Lucid Dream

The Bible, as well as other great books of historical and revealed

religion, show traces of a general and substantial belief in dreams.

Plato, Goethe, Shakespeare and Napoleon assigned to certain dreams

prophetic value. Joseph saw eleven stars of the Zodiac bow to himself,

the twelfth star. The famine of Egypt was revealed by a vision of fat

and lean cattle. The parents of Christ were warned of the cruel edict of

Herod, and fled with the Divine Child into Egypt. Pilate's wife, through

the influence of a dream, advised her husband to have nothing to do

with the conviction of Christ.

But the gross materialism of the day laughed at dreams, as it echoed

the voice and verdict of the multitude, Crucify the Spirit, but let the

flesh live. Barabbas, the robber, was set at liberty. The ultimatum of

all human decrees and wisdom is to gratify the passions of the flesh at

the expense of the spirit. The prophets and those who have stood

nearest the fountain of universal knowledge used dreams with more

frequency than any other mode of divination. Profane, as well as

sacred, history is threaded with incidents of dream prophecy.

Ancient history relates that Gennadius was convinced of the

immortality of his soul by conversing with an apparition in his dream.

Through the dream of Cecilia Metella, the wife of a Consul, the Roman

Senate was induced to order the temple of Juno Sospita rebuilt. The

Emperor Marcian dreamed he saw the bow of the Hunnish conqueror

break on the same night that Attila died. Plutarch relates how

Augustus, while ill, through the dream of a friend, was persuaded to

leave his tent, which a few hours after was captured by the enemy,

and the bed whereon he had lain was pierced with the enemies'

swords. If Julius Csar had been less incredulous about dreams he

would have listened to the warning which Calpurnia, his wife, received

in a dream. Croesus saw his son killed in a dream. Petrarch saw his

beloved Laura, in a dream, on the day she died, after which he wrote

his beautiful poem, The Triumph of Death.Cicero relates the story of

two traveling Arcadians who went to different lodgings one to an inn,

and the other to a private house. During the night the latter dreamed

that his friend was begging for help. The dreamer awoke but, thinking

the matter unworthy of notice, went to sleep again. The second time

he dreamed his friend appeared, saying it would be too late, for he

had already been murdered and his body hid in a cart, under manure.

The cart was afterward sought for and the body found. Cicero also

wrote, If the gods love men they will certainly disclose their purposes

to them in sleep.

Chrysippus wrote a volume on dreams as divine portent. He refers to

the skilled interpretations of dreams as a true divination but adds that,

like all other arts in which men have to proceed on conjecture and on

artificial rules, it is not infallible. Plato concurred in the general idea

prevailing in his day, that there were divine manifestations to the soul

in sleep. Condorcet thought and wrote with greater fluency in his

dreams than in waking life. Tartini, a distinguished violinist, composed

his Devil's Sonataunder the inspiration of a dream. Coleridge, through

dream influence, composed his Kubla Khan.The writers of Greek and

Latin classics relate many instances of dream experiences. Homer

accorded to some dreams divine origin. During the third and fourth

centuries, the supernatural origin of dreams was so generally accepted

that the fathers, relying upon the classics and the Bible as authority,

made this belief a doctrine of the Christian Church. Synesius placed

dreaming above all methods of divining the future he thought it the

surest, and open to the poor and rich alike.

Aristotle wrote: There is a divination concerning some things in

dreams not incredible. Camille Flammarion, in his great book on

Premonitory Dreams and Divination of the Future,says: I do not

hesitate to affirm at the outset that occurrence of dreams foretelling

future events with accuracy must be accepted as certain.Joan of Arc

predicted her death. Cazotte, the French philosopher and

transcendentalist, warned Condorcet against the manner of his death.

People dream now, the same as they did in medieval and ancient

times. The following excerpt from The Unknown,a book by

Flammarion, the French astronomer, supplemented with a few of my

own thoughts and collections, will answer the purposes intended for

this book. We may see without eyes and hear without ears, not by

unnatural excitement of our sense of vision or of hearing, for these

accounts prove the contrary, but by some interior sense, psychic and

mental. The soul, by its interior vision, may see not only what is

passing at a great distance, but it may also know in advance what is to

happen in the future.

The future exists potentially, determined by causes which bring to pass

successive events. Positive observation proves the existence of a

psychic world, as real as the world known to our physical senses. And

now, because the soul acts at a distance by some power that belongs

to it, are we authorized to conclude that it exists as something real,

and that it is not the result of functions of the brain?

Does light really exist? Does heat exist? Does sound exist? No. They

are only manifestations produced by movement. What we

call light is a sensation produced upon our optic nerve by the

vibrations of ether, comprising between 400 and 756 trillions per

second, undulations that are themselves very obscure. What we

call heat is a sensation produced by vibrations between 350 and 600

trillions. The sun lights up space, as much at midnight as at midday.

Its temperature is nearly 270 degrees below zero. What we call

sound is a sensation produced upon our auditory nerve by silent

vibrations of the air, themselves comprising between 32,000 and

36,000 a second. ... Very many scientific terms represent only

results, not causes. The soul may be in the same case. The

observations given in this work, the sensations, the impressions, the

visions, things heard, etc., may indicate physical effects produced

without the brain. Yes, no doubt, but it does not seem so.

Let us examine one instance. Turn back to page 156. A young woman,

adored by her husband, dies at Moscow. Her father-in-law, at Pulkowo,

near St. Petersburg, saw her that same hour by his side. She walked

with him along the street then she disappeared. Surprised, startled,

and terrified, he telegraphed to his son, and learned both the sickness

and the death of his daughter-in-law. We are absolutely obliged to

admit that SOMETHING emanated from the dying woman and touched

her father-in-law. This thing unknown may have been an ethereal

movement, as in the case of light, and may have been only an effect,

a product, a result but this effect must have had a cause, and this

cause evidently proceeded from the woman who was dying. Can the

constitution of the brain explain this projection? I do not think that any

anatomist or physiologist will give this question an affirmative answer.

One feels that there is a force unknown, proceeding, not from our

physical organization, but from that in us which can think. Take

another example. A lady in her own house hears a voice

singing. It is the voice of a friend now in a convent, and she faints,

because she is sure it is the voice of the dead. At the same moment

that friend does really die, twenty miles away from her. Does not

this give us the impression that one soul holds communication with

another? Here is another example: The wife of a captain

who has gone out to the Indian mutiny sees one night her husband

standing before her with his hands pressed to his breast, and a look of

suffering on his face. The agitation that she feels convinces her that he

is either killed or badly wounded. It was November 14th. The War

Office subsequently publishes his death as having taken place on

November 15th. She endeavors to have the true date ascertained. The

War Office was wrong. He died on the 14th.

A child six years old stops in the middle of his play and cries out,

frightened: Mamma, I have seen Mamma.At that moment his mother

was dying far away from him. A young girl at a ball stops

short in the middle of a dance and cries, bursting into tears. `My

father is dead I have just seen him.' At that moment her father died.

She did not even know he was ill. All these things present themselves

to us as indicating not physiological operations of one brain acting on

another, but psychic actions of spirit upon spirit.

We feel that they indicate to us some power unknown. No doubt it is

difficult to apportion what belongs to the spirit, the soul, and what

belongs to the brain. We can only let ourselves be guided in our

judgment and our appreciations by the same feeling that is created in

us by the discussion of phenomena. This is how all science has been

started. Well, and does not every one feel that we have here to do

with manifestations from beings capable of thought, and not with

material physiological facts only? This impression is superabundantly

confirmed by investigation concerning the unknown faculties of the

soul, when active in dreams and somnambulism.