"the dream guide"

And yet, as angels in some brighter dreams

Call to the sonl when man doth sleep.

So some strange thoughts transcend our wonted themes

And into glory peep.

-Henry Vaughan, "They Are All Gone".

Who is the Guide who comes into so many of my dreams? Amongst the varied company of people who take their place in these dreams, this rather shadowy figure is by far the most persistent. Some among this company represent the friends of real life, some are composite portraits, blending the characteristics of more than one person; whilst others are like the characters of the novelist and seem to be the inventions of the dreamer's mind. Of all these figures in my dreams, none takes so constant a part as the Guide. He seems always to stand close to me, always a little behind me. I take his presence so entirely for granted, that when he speaks I do not turn round, or try to see him. I am not concerned, in my dreams, to question who he is; or how or why he is possessed of such authority and knowledge. His wisdom always apparently transcends that possessed by my dream mind; and he tells me things which in my dreams I do not know. Sometimes he jests, often he laughs; sometimes he langhs at me. Because I have known his judgment to be profounder than my own, he has in certain dreams, calmed my excitement and my fears.

In one or two dreams, but not often, I have believed that the Guide's presence was that of a divine messenger; for it has seemed in these dreams that he had a wisdom beyond the wisdom belonging to men. Like all dream students, I have sought to find an answer to the riddle that meets us as soon as we begin to think about dreams - Whence do the actors in our dreams come? If they are the creation of the dream mind alone, how is it that they are able to play all these different parts, and to carry on the dialogue and arguments that they sustain so well?

And, as the Guide enters so constantly into my dream life, these questions have naturally turned upon his personality and origin, and I have asked, Whence does the wisdom of the Guide come? And can he be really the product of my own mind?

Confronted by a similar problem, one writer has advanced the theory that the dramatis persons in such dreams must come from a source extraneous to the dreamer, since there is no reason why surprise should be experienced if our own mind is the source of the dream content. I should like to believe in this theory, and to feel that the Guide and other dream personalities come from a source external to myself; but I cannot feel any conviction of this; it seems more in harmony with all dream experience to conclude that everything that is contained in dreams - the dream rooms and the dream country in which they take place, as well as the actors in them - are alike the invention of the dreamer's mind.

The wisdom displayed by the Guide, the singular quality of illumination that in dreams he seems to possess, may probably be explained by the heightened powers of the faculty of imagination in the dream and borderland states, to which frequent reference is made in this book. But though this may help to explain the Guide's wisdom, the explanation does not carry us very far. It is still very difficult to conceive the process by which the personages who play their parts on the stage of our dreams are created, and are able to sustain their widely different and consistent roles.

Certain dream experiences may possibly throw a little light on what is a very difficult problem. There are some dreams in which it seems as though two "selves," or two "minds" were at work at the same time, playing different parts, and bringing to their respective parts different mental characteristics. In certain of these dreams we are actually conscious of being present ourselves, in a dual capacity, and of acting in them as D -the dreamer - and as S - myself. (It is thus that I am obliged in making notes of these dreams to distinguish between the two roles, both of which "I" fill.)

The following note gives an example of such a dream, and illustrates the double part which the dreamer fills in them. This particular dream took place near the point of waking, but similar dreams take place at different periods of sleep. In two successive dreams of rather disordered sleep I was preoccupied by the same absurd but nightmareish worry. I thought that certain household possessions, some fine pieces of brocade, and silk curtains, had been left out of doors, and had been found in the rain and melting snow. The care of getting these things dried and restored became an obsession which distracted my dream imagination. In the second part of the dream, when the trouble had become acute, and when I was presumably near to the point of waking, I not only took part as the dreamer, but was present in a double capacity; for "I" interrupted the dream, and argued sternly with the dreamer as to the reality of the trouble that was so oppressive. "I" said, "This is a dream - I am certain of it; you must wake." But the dreamer replied, "It cannot simply be a dream, because it was not only in this dream, but in the dream before this one that I discovered these things in the snow; it must be real, or it would not happen twice, and here are the actual things which you can see and touch for yourself." "I" was very puzzled, and said that "I" could not answer this, or explain it properly; it did indeed seem very real even to me, and very confusing. "I" examined the soiled materials again; they felt very wet and dripping in my hands and seemed to be convincingly "real." "Perhaps," I thought, "some of the seeming facts are really true" - I could not disentangle them from what was false; only "I" felt sure that a great deal of the worry was "dream trouble, not day trouble." I "No," the dreamer argued again, "for you can see and feel the wet things - they are too real to be 'dream things.' " "Well," "I" said at last, "will you put it to the touch, and test it? Wake," "I" said, "and see just how much of this is a dream!" And I woke.