I’ve had one unmistakable precognitive dream that I’ll relate in another posting and discuss it there in full. What I dreamt was ordinary but unusual enough not be mistaken for a memory. And the action of the dream actually took place two days later. Precognition itself, proved by such phenomena, is a vast subject in which my insights are those of an ant regarding nuclear disarmament.
More on this subject will follow, of course, but I need to have this recorded for future reference.
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