Dreams.

Sensitiveness During Sleep.—There are dreams and dreams. When greatly fatigued, mentally or physically, the partially awakened faculties often become impressed with strangely distorted thoughts. Then there are the terrible dreams from indigestion, the peculiar interpretations of bodily discomfort, as dreams of frosts and snows, when chilled during sleep, or of burning forests when over-heated. Galen gives examples of such dreams in the case of a man who dreamed that his right leg was turned to stone, and soon after lost the use of it by palsy; and another patient who dreamed that he was in a vessel filled with blood, which the physician accepted as a sign that the man ought to be bled, by which a serious disease under which he labored was cured.

In perfect sleep dreams do not occur, because all the mental faculties are dormant. The conjecture that the mind always dreams, but fails to remember, is not true. A hearty supper, by inducing indigestion, is a prolific cause of bad dreams.

Derangement of the perfect correlation of the mental faculties, in sickness or the weakness of age, is a frequent cause of the wildest and most incoherent visions. All these causes may be well considered, and after their influences have been eliminated, there remains an order distinct and inexplicable by known causes. The dreamer may not be sensitive to psychic influences while awake, but during sleep may become exceedingly so. Night favors sensitiveness because of its negative influence. All nervous diseases are aggravated by the coming of twilight, and midnight is the hour when the most perfect negativeness is reached, as high noon is that of extreme positiveness.

It would be an easy task to fill volumes with dreams that have been received as premonitions of future events, or forecasts of desired information, which was otherwise impossible to obtain. I do not desire to crowd these pages with any more than will serve to illustrate the various characters of the true psychic dream, and show how the extra sensitiveness acquired in sleep explains this subject. It is misleading, however, to employ the word sleep in this connection, for in sound sleep there is dreamless rest. Sleep is the repose of the faculties, and impressions are not recognized. The peculiar condition in which these dreams occur, is mistaken for sleep, but is nearer trance. The silence of the night and its soothing negative quality, enhances this state, and impressions are borne into the receptive mind on the psycho-ether. Dreams that reach into the future and foretell events concealed from human ken, and which no reasoning or forethought can predict, are of interest as revealing glimpses of a new field of thought—that of prophecy.

In the “Glimpses of the Supernatural,” is a dream related by a dignitary of the Church of England:

“My brother had left London for the country to preach for a certain society to which he was officially attached. He was in usual health, and I therefore had no cause to feel anxiety about him. One night my wife awoke me, finding that I was sobbing in my sleep, and asked me the cause. I said, “I have been to a small village, and I went up to the door of the inn. A stout woman came to the door. I said to her: ‘Is my brother here?’ She said, ‘No, sir; he is gone.’ ‘Is his wife here?’ I inquired. ‘No, sir; but his widow is.’” Then the distressing thought came to me that my brother was dead. A few days after, I was suddenly summoned into the country. My brother had been attacked by a fatal illness, at Caxton. The following day his wife was summoned, and the next day, while they were seated together, she heard a sigh and he was gone. When I reached Caxton, it was the very village I had visited in my dream. I went to the same house, was let in by the same woman, and found my brother dead and his widow there.”

The story told by Dean Stanley has been widely circulated. The chiefs of the Campbells, of Inverawe, gave an entertainment. After the party broke up, one of the guests returned, claiming protection, which Campbell pledged himself to give. It afterwards appeared, in a brawl, he had killed Donald, the cousin of Campbell, and notwithstanding his pledge, he ordered him away. The murderer appealed to the word of his host, and was allowed to stay for the night, where Campbell slept. The blood-stained Donald appeared to him saying: “Inverawe, Inverawe, blood has been shed; shield not the murderer.” Having sent the guilty man away, the last time the vision came, saying: “Inverawe, Inverawe, blood has been shed. We shall not meet again until we meet at Ticonderoga.”

In 1758, there was a war between France and England, and Campbell, belonging to the Forty-second Highlanders, went to America. On the eve of the engagement the general said to the officers, who knew of what they regarded as Campbell’s superstition, that it was best not to tell him the name of the fortress they were to attack on the morrow, but call it Fort George. The fort was assaulted in the morning and Campbell mortally wounded. His last words were: “General, you have deceived me. I have seen him again. This is Ticonderoga.”

Vouched for as this occurrence is by the highest authority, it is of great significance, not only as a dream, but it shows that death brought about a sensitive condition like that in which the dream was received, and enabled Donald to again appear.

Among the news items of the San Francisco Chronicle, appeared the following:

“Yesterday morning W. S. Read, of Oakland, with a companion named Stein, started out from Long Wharf to reach a yacht upon which they were going on a fishing excursion. When about two hundred yards from the wharf the boat was capsized and Read was drowned. He started to swim to the wharf, but when within fifty feet of it he sank and did not rise again. Connected with this sad event is a dream: Last Friday night the sister of the deceased dreamed that her brother had gone out in a boat on Sunday, that the boat had been upset and he drowned. So vivid was the impression of the dream, that on Saturday morning she went to her brother’s office, told him of it, and implored him not to go out, but he laughed at her fears as the result of a disordered mind.”

Dr. M. L. Holbrook relates the following instances of dreams, which are certainly worth recording:

“Over twenty years ago I was subject to attacks of acute bronchitis, which in Spring gave me great trouble. On one occasion I was so exceedingly ill I felt I should not recover, and in this mood I fell to sleep, during which, in a dream, or what appeared to be such, my sister, who had died when I was a little boy, seemed to come to my bedside and said: ‘Martin, you are not going to die; you have much important work yet to accomplish, and we have come to cure you.’ Then what I can only describe as a shock of heavenly electricity struck me on the head, and was intensified over the lungs, where it seemed to almost burn through my chest, when it passed towards my feet in a delightful glow. The shock was so great that I awoke, free from the disease, and have never had the trouble since.”

“In 1867 I was alone in my sleeping-room in New York, and dreamed that I was dying, and in my struggles awoke. There was nothing peculiar in this experience, it may be truthfully said, for this sensation is quite common with those who suffer with nightmare. The singularity of the case was that every night for a succession of nights the same thing happened, growing more and more intense, until the last night I thought I could not escape, and died. After it was over, the thought came to me, ‘Well, it is not so bad after all; a rather pleasant experience!’ At this moment my father-in-law, who had been dead several months, appeared to me. He was the same as when alive, but more spiritual and beautiful. He said: ‘Martin, I have been endeavoring to show myself to you for several nights. Now I have succeeded, and shall trouble you no more.’ That was the last of my disturbing dreams. My thoughts were not upon him. I have never been able to convince myself that the vision was not objective, though I know some may not look at it in the same light.”

Dr. A. M. Blackburn, of Cresco, Iowa, a well-known physician of that town, dreamed that he was called to visit a little girl in the neighboring town of Ridgeway. On his return he came to a broad river which it was impossible to cross. While waiting on the banks, an old friend, long since dead, appeared and assisted him in crossing. When the doctor arose in the morning he related his dream, and so strongly was he impressed with its prophetic meaning that he secured a policy on his life, talked over and arranged his business, and having adjusted all his affairs, he awaited the fatality he said was sure to overtake him. A day or two after, he was called to Ridgeway to visit a little girl, and on his return his horse ran away and he was killed. There is an allegorical element in this dream, and the presence of a departed friend who assists him over the stream, gives it a poetic cast. Yet who can say that it was not realized?

A dream is related by J. Crysler, of Republic City, Kansas, which proved not only true, but the elements of “the double,” or of the appearance of the dreamer in the place he dreamed about, is introduced. He said, while from home he dreamed that his wife was sick, and awoke. On falling asleep again, the dream was repeated, a thing that had never before occurred to him. He remarked to a friend in the morning, that if he believed in dreams he would go directly home, as he felt troubled. He, however, waited and completed his business, reaching home the next day, when he found his wife just recovering from a severe attack of illness. Their three-year-old boy lodged with his mother, and became restless. All at once he asked: “Ma, what man is that standing there?” “Why,” she replied, “I see no one.” “Oh!” said he, “it is pa!” and turning over, contentedly dropped to sleep. The thoughts of the father, intensified by his solicitude, struck the sensitive brain of his child with such a force as to produce the impression that the father was an objective reality.

A prophetic dream must be impressed on the receiving mind, from a source having more than human intelligence. There must be a mind back of the impressions, capable of comprehending cause and effect more clearly than mortals are able to do. The effect cannot rise above its cause.

Laugh at the fantasies of a fevered brain, or the visions produced by a gorged stomach; the nightmare of the gourmand; the ghost-seeing of the dyspeptic; but there remain the dreams of the clear head and pure heart as angel visitants, and these should be treasured. When we rest in the arms of sleep, she hushes us with hymns sung by angelic voices, and sweet visions of the morning land.