dreams and premonitions - rogers, 1916

8/12/2019 Dreams and Premonitions - Rogers, 1916

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Dreamsanditions

BY L. W. ROGERS

los AngelesTHEOSOPHICAL, BOOK CONCERN


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Copyright, 1916, By L. W. Rogers.

10OCT IS 1916

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IntroductionDreams and premonitions are the most common of

all psychic phenomena, but they are nevertheless butlittle understood. Modern psychology has accumu-lated an immense array of facts which very conclu-sively show that the consciousness of the human beingis something vaster, deeper and altogether more re-markable than has generally been supposed. But justthere the psychologists stop, on the very threshold ofgreat discoveries. They are puzzled by the remark-able facts and are baffled in their attempts to co-relatethem and satisfactorily explain them.

The facts that have been collected and verifiedshow that while some dreams are fantastic, contradic-tory and illogical, others are not only coherent andlogical, but present a marvelous depth of wisdomwhich, when compared to ordinary human knowledge,seems almost like omniscience. They sometimes solveproblems that are impossible of solution by the wak-ing consciousness, and frequently actually forecast thefuture by accurately describing an event which hasnot yet occurred but which is to be. Thus peoplehave dreamed of their approaching death, or of thedeath of others, stating exactly the nature of the acci-dent that would cause it, and describing in detail thescenes of the coming tragedy. Yet again the impend-


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DREAMS AND PREMONITIONSing event presented to the consciousness in the dreamstate may represent only the most trivial of circum-tances. Sometimes dreams give warnings about dan-gers that are threatening but of which the wakingconsciousness is wholly oblivious. In other cases adream has enabled one to become a rescuer and life-saver in some approaching disaster. Occasionally in adream accurate knowledge is obtained of some tragedythat is occurring at a distance, or of a crime that hasbeen committed, while again missing people have beenlocated and lost objects have been recovered throughdreams.The truth of these astounding facts is beyond all

question. The problem is to explain the facts. Mod-ern psychology talks rather vaguely of the subcon-scious mind and of the subliminal self, but this reallyexplains nothing. We do not advance toward theunderstanding of a mystery simply by applying to ita new name. What is that thing called the subcon-scious, or the subliminal, and what are its powers andits limitations? Unless science can satisfactorily answersuch questions it has done little indeed toward solvingthese psychological puzzles.The most striking characteristic of the recent work

of writers on dreams is the strong tendency toward apurely materialistic interpretation of the phenomenaobserved. Hampered by the wholly inadequate hy-pothesis that dreams are caused either by impressionsmade on the physical senses or by desires of the wak-ing consciousness, they fill their pages with a discus-sion of the class of dreams that may thus be explained


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INTRODUCTION

and carefully avoid the dreams that are really worthyof investigation just because they present facts thatno such hypothesis can dispose of. It is some causefor congratulation, however, that after devoting muchspace to a description of the dreams which illustratethe well-known fact that slight external stimuli oftencause exaggerated brain impressionsas, for exam-ple, a drop of water on the face causing a dream of aviolent rainstormthese writers often devote a closingparagraph to the admission that neither physical normental causes are sufficient to account for the dreamsthat occasionally forecast the future. Now, it is pre-cisely those occasional dreams which the materialistichypothesis can not explain that it is important tounderstand, for they alone can give some clue to thereal nature of human consciousness. We shall surelylearn but little by going many times over the .beatenpath of admitted facts while neglecting to look beyondto the unexplored fields so full of fascinating possi-bilities. The merest glance is sufficient to show thatthere are two distinct classes of dreams ; that one classconstitutes a memory, on awakening, of somethingthat is related to impressions made on the physicalsenses ; that the other class clearly has no such originand that, instead of being distorted and fantastic, suchdreams sometimes embody profound wisdom or accu-rate knowledge of future events. These two classesof dreams no more arise from the same causes thanthe noise made by the revolving record of a phono-graph has the same origin as the song of intelligenceand emotion that flows from it. The one is purely


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DREAMS AND PREMONITIONSmechanical, while the other is purely mental and spir-itual, transmitted through a material mechanism. Andthat is the true distincton between the dream arisingfrom a physical cause and the dream which owes itsorigin to the higher activities of unfettered conscious-ness. The one is produced by the mechanism of con-sciousnessthe physical brain and its etheric counter-partautomatically responding to external stimuli andputting together fragmentary brain pictures. Theother is the result of the activity of the ego impressingthe physical brain with transcendental truth.

Psychologists should not be slower than the mostprogressive of physical scientists in accepting the factof clairvoyance and recognizing the part it plays inoccult research. There is so much of reliable evidenceon record involving the use of clairvoyance that itwould be almost as much a waste of time to argue itsexistence as to contend that there is a state of con-sciousness known as trance. Those who are familiarwith the clairvoyant faculty and with the remarkablepowers of the scientifically trained clairvoyant, willneed no argument to convince them that here is ameans of ascertaining the truth about the variousstates of consciousness and their relationship to thephysical mechanism through which they are ex-pressed. But it is of secondary importance whetherthe reality of clairvoyance be admitted or denied; forfrom the phenomena clairvoyantly observed and cata-logued it is possible to construct the hypothesis thatwill explain the facts, and all of the known facts, re-lated to dreams. Any hypothesis that can do that,


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INTRODUCTION

legitimately holds its place, and must be regarded assound until a fact is produced that it can not explain.The method of acquiring the knowledge from which ahypothesis is constructed is of little importance. Theonly question to be considered is whether the hypothe-sis can explain the admitted facts. On its ability todo that it must stand or fall.

There is a working hypothesis that logically andsatisfactorily explains all the remarkable facts, tragicor trivial, presented by dreams and premonitions ; thatwill enable us to classify and comprehend them; thatwill assign to each dream neither less nor more im-portance than the facts warrant, and that will give tothose interested in the subject a key to these mysteriesof the mind. The purpose of the following chaptersis to present this hypothesis, together with the neces-sary facts to fully illustrate the psychic principles in-volved in the remarkable dreams herein recorded.


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CHAPTER IThe Dreamer

Before we can hope to comprehend dreams wemust understand the nature and constitution of thedreamer. We must free ourselves of some of ourmaterialistic conceptions and consider the question ofwhat the human being really is. It is the popularerror of regarding man as being nothing more than aphysical body and brain that has so sadly retardedprogress in this field of research. The very phe-nomena with which psychology deals should long agohave destroyed such an untenable premise, for by thatmaterialistic hypothesis it is utterly impossible to ac-count for the facts in hand.

The work of such scientists as Crookes and Lodgeand Richet has finally turned public attention in theright direction. They have presented evidence in over-whelming abundance to show that the consciousnessis not dependent on the physical body for its continu-ity; that after bodily death the consciousness survives,and that during the life of the physical body the con-sciousness may also function quite independently ofit. So conclusive are the facts gathered by varied andlong-continued experiments that Sir Oliver Lodge wasled to declare in a lecture before the Society For TheAdvancement of Science that the. continent of a new


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10 DREAMS AND PREMONITIONS

world had been discovered, and that already a bandof daring investigators had landed on its treacherousbut promising shores.

This new ''continent belongs, of course, to the in-visible world, and these pioneers of the scientificarmy are not the first to explore it. They are onlythe vanguard of the physical scientists. The occultscientists were long ahead of them, and had exploredand studied the invisible realms. Naturally enoughthey hail the advent of the physical scientists with thegreatest satisfaction, for they are rapidly confirmingwhat the occultists long have taught about the con-stitution of man.

It is only when we have fully before us thesefacts about the real nature of man, and understandthat he is essentially a spiritual being, a minor partonly of whose energies come into action in the mate-rial realms, that we shall be able to comprehend thephenomena of dreams and premonitions. Let us turnour attention, then, to the occult side of the problemand examine the working hypothesis that satisfac-torily explains the facts.

This hypothesis is that the human being is an in-dividualized portion of the universal mind which, inturn, is but one expression of the Supreme Being;that man is an image of God'' in the very literalsense of having potentially within him the attributes,the power and the wisdom of the deity to which he isthus so directly related; that his evolution is goingforward in a world that has both its spiritual andphysical regions; that he is essentially a soul ,or cen-


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THE DREAMER 11ter of consciousness, functioning through a physicalbody which is but the temporary vehicle of the realman in the same sense that an automobile is one'svehicle, and that this material bodywhich is in real-ity but the clothing of the soul, as the glove is theclothing of the handis discarded at death withoutin any degree affecting the life and consciousness thathas temporarily used it for gaining experience in thematerial realms. Man is, therefore, a soul possessinga material body that enables him to be conscious andactive in the physical world. This hypothesis reversesthe old materialistic conception completely. This isman's temporary life. He existed as an intelligencebefore he came down into these material regionsthrough birth in a physical body, and when that bodydies he resumes his relationship to his home plane,the spiritual world. But this spiritual world is notmerely a realm of thought. It is a world of form anda life of activity, of deeper, wider knowledge than thephysical, an ethereal world, but still a world ofthought, of action and of enterprise. It is a world oftenuous matter, a huge globe, not distant in spacebut enclosing and interpenetrating our own as theether, postulated by science, surrounds and interpene-trates all physical objects. It is sometimes called theastral world. This ethereal world as a whole natur-ally has its sub-divisions, but for the purpose of under-standing the phenomena of dreams it is not necessaryto introduce details. It is necessary, however, to com-prehend the relationship between the physical andastral regions, and between the physical and astral


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12 DREAMS AND PREMONITIONSportions of the mechanism of consciousness. The rela-tionship of the former is that of a world within aworldthe astral globe being composed of matter sotenuous that it encloses the physical globe, interpene-trates it throughout, and extends far beyond it inspace. As a ball of fibrous matter might be immersedin liquid matter, saturated with it, and completelysurrounded by it, so the physical globe is interpene-trated and enveloped by the matter of the astralworld. The astral world, then, is not remote but ishere in the midst of us, about us, through us and be-yond us.

The relationship of the physical and astral bodiesof a human being are of a like nature. The tenuousmatter of the astral body is within and without thephysical body, extending somewhat beyond it, andconstituting an exact duplicate of it: Of course,;neither of these bodies is in any sense the man. Bothare parts of the complex mechanism through whichhe manifests himself, and the astral body is a higherand fuller expression of the man than the physicalbody is. Indeed, the latter is merely the body ofaction. It is only the instrument of the man, whichenables him to be present in the physical world, whilethe astral body is that with which he feels and throughwhich thought and emotion are sent downward, oroutward, into the physical body. The physical bodyhas no part in the generation of thought. It is merelythe means by which thought and emotion are ex-pressed in the material world. Therefore, thought and


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THE DREAMER

emotion do not come to an end when the physicalbody is inactive on account of either sleep or death.These two encasements of the real manthe phys-

ical and astral bodiesseparate from each other undercertain conditions, the latter being used as a vehicleof consciousness while the former is quiescent. Adiver uses a boat and a diver's suit. Both are neces-sary for the work he is to do. But he may leave theboat and use only the diving suit for a time. Theboat served the purpose of enabling him to go frompoint to point on the surface. The diving suit en-ables him to explore a region in which the boat isnot available. Neither is the man. They are merelythe mechanism that he uses. So it is with his visibleand invisible bodies. The visible physical body maybe discarded and the invisible astral body may thenbe used as the vehicle of the consciousness, or soulthe man himselfin the more ethereal regions.

But what are the conditions under which the con-sciousness withdraws from the physical body andfunctions through the astral body? One is sleep andthe other is death. Sleep always indicates the sepa-ration of the visible from the invisible body. Whetherthe sleep is natural, or is induced by hypnotism ortrance, it indicates the reparation of the bodies. Therecan be no such separation without sleep and no sleepwithout such separation. Sleep is simply the absenceof the man from his physical body. That is why itis asleep. It is not being used by the man. Hisintelligence is not flowing through it. He is notthere.


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14 DREAMS AND PREMONITIONSBut how, then, it may be asked, does the breathingcontinue and the heart beat if the body is without

its tenant? How does the worm entombed withinthe chrysalis become the butterfly? How do creaturesbelow the line of intellect in the evolutionary scalelive without thinking? Our physical bodies are notdependent upon our intellects. We do not con-sciously direct the beating of the heart nor theprocesses of digestion during the waking hours. Theactivities necessary to the life and well-being of thebody go on until its death whether we think of themor do not, and whether the consciousness is functioningthrough the body or is withdrawn from it.

Death is the other cause of the separation of theastral body from the physical body, and the onlydifference between sleep and death is that in sleepthe man withdraws his consciousness temporarilyfrom the physical body and later returns to it. Theact of withdrawing is what we call falling asleep.Returning is what we call awakening. The instantthe consciousness is withdrawn the physical body isasleep. That is what sleep isthe separation of theastral body from the physical body. The soul, thereal man, has temporarily laid down his instrumentof activity in the visible world. It is then like avacant house with drawn curtains until its absenttenant returns to it, and begins to send his conscious-ness through it. During his absence he has beenusing his astral body as his vehicle of consciousness,just as the diver temporarily abandoned his boat forhis diving suit.


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THE DREAMER 15

In death the consciousness has been withdrawnfrom the physical body for the last time. The absenceis permanent. The body has worn out or has beeninjured beyond the possibility of repair. The soul,the real man, can not return to it because it no longerserves the purpose for which it came into existence.It is a worthless machine, worn out through longuse, broken suddenly by violence or wasted slowlyby disease, as the case may be. During all the tem-porary absences called sleep there was a magneticconnection between* the astral and physical bodies ofthe man. But when death comes the tie between thesoul and the material bod)' is broken and there is nopossibility of returning to it. And that is what deathisthe severing of the bond between the visible andinvisible bodies. The physical body is then dead anddisintegration begins. But the real man, the indi-vidual consciousness, has not ceased to live. He hasmerely lost the instrument that connected him withthe material world, and which enabled him to moveabout on it and be known to others there. He isphysically dead because he has lost the physical body.He is not mentally and emotionally dead because hehas not lost that part of his mechanism of conscious-ness which is the seat of^ thought and emotion. Thephysical body enabled him to express his life in thevisible world but it was no more the man than aphonograph is the person who sings into it. If thephonograph is broken the only change to the singeris that he has lost the instrument of his expression,not his consciousness.


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16 DREAMS AND PREMONITIONSIt may, at first thought, seem grotesque to speakof a man as possessing more than one body. Being

to many an unaccustomed thought it may sound asbizarre as to say that a person may occupy twohouses at one and the same time. But neverthelessthe idea represents scientific accuracy. As a matterof fact we do live in two houses whenever we live inany house. Science asserts that every physical atomhas its duplicate in etheric matter, by which it issurrounded and interpenetrated. Every building,every brick and board, has its counterpart in unseenmatter. The immobile mountains, the flowing streams,the swaying tree-tops, the waving fields of grain,the placid lakes and the ocean tempest tossed, allhave their exact counterparts in the invisible matterthat reproduces the world in phantom form.

So much science is able to demonstrate and thevery nature of this truth compels us to postulate stillother and rarer grades of matter than the ether. It isthe next rarer grade of invisible matter that thescientists almost brought within the catalog of ascer-tained facts by discovering the electron and provingthat the atom is a minute universe in itself.When we hold a pebble in the hand we do not seeall of the pebble. It consists of its visible and invis-ible parts, and sight and touch can deal with but oneof them. The trained clairvoyant would see whatothers see and also the grades of subtile mattersurrounding it and interpenetrating it. Now, sincethis surrounding and interpenetrating relationship ofseen and unseen matter is as true of one object as


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THE DREAMER 17another, the physical body is no exception. Dupli-cating it exactly in form and feature is the tenuousmatter of a rarer grade, surrounding and permeatingit. The consciousness functions through these twobodies as one complex instrument, yet they areseparable. An aeroplane is equipped for movementboth on the ground and through the air. It maylose its wheels without losing its power to soar. Ithas merely lost that part of its mechanism that en-abled it to operate in connection with the grosserelement. So with man. When he loses his physicalbody it limits his field of activities but does notchange the man himself nor impair his ability tofunction elsewhere.

The dreamer, then, is vastly more than a physicalbody with a mysterious brain. We are not dealingwith a machine, a portiori of which secretes thoughtas the liver secretes bile, as a scientist of a pastgeneration ventured to guess, but with a spiritualbeing functioning through a material body containinga brain that is at once an instrument of thought anda limitation of consciousness; for if thought andemotion have a superphysical origin a large percentageof their original energy must be expended in attainingmaterial expression. Therefore the dreamer, in hiswaking hours, is expressing but a faint reflection ofhis true consciousness, which is necessarily limitedby its material media. As a fragment of the universalmind he- possesses within his unfettered self a wisdomwholly foreign to his physical existence. The homeplane of his being is above the limitations of those


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conditions of consciousness which we know as timeand space. He is temporarily blinded by matterwhile functioning through the material body. Heidentifies himself with it and loses conscious con-nection with his higher estate. But when he escapesthe limitations of the physical body, either in sleep orin death, and begins to function through his astralbody he is a stage nearer to reality and has, in somedegree, a transcendental grasp of human affairs. Inthe case of sleep he returns, at the moment of awaken-ing, from the higher state of consciousness to thelower level of physical plane consciousness and isagain subjected to the limitations of the physicalbrain. But the physical brain has its counterpart inastral matter and it is the astral form in which theconsciousness, the real man, has been functioningduring the hours of sleep. His experiences duringthat time have given rise to thoughts and emotionswhich are not impressed upon the physical brainbecause it has had no part in them. They have setup vibrations only in the subtiler portions of themechanism of consciousness. Ordinarily upon there-uniting of the astral and physical bodies thevibrations of the tenuous astral matter are not com-municated to the matter of the physical brain andthere is no memory of what has occurred during theperiod of slumber. Occasionally, however, there is arare combination of physical, astral and mental,conditions that makes memory possible and therecollection is called a dream. But all memories ofthe sleeping hours are not recollections of astral


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THE DREAMER 19events and it is only after some effort and experiencethat it becomes possible to distinguish between thememories which represent the adventures of the soulin the astral region and the brain pictures caused bythe automatic activity of the physical brain, in whichexternal stimuli sometimes play a most dramaticpart. Nevertheless the two distant classes of dreams,those caused by automatic physiological activity,occasionally associated with excitation outside thebody, and those which represent the experiences ofthe man himself in the ethereal realms, are, as analysiswill show, as different in their characteristics as arethe causes which produce them.


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CHAPTER IIThe Materialistic Hypothesis

Is InadequateSome modern writers have labored mightily to

show that dreams may be explained by a purelymaterialistic hypothesis. Coincidence has been putunder such stress as to raise the accidental to thedignity of the causal. Telepathy has been relied uponto cover a multitude of lame conclusions. To explainstrange facts we have been given far-fetched solutionsthat require more credulity for their acceptance thanany fairy tale of our childhood days. A writer willcheerfully set out to give a satisfactory material solu-tion for any and all dreams and will explain thatthe reason why a certain lady dreamed of the correctnumber of an unknown address was possibly becauseshe had seen that particular number on the pagingof a book the day before Another relates the storyof a dinner party being interrupted by one of theirnumber being suddenly impressed with the feelingthat he must go immediately to a barn not far away;that an undefinable something was wrong there.He had no idea what it might be but he had an innerimpulsion with the barn as a destination. It was anunreasonable but irresistible impulse to go imme-diately to examine the barn, and apparently for no


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22 DREAMS AND PREMONITIONSreason at all. None of the others shared the feelingbut upon reaching the barn they were astonished tofind that a small blaze had started in some unknownway and there would have been a conflagration butfor their timely arrival.

Here we have a phenomenon not easily explained.But it does not trouble the writer who presents it inorder to show how simple it all is. He smelled thesmoke triumphantly exclaims this Sherlock Holmesof psychic riddles. And when, in such a case, it isshown that the feeling of anxiety positively antedatedthe starting of the blaze by some minutes he fallsback on the final resort of the subconscious self,quite overlooking the fact that that is begging thequestion and really explains nothing.

In one of the leading monthly periodicals a well-known psychologist for a time conducted a departmenton psychology and the announced purpose was toexplain away puzzling psychic experiences in dailyaffairs. The thoughtful reader will find it difficult tobelieve that the people who propounded the questionswere satisfied with the answers but they are appar-ently the best that modern psychology is preparedto give them. However, if the solutions serve noother purpose they are at least useful in illustratingthe trivial arguments presented and the astoundingconclusions reached.

It was not so long ago that the fact of telepathywas struggling for slight recognition and was knock-ing almost unheard at the door of modern psychology.Slowly its status changed from the condition of an


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MATERIALISTIC HYPOTHESIS INADEQUATE 23

outcast to tardy recognition of its usefulness, and therapidly accumulating mass of psychic facts is likelyto raise it soon to the importance of becoming the lasthope of the ultra-materialist. Our psychologist of theperiodical above mentioned had not proceeded farwith his department until he opened his monthlydigest with this declaration

uIn the many letters received by me since I beganto discuss psychical problems in these columns, onefact has been increasingly evidentthe actuality oftelepathy or thought transference. Even if I hadstarted with a disbelief in telepathywhich I assur-edly did notI could not have retained my skepticismafter studying the letters my readers have sent me.From every State in the Union, from Canada,England, France, and other European countries, hascome evidence, testifying with cumulative force thatin some mysterious way one mind can in truth com-municate directly with another mind, though halfthe world apart.

Without the fact of telepathy the attempt of thepsychologist to explain some of the dreams submittedwould, indeed, put him in hard case ; for even withtelepathy, and telepathy strained and twisted out ofall semblance to its legitimate self, his hypothesis isstill hopelessly weak and utterly inadequate.

Telepathythe communication between mind andmind without material meanshas been demonstratedby the simple method of one person acting as the''sender and being handed a written word or asimple drawing upon a piece of paper supplied by


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the experimenter, who has himself at that momentconceived it. The ''sender fixes his attention upon it.At that moment another person who is acting as thereceiver, stationed at a distance of, let us say, ahundred miles, waiting with pencil in hand, repro-duces the word or drawing with more or less accuracyas the case ma}^ be. By the hypothesis laid down inChapter I the explanation is as simple as wirelesstelegraphy. Thought is a force as certainly as elec-tricity is a force. When a mental picture is formedin the mind, grades of subtile matter rarer than thatof the brain are thrown into vibration and reproducethemselves in the mind of the receiver after thefashion of the vibrations initiated by the sendinginstrument of wireless telegraphy. But telepathy hasits limitations as certainly as telegraphy has. Athought, a feeling, a mood, an emotion may be tele-pathically communicated from one person to anotherand apparently regardless of any intervening spacewhich the limits of the earth can impose. In thecase of people with minds well developed and capableof forming strong and clear mental images a moreextended communication would conceivably be pos-sible. The scientific experiments thus far made have,however, resulted in no such accomplishment. Themost that can be said to be proved for telepathy isthat communication is a truth of nature and that itmay occur in cases where, although the parties arewidely separated, there is either strong effort to com-municate or where there is a bond of sympathybetween them. When people are together and their


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MATERIALISTIC HYPOTHESIS INADEQUATE 25minds are running along the same lines it may occurunder the most ordinary circumstances. But we mustnot overlook the part played by facial expression inreading the thoughts of others, nor of the physicalconditions that shape thought in a common mold as,for example, when your friend rises to open a windowbefore you can utter the request that is in your mind.He may have thought of it because he was moved byyour thought or only because he, too, was uncom-fortable. There are other cases not at all susceptibleto such explanation. One often gets telepathically thethought of another who is near him but it is partialand fragmentary. He does not get a complete in-ventory of the content of the other's mind. So faras casual experience and scientific experiment havegone it has been made fairly clear that while telepathyis common it marks out an extremely narrow -field inpsychological phenomena. Deprived of the connectinglink of personal presence and conversation, or ties ofclose sympathy, it seems to be effective only whenthe thought is stimulated by some powerful emotionlike sudden and serious illness, accident or death.When we go beyond that we are in the realm ofassumption and speculation. To assume that becauseone mind can catchy a thought or emotion fromanother telepathically, one person therefore gets fromanother's mind without effort or desire all the detailsrelating to something that individual has seen orheard, is as absurd as to assume that because wirelesstelegraphy brings a message that has pessed throughthe mind of the sending operator the message might


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in some mysterious way give a knowledge of every-thing else known to that individual. And yet justsuch fantastic and groundless assumption is what ourpsychologist is forced to, in the effort to explain someof the cases submitted. Here is an exampleA trifle over a year ago, contemplating a trip

East, I decided to rent my furnished six-room apart-ment. It was taken by two young ladies, oneemployed, the other the homekeeper. Some threeweeks later I had the most distressing dream. Ithought I went over to my apartment, only to findeverything in most dreadful confusion. The sunporch had been converted into a temporary bedroom,and in my own bedroom, where usually stood thedressing table (now on the porch) stood a small ironbed, white, with everything upset and dirty. In mydream I also saw that the young ladies had taken inas boarders a married couple with two little ones.Well, I immediately forgot the dream, but severalnights later had the same dream again. Imagine mysurprise at learning after my return home, that justwhat I had dreamed had actually occurred, even tothe little white bed.

Then follows the psychologist's explanation. Hesays:

On the facts as stated this dream must be regardedas telepathic. There is, of course, a possibility thatthe dreamer, before leaving home, had, without beingaware of it, heard her prospective tenants talking abouttheir plans for taking in boarders, changing the furni-


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\MATERIALISTIC HYPOTHESIS INADEQUATE 27

ture, etc. The dream would then be merely theemergence of a subconscious memory.The theory of telepathy in this case is so obviously

inadequate that our psychologist hastens to add thatthere is another possible explanation and then fallsback upon the safe vagueness of the subconsciousmemory. But is his explanation even within therealm of probability? There may be the possibility,he argues, that she had heard talk of taking in board-ers and changing the furniture S But even if that hadhappened and even if we were to grant some connectionbetween that fact and the dream, how could she haveobtained from the knowledge that they would takeboarders the fact that the boarders would be a manand his wife and two little children? and if we grantthat she unconsciously and in some mysterious wayabsorbed the information that they would change thefurniture, how could that possibly enable her to knowthat her dressing table would be moved to the porchand that a small white iron bed would be put in itsplace?

There is no evidence, however, that she had heardsuch conversation, or had the slightest hint that anysuch thing was contemplated. Indeed, there is goodground for the belief that it was all a most disagreeablesurprise to her. She describes the discovery as amost distressing dream. The reasonable assump-tion from the language employed by her is that shewas astonished and annoyed and was very muchdisappointed in her tenants. Clearly neither of the

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28 DREAMS AND PREMONITIONSexplanations of the psychologist really explains thisdream. *

Our psychologist turns his attention to premoni-tions with no better results. One of his correspondentssubmits to him the following experience :

One Sunday evening during the 'Maine rum war'the pastor of my church announced that Dr. WilburF. Krafts, then touring the State in the interests ofprohibition, would speak the next day at noon in thepublic square. Though interested like many others inkeeping the prohibitory law, it was by that time, Isuppose, 'on my nerves,' and I wanted to hear no moreon the subject and left the church as soon as possible.That night I dreamed of returning from my work atnoon, hearing the sound of music'Marching ThroughGeorgia'and going to the public square. There Isaw a crowd surrounding a group of three or fourmen. Near the speaker stood my pastor, who, noticingme, made his way through the crowd and spoke to me.At that point I awoke.

On the forenoon following I had no recollection ofmy dream and at noon heard music, evidently in thepublic square. As I started for the square I noticedthat the air was 'Marching Through Georgia.' BeforeI reached the square the music changed to anotherair as in my dream, which I then remembered. In thesquare I recognized in Dr. Krafts the speaker of mydream. My pastor was near him and, noticing me,came to me with a message from his wife. Until thenI had never seen Dr. Krafts, nor heard anything in


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particular about him, never had him in mind at alland do not think I had ever seen his picture.To this the psychologist repliesSome psychologists, contrasting the complete

forgetfulness until noon with the vividness and full-ness of the dream detail recalled by happenings in thesquare, would insist that the whole dream memorywas an unconscious fabrication. But the likelihoodis that since, as she says, the prohibition campaignwas on her nerves, she did dream something aboutthe meeting to take place the next day. She mayeasily have dreamed of Dr. Krafts himself for, in spiteof her disclaimer, it would be strange indeed if shehad never seen a newspaper or poster portrait of himprinted in connection with the campaign. If she diddream of Dr. Krafts she would be all the more likely,because of her surprise at recognizing him in thesquare, to fuse the true details of her dream memorywith details of which she had not really dreamed.

Perhaps nothing could appear more absurd to onewho has had such an experience than to call it uncon-scious fabrication. If that is what such evidencewould be called by some psychologists they havecertainly not been qualified for their work by anypersonal experience. One of the outstanding factsabout such dreams is their vividness and lifelikereality. That she did not remember the dream duringthe forenoon is no evidence whatever against itsreality. What followed was perfectly natural. Whenshe heard the same airs played by the band in thesame sequence and saw the same figures she had seen


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30 DREAMS AND PREMONITIONSin the dream it is impossible that she could fail torecall it. To say that she may have fused the truedetails of her dream with the details of the events thatfollowed is a far-fetched possibility with no relation-ship to probability, and a theory is weak indeed thatmust rely on such an assumption. Akin to it is thehazard that she must have seen Dr. Kraft's pictureand forgotten it. Yet if seeing his forgotten picturehad enabled her to identify the man, would not seeingthe man enable her to remember having previouslyseen his picture? But the identity of the speaker,which is so unsatisfactorily explained, is of no moreimportance than the movements of the pastor. Inthe dream he notices her, comes through the crowdand speaks to her, at which point she awakens. Inthe events of the next day he does precisely the samething. There is apparently no sound reason what-ever for doubting any part of the evidence.

In another premonitory dream the account runsas follows:

aMy mother, an Englishwoman and a deeply re-ligious woman, dreamed she saw my sister lyingdead, with two doctors in white beside her. Mymother was greatly distressed over this, but as theweeks passed she gradually forgot it, until one day,several months after the dream, my sister had to goto Dublin for a slight operation. Just before com-mencing they allowed mother to see her and herdream was before her. She recognized it instantly.My sister was unconscious and on the operating table,while a doctor stood on each side.


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Which the psychologist thus explainsAnd, no doubt, at the time of the dream thesister's health was such that her mother would con-sciously or subconsciously be aware that an operationmight some day be necessary. Out of this consciousor subconscious knowledge the dream would logicallydevelop, featuring the attending physicians in theregular costume of the operating room.

Suppose that for the sake of the argument wewere to grant the overworked theory of ''subconsciousknowledge, and then for good measure were to throwin the admission of the asssumptionfor which thereis no fact in evidencethat the daughter's health wasbad at the time of the dream. How, even then, canthe dream be thus satisfactorily explained? If themysterious subconscious knowledge furnished theinformation that there would be an operation, fhenwhat put two doctors in the dream instead of one, orthree? When relatives are admitted to see patientsbefore an operation they usually see them just beforethe ether is administered. In this instance there musthave been some unexpected delay in arriving or someother miscalculation which changed the ordinarycourse. How did it happen that in the dream themother saw her daughter apparently dead, lyingbetween the two doctors, with which details the laterevent exactly corresponded ?

If the dream in this case was the waking memoryof the ego's dramatization of approaching events itis easy to understand why the mother thought herdaughter was dead. Having taken the anaesthetic


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she appeared to lie dead. But if the dream camebecause the mother was consciously or subcon-sciously aware that an operation would sometimebe necessary why did she not dream that herdaughter was not dead but had merely taken ether?

None of the explanations of our psychologist willpass the test of analysis. No thoughtful person canfail to observe that, in almost every case, he isobliged to assume facts that are not in evidence, andthat he proceeds to build up an imaginary structureand surround the case with conditions which thereis no reason to believe really exist. When the factswhich are in evidence are antagonistic to his hypothe-sis he calmly ignores the facts and holds that thewitnesses are mistaken He is a poor attorney whocould not win a case were he permitted to be judgeand jury as well as advocate.

The ease with which our psychologist can disposeof a difficulty is well illustrated by the following caseand explanationMy mother tells the following story. When Iwas several months old she one night put me to sleepin my cradle sound and well as usual, and then wentto sleep herself. In the night she was awakened by adreadful nightmare. She dreamed she was standingover my newly made grave. Getting out of bed, sherushed to my cradle. I was as pale as a sheet, mybreath came fast and heavy, and she could not wakeme for some time. By the time the doctor arrivedI had gone into violent convulsions. My mother to


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this day says her dream had saved my life. Can youexplain it?And here is his explanationWhat undoubtedly had happened was that the

noise, however slight, made by the stricken child, haddisturbed the watchful mother's sleep, giving rise to thesymbolical and most fortunate nightmare.

Now, observe that the child had been put to bedin her usual health. There was nothing to cause themother the slightest uneasiness. Had the psycholo-gist said that any slight noise made by the child wouldawaken the mother the statement could easily be ac-cepted. But when he asserts that what must havehappened was that some slight noise from the childcaused the mother to have a most fortunate nightmare,the statement would be of greater value in the col-umns of a humorous paper than in a serious study ofpsychology.

The laughable extremity to which our psychologistis pushed in his determination to explain everythingfrom the material viewpoint comes out well in anothercase which is not a dream at all, but which furnishes afine example of his method. The experience is stated asfollows

''One summer a party of us were walking alonga mountain trail, Indian fashion. I was the last inline, and kept my eyes on the group ahead. We cameto a clump of trees beside the path. The rest keptright on, but something prompted me to turn to theleft and leave the path. I did so, and going aroundthe clump I heard screams, and all ran back. Coiled,


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ready to strike, was a large rattler that disappearedinto the bushes. If I had gone on, instead of aroundthe trees, I should surely have been bitten by thesnake.

Then comes his explanation :A capital instance, this, of the power of the eye

or, in this case, perhaps the earto perceive more thanone consciousl}' comprehends, and* by this perceiving,to impel to action which seems to be quite withoutreason and consequently mysterious/'We are here asked to believe that a person sees orhears a rattlesnake near the path, and acts upon theknowledge to avoid the danger without being con-scious of the existence of the reptile Could the de-mand upon credulity go further than that? One ofthe most remarkable things about the psychologist ofthe materialistic type is that while he constantly warnsagainst wrhat he regards as the blind and unreasoningfaith of those who see intelligence and purpose in allforces, however apparently chaotic in their expres-sions, he nevertheless offers explanations of phenom-ena that set at naught all common sense experienceand place an impossible tax upon credulity. Ahypothesis accepted by such scientists as Crookes.Lodge, Wallace, Flammarion, Richet and others ofequal standing in the scientific world, is disregarded,while, in order to account for all that occurs by theemployment of purely physical factors, special con-ditions are assumed, witnesses are discredited, factsare ignored, and in the name of science conclusions


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are drawn that represent nothing less than the mostarrant nonsense.With the vague, elusive and undefined subcon-

sciousness to fall back upon in an emergency, thereis always a safe retreat. And that assurance may bedoubly sure our psychologist says

Let me urge my readers never to forget that any-thing which has ever got into the mind, may, underspecial conditions, be externalized as an hallucination,or may crop up into the recollection in the form of adream.When we add to that declaration the privilege ofassuming the special conditions that may be neces-sary to make any particular case fit the materialisticinterpretation, it certainly ought to go a long wayin helping our psychologist to harmonize his theorywith the facts

There is no danger of defeat in the arena of logicif there is some byway permitting retirement beyondthe reach of logic at any critical moment. Fortyyears ago when the idea of evolution was getting afoothold in the thought of western civilizaton I knewan estimable and pious old gentleman whose mindwas somewhat scientific in trend but ultra-orthodoxin faith. He would notdeny a scientific fact or prin-ciple, as he understood it, but he clung tenaciouslyto the old idea of the literal interpretation of the Biblewhich the evolutionary hypothesis was invalidating,and when he was asked to explain how a certain thingcould be so and so, as alleged, when it was in viola-tion of the scientific facts he would reply, Well, it is


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the Lord's way. No matter what altogether impos-sible or utterly contradictory matter had to be ex-plained it was met with the solemn declaration that''It is the Lord's way. And all the time the old gen-tleman evidently believed that to be conclusive, andappeared to be serenely unconscious of the fact thatanything imaginable can be justified by the man whomerely has to declare it is the Lord's way.

Our psychologst is equally safe. His line of re-treat to subconsciousness is always open. If adream accurately forecasts the future it is becausethe dreamer knew of some fact which, by the won-derful alchemy of the subconsciousness, supplied thefuture details. If one is in a strange country whichhe has never before visited, and suddenly becomesaware that it is all as familiar as his own garden, andthen proceeds to describe to his friends what liesahead along the road, it is because he has somewherehad a glimpse of a pictureand forgotten itand thatwonderful subconsciousness accounts for the rest. Ifone is moving in the darkness toward a precipice ayard away, in perfect ignorance of its existence, andfeels himself suddenly bodily pushed backward whenthere is no living being near him, why, its a halluci-nation representng ideas latent in his consciousness.If you are meandering along a forest path, and aresuddenly seized with an impulse to leave it for noimaginable reason, and come back to it a few feetfurther on, and then discover that you thus probablyescaped death, it is because your subconsciousnessmanaged the matter. You saw or heard the snake,


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but didn't know it, or you would have known whyyou turned aside. If you have a dream of futureevents as they afterward really transpire, it is onlya coincidence unless the details are all in agreementwith the dream, and if they are then you didn'tdream them ; not because you are consciously fabri-cating, but because the mysterious subconsciousnessthat previously saved you from snakes is now leadingyou to fuse the details and appear in the role of anunconscious liar ; and, finally, if you have a dream thatpresents facts which cannot possibly be explained bythe material hypothesis, you are simply mistakenabout ityou only thought you had a dream, becauseif you really had had such a dream it would not bein agreement with the materialistic theory

It is, of course, true that some dreams and appar-ent premonitions can be explained by material facts.It is equally true that a great many dreams can notbe thus explained. A close study of them will at oncemake this apparent and show the utter inadequacythe materialistic hypothesis. Any hypothesis is serv-iceable only so long as it can explain the known facts.The moment it fails to explain an established fact itfalls to the ground, no matter how many other factsit may have satisfactorily explained. The belief thatthe world was flat and stationary was at one time gen-eral. That theory satisfactorily explained the knownfacts. But when other facts were discovered thatcould not be thus explained the theory instantly col-lapsed. The only question involved was whetherthere were really new facts to be dealt with. The


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38 DREAMS AND PREMONITIONSworld discovered that it had been considering onlypart of the facts. Additional facts destroyed the oldhypothesis; and that is precisely the case in the mat-ter here under discussion. The facts have not all beenconsidered. They have either been completely ignoredor have been waived aside with the assumption thatthe most trivial and far-fetched explanations are suffi-cient to dispose of them.The dreams that are utterly beyond explanationby the materialistic hypothesis constitute evidence asreliable as the others, and are furnished by witnesseswho differ in no way from those who have furnishedthe details of the few dreams that involve no super-physical factors. A glance at some of these dreamswill show how hopelessly the old theory breaks downin their presence. Many of them are dreams of dis-covery which bring to light that which is lost andunder circumstances that eliminate telepathy andvague hints at subconscious possibilities. Others arein the nature of warnings of impending danger whichdoes not exist at the time the warning is given.Sometimes they enable the dreamer after awakeningto give life-saving assistance to other people. Thefact that some dreams can be fully and satisfactorilyexplained on purely material grounds does not throwa single ray of light upon the mystery of other dreamsin which the dreamer obtains detailed knowledge ofwhat transpired during the night at a distance, orthe dream that foreshadows an approaching tragedy.


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CHAPTER IIIDreams of Discovery

Most people who are able to give testimony uponsuch matters are unwilling to be personally mentionedfor a double reason; they dread the possible ridiculeof the unthinking, and they dislike the task of reply-ing to letters of inquiry which the publicity of thefacts may call out. Fortunately there are some who,in the interest of truth, are willing to be witnessesfor it regardless of the unpleasantness involved. Theextremely interesting and remarkable dream selectedto open this chapter was related to me by Mrs. 'ReevesSnyder, a well-known resident of Springfield, Ohio,with permission to use her name. Her mother haddied rather suddenly after a short illness. When thetime arrived for adjusting the financial accounts itwas discovered that certain bonds were missing. Theywere not in the strong box at the bank where theywere supposed to be, nor had any member of thefamily the slightest knowledge that could lead totheir recovery. They well knew that they would nothave been disposed of without their consent and ad-vice. Every conceivable nook and cranny of thehouse was searched and re-searched, but the mysteryof the missing bonds remained unsolved. The losswas a large one, and as time passed without develop-


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40 DREAMS AND PREMONITIONSing the slightest clue to the missing property thedaughter's anxiety grew.

One night Mrs. Reeves Snyder dreamed. Shefound herself in the presence of her dead mother, whosmilingly said, ''Don't worry any more about thosebonds, you'll find them in the morning. I had themat the house just before I was taken ill, and had themin my hand when I went up to the garret floor, andlaid them aside while busy there. I forgot them whenleavingand then came the illness and confusion thatfollowed. But they are there, and you will find themin an old tomato can, covered with a board, near theend of the large black trunk.

Awakening, the dreamer related the startling storyto her husband, who was wholly incredulous. Butshe herself had not the slightest doubt that she hadseen and conversed with her recently departedmother. We can easily imagine the impatience withwhich she awaited the coming of morning, and withwhich she hurried to her mother's late residence atthe earliest possible moment. As she approached thehouse her father and sister appeared on the verandah.Now it seems that Mrs. Reeves Snyder had the repu-tation of being a dreamer of remarkable dreams, andher father, who was strongly inclined to conservatism,called out as she approached, Have you had anotherdream? To this she replied that she had dreamed ofher mother. Pie interrupted her with the remarkthat her sister also had dreamed of her mother, andadded that before her sister spoke of it at all hewished to hear her full story. It was related to him


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DREAMS OF DISCOVERY 41as above given, and then the amazed skeptic said thather sister had just told him of her own dream, whichwas identical in every detail. She had also dreamedthat her dead mother came to her during the night,recounting the same story of the lost bonds, with thesame minute instructions for recovering them. To-gether the three made their way to the place desig-nated and there, in an empty tin can covered with aboard, lay the missing bonds

It requires no argument to show that the explana-tion of these facts is utterly beyond the possibilitiesof the materialistic hypothesis. But if it be true, asset forth in the hypothesis stated in Chapter I, thatsleep and death differ only in that one is temporaryand the other permanent release from the physicalbody, and that in each case the consciousness is thenfunctioning through a vehicle of astral matter, thencommunication between the dead and the living isa perfectly natural thing during the hours of sleep.With some people this memory of the meeting maybe vivid and realistic. With others it may be vague,unsubstantial and fleeting. With still others theremay be no memory at all impressed upon the physicalbrain, yet the experience may have been as impressiveto the person's consciousness at the moment as in thecase of the others who did remember upon awakening.

In what other possible way can the facts be ex-plained? The only person who knew where the bondsrested had been dead some weeks. No other personeven knew that the bonds had been removed fromtheir accustomed place of security. They were in a


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42 DREAMS AND PREMONITIONSplace where nobody would have thought for a momentof searching for them. They would have been safefrom the most painstaking burglar. It required defi-nite instruction to find them. How did that detailedinformation get into the consciousness of the two sis-ters, sleeping in different houses, at the same time?

Another dream of discovery presents precisely thesame principles but differs most interestingly in itsdetails. The facts were given to me by Dr. L. H.Henley, who was at the time, and still is, chief sur-geon of the Texas & Pacific Railway hospital atMarshall, Texas. His friends, a Mr. and Mrs. Moore,lived on a farm four and a half miles from Atlanta,Texas, at the time of the financial panic of 1907. Mr.Moore had deposited to his account at his bank aboutfive thousand dollars. It will be remembered thatduring that brief financial stringency the banks werepermitted to limit the amount that could be drawnout by depositors and that for some time only asmall percentage of any balance could be checked outwithin a stated period. This experience of beingunable to get his money when he wanted it seems tohave raised a question in the mind of Mr. Mooreabout the wisdom of patronizing banks at all, andhe evidently resolved that as soon as the restrictionshad been removed he would withdraw his moneyand put it in a safe place. Just what happenedbetween the resumption by the banks of the custom-ary rules of procedure and the unexpected death ofMr. Moore soon afterward, nobody knows. But whenhis wife went to the bank, in closing up the estate,


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DREAMS OF DISCOVERY 43

expecting to find about five thousand dollars to thecredit of her late husband, she was astounded wheninformed that he had withdrawn the entire sum andclosed the account. Now that five thousand dollarswas the total of their little fortune and she facedgrim poverty alone. She was obliged to abandon thehome and go to live with a married daughter atTexarkana. More than two years passed. She sup-posed that her husband had invested or depositedthe money somewhere, and neglected to mention thematter to her, and she could only vaguely hope thatit would sometime in some way be brought to herattention and that she would at last learn the truth.She finally did learn the truth,the strange and im-probable truthand in a most astounding manner.She dreamed one night that she was with her husbandand that he told her the secret of the missing money.He had said to her in the dream that he drew themoney from the bank in gold and silver coin andthat on a day when nobody but himself was at homehe had buried the treasure full three feet below thesurface of the ground, on a line running from acertain corner of the house to a certain corner of ashed, and exactly midway between the two points.

So vivid and realistic was the dream that Mrs.Moore had absolute confidence that it presented thefacts; but when she related it to her daughter's hus-band and asked him for the money necessary to makethe journey to the village of Atlanta he ridiculed thewhole thing so mercilessly that Mrs. Moore beganto lose her confidence. But again she dreamed of it


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into the waking state she was able to repeat it anynumber of times.Another case of treasure recovered presents quite

different circumstances. At the time of the discoveryof the gold the old miser who had buried it had beendead more than seventy years and there was nothingthat we know of to cause the dreamer to be thinkingof him, or of a hidden fortune. The story wasprinted January 21, 1908, by the New York World,whose reporter went very fully into the details :

''Miss Lucy Alvord of Taylortown, N. L, told herbrother Claude on Sunday morning that her grand-father, who died in 1837, came to her in a dream thenight before, appearing so natural that, although shehad never seen a picture of him. she recognized himfrom her mother's description. Pie was middle-agedand wore a beard. In the dream he seemed to shakeMiss Alvord and arouse her. She stared at him andwas about to speak, but he indicated silence andmotioned her to follow him. She followed him intothe kitchen of the house, a wing that was built longbefore the Revolution. The house itself has beenoccupied by the AJvord family for five generations.Stepping to the north side of the great room the manopened the iron door orthe brick oven alongside thefireplace. He stepped inside the big oven and reap-peared with a stone jar which he set on the tablein the middle of the room. He then seemed obliviousto the presence of Miss Alvord, and to her, in thedream, his conduct seemed perfectly natural. He dughis hands into the crock and brought them out filled


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46 DREAMS AND PREMONITIONSwith gold pieces. He emptied the crock on the tableand began to stack and count the money. He madeseparate stacks of English and American coins and ofthe different denominations. He made figures on aslip of paper, which he totalled and put in his pocket.

Then the visitor put the money back into thecrock and crawled into the oven. Miss Alvord peeredin and saw him wall up the crock with bricks andmortar. The oven is six feet deep and the wall wasscarcely noticeable in the great depth. When all hadbeen secured the man closed and locked the iron door.Then Miss Alvord woke up. When she met herbrother at breakfast she told him the story. Thevividness of her dream had frightened her. But sheinsisted that her brother attack the wall of the oven.She was confident that he would find the stone crockand the treasure. He laughed at her, but to humorher went at the wall with a crowbar. The first lightblow went through the wall. A few blows demol-ished it, and there lay a crock such as the woman hadseen in her dream. The excitement of the sister andbrother knew no bounds. They dragged out thecrock and opened it, and before their eyes lay gold.They emptied it on the kitchen tablea table madegenerations ago out of a slab of pine. They countedthe money. In the heap of gold was four thousandand some odd dollars. The hoard belonged to SilasAlvord, the grandfather, in all probability. He wasthe last of the family to work an iron forge on theplace. H,e made anchors, anchor chains and otherimplements. When he died, in 1837, it was thought


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he had a fortune. Apparently, however, he left noth-ing but the farm, valuable in itself. Then his relativesthought he had lost his money in wildcat banks. MissAlvord's story of the strange dream and of the findingof the hoard of gold was told about the countryside,and all day yesterday neighbors heard her repeat itand looked in the oven and saw where the bricks hadbeen removed.

Still another dream of discovery, resulting in therecovery of several thousand dollars in gold coin, isreported from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, which indi-cates that while the physical body is asleep theconsciousness escapes its material confinement, andmay bring back to the waking hours informationwhich it has acquired in the ethereal regions. Thefollowing story appeared in the Associated Pressdispatches sent out from Lancaster June 19, 1916 andwas widely reprinted throughout the country:

When John Bellman, farmer, near Brickerville,died six months ago, very little money was found,though the widow knew he had a substantial amount.In April, William Heil took possession of the farm,and he, too, made fruitless searches for Bellman'smoney. Tuesday night he dreamed that Bellmancame to his bedside ancttold him that the money wasburied in the hay-mow. Yesterday morning he andhis wife searched in that place and found a box, deephidden in the hay, and upon opening it, found thou-sands of dollars in five, ten and twenty dollar goldpieces. The widow of Bellman was notified, andtook possession of the wealth. Those interested will


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times in the last five years, and that this was hertenth trip into the old well. Some animal had bur-rowed in the earth by the can and had exposed partof the old sack which enwrapped the can of gold.William Hays, administrator of the Buchanan estate,admits the finding of the gold and says he will layclaim to it in the name of the estate.

This case is not so strong as the preceding ones,but it is worthy a place in the ever-growing catalogueof facts which reveal the real nature of human con-sciousness. In this case the miser had told some ofhis neighbors that he had buried the gold, presumablyon his farm, and the skeptical will argue that thegirl had heard these stories and, believing them, hadinduced her father to purchase the farm. This ispossible and it reduces the value of the evidence tothe testimony of Miss Auld. That should be giventhe same weight that it would have in any othermatter. She asserts that she saw the gold in herdreams, but evidently could not definitely locate it,and says that because of her dreams she induced herfather to secure the farm. There seems to be nopossible motive for telling the dream story unlessit is true. There was nothing to be gained by it. Ifthe tales told by neighbors, of the miser's hidden gold,led to the purchase of the farm there appears to beno conceivable reason for fabricating the dream story.But the case lacks the strength of the preceding ones,in which the sequel furnishes overwhelming evidenceand leaves us with no possible alternative conclusion.A case in which a dream was the means of recov-


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50 DREAMS AND PREMONITIONSering the body of a lost son is given in the NewYork American, of October 18, 1915, under the titleMother's Dream Saves Son From Potter's Field.The story follows

A mother's graphic dream in which she saw thebody of her long missing son being lowered into apauper's grave has led to the discovery of the body.It marks one of the strangest incidents in local policehistory. Harry Kauffman, of No. 264 Cherry Street,disappeared June 30. His body was found July 4 andburied the same day among unidentified dead. Theonly record aside from mere description was thatdeath had been due to drowning. Last week Mrs.Liba Kauffman dreamed all the details of the recoveryand burial of her son's body. She informed herhusband. He went to the Bureau of UnidentifiedDead. The details as made known to his wife inthe dream tallied in essentials with the actual inci-dents connected with the burial of Kauffman's body.It was soon learned that the body buried on July 4really was that of the missing boy. Orders were thengiven to have it exhumed. Yesterday the funeral washeld from the Kauffman home.

In this case about three months pass and themother, who no doubt had been thinking daily ofher son and mourning for him, at last brings theknowledge of the facts into her waking consciousness.Many another mother may have had a similar expe-rience, and may have longed as earnestly for a clueto the mysterious disappearance of her boy, and yetfailed to get it. One of the world's greatest psycholo-


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gists, who enjoys the advantage of highly developedclairvoyance to facilitate his studies, remarks thatthere is nothing strange about the fact that a verysmall percentage of astral experiences are broughtthrough into the waking state, but that the greaterwonder is that anything at all is brought through onaccount of the fact that in order to do so there mustbe the rare combination of astral, mental and physicalconditions that make it possible. The factors in-volved are, naturally enough, many and varied butthe degree of sensitiveness represented by the dreameris certainly a most important one.

Among dreams of discovery one of the mostdramatic is that connected with the Wilkins case atSan Francisco in 1908. When the mystery of themissing woman could not be explained and^ when,with Wilkins in their hands, the officers of the lawcould get no tangible evidence to support the well-grounded suspicion that he had killed his wife, a neigh-bor came forward with a dream clue. Mrs. Wilkinshad long before disappeared and her husband hadgiven contradictory and improbable explanations ofher prolonged visit in the east. But absence andsuspicion are not evidence and there was an embar-rassing halt in the proceedings. Wilkins wouldundoubtedly have been liberated on account of thelack of evidence had not Mrs. Anderson urged theauthorities to begin excavations in the barn. Shedeclared that in repeated dreams she had seen themissing woman walk slowly to the barn, where anopen grave was pointed out. The suggestion of the


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Y

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dreamer was finally reluctantly acted upon and thedead body was discovered and exhumed.. A more recent case in which a dream led to the

discovery of a crime is reported by the Spokesman Re-view, Spokane, Washington, of May 23, 1916. The storyfollows

After a dream in which he saw his son, DallasGreene, who had been missing for nearly a month,killed by a man, J. W. Greene, of W. 1002 SeventhAvenue, visited Troy, Mont., Saturday, and after asearch with officers found his son's body buried in adense thicket of brush on Callahan creek, about amile from town. The circumstances indicated thatmurder had been committed, and Jack Miller, withwhom Greene is said to have been camped near thespot of the supposed murder, and who is alleged tohave sold horses which formerly belonged to Greene,was placed under arrest and now is in the jail atLibby.

On July 18, the Missoula Sentinel published a dis-patch from Libby, Montana, giving the following addi-tional information

John C. Miller, arrested for the murder of DallasA. Greene, was brought before a jury in the districtcourt yesterday for trial. The discovery of the mur-der came about when W. J. Greene, father of the deadman, dreamed he saw his son being killed. Frightenedby the dream, the father came to this place fromSpokane, leading the Sheriff to the spot where thebody was concealed. Miller was arrested while tryingto sell the deceased's live stock. He told friends that


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54 DREAMS AND PREMONITIONStimes before and was sure that nothing worth whilehad been left there. But she was convinced from thethree dreams that the spirit of her father was tryingto communicate something of importance. Shelooked, found the papers, but did not realize theirsignificance until she took them to Knuttel. He wasoverjoyed to receive them, and told her they wouldprove conclusively his title to eight lots in Berkeleyand some land in Jefferson county, which are thebasis of a suit by Mrs. Eva May Strong for $14,233.Leimer, he said, had been taking care of the papersfor him, and at his death they were lost. Mrs. Strong,who is the daughter-in-law of the late millionaire,Samuel Strong, is suing for title to the lots and forheavy punitive damages from Knuttel, also demandingthat Knuttel be sent to jail until any judgmentreturned against him is satisfied.

This is a case in which there was certainly goodreason for making strenuous and sustained effort toimpress upon the mind of the dreamer the where-abouts of the missing papers.

What can the materialistic hypothesis possibly dowith the facts presented in these dreams of discovery?Before the testimony of these witnesses the adherentsof that outgrown hypothesis stand silent. They canneither deny the facts nor explain them.A recent writer on the mystery of dreams remarksthat dreams locating lost articles may be but draftson the marvelous storehouse of subconscious mem-ory/' That would at least be a possible explanationwhere one loses a pocketknife or a key, searches in


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vain for the lost article, and then dreams of its exactlocation. But how can it explain the finding of thingswhich the dreamer did not lose, of which there can be,neither consciously nor subconsciously, a memoryrecord, and of which the dreamer knows nothingwhatever beyond what he learns from the dreamstate? In at least two of these cases (Reeves Snyderand Moore) information unknown to any living beingis obtained during the hours of sleep, is immediatelyput to the test, and results in the recovery of valua-bles. In these two cases alone we have evidence ofthe soundness of the hypothesis laid down in ChapterI, which is not merely convincing in its character but isalso conclusive in its facts.


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CHAPTER IVVarieties of Dreams

While many dreams may be traced to materialcauses there are many others which undoubtedly owetheir origin to the activities of the ethereal worldwhere, functioning in his astral body while the phys-ical body sleeps, the dreamer is more or less awaketo, and conscious of, what is going on about him.To people who have thought but little upon suchsubjects there will, at first, be no apparent differencebetween a dream which results from the automaticaction of the idle physical brain and its etheric coun-terpart, and the dream which is the result of astralactivities, recalled at the moment of awakening.Each is but a memory, a mental picture associatedwith various emotions. But there is nevertheless adistinction and although it is often slight and elusiveat first it grows to definiteness with experience. Uponfirst entering a garden filled with a profusion ofblossoms it is difficult to distinguish between thevarious delicate perfumes but after a little experienceone is able to separate and recognize the differentodors. And somewhat thus it is in the subtle regionsof the dream. What is at first elusive becomes definiteand unmistakable with experience.

Every dreamer is aware that there are, broadly


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58 DREAMS AND PREMONITIONSspeaking, two general classes of memories which hecalls dreams. In one the dream is more or lesschaotic, disjointed, illogical and fantastic. Suchdreams are usually the result of the automatic actionof the brain. They lack coherence and logic becausethe thinker, the ego, is not there. He has withdrawnhis consciousness with the separation of the astralbody from the physical body and is either dreamilydrifting about in his astral vehicle or is alert to hissurroundings, according to his stage of evolution.The physical body has temporarily lost its tenant ascertainly as a suit of clothes abandoned before re-tiring has lost its occupant. When the ego returnsto it's tenement of clay and the center of consciousnessis transferred once more to the physical brain, thefragmentary brain pictures become a part of thememory.

These more or less fantastic thought images some-times owe their origin in part to external stimuli, andthe brain, without the directing intelligence of theego, may magnify the pressure of a button into thestab of a dagger, or the sound of a rolling marbleinto the roar of artillery. In such dreams the mostludicrous situations cause no mirth and the mostimpossible transactions call out no challenge fromthe reason, because no intellect is present to protestagainst the riot of chaos. There is a total absenceof relationship between cause and effect, while alllaws of space and matter, have disappeared. Thedreamer is at one moment walking through the quietcountry lanes near his home and the next instant


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VARIETIES OF DREAMS 59

may be seated on the throne of Siam. He changespersonality with equal facility and may become, in atwinkling, one of his neighbors or his own grand-father without the slightest suspicion that it is arather remarkable transformation. He may passswiftly from a pleasant chat with a friend to a furiousquarrel in which his friend changes into a bandit andslays him; and, after calmly looking down on hisown corpse for a moment he rises from the dead,drags his murderer into court and gives testimonyabout his own assassination without for a momentbeing aware that there is anything either illogical orimpossible in the whole affair.

The other class of dreams differs from all this asintelligence differs from stupidity, or mental balancediffers from insanity. This class of dreams consistsof either the experiences of the man in the astralregion while the abandoned physical body is asleep,or else of some truth of nature or some premonitionwhich the ego attempts, with more or less success,to impress upon the physical brain and which is insome degree remembered upon awakening. Suchdreams are akin to the activities of the waking con-sciousness in that they are orderly, coherent andlogical. Different people will recall the events withvarying degrees of success, some being able to re-member only a very little while others review all thedetails with as vivid recollection as the occurrencesof yesterday's waking hours. But, whether the mem-ory grasps little or much, all that is recalled will bereasonable and natural. The dreamer remembers


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that he has been to some place, which may or maynot be a place that he knows in his waking conscious-ness; or he may remember that he has visited somefriend, whether dead or living matters not, for whenhis living friend is asleep, he, also, is functioning inhis astral body. The dreamer on awakening maysometimes have a memory of a conversation withsomebody and, if so, it will be a sane and logical con-versation, quite as able, or perhaps abler, than any-thing he is capable of in his waking state; for in theastral realm the center of his consciousness is nearerthe ego and the thought is therefore a fuller and freerexpression of himself than it is when expressedthrough the physical brain. This fact explains whyoccasionally some great poem is written, or inventionis made, or problem is solved, by thought broughtthrough into the waking consciousness from thesleeping hours.

It not infrequently happens that one who hasrecently lost a very dear companion or friend remem-bers upon awakening to have been with him. If thememory is vivid and the event seems realistic thereis very strong probability that the dream is thememory of an astral experience. Quite often thedreamer will bring back a memory of the emotionsaroused by renewed association with the departed,a lingering memory of joy and exaltation. Suchmemories from the ethereal world are, with somepeople, full and complete, while with others they arethe merest fragments. As a rule the}'- come at widelyseparated periods, and months may elapse between


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them. This is not in the least because the associationis not renewed night after night, for it invariably is,but wholly because the dreamer is unable to impressthe memory of it upon the brain consciousness. It ispossible to cultivate the ability to do so and slowlybut steadily to expand the consciousness until one isenabled to bring a full and vivid memory of the astralactivities into the daily life; but a full discussion ofthe details essential to success in the undertakingcan best be left for a following chapter.

The dreams that are the result of the automaticactivity of the physical brain or of vagrant vibrationsdrifting through its etheric counterpart, may be dis-missed as being of no importance whatever. It isnecessary to classify them only to eliminate them.The dreams that are memories of the hours spent inthe ethereal regions may be extremely important toone who will take the trouble to understand thembecause they are the activities of his consciousnessworking on higher levels. That higher state of con-sciousness is so radically different from its expressionconditioned by physical matter that it is impossibleto comprehend it fully, but the fragments of it thatcome through into the Avaking state at least prove itsalmost omniscient character.

Having eliminated the dreams arising from phys-ical causes we may now classify the remainder. Thesemay be divided into two classes and be designatedas dreams that are the memories of astral experiencesand dreams that are the result of the attempt of theego to impress ideas or facts upon the brain conscious-


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62 DREAMS AND PREMONITIONSness. Dreams of the latter variety are often symbolicalfor, as has been well said, symbology is the languageof the soul.

Obviously, facts or ideas impressed on the brainconsciousness by the ego himself are likely to be ofthe greatest importance. The ideas may representprofound truths of nature and the facts may disclosethe future or contain a warning that it may be ex-tremely desirable to fully comprehend. The successof the ego's attempt, however, necessarily dependsupon a number of things and a little thought on thesubject will suffice to show why failure is common.C. W. Leadbeater, in his valuable little volume,Dreams, says:

A result which follows from the ego's super-normal method of time-measurement is that in somedegree prevision is possible to him. The present,the past, and, to a certain extent, the future lie openbefore him if he knows how to read them; and he un-doubtedly thus foresees at times events that will be ofinterest or importance to his lower personality, andmakes more or less successful endeavors to impressthem upon it.

When we take into account the stupendousdifficulties in his way in the case of an ordinarypersonthe fact that he is himself probably not yeteven half awake, that he has hardly any control overhis various vehicles, and cannot, therefore, preventhis message from being distorted or altogether over-powered by the surgings of desire, by the casualthought-currents in the etheric part of his brain, or


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by some slight physical disturbance affecting hisdenser bodywe shall not wonder that he so rarelyfully succeeds in his attempt. Once, now and again,a complete and perfect forecast of some event isvividly brought back from the realms of sleep; farmore often the picture is distorted or unrecognizable,while sometimes all that comes through is a vaguesense of some impending misfortune, and still morefrequently nothing at all penetrates the denser body.

It has sometimes been argued that when thisprevision occurs it must be mere coincidence, sinceif events could really be foreseen they must be fore-ordained, in which case there can be no free-will forman. Man, however, undoubtedly does possess free-will; and therefore, as remarked above, prevision ispossible only to a certain extent. In the affairs ofthe average man it is probably possible to a verylarge extent, since he has developed no will of hisown worth speaking of, and is consequently verylargely the creature of circumstances ; his karmaplaces him amid certain surroundings, and their actionupon him is so much the most important factor in hishistory that his future course may be foreseen withalmost mathematical certainty.

When we consider the vast number of eventswhich can be but little affected by human action,and also the complex and widespreading relation ofcauses to their effects, it will scarcely seem wonderfulto us that on the plane where the result of all causesat present in action is visible, a very large portion ofthe future may be foretold with considerable accuracy


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64 DREAMS AND PREMONITIONSeven as to detail. That this can be done has beenproved again and again, not only by prophetic dreams,but by the second-sight of the Highlanders and thepredictions of clairvoyants; and it is on this forecastingof effects from the causes already in existence thatthe whole scheme of astrology is based.

But when we come to deal with a developedindividuala man with knowledge and willthenprophecy fails us, for he is no longer the creature ofcircumstances, but to a great extent their master.True, the main events of his life are arranged before-hand by his past karma; but the way in which hewill allow them to affect him, the method by whichhe will deal with them, and perhaps triumph overthemthese are his own, and they cannot be foreseenexcept as probabilities. Such actions of his in theirturn become causes, and thus chains of effects areproduced in his life which were not provided for bythe original arrangement, and, therefore, could nothave been foretold with any exactitude.

It is not easy to comprehend in the physical brainconsciousness how events can be known before theyoccur. May not the explanation be that they haveoccurred so far as inner planes are concerned, butthat only as they work outward from the realm ofcausation and become materialized in what we callan event, can the limited physical consciousness be-come aware of them? If physical matter is a limita-tion of consciousness it must necessarily give rise toillusory ideas of the superphysical realms, where whatwe call past, present and future may represent entirely


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VARIETIES OF DREAMS 65different conditions than we are now able to conceive.Sir Oliver Lodge says

A luminous and helpful idea is that time is buta relative mode of regarding things; we progressthrough phenomena at a certain definite pace, and thissubjective advance we interpret in an objective man-ner, as if events moved necessarily in t

dreams and premonitions - rogers, 1916

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