tsdd appendix 2 – dreams

(Appendix 2: Dreams)

 
“Q:  What are the “principles” which are active during dreams?

 
A:  The “principles” active during ordinary dreams – which ought to be distinguished from real dreams, and called idle visions – are Kama, the seat of the personal Ego and of desire awakened into chaotic activity by the slumbering reminiscences of the lower Manas.

 
Q:  What is the “lower Manas”?

 
A:  It is usually called the animal soul (the Nephesh of the Hebrew Kabalists). It is the ray which emanates from the Higher Manas or permanent EGO, and is that “principle” which forms the human mind – in animals instinct, for animals also dream. (the word “dream” means really “to slumber”)

 
The combined action of Kama and the “animal soul”, however, are purely mechanical. It is instinct, not reason, which is active in them.

 
During the sleep of the body they receive and send out mechanically electric shocks to and from various nerve-centres. The brain is hardly impressed by them, and memory stores them, of course, without order or sequence.

 
On waking these impressions gradually fade out, as does every fleeting shadow that has no basic or substantial reality underlying it. The retentive faculty of the brain, however, may register and preserve them if they are only impressed strongly enough.

 
But, as a rule, our memory registers only the fugitive and distorted impressions which the brain receives at the moment of awakening. This aspect of “dreams” however, has been sufficiently observed and is described correctly enough in modern physiological and biological works, as such human dreams do not differ much from those of the animals.

 
That which is entirely terra incognita for Science is the real dreams and experiences of the higher EGO, which are also called dreams, but ought not to be so termed, or else the term for the other sleeping “visions” changed.”

 
H. P. Blavatsky