The Bride of Dreams
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Frederik van Eeden >> The Bride of Dreams
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But the inhabitants of this dreamy little country do not like to be
called dreamy. As I understand the word, it is a compliment better
deserved by my own countrymen; but the Hollanders themselves feel
flattered, though quite erroneously, when I casually remark at the club
that the Italians are a much dreamier people than they. To the
Hollander a dreamer is a blockhead and a dullard, and our broker, a
little fellow with gray beard and little leering cunningly-stupid eyes,
who thinks himself very smart because he knows bow to eke out a profit
everywhere and thus to swell his bank account, always states with much
satisfaction that he never knew what it was to dream. When he sleeps he
sleeps absolutely and is conscious of nothing, thus - of less even than
when he is awake. And the doctor - a fat jovial young fellow of strong
mulatto type and popular for his good-natured cordiality and stale
college jokes - says that all dreams are pathological and the best
medicine for them is a good cigar and a stiff rum punch before retiring.
A Dutch peasant in his blue blouse, on a meadow flooded by the golden
evening sun, amongst the black and white cattle, with a background of
white and pale green dunes in fine undulating outline, is a marvel of
dream beauty. But he himself knows nothing of this, as little or even
less than the cow beside him. And the broker and the doctor only
recognize it when a dreamer such as Rembrandt or Ruysdaal has revealed
it, and the papers record how many thousands of golden gilders their
reverie has yielded. But in my country the humblest peasant lad,
clambering barefooted and singing down the Piedmontese foothills behind
his black goats in the golden evening light, is enough of a dreamer to
have a clear conception of the grand concert of beauty whereof he is a
single tone. In the cities it is of course equally bad everywhere, and
dreamers are as rare among the sleek, smart officers and loungers of
the Toledo in Naples as among the portly, blond-bearded sons of the
merchants and shopkeepers in the Kalverstraat at Amsterdam.
Now it also seems to me that he who dreams is more awake than he who
sleeps, and that he who spends a third part of his life in utter
unconsciousness better deserves to be called a sleepyhead and dullard,
than he for whom the dark nights are also vivid and rich with pulsing
life. To me it has always seemed a shame to lie like a stone for so
many hours, and to arise from sleep no wiser than when we sank into it.
And after having experienced several times in my early youth that sleep
possesses riches of sensations and a wealth of rapture that surpass the
intensest joys of brilliant day, shedding behind them a radiance that
penetrates the brightest daylight as sunshine penetrates an
electrically lighted hall, - I began to pay more attention to my dreams
and, especially in dreary joyless days, to look forward to the nights
in which I had unmistakably felt the shining presence of such great
treasure.
As to the doctors' opinion regarding the morbidness of dreams, I refer
again to my observations on the philistinism prevalent among
physicians, and I know from very positive experience that there are
healthy as well as morbid sensations in sleep, precisely as in the
day-life. I may speak with some authority because in my day-life I
never experienced any serious morbid disorder and no doctor could ever
cast a doubt on the excellence of my health. Yet for me a dreamless
night is a bad night, and I call the man who passes his days in the
following of perverted and inharmonious impulses, in deviations from
the good instincts for refreshment and nourishment, for propagation and
accumulation, for peace and happiness, and his nights in dull
unconsciousness and thoughtlessness, dead as a cork, or at most, a
little mad temporarily from foolish and confused dreams, - such a man
I, with good reason, call sickly and abnormal.
For our highest instinct, that like a stately royal stag, proudly
holding aloft his widely branching antlers, should take the lead of all
the wanton and timid flock of our impulses and passions uniting and
guarding them, is the impulse toward beauty, toward sublimity, and
toward purest blessedness. Even the mighty passion for knowledge, which
impels us so untiringly to seek for the secret of life, is subordinate
to this, though it is the second in rank - the most beautiful hind of
the flock.
And if in our sleep and dreams we perceive, more distinctly than in the
day life, signs of the highest beauty and the purest bliss, - should we
not then give them our closest attention?
And this I would now point out to you, dear reader, as the first new
idea, strange - till now - to the present world, the first
thought-child pulsing with life and future promise, born of the
profound union of my experience and contemplation:
The solution of the secret of our lives lies in our dreams.
You think - do you not? - that this solution is not attainable to man.
Nor indeed is it - at least not to mortal man. And yet all mankind,
through the medium of its naturalists, is patiently and hopefully
seeking it. But, though they have already unearthed much that is
useful, measuring and recording and comparing with ever finer and
sharper instruments, they are still digging in a direction that
inevitably leads into a blind alley.
For the manifestations of day-life, the only ones that attract the
attention of the searchers, do not reach beyond the grave and end with
the withering of the body. But the manifestations of sleep, yet
unexplored and unmeasured, begin where the eyes are shut, the ears do
not hear, the skin does not feel, and extend into the regions
concerning which we want enlightenment as much as - yes, even more than
- concerning the sphere of day.
As long as I can remember, I have always been a great and vivid
dreamer; therefore I know I must count myself among the breakers of
suggestion, among the pathfinders, just as you too, dear reader and
sympathizer, are one of them. And therefore, also, when the ideas of
the group and traditional creed became too narrow for me and neither
the words of my great hero brothers, nor intercourse with my
contemporaries, nor the latest discoveries of science could satisfy me,
I could forthwith see an outlet and discover light on a path which no
one had yet pointed out to me and none, before me, had trod. Thus my
alienation from the world has not made me unruly. Thus alone is it
possible for me to find peace and contentment in this life amid narrow,
sordid souls and barbarians. For aside from my monotonous daily life,
with brief moments of rapture aroused by the beauty of these low lands
and the sea, by work and study, I have the rich nights full of
marvelous mystic realities which I gratefully and attentively observe
and record by day. Thus, despite the loss of all that was dear to me, I
am happy in the consciousness of being a useful laborer in the fields
of the future, ploughing.
"For the promise of a later birth
The wilderness of this Elysian earth."
Before, therefore, speaking to you of my marriage to Lucia del Bono and
the long, outwardly prosperous period following, I must acquaint you
with my nocturnal observations.
The dreams of terror and bliss, that to you too surely are not unknown,
I dreamed with vivid intensity. And it had immediately struck me that
their vehement sensations - the inexplicable, deadly, hopeless terror
and disgust or the wondrous, perfect bliss were quite disproportionate
to, and could not be explained by, the things we saw and experienced in
the dream. I remember a dream of a bare, gray room, without windows or
furniture, and moving about in a corner some indistinct object, whose
terrifying weird impression could make me shudder even by day; another
one of a small, narrow, square courtyard enclosed by high walls
overgrown with ivy, which was also gruesome and appalling beyond
description, - and then again blissful dreams of meetings with a
strange youth or maiden in some unknown garden, or in a rocky valley
with gigantic golden-leaved chestnut trees, whose memory filled me with
sweet delight for days and weeks - yes! that even now in my old age can
make me happy when I vividly recall them.
No one hearing such a dream recounted would be able to comprehend its
impressions of terror or delight. Only this was plain to we - that the
blissful dreams dealt with love. In my earliest youth it was a boy whom
I would meet in my dreams and who by a single word, without much sense,
would make me marvellously happy and the scenery around him glorious;
later it was a girl. The boy and the girl returned several times,
though not very often, and did not resemble any friend or sweetheart of
my day-life.
At first the weird terror seemed much more mysterious, for it was
connected in some unaccountable way with the simplest and most innocent
objects and scenes I dreamed of.
We, indeed, talk of nightmare and usually seek its cause in a poor
digestion and the doctors talk a great deal about improper circulation
and suggest all kinds of remedies. But throughout a long life I have
been a close observer and have come to the conclusion that indigestion
and improper circulation are no more the cause of this nightly terror
than of rain and wind, though a frail condition will make the one as
well as the other harder to endure. Wait, my reader, until you are as
old and experienced a dreamer as I am, and you shall see for yourself
these terror-inspirers and bloodcurdlers, these buffoons and jesters at
work in the shapes in which Breughel and Teniers portrayed them in so
life-like a manner. You shall learn to know their tricks and malicious
inventions, and the queer furnishings of their dwelling sphere. You
shall learn to track them, as it were, - as the dog tracks the game -
by their peculiar scent of gruesomeness. You shall see them unfolding
their loathsome and dark spectacles before you -their battlefields
reeking with blood, their swamps filled with corpses - besmirching your
path with mud, and playing fantastic tricks on you without its causing
you the slightest degree of alarm or fear, or depressing you as it did
before you knew the cause of all these things - because now you
apprehend them in their wretched malignity and dare to face them and,
if need be, duly to chastise them.
These are the creatures that Shelley calls
"The ghastly people of the realm of dreams,"
and of whose miserable existence and restless activity neither he, nor
Goethe, nor any other of the world's sages and seers ever doubted.
Indeed, would not this doubt signify that we are ourselves responsible
for the multitude of horrible, utterly vulgar, heinous and vile or
obscene illusions that menace us at night and yet all bear an
unmistakable imprint of thought and imagination, compiled with reason
and deliberation, and thus betray a thinking mind though a low-thinking
one? Do you not know the dream in which you know yourself to be guilty
of murder, of bloody murder through covetousness, of theft, or of
plotting to kill and inciting the innocent to it -with all the horrid
retinue of fear of discovery and lies upon lies to escape it? And do
you hold your own soul responsible for this? Or do you believe that
chance can beget such artfully contrived complexities?
It was this sort of deception that incited me to indignant defiance.
The war I had to carry on by day against my troublesome passions, also
put me on my guard at night, and I would not absolve myself with the
excuse that sleep renders irresponsible. For I knew that it was I,
myself, I, Lodovico Muralto, an honest, well-meaning fellow, who in the
dream-life of night had done and felt all kinds of malicious wicked and
low-minded things, and I would not have it.
Not only the baseness, but also the absurdities of dreams, exasperated
me. Night after night I was imposed upon and led about by the nose in
the most ridiculous fashion. It often seemed as though my most earnest
resolutions and most sacred feelings were the very ones to draw their
shafts of ridicule. And morning after morning it was not only with
surprise, but also with growing shame and wrath that I discovered on
awakening, how absurdly I had again been fooled. This could not issue
from myself, it must have been thrust on me; it was suggestion,
infusion, that menaced and confounded my mind and judgment, and I was
determined not to endure it. I would not stand it and earnestly sought
a means of defending my healthy soul and free judgment. Thus I may say
that my vehement lifelong struggle for self-purification and advance
toward salvation was doubled, being carried on by night as well as by
day, and indeed to great advantage. For it is the same soul, and they
are the same forces which by night as well as by day act and react upon
one another, and life with the physical senses of day has been made not
a little clearer to me by the nightly senseless life.
I accustomed myself to memorize carefully in the morning what had
occurred to me throughout the night, and in the evening before going to
sleep to form fixed resolutions, auto-suggestions which should continue
working also in my dream life.
And I realized that the first essentials were: observation, attention,
self-consciousness also in dreams. Who would not be cheated must be on
his guard. Thus while dreaming, I wanted above all to realize that I
was dreaming and not to lose the tie of memory connecting me with the
day-life. Every night I stood before the dark cavern of sleep, like
Theseus with Ariadne's thread in his hand, and I knew, as you perhaps
do too, reader, through chance experience - that such retention of
memory is possible. Has it not happened to you often while dreaming
that startled by some dangerous beast, or confronted by a steep
precipice, you have calmed yourself with the vague consciousness: after
all it's nothing but a dream? This consciousness I wished to cultivate
and to strengthen until it should become fixed and lasting. And after a
while, one night while dreaming of a blossoming orchard in Italy, I
succeeded in observing with thorough consciousness. I saw the branches
as they crossed one another, and the festoons of vines stretching from
tree to tree, whilst I soared through, a few yards from the ground,
with a pale blue sky above me. And while observing yet more closely I
pondered how it was possible to reproduce so exactly and minutely in a
vision obviously emanating from myself and which I had myself created,
the apparent motions of these myriad crossing twigs and the confusion
of the young foliage. And in my dream, and realizing that I was
dreaming, I came to the conclusion that this vision must be a reality,
an objective reality as the philosophers of reason would say, because
to me - the observer - it manifested a distinctly personal existence.
As I soared by, the twigs described their apparent motions exactly as I
had observed by day, and how should I, who could not even draw a tree,
be able to create these extraordinarily compiled moving images? And at
the same time, now thoroughly wide awake in the midst of what I
recognized as a deep sound sleep, I pondered upon the visionary
impressions of day-life which have been explained by the effect upon
the wonderfully constructed eye, of infinitely fine, infinitely swift
vibrations of light, which are sent out from objects whose construction
includes a no less complicated combination of billions and trillions of
molecules - and how these identical impressions with exactly the same
results were now attained, as a clearly felt and calmly observed
reality, while my eyes were shut and the world of day-life remote -
thus that there must be something which could reproduce all these
infinite combinations of light vibrations and molecular motions with an
absolutely equivalent effect.
And before having yourself tasted such delight, reader, you cannot
imagine my elation when, on awakening, I found that my attempt had met
with success, that I had gone on observing - attentively observing, and
thinking - thinking deeply and clearly, with full recollection and calm
self-consciousness in that mysterious, senseless sphere of wonder and
deception.
The philistine philosophers will talk of "delusion" and contend that
only the perceptions of day are real and those of sleep a mere
delusion. But I have said it before: there is no delusion, or -
everything is delusion. What realities does the day possess beyond
perception? And because the perceptions of sleep are more fleeting,
more unconnected, more mysterious, does it follow that they do not
exist or that they deserve no attention? Through the very strangeness
of their nature, which has no need of our senses, their study promises
richer revelations than are found in day-life, but what they primarily
demand is steadiness and clearness of the mind that would contemplate
them, with the same purpose and precision with which the realities of
day-life are searched.
My delight at this first success filled me all the day, and the comfort
and joy found in this unexplored domain of study has not forsaken me to
the present day and has helped me to bear a hard life with fortitude.
I now determined, by constant practice, to go further, to observe
longer and with still greater accuracy and also, above all, to try to
what extent I could act voluntarily in this senseless sphere. In my
first elation I hoped that I might sometime reach the point where I
could pass from waking to sleeping without loss of consciousness, and
night after night contemplate the dream-sphere with all the calmness of
day - thus doubling my entire life. Moreover, I hoped to fight the evil
and demonic, to seek the pure and heavenly and perhaps also to dig up
from the unknown world of perception, other precious facts.
Of course my exaggerated expectations met with disappointment. Only
very slowly can we gain ground in a field so wholly unknown. I must
content myself with leaving behind a series of honest and careful
observations which will be repeated and put to test by others. To you,
my reader, if the time be spared me, I will bequeath them in writing
for your perusal, well ordered as a guide for further research. I know
that you can follow the path pointed out by me and penetrate further
than I.
For the present I will only briefly mention that although my
expectations were not fulfilled in the measure hoped for, yet not any
one of them was wholly disappointed.
To retain the clearness of mind night after night throughout the entire
duration of sleep - that I never achieved. The moments of observation
were and ever continued to be of brief duration, and they came at long
intervals. Sometimes there is nothing to observe for weeks; then again
two or three good nights follow in succession. The conditions for
satisfactory observation are: excellent health, perfect equilibrium of
mind and body, and the deep refreshing sleep toward morning, when the
body and the senses are in a state of absolute passiveness and calm.
Nell' ora che comincia, i tristi lai
la rondinella presso la mattina,
- - - - - -
e che la mente nostra pellegrina
pių dalla, carne e men da' pensier presa,
alle sue vision quasi č divina.
A few times only did I succeed in falling asleep with unbroken
consciousness. This occurred when I was very tired and fell quickly
into a deep sleep. Then all at once I would realize with a wonderful
sensation of joy and relief that the desired sleep had come, and I
thought, enjoyed, observed, determined and acted with calm deliberation
in the glad conviction that my body, whose weariness I no longer felt,
had found its needed refreshment without necessitating a suspension of
the vital activities of my senseless and invisible being. But these
extremely favorable conditions are rare; usually I feel myself gliding
rapidly through the sphere of perception, anxious lest it should pass
before I have made the most of it.
A long series of observations has made clear to me this above all: that
there are various spheres which, on gaining consciousness, one
immediately recognizes by their peculiar atmosphere, impossible more
closely to describe. One knows what depths, what fields of observation
one traverses.
There is a sphere wherein we see again the world of day-life - the
earth we have seen with its landscapes and habitations - all strangely
altered. It is not the same, but we know: this is meant.
Thus over and over again many a night I saw my paternal home in the
city with its old-time luxury - but in its dream image. Moreover Lake
Como and the forest of Gombo, near Pisa, and also England and the North
Sea - but it is always the dream sea, and the dream forest, and the
dream London, differing totally from the realities of day. But they
themselves remain the same and without exception I immediately
recognize them.
Thus there is a sphere of ecstasy and great joy. In this our
consciousness of self is strongest, and it is impossible to give an
idea of the wonderful clearness with which one views and admires
everything, and the undoubted sense of a reality, though wholly unlike
the reality of our waking hours. One sees vast, splendid, more or less
clearly lighted landscapes, fashioned indeed according to earthy
pattern, with mountains, trees, seas and rivers, but more beautiful and
filling us with overwhelming admiration. And one sees them perfectly
distinctly, with sharp intensity and full consciousness.
In this sphere one also possesses a peculiar body with very intense
corporal feeling and definite qualities. One feels one's own eyes
opened wide and sees with them, one feels one's mouth and speaks and
sings at the top of one's voice - wondering meanwhile that the sleeping
body should lie there still as death - one sees one's own hands and
feet and the clothes one wears, resembling the clothes worn by day. It
is all a little different, it is seen fleetingly as through running
water, and it changes also through the influence of pronounced will.
But one recognizes the dream-body exactly as one recognizes the waking
body, when one has again returned to it. And one retains the sense
recollection of both, each independent of the other. One remembers on
awaking that the dream body has been actively stirring, but the waking
body knows that it has been lying calm and still, though not wholly
dead, for an unaccustomed noise would have wakened it. And the
dream-body possesses all the sense perceptions and all the energies of
the waking body and even more, for it can not only see, feel, hear,
taste and smell, but also think very clearly and discern more delicate
subtleties of mood. Yes! this last it does with such unwonted subtlety
and acuteness that one cannot compare it to any sense perception of day
and might with good reason speak of a new sense. And it can soar and
fly. It feels light and free - though the waking body is wrapped in the
deep sleep of weariness, the dream-body in this sphere is always
supple, light and delightful beyond description. This ability to fly is
always the infallible proclaimer of the advent of the joy-sphere. But
this soaring power is not unlimited. The dream-body can safely descend
into the deepest chasm, but it cannot rise to every height. Ascending
requires exertion and often meets with failure despite the greatest
efforts.
The careful observation of the reversion of the one body into the other
on awakening is most remarkable.
One can always wake voluntarily from this joy-sphere. And to me it is
an ever recurring and never waning wonder when the two bodies, each
with its distinct bodily recollection, merge into one another. The
dream-body, let us imagine, assumes an attitude, with arms stretched
out and raised high above the head, and it shouts and sings, but at the
same time it knows the sleeping body, still as death, is lying on its
right side, with arms folded over the breast; this seems impossible,
however, so distinct is the consciousness of speech, of the muscles, of
the open eyes ? and yet there follows a single indescribable moment of
transition and we regain the physical consciousness of the sleeping
body with the memory of having lain silent, immovable, unseeing, in
quite another attitude.
Who once has observed this, as I have hundreds of times observed it, no
longer meets with flat denial the supposition that the decline and
decay of this visible body does not exclude the possibility of
reintegration and of renewed consciousness, will and perception. No
more will he dare to confirm my father's opinion that we possess no
sign or proof of the existence of any part of our being, whether we
call it "soul" or "spectre" or by another name, that can separate
itself from the visible body.
It was this sphere of joy which I always hoped to regain and the
attainment of which made me happy all day. In this sphere I can make
music and sing wonderfully - a talent wherein by day I do not, alas,
excel. In this sphere I can also exert influence on myself and on the
life of day. A strong suggestion uttered by my dream-body acts upon my
waking body and drives away weariness, dejection and some of the slight
disorders that sometimes trouble me.
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