Theory of dreams.

— It is really strange that a phenomenon as common as that of dreams should have been the object of such indifference on the part of Science, and that one should still be asking the cause of these visions. To say that they are products of the imagination is not to resolve the question; it is one of those words by the aid of which they wish to explain what they do not understand and which explain nothing. In any case, the imagination is a product of the understanding. Now, since one cannot admit understanding nor imagination in brute matter, it must be believed that the soul enters therein for something. If dreams are still a mystery for Science, it is because it has persisted in closing its eyes to the spiritual cause. The soul is sought in the recesses of the brain, while at every instant it rises before us, free and independent, in an immensity of phenomena inexplicable by the laws of matter alone, notably in dreams, in natural and artificial somnambulism, and in second sight at a distance; not in the rare, exceptional, subtle phenomena, which require the patient researches of the scholar and the philosopher, but in the most common; there it is, seeming to say: Look and you will see me; I am before your eyes and you do not see me; you have seen me many and many a time; you see me every day; even children see me; the scholar and the ignorant, the man of genius and the idiot see me, and you do not recognize me. But there are persons who seem to be afraid of looking at it face to face, and of acquiring the proof of its existence. As for those who seek it in good faith, until today they have lacked the only key with which they would have recognized it. This key Spiritism has just given by the law that governs the relations between the corporeal world and the spiritual world. Aided by this law and by the observations on which it rests, it gives of dreams the most logical explanation ever furnished; it demonstrates that the dream, somnambulism, ecstasy, second sight, presentiment, the intuition of the future, the penetration of thought are but variants and degrees of one and the same principle: the emancipation of the soul, more or less detached from matter.

— With regard to dreams, does it give a precise account of all the varieties that they present? No, not yet; we possess the principle, and that is already much; those we can explain will put us on the way to the others; without doubt we still lack some knowledge, which we shall acquire later. There is not a single science that, at one bound, has developed all its consequences and applications; they can only be completed by successive observations. Now, born yesterday, Spiritism is like Chemistry in the hands of the Lavoisiers and the Berthollets, its first creators; these discovered the fundamental laws. The first markers planted set them on the way to new discoveries. Among dreams there are some that have a character so positive that, rationally, they could not be attributed merely to a play of the imagination; such are those in which one acquires, upon waking, the proof of the reality of what one saw, and of which one was absolutely not thinking. The most difficult to explain are those that present to us incoherent, fantastic images, without apparent reality. A more thorough study of the singular phenomenon of fluidic creations will without doubt put us on the way.

— While waiting, here is a theory that seems to advance a step in the question. We do not give it as absolute, but as founded on logic and able to be an object of study. It was given to us by one of our best mediums, in a state of very lucid somnambulism, on the occasion of the following fact:

Urged by the mother of a young girl to give her news of her daughter, who was in Lyon, he saw her lying down and asleep, and described with exactness the apartment in which she was. This young girl, of sixteen years, was a writing medium; the mother asked whether she had the aptitude to become a seeing medium. Wait, said the somnambulist, I must follow the trail of her Spirit, which at this moment is not in the body. She is here, in the villa Ségur, in the room where we are [see the personal domicile of Mr. Allan Kardec], drawn by your thought; she sees you and hears you. For her it is a dream, of which she will not remember upon waking. One can, he adds, divide dreams into three categories, characterized by the degree of remembrance that remains in the state of detachment in which the Spirit finds itself. They are:

1st – Dreams provoked by the action of matter and of the senses upon the Spirit, that is, those in which the organism plays a preponderant part by the more intimate union between the body and the Spirit. Of these we remember clearly and, however little developed the memory may be, we retain a durable impression.

2nd – Dreams that may be called mixed. They partake at once of matter and of Spirit. The detachment is more complete. Of these we remember on waking, only to forget them almost instantly, unless some particularity comes to awaken their remembrance.

3rd – Ethereal or purely spiritual dreams. They are produced solely by the Spirit, which is detached from matter, as much as it can be during the life of the body. Of these we do not remember; or, if a vague remembrance of what we dreamed remained, no circumstance could bring back to memory the incidents of sleep.

The present dream of this young girl belongs to the third category. She will not remember it. She was led here by a Spirit well known to the Lyonese spirit world and, even, to the European spirit world (the somnambulist-medium describes the Spirit Cárita). He brought her with the aim that she may keep, if not a precise remembrance, a presentiment of the good that may be drawn from a firm, pure, and holy belief, and of the good that one may do to others, by doing it to oneself.

She tells the mother that, if she remembered in her normal state as well as she now remembers her preceding incarnations, she would not remain long in the stationary state in which she is, for she sees clearly and can advance without hesitation, whereas in the ordinary state we have a bandage over the eyes. She says to those present: “Thank you for having occupied yourselves with me.” Then she kisses her mother. How happy she is! adds the medium in concluding, how happy she is with this dream, which she will not remember, but which, none the less, will not fail to cause her a salutary impression! It is these unconscious dreams that afford those indefinable sensations of contentment and happiness, of which we do not give ourselves account, and which are a foretaste of that which happy Spirits enjoy.

— It is deduced from this that the incarnate Spirit can undergo transformations that modify its aptitudes. A fact that has perhaps not been sufficiently observed comes in support of the above theory. It is known that forgetfulness on waking is one of the characters of somnambulism. Now, from the first degree of lucidity the Spirit passes, at times, to a higher degree, which is different from ecstasy, and in which it acquires new ideas and more subtle perceptions. On leaving this second degree to enter the first, it will not remember what it said, nor what it saw; then, passing from this degree to the state of waking, there is a new forgetfulness. A thing to note is that there is remembrance from the higher degree to the lower degree, while there is forgetfulness from the lower degree to the higher. It is, then, quite evident that between the two somnambulic states of which we have just spoken, something analogous happens to what occurs between the state of waking and the first degree of lucidity; that what passes influences the faculties and the aptitudes of the Spirit. One would say that from the state of waking to the first degree the Spirit is stripped of a veil; that from the first to the second degree it is stripped of a second veil. These veils no longer existing in the higher degrees, the Spirit sees what is below and remembers; descending the scale, the veils form again successively and hide from it what is above, causing it to lose the remembrance of them. Sometimes the will of the magnetizer can dissipate this fluidic veil and restore the remembrance. As one sees, there is a great analogy between these two somnambulic states and the diverse categories of dreams described above. It seems to us more than probable that, in the one case and the other, the Spirit finds itself in an identical situation. At each step that it climbs, it rises above a layer of mist; its vision and its perceptions are clearer.