22 April 1953

 

The following brief passage about sleep and dreams, is part of a longer, incompletely recorded talk.

 

When one sleeps, how can one distinguish the nature of the visions?

 

They do not leave the same impression at all.

In order to know things well, one must educate oneself, develop the conscious being. But there are all kinds of different things, there are mental and vital projections exactly as in the cinema; then there are visions you may have if you are exteriorised in the mental and vital regions; the great difference is that these dreams are imposed upon you, you are taken in...¹ Here a whole passage is missing. Then there are countless dreams without any connection which have no interest. For your brain is like a recording instrument: something comes and strikes hundreds of cells, each thing must strike a small note. Things will strike the brain – convolutions a remembrance, an impression, all kinds of tiny memories – it depends on your condition. But you have the control, ideas follow each other in accordance with a certain logic; there is also a mechanism which puts memories into movement through contagion, and the movement through contagion is made according to logic (what you call logic). But when you sleep, that faculty usually goes to sleep, so all those little cells are left to themselves and the connections - like the connections of electric wires - don’t work any longer, things come the wrong way round or in any direction at all. You must not look for a meaning. It was a contagion: because this one was vibrating, that other also vibrated, one vibration gives rise to another. Your logic works no longer. And you have fantastic dreams, absurd dreams.

 

¹Here a whole passage is missing 

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It is very difficult to put one’s mind into repose. The majority of men get up very tired, more tired than when they went to sleep. One must learn how to quieten one’s mind, make it completely blank, and then when one wakes up, one feels refreshed. One must relax the whole mind in the pure white silence, then one has the least number of dreams. 

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