Dreams quotes

… order to be treated in a complete manner it requires such a long development—and we have so little space, that I shall ask your permission to dispense with all preamble, to set aside unessentials, and to go at once to the heart of the question.

A dream is this. I perceive objects and there is nothing there.

I see men; I seem to speak to them and I hear what they answer; there is no one there and I have not spoken.

But, first, is it true that there is nothing there? I mean, is there not presented a certain sense material to our eyes, to our ears, to our touch, etc., during sleep as well as during waking?

Close the eyes and look attentively at what goes on in the field of our vision.

Many persons questioned on this point would say that nothing goes on, that they see nothing. No wonder at this, for a certain amount of practise is necessary to be able to observe oneself satisfactorily.

The phenomenon is easily enough explained. It is in general necessary for us to hear sounds in a dream.

From nothing we can make nothing.

And when we are not provided with sonorous material, a dream would find it hard to manufacture sonority.

Then, if our dream is at the moment taking us through the street, it is in this simple attire that we present ourselves to the gaze of the passers-by, without their appearing to be astonished by it.

We are ourselves astonished in the dream, but that never appears to astonish other people.

I cite this dream because it is frequent. There is another which many of us must have experienced. It consists of feeling oneself flying through the air or floating in space. Once having had this dream, one may be quite sure that it will reappear;

and the soul, looking upon the body and believing that it perceives its own image as in a mirror, and attracted, fascinated by the image, lets itself fall.

It falls, and this fall is life.

I may compare to these detached souls the memories plunged in the obscurity of the unconscious. On the other hand, our nocturnal sensations resemble these incomplete bodies. The sensation is warm, colored, vibrant and almost living, but vague.

You exert, then, continually, every moment of the day, an enormous effort.

Your life in a waking state is a life of labor, even when you think you are doing nothing, for at every minute you have to choose and every minute exclude.

You choose among your sensations, since you reject from your consciousness a thousand subjective sensations which come back in the night when you sleep.

But all this keeps you in a state of uninterrupted tension. You do not feel it at the moment, any more than you feel the pressure of the atmosphere, but it fatigues you in the long run.

Common sense is very fatiguing.

"So, I repeat, I differ from you precisely in that I do nothing. The effort that you give without cessation I simply abstain from giving. In place of attaching myself to life, I detach myself from it. Everything has become indifferent to me.

The effort that you give without cessation I simply abstain from giving. In place of attaching myself to life, I detach myself from it. Everything has become indifferent to me. I have become disinterested in everything.

To sleep is to become disinterested.

One sleeps to the exact extent to which he becomes disinterested. A mother who sleeps by the side of her child will not stir at the sound of thunder, but the sigh of the child will wake her.

In place of attaching myself to life, I detach myself from it. Everything has become indifferent to me. I have become disinterested in everything. To sleep is to become disinterested. One sleeps to the exact extent to which he becomes disinterested.

A mother who sleeps by the side of her child will not stir at the sound of thunder, but the sigh of the child will wake her.

Does she really sleep in regard to her child? We do not sleep in regard to what continues to interest us.

A mother who sleeps by the side of her child will not stir at the sound of thunder, but the sigh of the child will wake her. Does she really sleep in regard to her child?

We do not sleep in regard to what continues to interest us.

"You ask me what it is that I do when I dream? I will tell you what you do when you are awake.

That is what it is to be awake. That is what it is to live the normal psychical life. It is to battle. It is to will. As for the dream, have you really any need that I should explain it?

It is the state into which you naturally fall when you let yourself go, when you no longer have the power to concentrate yourself upon a single point, when you have ceased to will.

What needs much more to be explained is the marvelous mechanism by which at any moment your will obtains instantly, and almost unconsciously, the concentration of all that you have within you upon one and the same point, the point that interests you.

In the dream the same faculties are exercised as during waking, but they are in a state of tension in the one case, and of relaxation in the other.

The dream consists of the entire mental life minus the tension, the effort and the bodily movement.

We perceive still, we remember still, we reason still. All this can abound in the dream; for abundance, in the domain of the mind, does not mean effort. What requires an effort is the precision of adjustment.

If telepathy influences our dreams, it is quite likely that in this profound slumber it would have the greatest chance to manifest itself. But I repeat, I cannot express an opinion upon this point. I have gone forward with you as far as I can;

I stop upon the threshold of the mystery.

To explore the most secret depths of the unconscious, to labor in what I have just called the subsoil of consciousness, that will be the principal task of psychology in the century which is opening.