Certain quite extraordinary experiences were, for me, connected with dreams. When still a child I woke on several occasions with the distinct feeling of having experienced something so interesting and enthralling that all that I had known before, all I had come into contact with or seen in life, appeared to me afterwards to be unworthy of attention and devoid of any interest. Moreover, I was always struck by recurring dreams, dreams which occurred in the same form, in the same surroundings, led to the same results, to the same end, and always left behind the same feelings.
About 1900, when I had already read almost all I could find on dreams in psychological literature, I decided to try to observe my dreams systematically, accepting the usual methods but having my own end in view.
[In speaking of the literature on dreams I have not in view so-called "psychoanalysis", that is, the theories of Freud and his followers. First, because when I began to be interested in dreams, "psychoanalysis" did not exist and second, because, as I became convinced later, in "psychoanalysis" there is and there was nothing valuable, nothing in general that would make me alter the least of my statements and conclusions, though they are entirely opposite to the "psychoanalytical".
In order not to return to this question later, I will mention here that the only merit of "psychoanalysis" is a clear formulation of the principle of the necessity, for the purpose of the study of psychology, of observation in new domains which have not hitherto entered into the subject of psychology. But it was precisely this principle which "psychoanalysis" did not follow because, having in the first stage of its existence introduced a series of very doubtful hypotheses and generalisations, in its next stage dogmatised them and so stopped every possibility of its own development. The specific "psychoanalytical" terminology which grew out of these dogmatised hypotheses has become a kind of jargon by which it is possible to recognise "psychoanalysts", however they call themselves and however they deny their mutual connection and origin from one common source.
The success of "psychoanalysis" is explained by the poverty of the ideas, by the timidity of the methods of scientific psychology, and by the very painfully felt need for a general system. — PDO.]
My aim was connected with an idea about dreams which had appeared in my mind probably in childhood. Dreams always intrigued me, and in reflecting on them I often said to myself that if I were able to "think", I should understand what they meant. By the word "think" I meant to think consciously, i.e., to be aware of everything happening around me and so to be conscious of my being asleep. Some time later I formulated the same idea a little differently. I said to myself that if I could know in sleep that I was asleep, I should find the possibility of continuing the dreams, of going beyond them, and perhaps of finding their cause.
At the very beginning of these observations I was confronted with a fact which, first, showed me the difficulty of the task I had set myself, and second, at once and unquestionably demonstrated the impracticability of the methods which were used and recommended by all investigators of dreams (that is, the writing down of dreams immediately after awakening, and the analysis and classification of them, etc.).
Dreams proved to be too light, too thin, too plastic. They did not stand observation: observation changed them.
What happened was this: very soon after I had begun to write down my dreams in the morning and during the night, had tried to reconstruct them, thought about them, analysed and compared them one with another, I noticed that my dreams began to change. They did not remain as they were before, and I very soon realised that I was observing not the dreams I used to have in a natural state, but new dreams which were created by the very fact of observation.
This was my first interesting discovery.
It naturally led to the conclusion that the methods commonly recommended and used were unsuitable. There is something in us which at once begins to invent dreams as soon as it feels that the dreams are attracting attention.
Later, this realisation explained to me how the "mystical" dreams of different orders and denominations which are described in various religious and theosophical books are created; and not only mystical dreams, but also all "visions", cases of "clairvoyance" in dreams, observations in the "Akashic Records", and so on.
"Half-dream states" probably began to appear as a result of my efforts to observe dreams at moments of falling asleep or in half-sleep after awakening. I cannot say exactly when these states began to come in full form. Probably they developed gradually. I think they began to appear for a short time before the moment of falling asleep, but if I allowed my attention to dwell on them I could not sleep afterwards. I therefore came gradually, by experience, to the conclusion that it was much easier to observe "half-dream states" in the morning, when already awake but still in bed.
Wishing to create these states, after waking I again closed my eyes and began to doze, at the same time keeping my mind on some definite image or some thought. Sometimes in that case there began those strange states which I call "half-dream states". Without definite efforts, such states would not come. Like all other people I either slept or did not sleep, but in these "half-dream states" I both slept and at the same time did not sleep.
If I take the time when these "half-dream states" were just beginning, i.e., when they came at the moment of going to sleep, then usually the first sign of their approach was the "hypnagogic hallucinations" often describes in psychological literature. I will not dwell on this. But when "half-dream states" began to occur, chiefly in the morning, they usually started without being preceded by any visual impressions.
In order to describe these "half-dream states" and all that was connected with them, it is necessary to say a great deal. But I shall try to be as brief as possible because at the present moment I am concerned not with them but with their results.
The first sensation they produced in me was one of astonishment. I expected to find one thing and found another. The next was a feeling of extraordinary joy which the "half-dream states" and the possibility they gave me of seeing and understanding things in quite a new way. The third was a certain fear of them, because I very soon noticed that if I let them take their own course, they would begin to grow and expand and encroach upon both sleep and the waking state.
Thus "half-dream states" attracted me on the one hand and frightened me on the other. I felt in them enormous possibilities and also a great danger. But what I became absolutely convinced of was that without these "half-dream states" no study of dreams is possible, and that all attempts at such study are inevitably doomed to failure, to wrong deductions, to fantastic hypotheses, and the like.
Therefore, from the point of view of my original idea of the study of dreams, I could be very content with the results obtained. I possessed a key to the world of dreams, and all that was vague and incomprehensible in them gradually cleared up and became comprehensible and visible.
The fact is that in "half-dream states" I was having all the dreams I usually had. But I was fully conscious, I could see and understand how these dreams were created, what they were built from, what was their cause, and in general what was cause and what was effect. Further, I saw that in "half-dream states" I had a certain control over dreams. I could create them and could see what I wanted to see, although this was not always successful and must not be understood too literally. Usually I gave only the first impetus, and after that the dreams developed as it were of their own accord, sometimes greatly astonishing me by the unexpected and strange turns they took.
I had in "half-dream states" all the dreams I was able to have in the ordinary way. Gradually, my whole repertoire of dreams passed before me. I was able to observe these dreams quite consciously, could see how they were created, how they passed one into another, and could understand all their mechanism.
To one of these categories I assigned all the constantly recurring dreams which I had had from time to time during the whole of my life from early childhood.
Some of these dreams used previously to frighten me by their persistence, their frequent repetition, and certain strange character, and made me look for a hidden or allegorical meaning, prophecy, or warning in them. It had seemed to me that these dreams must have a certain significance, that they must refer to something in my life.
Speaking generally, naïve thinking about dreams always begins with the idea that all, and especially persistently recurring, dreams must have a certain meaning, must foretell the future, show the hidden traits of one's character, express physical qualities, inclinations, hidden pathological states, and so on. In reality, however, as I very soon became convinced, my recurring dreams were in no way connected with any traits or qualities of my nature, or with any events in my life. I found for them clear and simple explanations which left no doubt as to their real nature.
I will describe several of these dreams with their explanations.
The first and most characteristic dream, which I had very often, was one in which I saw a quagmire or bog of a peculiar character which I was never able to describe to myself afterwards. This bog, or merely deep mud such as is seen on Russian roads and even in Moscow streets, often appeared before me, on the ground or even on the floor of the room, without any association with the plot of the dream. I did my utmost to avoid this mud, not to step into it, even not to touch it. But I invariably got into it, and it began to suck me in and generally sucked my legs in up to the knees. I made every conceivable effort to get out of this mud or mire, and sometimes succeeded, but then I usually woke up.
It was very tempting to interpret this dream allegorically, as a threat or a warning. But when I began to have this dream in "half-dream states" it was explained very simply. The whole content of this dream was created by the sensation of my legs being entangled in the blanket or sheets, so that I could neither move nor turn them. If I succeeded in turning over, I escaped from this mud, but then I invariably woke up because I had made a violent movement. As regards the mud itself and its "peculiar" character, this was connected, as I again became convinced in "half-dream states", with the more imaginary than real "fear of bogs" I had in childhood. This fear, which children and even grown-ups often have in Russia, is created by tales of quagmires and bogs and "windows" ["Window" is the name given to a small spot, sometimes only a few yards across, of "bottomless" quagmire in an ordinary swamp. — PDO] which were said to have a "peculiar" character, that they could be recognised, that they always differed from an ordinary swamp, that they "sucked in" what fell into them, that they were filled with a particular soft mire, and so on, and so on.
In "half-dream states" the sequence of associations in the whole dream was quite clear. First appeared the sensation of bound legs, then the signal: bog, mire, window, peculiar soft mud. Then fear, desire to tear oneself away and, usually, the awakening. There was nothing mystical or psychologically significant in these dreams.
Second, there was a dream which also frightened me. I dreamed that I was blind. Something was happening around me. I heard voices, sounds, noises, movement, felt some danger threatening me; and I had to move somewhere with hands stretched out in front of me in order to avoid knocking against something, all the time making terrible efforts to see what was around me.
In "half-dream states" I understood that the effort I was making was not an effort to see, but an effort to open my eyes. It was this effort, together with the sensation of closed eyelids which I could not lift, that created the sensation of "blindness". As the result of this effort, I sometimes woke up. This happened when I actually succeeded in opening my eyes.
Even these first observations of recurring dreams showed me that dreams depend much more on the direct sensations of a given moment than on any general causes. I gradually became convinced that almost all recurring dreams were connected with the sensation not even of a state but simply of the posture of the body at the given moment.
When I happened to press my hand with my knee and the hand became numb, I dreamt that a dog was biting my hand. When I wanted to take something in my hands or lift it, it fell out of my hands because my hands were limp as rags and refused to obey me. I remember once in a dream I had to break something with a hammer, and the hammer was as if made of rubber; it rebounded from the object I was striking, and I could not give any force to the blows. This, of course, was simply the sensation of relaxed muscles.
There was yet another recurring dream which always frightened me. In this dream I was a paralytic or a cripple; I fell down and could not get up, because my legs did not obey me. This dream also seemed to be a presentiment of what was going to happen to me until in "half-dream states" I became convinced that it was merely the sensation of motionless legs with relaxed muscles, which of course could not obey the moving impulses.
Altogether I saw that our movements, especially our impulses to movements, and the sense of impotence in making a particular movement, play the most important rôle in the creation of dreams.
To the category of constantly recurring dreams belonged also dreams of flying. I used to fly fairly often and was very fond of these dreams. In "half-dream states" I saw that flying depended on a slight giddiness which from time to time occurs in sleep without any pathological cause, but probably simply in connection with the horizontal position of the body. There was no erotic element in the dreams of flying.
Amusing dreams, those in which one sees oneself undressed or half-dressed walking in the street or among people, occur very often, but require no complicated theories for their explanation. They are simply the sensation of one's half-dressed body. As I noticed in "half-dream states", these dreams occurred chiefly when I was feeling cold during sleep. The cold made me realise that I was undressed, and this sensation penetrated into my dreams.
Some of the recurring dreams could be explained only in connection with others. Such were the dreams of stairs, often described in psychological literature. These are strange dreams, and many people have them. You go up huge, gloomy, endless staircases, find certain passages leading out, remember the way, then lose it again, come upon unfamiliar landings, turnings, doors, etc. This is one of the most typical recurring dreams. As a rule you meet no one; you are usually alone amidst these large empty staircases.
As I understood in "half-dream states", these dreams are a combination of two motifs or recollections. The first motif is created by motor memory, the memory of direction. These dreams of stairs are in no way different from dreams of long corridors, with endless courtyards through which you pass, with streets, alleys, gardens, parks, fields, woods; in a word, these are dreams of roads or ways. We all know many roads and ways: in houses, up stairs, and along corridors; in towns, in the country, in the mountains; and we can see all these roads in dreams, although we very often see not the roads themselves but, if it can be so expressed, the general feeling of them. Each way has its own particular sensation. These sensations are created by thousands of small details reflected and impressed in various corners of our memory. These sensations are later reproduced in dreams, though dreams very often use the accidental material of images for creation of the desired sensation. Because of this, the "road" you see in dreams may not outwardly resemble the road you actually know and remember when awake, but it will produce the same impressions and will give you the same sensations as the road with which you are, or were, familiar.
"Stairs" are similar to "roads", only, as has already been said, they contain another motif as well. This motif consists in a certain mystical significance which stairs have in the life of every man. Everybody in his life often experiences on the stairs a sense of something new and unknown awaiting him on the next floor, behind a closed door. Everybody can recollect many such moments in his life. A man ascends the stairs not knowing what awaits him. For children, it may be their arrival in school, and such impressions remain for the whole life. Further, stairs are often the scene of hesitations, decisions, change of decisions, and so on. All this taken together and united with memories of motion creates dreams about staircases.
To continue the general description of dreams, I must note that visual images in sleep often do not correspond to visual images in waking states. A man you know very well in life can look quite different in a dream. In spite of that, however, you do not for a moment doubt that it is really he, and his unfamiliar aspect does not in the least surprise you. It often happens that the quite fantastic, and even unnatural and impossible, aspect of a man expresses certain traits and qualities you know in him. In a word, the outward form of things, people, and events is in dreams much more plastic than it is in a waking state, and it is much more susceptible to the influence of the accidental thoughts, feelings, and moods that pass through us.
As regards recurring dreams, their simple nature, and the absence of any allegorical meaning in them, became unquestionable for me after they had all occurred several times in my "half-dream states". I saw how they began, I could explain clearly where they came from, and how they were created.
There was only one dream I was unable to explain. That was the dream in which I saw myself running on all fours, and sometimes very fast. It seemed to be in certain cases the swiftest, safest, and most reliable means of locomotion. In a moment of danger, or in general in any difficult situation, I always preferred in the dream this means of locomotion to any other.
For some reason I do not remember this dream in "half-dream states". I understood the origin of this "running on all fours" only later, when I was observing a small child who was only just beginning to walk. He could walk, but to him it was still a great adventure and his position on two legs was still very uncertain, unstable, and unreliable. He apparently distrusted himself in this position. Therefore, if anything unexpected happened, if a door opened, or a noise was heard from the street, or even if the cat jumped off the sofa, he immediately dropped on all fours. In observing him I understood that somewhere, deep in the innermost recesses of our memory, are preserved recollections of these first motor impressions and of all the sensations, fears, and motor impulses connected with them. Evidently there was a time when new and unexpected impressions created the impulse to drop on all fours, that is, to assume a steadier and firmer position. This impulse is not sufficiently strong in a waking state, but in dreams it acts and creates strange pictures, which also appeared to me to be allegorical or to have some hidden meaning.
Observations of the same child also explained to me a great deal about staircases. When he began to feel quite firm on the floor, the stairs were still for him a great adventure. Nothing attracted him more than the stairs, although he was forbidden to go near them. Of course, in the next period of his life, he practically lived on the stairs. In all the houses in which he lived, the stairs attracted him first of all. When I was observing him, I had no doubts that the impressions of stairs would remain in him all his life and would be connected with all emotions of a strange, attractive, and dangerous character.
I remember once seeing myself in a large room without windows with only a small black kitten for company. "I am dreaming", I say to myself. "How can I know whether or not I am really asleep? Suppose I try this way. Let this black kitten be transformed into a large white dog. In a waking state it is impossible, and if it comes off it will mean that I am asleep." I say this to myself, and immediately the black kitten becomes transformed into a large white dog. At the same time the opposite wall disappears, disclosing a mountain landscape with a river receding into the distance like a ribbon.
"This is curious", I say to myself; "I did not order this landscape. Where did it come from?" Some faint recollection begins to stir in me, a recollection of having seen this landscape somewhere and of its being somehow connected with the white dog. But I feel that if I let myself go into it I shall forget the most important thing I have to remember, namely, that I am asleep and am conscious of myself, i.e., that I am in the state for which I have long wished and which I have been trying to attain. I make an effort not to think about the landscape, but at that moment some power seems to drag me backwards. I fly swiftly through the back wall of the room and go on flying in a straight line, all the time backwards and, with a terrible noise in my ears, suddenly come to a stop and awaken.
The description of this backward flying and the accompanying noise can be found in occult literature, where some special meaning is ascribed to them. But in reality there is no meaning in them except probably that of an inconvenient position of the head or slightly deranged circulation of the blood.
It was in this way, flying backwards, that people used to return from the witches' Sabbath.
Speaking generally, false observations, i.e., dreams within dreams, must have played a great part in the history of "magic", miraculous transformations, etc.
False observations like the one described occurred several times, remained in my memory very vividly, and helped me very much in elucidating the general mechanism of sleep and dreams.
First, it is necessary to understand clearly that sleep may be of different degrees, of different depths. We can be more asleep or less asleep, nearer or further from the possibility of awakening. We usually remember only those dreams which we have when near to the possibility of awakening. Dreams which we have in deep sleep, i.e., far from the possibility of awakening, we do not remember at all. People who say they do not remember dreams sleep very soundly. People who remember all their dreams, or at any rate many of them, are really only half asleep. The whole time, they are near to the possibility of awakening. As a certain part of the inner instinctive work of our organism is best performed in deep sleep and cannot be well carried out when a man is only half asleep, it is obvious that the absence of deep sleep weakens the organism, prevents its renewing its spent forces and eliminating the used-up substances, and so on. The organism does not rest sufficiently. As a result it cannot produce sufficiently good work, is sooner worn out, more easily falls ill. In a word, deep sleep, that is, sleep without dreams, is in all respects more useful than sleep with dreams. The experimenters who encourage people to remember their dreams render them a truly bad service. The less a man remembers his dreams the more soundly he sleeps and the better it is for him.
Further, it is necessary to note that we make a very great mistake when we speak about the creation of mental pictures in sleep.
Thus we speak only of the head, brain thinking, and we ascribe to it the chief part of the work of creating dreams as well as all our thinking. This is utterly wrong. Our legs also think, think quite independently of and quite differently from the head. Arms also think: they have their own memory, their own mental images, their own associations. The back thinks, the stomach thinks, each part of the body thinks independently. Not one of these thinking processes reaches our consciousness in a waking state, when the head-thinking, operating chiefly by words and visual images, dominates everything else. But when the head-consciousness calms down and becomes clouded in the state of sleep, especially in the deeper forms of sleep, other consciousnesses — namely those of feet, hands, fingers, stomach, other organs, and various groups of muscles — immediately begin to speak. These separate consciousnesses in us possess their own conceptions of many things and phenomena for which we sometimes also have head conceptions and sometimes not. This is precisely what most prevents our understanding our dreams. In sleep, the mental images which belong to the legs, arms, nose, tips of the fingers, and various groups of motor muscles become mixed with our ordinary visual-verbal images. We have no words and no forms for the expression of conceptions of one kind in conceptions of another kind. The visual-verbal part of our psychic apparatus cannot remember all these utterly incomprehensible and foreign images. In our dreams, however, these images play the same rôle as the visual-verbal images, if not a greater one.
The following two reservations I make here should be remembered in every attempt at the description and classification of dreams. The first is that there are different states of sleep. We can catch only the dreams which pass near the surface; as soon as they go deeper, we lose them. The second is that no matter how we try to remember and exactly describe our dreams, we remember and describe only head-dreams, i.e., dreams consisting of visual-verbal images; all the rest, i.e., the enormous majority of dreams, will escape us.
To this must be added another circumstance of very great importance. In sleep, the head-consciousness itself changes. This means that man cannot in sleep think about himself unless the thought is itself a dream. A sleeping man can never pronounce his own name.
If I pronounced my own name in sleep, I immediately woke up. I then understood that we do not ordinarily realise that the knowledge of one's name for oneself is already a different degree of consciousness as compared with sleep. In sleep we are not aware of our own existence; we do not separate ourselves from the general picture which moves around us, but we, so to speak, move with it. Our "I" feeling is much more obscured in sleep than in a waking state. This is really the chief psychological feature which determines the states of sleep and expresses the whole difference between sleep and the waking state.
Most of our dreams are entirely accidental, entirely chaotic, unconnected with anything, and therefore meaningless. These dreams depend on accidental associations. There is no consecutiveness in them, no connection, no idea.
I will describe one such dream which was noted in a half-dream state.
I am falling asleep. Golden dots, sparks, and tiny stars appear and disappear before my eyes. These sparks and stars gradually merge into a golden net with diagonal meshes which moves slowly and rhythmically in rhythm with the beating of my heart, which I feel quite distinctly. The next moment the golden net is transformed into rows of brass helmets belonging to Roman soldiers marching along the street below. I hear their measured tread and watch them from the window of a high house in Galata, in Constantinople, in a narrow lane one end of which leads to the old wharf of the Golden Horn with its ships and steamers and the minarets of Stamboul behind them. The Roman soldiers march on and on in close ranks along the lane. I hear their heavy measured tread, and see the sun shining on their helmets. Then suddenly I detach myself from the window-sill on which I am lying, and in the same reclining position fly slowly over the lane, over the houses, and then over the Golden Horn in the direction of Stamboul. I smell the sea, feel the wind, the warm sun. This flying gives me a wonderfully pleasant sensation, and I cannot help opening my eyes.
This is a typical dream of the first category, i.e., of dreams which depend on accidental associations. Looking for a meaning in these dreams is exactly the same as telling firmness by coffee grounds. The whole of this dream passed before me when in a "half-dream state". From the first moment to the last I observed how pictures appeared and how they were transformed into a net with regular meshes. Then the golden net was transformed into the helmets of Roman soldiers. The pulsation which I heard was transformed into the measured tread of the marching detachment. The sensation of this pulsation means the relaxation of many small muscles, which in its turn produces a sensation of slight giddiness. This sensation of slight giddiness was immediately manifested in my seeing the soldiers while lying on the window-sill of a high house and looking down; and when this giddiness increased a little, I rose from the window and flew over the gulf. This at once brought with it the sensation of the sea, the wind, and the sun, and if I had not awakened, I should probably at the next moment of the dream have seen myself in the open sea, on a ship, and so on.
These dreams are sometimes remarkable for a particular absurdity, for quite impossible combinations and associations.
I remember one dream in which for some reason a very great part was played by a large number of geese. Then somebody asks: "Would you like to see a gosling? You have certainly never seen a gosling". At this moment I agree that I have never seen goslings. Next moment they bring me on an orange silk cushion a very strange-looking sleeping grey kitten, twice as long and thin as an ordinary kitten. I examine the gosling with great interest and say that I never thought they were so strange.
In these dreams a man sees himself in all kinds of dramatic situations. He travels in various distant lands, fights in wars, saves himself from some danger, chases somebody, sees himself surrounded by a crowd of people, meets all his friends and acquaintances dead and alive, sees himself at different periods of his life — though grown-up he sees himself at school, and so on.
It happens that some dreams of this kind are very interesting in their technique. They contain a quantity of such subtle material of observation, memory, and imagination as man does not possess while awake. This is the first thing that struck me in dreams of this kind when I began to understand something about them.
If I saw in my dream one of my friends whom I may not have seen for several years, he spoke to me in his own language, in his own voice, with his own intonations and inflections, with his own characteristic gestures; and he said precisely what only he could say.
Every man has his own manner of expressing himself, his own manner of thinking, his own manner of reacting to outward phenomena. No man can speak or act for another. What first attracted my attention in these dreams was their wonderful artistic exactitude. The style of each man was represented throughout in the smallest detail. It happened that certain features were exaggerated or expressed symbolically. But there was never anything incorrect, anything inconsistent with the type.
In dreams of such a kind, it happened that I more than once simultaneously saw ten or twenty people whom I had known at different periods of my life, and in not one of them was there ever the slightest mistake of inexactitude.
This was something more than memory; it was artistic creation, because it was quite clear to me that many details which had obviously gone from my memory were reconstructed, so to speak, on the spot, and they corresponded completely to what ought actually to have been there.
Other dreams of this kind surprised me by their thoroughly thought out and elaborated plan. They had a clear and well-conceived plot which was unknown to me beforehand. All the dramatis personae appeared at the right moment and said and did everything they had to do and say in conformity with the plot. The action could take place and develop in the most varied conditions, could be transferred from the town to the country, to lands unknown to me, to the sea; the strangest types could enter into these dramas.
I remember, for instance, one dream, full of movement, dramatic situations, and the most varied emotions. If I am not mistaken, it was during the Japanese war. In the dream it was a war in Russia itself. A part of Russia was occupied by armies of some strange people called by a strange name which I have forgotten. I had at all costs to pass through the enemy lines on some extremely important personal affairs. In connection with this a whole series of tragic, amusing, melodramatic incidents occurred. All this would have made a complete scenario for cinema production: everything was in its right place and nothing was out of tune with the general course of the play. There were many interesting types and scenes. The monk with whom I spoke in a monastery still lives in my memory; he was entirely outside life and outside all that took place around him, and at the same time he was full of little cares and anxieties at that moment connected with me. The strange colonel of the enemy army, who had a pointed grey beard and incessantly blinking eyes was a fully living man, and at the same time a very clear and definite type of man-machine whose life is divided into several compartments separated by impenetrable partitions. Even the type of his imaginary nationality, the sound of the language he spoke with other officers, all were in perfect keeping. The dream was full of small realistic details. I galloped through the enemy lines on a big white horse, and during one of the halts I brushed some white hairs off my coat with my sleeve.
This dream interested me very much because it showed me quite clearly that there was in me an artist, sometimes very naïve, sometimes very subtle, who worked at these dreams and created them out of the material which I possessed but could never use in full measure while awake. I saw that this artist was extraordinarily versatile in his knowledge, capacities, and talents. He was a playwright, a producer, a scene-painter, and a remarkable actor-impersonator.
This last capacity in him was possibly the most astonishing of all. It especially struck me because I had very little of this capacity when awake. I never could imitate people, never could reproduce their voices, intonations, gestures, movements; never could repeat the words or phrases most characteristic even of the people most familiar to me; in the same way I never could reconstruct accents and peculiarities of speech. But I could do all this in dreams. The striking capacity for impersonation, for dramatisation, for arranging the picture, for stylisation, for symbolisation, lies within every man and is manifested in his dreams.
Dreams in which people see their dead friends or relations strike their imagination so strongly because of this remarkable capacity for impersonation inherent in themselves. This capacity can sometimes function in a waking state when man is absorbed in himself or separates himself from the immediate influences of life and from usual associations.
After my observations of impersonation in dreams I entirely ceased to be surprised at tales of spiritualistic phenomena, of voices of people long dread, of "communications" and advice coming from them, etc. It can even be admitted that by following this advice people have found lost things, bundles of letters, old wills, family jewels, or buried treasures. Certainly the majority of such tales are pure invention, but sometimes, although possibly very seldom, such things happen, and in such a case they are undoubtedly based on impersonation. Impersonation is an art, although unconscious, and art always contains a strong "magic" element; and the magic element implies new discoveries, new revelations. A true and exact impersonation of a man long since dead can be magic like this. The impersonated image not only can say what the man who reproduces it knows consciously or subconsciously, that is, without accounting for it to himself, but it can definitely say even things that the man does not know, things which follow from the very nature of its being, from the nature of its life: that is, something that actually happened and that only it could know.
My own observations of impersonation did not go beyond observing the reproduction of what I had once known, heard, or seen, with very small additions.
I remember two cases which explained to me a great deal in relation both to the origin of dreams and to "spiritualistic communications" from the world beyond. It happened on the way to India after the time when I was occupied with the problem of dreams. I was alone. My friend, S, with whom I had previously travelled in the East and with whom I had planned to go to India, had died a year before and, especially at the beginning of the journey, I involuntarily thought about him and felt his absence.
It happened twice — once on a boat in the North Sea and a second time in India — that I distinctly heard his voice, as though he was entering my mental conversation with myself. On both occasions he spoke in the manner in which he alone could speak and said what he alone could say. Everything, his style, his intonation, his manner of speech, his way with me, all was in these few sentences.
Both times it happened on quite unimportant occasions, both times he joked with me in his usual manner. Of course I never thought for a moment that there could be anything "spiritualistic" in it; obviously he was in me, in my memory of him, and something within me reproduced him, "impersonated" him in these moments.
This kind of impersonation sometimes occurs in mental conversations with absent friends. In these mental conversations, exactly as people who are dead can do, they can tell us things which we do not know.
In the case of people who are alive, such incidents are explained by telepathy; in the case of the dead, by their existence after death and the possibility of their entering into telepathic communications with those alive.
This is the way things are usually explained in spiritualistic works. It is very interesting to read such books from the point of view of the study of dreams. I could distinguish different categories of dreams in the spiritualistic phenomena described: unconscious and chaotic dreams, invented dreams, dramatic dreams and, once more, a very important category which I would call imitative. This imitative category is very important in many respects because, although in many cases the material of these dreams is very clear in our waking state, we should not be able to use it so skilfully as we do when asleep. Here again the "artist" is at work. Sometimes he is a producer, sometimes a translator, sometimes an obvious plagiarist changing in his own way and ascribing to himself what he has read or heard.
The phenomena of impersonation have also been described in scientific literature on the study of spiritualism. P Podmore cites and interesting case from The Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research (Vol. XI, pp. 309-316):
Mr C H Tout, Principal of Buckland College, Vancouver, describes his experiences at spiritualistic séances. During these séances some persons were afflicted with spasmodic twitchings in their hands and arms and with other involuntary movements. In these cases, Tout himself felt a strong impulse to imitate these movements.
At later séances he on several occasions yielded to similar impulses to assume a foreign personality. In this way he acted the part of a deceased woman, the mother of a friend then present. He put his arm round his friend and caressed him as his mother might have done, and the personation was recognised by the spectators as a genuine case of "spirit control".
On another occasion, having under the influence of music given various impersonations, Mr Tout was finally oppressed by a feeling of coldness and loneliness, as of a recently disembodied spirit. His wretchedness and misery were terrible, and he was kept from falling to the floor only by some of the other sitters. At this point, one of the other sitters made a remark which I remember to have overheard: "It is father controlling him"; and then I seemed to realise who I was and whom I was seeking. I began to be distressed in my lungs, and should have fallen had they not held me by the hands and let me back gently upon the floor. As my head sank back on the carpet I experienced dreadful distress in my lungs and could not breathe. I made signs to them to put something under my head. They immediately put the sofa cushions under me, but this was not sufficient — I was not yet raised high enough to breathe easily — and they then added a pillow. I have the most distinct recollection of a sigh of relief I now gave as I sank back like a sick, weak person upon the cool pillow. I was in a measure still conscious of my actions, though not of my surroundings, and I have a clear memory of seeing myself in the character of my dying father lying in the bed and in the room in which he died. It was a most curious sensation. I saw his shrunken hands and face, and lived again through his dying moments; only now I was both myself — in some indistinct sort of way — and my father, with his feelings and appearance.
I awoke with a clear memory of a long and, as it seemed to me, very interesting story, which I thought I had written in my dreams. I remembered it in every detail and decided to write it down at the first free moment, both as a specimen of "creative" dreams, and also thinking that I might use the theme some day, although the story had nothing in common with my usual writings and differed entirely from them in type and character. But about two hours later, when I began to write down the story, I noticed in it something very familiar and suddenly, to my great amazement, I saw that it was a story by Paul Bourget which I had read not long before. The story was altered in a curious way. The action which in Bourget's book unfolded from one end, started in my dream from the other end. The action took place in Russia, all the characters had Russian names, and a new person was added introducing a definitely Russian atmosphere.
I rather regret now that I did not write the story down at the time as I constructed it in my dream. It undoubtedly contained much of interest. First of all there was the extraordinary quickness of the work. In normal conditions, when awake, such a turning inside out of somebody else's story of similar length, transplanting the action into another country, and adding a new person who appears in almost every scene would require, according to my estimate, at least a week's work. In sleep, however, it was done without any expenditure of time, simply in the course of the progress of the action.
This extraordinary speed of mental work in sleep has many times attracted the attention of investigators, and their observations have given rise to many wrong deductions.
There is a well-known dream described by Maury in his book Sleep and Dreams, which in his opinion establishes that one moment is sufficient for a very long dream:
I was slightly indisposed and was lying in my room; my mother was near my bed. I am dreaming of the Terror. I am present at scenes of massacre; I appear before the Revolutionary Tribunal; I see Robespierre, Marat, Fouquier-Tinville, all the most villainous figures of this terrible epoch; I argue with them; at last, after many events which I remember only vaguely, I am judged, condemned to death, taken in a cart amidst an enormous crowd to the square of the Revolution; I ascend the scaffold; the executioner binds me to the fatal board, he pushed it, the knife falls; I feel my head being severed from the body; I awaken seized by the most violent terror, and I feel on my neck the rod of the bed which had become suddenly detached and had fallen on my neck as would the knife of the guillotine. This happened in one instant, as my mother confirmed to me, and yet it was this external sensation that was taken by me for the starting point of the dream with a whole series of successive incidents. At the moment that I was struck the memory of the terrible machine, the effect of which was so well reproduced by the rod of the bed's canopy, had awakened in me all the images of that epoch of which the guillotine was the symbol. — L F Alfred Maury: Le sommeil et les rêves, études psychologiques sur ces phénomènes, (Paris, 1861).
Maury explained his dream by the extraordinary speed of the work of imagination in sleep, and it followed from his explanations that in some tenth or hundredth parts of a second which passed between the moment when the bar struck his neck and his awakening, he constructed the whole dream, which was full of movement and dramatic effect, and seemed to last a long time.
But Maury's explanation is not sufficient and is wrong in its sequence. It overlooks one important circumstance. In reality the dream took a little longer than Maury thought, possibly several seconds, a fairly long time for a mental process; whereas for his mother his awakening might have appeared instantaneous or very quick.
What happened in reality was as follows. The fall of the rod brought Maury into a "half-dream state". In this state, the chief feeling was fear. He was afraid to wake up, afraid to explain to himself what had happened to him. The whole of his dream is created by this question: what has happened to me? This suspense, this uncertainty, the gradual disappearance of hope, are very well rendered in his dream as he tells it.
But there is one more very characteristic feature in Maury's dream which he did not notice. This is that events in his dream followed not in the order in which he describes, but from the end towards the beginning.
This often happens in invented dream, which may even have been noted somewhere in special literature on the subject. Unfortunately the importance and meaning of this quality have not been pointed out and the idea had not entered the usage of ordinary thought, though this capacity of dreams to develop backwards explains a great deal.
The backward development of dreams means that when we are awake, we awaken at the moment of the beginning of the dream and remember it as starting from this moment, that is, in the normal succession of events. Maury's first impression was: Oh God, what has happened to me? Answer: I am guillotined. Imagination at once draws the picture of the execution, the scaffold, the guillotine, the executioner. At the same time, the question arises: how can it all have happened? How can I have got on to the scaffold? In answer there again come pictures of the Paris streets, of the crowds of the time of the Revolution, of the tumbril in which the condemned were driven to the scaffold. Then again a question, with the same anguish wringing the heart and with the same feeling that something terrible and irreparable has happened. And in answer to these questions there appear pictures of the Tribunal, the figures of Robespierre, Marat, scenes of massacre, general pictures of the Terror, explaining all that happened. At this moment Maury awoke, that means, he opened his eyes. In reality, he awoke long ago, possibly several seconds before. But having opened his eyes and remembering the last moment of the dream, the scenes of the Terror and massacre, he began at once to reconstruct the dream in his mind, starting from that moment. The dream began to unfold before him in the normal order, from the beginning of events to the end, from the scene at the tribunal to the fall of the knife of the guillotine, or, in reality, the fall of the rod.
Later, when writing down or telling his dream, he never doubted for a second that he actually had the dream in this order, that is to say, he never imagined the possibility of dreaming a dream in one order of events and remembering it in another. A different problem arose before him: how such a long and complex dream could flash past in one moment, for he was certain that he awoke at once (he did not remember the "half-dream state"). This he explained by the extraordinary swiftness of the development of dreams, whereas in reality the explanation requires the understanding first of "half-dream states" and second of the fact that dreams can develop in reverse order, from end to beginning, and be remembered in the right order, from beginning to end.
The development of dreams from end to beginning happens fairly often, but of course we always remember these dreams in the normal order because they end with the moment from which they would begin in the normal development of events, but are remembered or imagined from this moment.
I will cite here one dream which undoubtedly could be interpreted spiritualistically, though of course there is no spiritualism in it (I had this dream when I was seventeen or eighteen).
I dreamed of Lermontoff. I do not remember the visual image, but he told me in a strange hollow and strangled voice that he did not die when he was thought to have been killed. "I was saved", he said, slowly and in a low voice. "My friends arranged it. The Circassian who jumped into the grave and knocked off the earth with his dagger, pretending that it was necessary to help the coffin to pass.... It was connected with that. At night they dug me out. I went abroad and lived there for a long time, only I did not write anything more. No one knew about it except my sisters. Later I really died."
I awoke from this dream in an unusually depressed state. I was lying on my left side, my heart was beating fast, and I was feeling inexpressible anguish. This anguish was really the chief motif which, in connection with accidental images and associations, created the whole dream. So far as I can remember, my first impression of "Lermontoff" was the hollow strangled voice, full of some peculiar sadness. Why I replied to myself that it was Lermontoff it is difficult to say. It is possible that there was in this an emotional association. The description of the death and burial of Lermontoff might have produced a similar impression on me at one time. Lermontoff's saying that he did not die, that he was buried alive, accentuated this emotional tone still more.
A curious feature of this dream was the attempt to connect the dream with facts. In the description of Lermontoff's burial in some biographies, it is stated on the strength of the accounts of eye-witnesses that the coffin could not pass into the recess at the side of the grave and that a mountaineer jumped down and knocked off the earth with his dagger. In my dream something was connected with this incident. Then with reference to "Lermontoff's sisters", who alone knew that he was alive, I thought even in my dream that he said "sisters" meaning "cousins", as though for some reason or other he did not wish to speak clearly. All this followed from the chief motif of the dream, a feeling of depression and mystery.
There is no doubt that this dream would have been interpreted by spiritualists in a spiritualistic sense. Speaking generally, the study of dreams is the study of "spiritualism", because "spiritualism" draws all its contents from dreams. As I pointed out earlier, spiritualistic literature gave me very interesting material for the explanation of dreams.
But apart from this, spiritualistic literature undoubtedly creates whole series of "spiritualistic" dreams, just as the cinematograph or detective novels undoubtedly play a very important part in the creation of dreams.
Modern attempts at the investigation of dreams as a rule hardly take into consideration the character of a man's reading and favourite spectacles, whereas it is precisely from these that the chief material of dreams comes, especially in the case of people whose external life contains but few impressions. It is reading and spectacular sights that create allegorical, symbolical, and similar dreams. The rôle played by advertisements and posters in creating dreams is also quite disregarded.
The building up of visual images in dreams is sometimes very strange. I have already mentioned the fact that dreams are principally built according to associations of impressions and not according to associations of facts. For instance, in visual images entirely different people with whom we come into contact at entirely different periods of our lives very often become united and merged into one person.
A young girl, a political prisoner who spent a long time in the Boutirsky prison in Moscow (in 1906-1908), told me during my visits, speaking through two gratings, that in her dreams the impressions of the prison were completely mixed up with the impressions of the institute [A privileged government school for girls, of the type established in Russia in the 18th century and having the character of French convents. — PDO] which she had left only six years before. In her dreams the prison warders became confused with former "class-ladies" and "inspectresses" (house-mistresses). Summonses before the prosecutor and cross-examination were lessons, the coming trial was the final examination. And everything was similarly confused.
In this case the connecting link was undoubtedly the similarity of emotional experiences, the boredom, the continual constraint, and the general absurdity of all the surroundings.
Another dream has remained in my memory, this time merely an amusing one, in which was manifested the principle of the personification of ideas opposite to the one described.
Long ago when I was quite young, I had a friend in Moscow who accepted a situation in the south of Russia and went there. I remember seeing him off at the Kursk railway station.
About ten years later I saw him in my dream. We were sitting at a table in the station restaurant drinking beer exactly as we had dome when I saw him off. But we were three: I, my friend as I remembered him, and my friend as he probably must have become in some part of my mental picture of him, a stout middle-aged man much older than he could have been in reality, dressed in an overcoat with a fur collar and having slow and assured movements. As usually happens in dreams, this combination did not surprise me in the least and I took it as though it was the most ordinary thing in the world.
I have already pointed out that dreams differ among themselves not less than phenomena of the real world. All the examples given up to now relate to "simple" dreams, that is, to dreams which take place on the same level as our ordinary life, as our thinking and feeling in a waking state. But there are other categories of dreams which have their origin in the innermost recesses of life and rise high above the common level of our understanding and perception of things. These dreams can disclose a great deal that is unknown to us on the ordinary level of life — for instance, in showing us the future or the thoughts and feelings of other people or events unknown to us or remote from us. They can also disclose to us the mysteries of being, show the laws governing life, bring us into contact with higher forces. These are very rare dreams, and one of the errors of the usual treatment of dreams is that these dreams are regarded as much more frequent than they are in actual fact. Their principles and ideas became to a certain extent comprehensible to me only after the experiments which I describe in the next chapter.
It must be understood that all that can be found about dreams in psychological literature refers to "simple" dreams. The confusion of ideas about these dreams depends, apart from wrong classification of the dreams themselves, to a considerable degree on wrong definition of the material of which dreams are made. Dreams are regarded as being created from fresh material, from the same material as that which goes to create the thoughts, feelings, and emotions of our waking life. This is the reason why dreams in which a man performs actions or experiences emotions give rise to such multitudes of questions. The interpreters of dreams take it all quite seriously and create their own picture of a man's soul on the basis of these features. All this is, of course, quite wrong.
With the exception of dreams like those described already, such as the dream of the "quagmire" or "blindness", which are created by sensations received during sleep, the chief material which goes to make up dreams is the refuse or used-up material of our psychic life.
It is the gravest mistake to think that ordinary dreams reveal us as we are somewhere in the unknown depths of our nature. To ourselves, dreams cannot do this; they picture either what has been and has gone by or, still more often, what has not been and could not have been. Dreams are always a caricature, always a comic exaggeration, but an exaggeration which in most cases relates to some non-existent moment in the past or non-existent situation in the present.
The question is, what are the principles which create this caricature? Why do dreams so contradict reality? Here we meet with a principle which, though not fully understood, has nevertheless been noted in "psychoanalytical" literature. This is the principle of "compensation". But the word itself is unsuccessful, and probably this unsuccessful word creates its own unsuccessful associations, which is the reason why the principle had never been wholly understood, but has on the contrary give rise to utterly wrong theories.
This idea of "compensation" has been connected with the idea of dissatisfaction. The action of the principle is understood in the sense that a man who is dissatisfied with something in life in regard either to himself or to others, compensates himself in dreams. A weak, unhappy, cowardly man sees himself brave, strong, attaining everything he desires. Some friend suffering from an incurable disease is seen by us in dreams as cured, full of strength and hope. Similarly, people who have had a long illness or have died in painful conditions appear to us in dreams cured, content, and happy. In this instance the interpretation is very near the truth, but nevertheless is only half the truth.
In reality the principle is much wider, and the material of dreams is created not on the principle of compensation taken in a simple psychological or life sense but on the basis of what I would call the principle of complementary tones entirely without relation to our emotional feeling of those tones.
This principle is very simple. If you look for some time at a red spot and then turn your eyes to a white wall, you will see a green spot. If you look for some time at a green spot and then take your eyes off, you will see a red spot. Exactly the same thing happens in dreams. There exist for us no morals in dreams, because for good or ill our life is controlled by different moral rules. Every moment of our life is surrounded by different kinds of "thou shalt not", and therefore "thou shalt not" does not exist in dreams. There exists for us nothing extraordinary in dreams, because in life we are astonished at every new or unusual combination of circumstances. There exists for us no law of the consecutiveness of phenomena in dreams, because this law governs everything in life, and so on.
The principle of complementary tones plays the chief rôle in our dreams as much in those we remember as in those we do not remember; and without keeping this principle in view, it is impossible to explain a whole series of dreams in which we do and apparently feel what we never do and never feel in life.
Very many things happen in dreams only because they never happen, and never can happen, in life. Dreams are very often the negative in relation to the positive of life. But again it should be remembered that this refers only to details. The composition of dreams is not the simple opposite of life, but an "opposite" turned inside out several times and in several senses. Therefore attempts to reconstruct from dreams the hidden causes of dreams are quite useless, and it is merely senseless to suppose that the hidden causes of dreams are the hidden motives of life in a waking state.
The more I observed dreams the wider became the field of my observations. At first I thought that we have dreams only in a definite state of sleep, near awakening. Later I became convinced that we have dreams all the time, from the moment we fall asleep to the moment we awaken, but remember only the dreams near awakening. Still later, I realised that we have dreams continually, both in sleep and in a waking state. We never cease to have dreams, though we are not aware of this.
As the result of the above, I came to the conclusion that dreams can be observed while awake. It is not at all necessary to be asleep in order to observe dreams. Dreams never stop. We do not notice them in a waking state, amidst the continuous flow of visual, auditory, and other sensations for the same reason that we do not see the stars in the light of the Sun. But just as we can see the stars from the bottom of a deep well, so we can see the dreams which go on in us if, even for a short time, we isolate ourselves whether accidentally of intentionally from the inflow of external impressions.
It is not easy to explain how this is to be done. Concentration upon one idea cannot produce this isolation. An arrest of the current of usual thoughts and mental images is necessary. It is necessary to achieve for a short period "consciousness without thought". When this consciousness comes, dream images begin slowly to emerge through the usual sensations, and with astonishment you suddenly see yourself surrounded by a strange world of shadows, moods, conversations, sounds, pictures. You then understand that this world is always in you, that it never disappears.
You come to a very clear, although somewhat unexpected, conclusion: sleep and the waking state are not two states that succeed one another or that follow one upon another. The names themselves are incorrect. The two states are not sleep and waking state. They may be called sleep and sleep plus waking state. This means that when we awaken sleep does not disappear but that to the state of sleep there is added the waking state, which muffles the voices of dreams and makes dream images invisible.
The observation of "dreams" in a waking state presents far fewer difficulties than observation in sleep and, moreover, observation in this case does not change their character, does not create new dreams.
After some experience, even the arresting of thoughts, the creation of consciousness without thought, becomes unnecessary. Dreams are always there. It is sufficient only to divide the attention, and you see how into the usual thoughts of the day, into the usual conversations, there enter thoughts, words, figures, faces, scenes, either from what has been read or heard at some time, or from that which has never happened but of which one was one day thinking or talking.
Suddenly in some new combination of circumstances, among new people, a man stops and looks with astonishment about him — this has happened before! But when? He cannot say. Later he tells himself that it could not be so, he has never been here or in these surroundings, has never seen these people.
Sometimes it happens that these sensations are very persistent and long, sometimes very quick and elusive. The most interesting of them occur with children.
A distinct realisation that it has happened before is sometimes absent in these sensations. But it happens sometimes without any visible or explicable cause that some definite thing, a book, a toy, a dress, a certain face, a house, a landscape, a sound, a tune, a poem, a smell, strikes the imagination as something familiar, well known, touching upon the most hidden feelings, evokes whole series of vague and fleeting associations and remains in the memory for the whole life.
With me, these sensations (with a clear and distinct idea that this has happened before, that I have seen it before) began when I was about six years old. After eleven, they became much rarer. One of them, extraordinary for its vividness and persistence, occurred when I was nineteen.
The same sensations, but without a clearly pronounced feeling, began still earlier, from very early childhood, and were particularly vivid during the years when the sensations of repetition appeared, that is, from six to eleven; and they also came later from time to time in various conditions.
Usually, when these sensations are treated of in psychological literature, only the first kind is meant, namely, the sensations with a clearly pronounced idea of repetition.
According to psychological theories, sensations of this kind are produced by two causes. Firstly, they depend on breaks in consciousness, when consciousness suddenly disappears for one quite imperceptible moment and then flashes out again. In this case the situation in which one finds oneself, that is, all that surrounds one, seems to one to have happened before, possibly long ago in the unknown past. The "breaks" themselves are explained by the possibility of the same psychic function being carried out by different parts of the thinking apparatus. As a result of this, one function having accidentally stopped in one part is immediately taken up and continued in another, producing the impression that the same situation has occurred some time previously. Secondly, the same sensation may be produced by an associative resemblance between totally different experiences, when a stone or a tree or any object may remind one of somebody one knew very well, or of some place, or of a certain incident in one's life. This happens when, for instance, one feature or line of a stone reminds you of some feature in a man or in another object; this can also give the sensation that this has happened before.
Neither of these theories explains the reason why in most cases the sensation that this has happened before occurs chiefly in children and almost always disappears later. On the contrary, according to these theories, the sensations described should grow more frequent with age.
Both the above theories are deficient in that they do not explain all the existing facts of the sensation of repetition. Exact observations show three categories of such sensations. The first two categories are explained (although not fully) by the above psychological theories. The peculiarity of these two categories is that they usually occur in a partly clouded consciousness, almost in a half-dream state, although this may not be realised by the man himself.
The third category of sensations that this has happened before stands quite apart, and its peculiarity is that the sensations or repetition are connected with an especially clear waking state of consciousness and a heightened self-feeling.
I shall speak of these sensations and their meaning in another place.
I refer to hypnotism. The nature of hypnotism, i.e., its causes, and also the forces and laws that make it possible, remain unknown. All that can be done is to establish conditions in which phenomena of hypnotism may occur and the possible limits, results, and consequences of these phenomena.
In this connection it must be noted that the general reading public has attached to the word hypnotism such a number of wrong conceptions that before speaking of what is possible under the term hypnotism it must be made clear what is impossible.
Hypnotism in the popular and fantastic meaning of the word and hypnotism in the scientific or real meaning are two entirely different ideas.
In the real meaning, the content of all the facts united under the general name of hypnotism is very limited.
By being subjected to special kinds of treatment, a man can be brought to a particular state called the hypnotic state. Although there exists a school which asserts that any man can be hypnotised at any time, facts tell against this. In order to be hypnotised, to fall into a hypnotic state, a man must be perfectly passive, i.e., know that he is being hypnotised and not resist it. If he does not know, the ordinary course of thoughts and actions suffices to protect him from the possibility of hypnotic action. Children, drunken men, madmen, do not submit to hypnosis, or submit very badly.
There exist many forms and degrees of the hypnotic state. They can be created by certain methods. Passes and strokings of a certain kind, which provoke relaxation of the muscles, a fixed gaze into the eyes, flashing mirrors, sudden impressions, a loud shout, monotonous music: all these are means of hypnotising. Besides this, narcotics are used, although the use of narcotics in hypnosis has been very little studied, and description of their use is hard to find even in special literature on the subject. But narcotics are used far more often that is thought, and for two purposes: first, for weakening the resistance to hypnotic action, and second for strengthening the capacity to hypnotise. There are narcotics which act differently on different people, and there are narcotics which have a more or less uniform action. Almost all professional hypnotists use morphia or cocaine in order to be able to hypnotise. Different narcotics are used also for the person hypnotised; a weak dose of chloroform very much increases the capacity of a man to submit to hypnosis.
What actually occurs in a man when he is hypnotised and by what force another man hypnotises him are questions which science cannot answer. All we know up to now gives us the possibility of establishing only the external form of the hypnotic state and its results. The hypnotic state begins with simple weakening of the will. Control of ordinary consciousness and ordinary logic weakens, but it never disappears altogether. With skilful action, the hypnotic state is intensified. The man thus passes into a state of a particular kind, the external side of which is characterised by its resemblance to sleep (in deep states unconsciousness and even insensibility appear), and the internal side by an increase of suggestibility. The hypnotic state is therefore defined as the state of maximum suggestibility.
In itself hypnosis does not comprise any suggestions, and is possible without any suggestion, particularly if purely mechanical means are used, such as mirrors, etc. But suggestion may play a certain part in the creation of the hypnotic state, particularly in repeated hypnotising. This fact, and also in general the confusion of ideas as to the possible limits of hypnotic action, makes it very difficult for non-specialists (as well as for many specialists) to distinguish exactly between hypnosis and suggestion.
In actual fact they are two entirely different phenomena. Hypnosis is possible without suggestion, and suggestion is possible without hypnosis.
But if suggestion, whatever it be, takes place while the subject is in a hypnotic state, it will give notably greater results. There is no resistance, or almost none. A man can be made to do things under hypnosis which seem to him a complete absurdity, though only things which have no serious importance. It is equally possible to suggest to a man something for the future (post-hypnotic suggestion), i.e., it is possible to order some action, thought, or feeling for a certain moment on the following day or later. Then the man can be awakened. He will remember nothing. But at the appointed time, like a wound-up clock mechanism, he will do, or at least will attempt to do, what has been "suggested" to him — but again, only up to a certain limit. It is impossible to make a man, when hypnotised or through post-hypnotic suggestion, to do anything which would contradict his nature, tastes, habits, education, convictions, or even merely his ordinary actions; it is impossible to make him do anything which would provoke inner struggle in him. If such a struggle begins, the man does not do what has been suggested to him.
The success of suggestion under hypnosis or of post-hypnotic suggestion consists precisely in suggesting to a man a series of indifferent actions which provoke no struggle in him. Suppositions that a man under hypnosis can be made to know something which he did not know in a normal state and which the hypnotist does not know, or that a man under hypnosis can show a capacity for "clairvoyance", are not confirmed by any facts. At the same time there are known many cases of unconscious suggestion on the part of the hypnotist and a certain capacity for reading his thoughts on the part of the person hypnotised.
All that takes place in the mind of the hypnotist, that is, the semi-conscious associations, imagination, and anticipation of what according to him must happen, can be transferred to the subject. How the transference takes place it is impossible to establish, but the fact of this transference is very easy to prove if that which is known by the one is compared with that which is known by the other.
To this category are related phenomena of so-called "mediumism".
There is a very curious book by a French author, de Rochas, who describes experiments with persons whom he hypnotised and made "remember" their previous "incarnations" on Earth. In reading this book I was many times amazed that the author could avoid seeing that he himself was the creator of all these "incarnations", anticipating what the hypnotised subject would say and in this way suggesting to him what to say.
This book gives very interesting material for understanding the process of the formation of dreams. It might have given even more important material for the study of the methods and forms of unconscious suggestion and unconscious thought-transference. Unfortunately, in his pursuit of fantastic "remembrances" of incarnations, the author did not see what was really valuable in his experiments and did not note many small details and particulars which would have given the possibility of reconstructing the processes of suggestion and transference of thoughts.
Hypnotism is applied in medicine as a means of action on the emotional nature of man, for the struggle through suggestion with gloomy and depressed moods, morbid fears, and unhealthy tendencies and habits. In those cases in which the pathological manifestations are not dependent on deep-seated physical causes, the use of hypnotism gives favourable results. However, the opinions of specialists differ with regard to these results, and many assert that the use of hypnotism gives only short-lived useful results with a very strong reaction in the direction of the increase of undesirable tendencies or, in the presence of seemingly favourable results, gives concomitant negative results, weakens the will and capacity for resisting undesirable influences, and makes a man even less stable than he was.
In those cases in which the psychical nature of the patient is the object of action, hypnotism stands on the level of a serious operation, and is unfortunately often applied without sufficient understanding of the consequences of its use.
There exists another sphere in which hypnotism could be applied in medicine without any harm, namely the sphere of direct action (i.e., not through the mediation of the patient's psychical nature) on nerve centres, tissues, inner organs, and inner processes. Unfortunately, this sphere has been very little studied up to the present time.
Thus the limits of possible influence on a man with the aim of bringing him to a hypnotic state, as well as the limits of possible action on a man who is in a hypnotic state, are very well known and contain nothing enigmatic. The strengthening of the influence is possible only in the direction of strengthening the influence on the physical nature of the man apart from his psychic apparatus. But it is precisely to this direction that attention has been turned least of all. On the contrary, current conceptions of hypnotism admit far greater possibilities of action on man's psychical nature than exist in actual fact.
There exist, for instance, very many stories about mass hypnosis, but all these stories, in spite of their wide circulation, are the purest invention, and most often are merely repetitions of similar stories which existed earlier.
I heard later that during the Prince of Wales' travels in India (in 1921 and 1922) the "rope trick" was sought for specially for him, but could not be found. In the same way India was searched for the "rope trick" for the Wembley exhibition of 1924, but it could not be found.
A man who knew India very well told me once that the only thing resembling the "rope trick" he had ever seen was some juggling by a Hindu conjuror with a thin wooden hoop at the end of a long bamboo rod. The juggler made the hoop run up and down the rod. This may possibly have started the legend.
In the 2nd and 3rd issues of Revue Métapshyschique for the year 1928, there is an article (by M C de Vesme) La Légende de l'hallucination collective à propos du tour de la corde pendue au ciel. The author gives a very interesting survey of the history of the "rope trick", citing descriptions of it by eye-witnesses, stories told by people who had only heard about it, and the history of attempts to find and establish the real existence of this trick. Unfortunately, however, while denying the miraculous, he himself makes several naïve assertions. For instance, he recognises the possibility of a "mechanical device concealed inside the rope" which enables the rope to stand upright so that a boy can climb it. In another place he speaks of a photograph of the "rope trick" in which one can distinguish a bamboo inside the rope.
Actually, if such a thing as a mechanical appliance inside the rope were possible, it would be even more miraculous than the "rope trick" as it is usually described. I doubt whether even European technique could contrive such a device to be placed inside a thin and, presumably, fairly long rope, which would make the rope stand upright and allow a boy to climb it. How a half-naked Hindu juggler could have such a rope is totally incomprehensible. The "bamboo" inside the rope is still more interesting. The question arises here how the rope could be coiled if it had a bamboo inside it. Altogether the author of this very interesting survey of the study of Indian miracles has, on this point, got himself into a very strange position.
But stories of the miracles of fakirs make a necessary part of the descriptions of impressions of India and Ceylon. Not very long ago I happened to see a French book whose author relates his experiences in Ceylon in recent years. To do him justice he caricatures everything he describes and makes no pretensions to seriousness. But he describes another "rope trick" in Kandy, this time with certain variations. Thus the author, who was hidden on a verandah, was not hypnotised by the "fakir" and therefore did not see what his friends saw. Besides this, one of them photographed the whole of the performance with a cinematograph camera.
"But when we developed the film the same night", writes the author, "there was nothing on it".
What is most amusing is that this author does not realise in what the most miraculous part of his last statement consists. But this persistence in the description of the "rope trick" and "mass hypnotism", that is, precisely what does not exist, is very characteristic.
The possibilities of self-hypnosis also are exaggerated. In reality, without the help of artificial means, self-hypnosis is possible only in a very feeble degree. By creating in himself a certain passive state, a man can weaken the resistance which comes, for example, from logic or common sense, and surrender himself wholly to some desire. This is the possible form of self-hypnosis. But self-hypnosis never attains the forms of sleep or catalepsy. If a man seeks to overcome some great resistance in himself, he uses narcotics. Alcohol is one of the chief means of self-hypnosis. The rôle of alcohol as a means of self-hypnosis is still entirely unstudied.
Suggestion must be studied separately from hypnotism.
Hypnotism and suggestion are constantly confused; the place which they occupy in life is therefore quite undetermined.
In reality, suggestion is the fundamental fact. Nothing would be altered if hypnotism did not exist in our life, but suggestion is one of the chief factors both in individual and in social life. If there were no suggestion, men's lives would have an entirely different form: thousands of the phenomena of the life surrounding us would be quite impossible.
Suggestion can be conscious and unconscious, intentional and unintentional. The sphere of conscious and intentional suggestion is extremely small in comparison with the sphere of unconscious and unintentional suggestion.
From earliest childhood, from the moment of first conscious reception of external impressions, a man falls under the action of suggestions, intentional and unintentional. Certain feelings, rules, principles, and habits are suggested to him intentionally; and the ways of acting, thinking, and feeling against these rules, principles, and habits are suggested unintentionally.
This latter kind of suggestion arises from the tendency to imitation which everyone possesses. People say one thing and do another. A child listens to one thing and imitates another.
In children, and also in grown-up people, the capacity for imitation greatly increases their suggestibility.
The dual character of suggestion gradually develops duality in man himself. From very early years he learns to remember that he must show the feelings and thoughts demanded of him at the given moment and never show what he really thinks and feels. This habit becomes his second nature. As time passes he begins, also through imitation, to trust alike the two opposite sides in himself which have developed under the influence of opposite suggestions. But their contradictions do not trouble him, first because he can never see them together, and second because the capacity not to be troubled by these contradictions is suggested to him because nobody ever is troubled.
Home-education, the family, elder brothers and sisters, parents, relatives, servants, friends, school, games, reading, the theatre, newspapers, conversations, further education, work, women (or men), fashion, art, music, the cinema, sport, the jargon accepted in his circle, the accepted wit, obligatory amusements, obligatory tastes and obligatory taboos — all these and many other things are sources of new and ever new suggestions. These suggestions are invariably dual, i.e., they simultaneously create what must be shown and what must be hidden.
It is impossible even to imagine a man totally free from suggestions, one who really thinks, feels, and acts as he himself can think, feel, and act. In his beliefs, in his views, in his convictions, in his ideas, in his feelings, in his tastes, in what he likes or dislikes, in every movement and in every thought, a man is bound by a thousand suggestions to which he submits, even without noticing them, suggesting to himself that it is he himself who thinks in this way and feels in this way.
This submission to external influences so far permeates the whole life of a man, and his suggestibility is so great that his ordinary, normal state can be called semi-hypnotic. We know very well that at certain moments and in certain situations, a man's suggestibility can increase still more and he can reach complete loss of any independent decision or choice whatever. This is particularly clearly seen in the psychology of a crowd, in mass movements of various kinds, in religious, revolutionary, patriotic, or panic moods, when the seeming independence of the individual man completely disappears.
All this taken together constitutes one side of the "life of suggestion" in a man.
The other side lies in himself and consists, first, in the submission of his so-called "conscious", i.e., intellectual-emotional, functions to influences and suggestions coming from the so-called "unconscious" (i.e., unperceived by the mind) voices of the body, the countless obscure consciousnesses of the inner organs and inner lives; and second, in the submission of all these inner lives to the completely unconscious and unintentional suggestions of the reason and the emotions.
The first, i.e., the submission of the intellectual-emotional functions to the instinctive, has been the more worked out in psychological literature — though the greater part of what is written on these subjects must be taken very cautiously. The second, i.e., the submission of the inner functions to the unconscious influences of the nerve-brain apparatus has been very little studied. Meanwhile, this last side offers enormous interest from the point of view of the understanding of suggestion and suggestibility in general.
The inner consciousnesses are a provincial crowd, listening to the opinions of the inhabitants of the capital, following their tastes, imitating their manners. What the "mind" and "feeling" say, what they do, what they wish, what they fear, becomes instantly known in the most distant, in the darkest corners of the organism, and of course it is interpreted and understood by each in its own way. A perfectly casual paradoxical idea of the brain-consciousness, which "comes into the head" casually and is forgotten casually, is accepted by some "connective tissue" as a revelation, and it begins to "live" in conformity with this idea. The stomach can be entirely hypnotised by certain absurd tastes and aversions of a purely "aesthetic" character; heart, liver, kidneys, nerves, muscles may all, in this or some other way, submit to suggestions which are unconsciously given to them by thoughts and emotions. A considerable number of the phenomena of our inner life, particularly of undesirable phenomena, is in reality dependent on these suggestions. The existence and character of these obscure consciousnesses also explain a great deal in the world of dreams.
The mind and feeling forget, or know nothing about, this crowd which listens to their voices, and they often talk too loudly when it would be better for them to be silent or not to express their opinions which sometimes, unimportant and transient for themselves, may produce a very strong impression on the inner consciousnesses. We must remember about all these obscure people, listening at the doors of our consciousness, drawing their own conclusions from what they hear, submitting with incredible ease to temptations and fears of every kind, and starting to rush about in panic at some simple thought that we may miss a train or lose a key.
We must learn to consider the importance of these inner panics, or, for example, the terrible depression that suddenly seizes us at the sight of a grey sky and rain beginning. This means that the inner consciousnesses have caught a casual phrase: "What nasty weather", said with great feeling, and they have understood it in their own way, that now the weather will always be nasty, that there is no way out, and that it is not worth while living or working any longer.
But all this refers to unconscious self-suggestion. The limits of voluntary self-suggestion in our ordinary state are so insignificant that it is impossible to speak of any practical application of this force. Yet against all the facts, the idea of self-suggestion inspires confidence. At the same time the study of involuntary suggestions and of involuntary suggestibility can never be popular because, more than anything else can do, it destroys millions of illusions and shows a man what he really is. A man in no case wishes to know this, and he does not wish it because there acts against it the strongest suggestion existing in life, the suggestion which persuades a man to be and to appear other than he is.
1905-1929.