Significant Dreams

Next I want to present a dream of unusual character and then compare such dreams to the usual product of the night.

Content. In this dream I stood on a grassy plain. Ahead of me in the near distance was a wide river, smooth as glass; it curved to my left; a single mansion stood on its far shore. A boatman across the way was preparing to cross; he was an older fellow but had a young boy helping him. I ignored the boatman, he was to my far right, and headed through grass toward the river’s curve. On my way I came across two long beams or sticks that resembled a broken ladder. I used these sticks to float across the river to the far shore where the mansion stood.

The river was very full but peaceful, reaching right to the edge of the bank. My mother met me at the entrance to the mansion. She was young and wore one of her favorite dresses of that time, blue with white polka dots.

I understood, without communication, that the mansion was her house, still under construction. We passed through a dark passage where workmen had left various tools and supplies. We entered a strikingly bright, radiant, sun-filled sort of living or central room. Its windows were shaded, but very warm sunlight lit them and came in on the edges of the shades. The room faced some inner courtyard or garden, but, I understood, we couldn’t see out until the house was finished and the shades had been removed. Then I woke up.

Meaning and Symbolism. The dream had a peaceful, radiant mood. It had no discontinuities. I felt the water as I laid down on the beams to float across, and the water was warm. I decided to decode this dream to get at its numinous quality.

My mother lay dying in those days. She would die within a month of this dream. I knew right away that a mansion in heaven was being prepared for her; the still hidden garden in the center of the house was Paradise. The river, of course, was the river Styx. I saw that the moment when I attempted to explain the rods I’d seen laying there. My mind kept wanting to call them “sticks” even though they were much sturdier beams and, indeed, resembled the uprights of a ladder. The word ladder, then, in turn, reminded me of Jacob’s ladder, the means by which Jacob had managed to reach heaven. Next I realized that the boatman across the way, preparing to get me, had to be Charon, he who ferries the dead across the Styx. But I crossed lying on Jacob’s ladder, instead, perhaps because I was just visiting.

The dream implied—by the still, warm water of the river and my mother’s youth—that I had made this trip before, but going the other way, the warm water being amniotic fluid…and also in a happier time: “The sea of faith was once, too, at the full and round earth’s shores lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled” (Matthew Arnold, "Dover Beach").

This dream illustrates some aspects of the Unconscious as Carl Jung saw it; it is also a very good instance of the manner in which dreams use images to signal abstract concepts. During the dream itself I had not the slightest understanding of it. Had I had, I would have woken up. The name of the river was symbolized by objects, the two rods which lay pointing in an A-shape toward the water. In the manner of poetry, the image made by the rods had a double meaning, an overlaid meaning. The “sticks” were also a discarded ladder by means of which I crossed over to “the other shore.” The river’s ample curve was my mother’s belly filled with amniotic fluid, and so on. Death’s ferryman was just an ordinary man, not in any way antique in appearance. The symbolism was very sophisticated, the reference to Arnold’s poem, one of my favorites, rendered by nothing more than the unusual “fullness” of the river which I noted as an oddity in the dream itself.

Comment. While this dream was very neatly constructed, coherent, and very vivid, it can still be understood as simply a thought. The thought here could be rendered as: “Mother will soon be in heaven. I hope they’re making a place for her. ‘In my house there are many mansions.’” Something like that. It seems to me that dreams are almost always the “unpacking” of such a thought into symbolism, and as the presentation unfolds, we feel as if we were in the dream and taking part in it although, in actuality, we are a passive observer.

What I saw in this dream—I call it the Styx Dream—was a presentation rather than an actual physical, tangible place.

Some people, reading the dream account itself, will consider my interpretation of it—especially such aspects as “amniotic fluid,” Jacob’s ladder, and a “paradise” inside a house—pure projection of a heated brain. All right. The entire interpretation flowed right out of my intuitions into consciousness with great rapidity as soon as I understood the symbolism of the “sticks.” It was my dream, and my mind does work just like that. It is always filled with images even in the most ordinary circumstances.

Three features make dreams of this sort “significant.” One is their high energy, made plain by heightened color and bright light, another is their coherence from beginning to end, and the third is a sense of unified meaning that bursts forth as soon as effort is made to decode the symbols. Thus there is a possibility here that dreams of this sort may be messages. They are more energetic, better designed, and more beautiful than ordinary thoughts. They communicate their meaning more directly. The mind is absent in both, but in the ordinary dream random thought formations are responsible; in the significant dreams, the agency may be fully conscious. And dreams of that sort, furthermore, “higher” dreams, also carry a numinous quality that is quite unmistakable.

A Paradox. Here is a paradox. If the significant dreams are messages rather than thoughts mechanically built by associations of a brain, the recipient of the dream, the sleeper, would have to be at least potentially capable of understanding the symbolism that, in dreams, must be used as the language of communications. In this particular case, I was certainly “adequate” to the understanding of the symbols used. The sender of the message, of course, would also select the symbols so that they would be understood. The paradox arises thus: The very fact that I can decode the dream can be used as an argument to say that no message is being sent, that the whole mirage is my own creation. Things are cunning arranged. You know what you know internally, but the skeptic will also be protected in his skepticism.