All:
I am always trying to remember my dreams. Dates back to when I was a kid and had some determining dreams, that is to say, I had to work them out into reality so I could understand what the dream was about.

We don't remember our dreams, according to doctors, because there is a chemical in that part of the brain that deals with dreams that isn't good at retaining memory very well.

Dreams seems to be something on the order of extreme logic. One small event can mean a dozen simutaneous events that all carry a unifying 'picture'. So trying to make sense of dreams when you awake makes for confusion. Some dreams are simple. Some are that complex.

When I was a kid I remember a full color dream of Robin Hood, who was sort of holding a model airplane, but the plane was big enough for one to fly in, and he kept spinning this propellar with one hand, like you would a model airplane. I kept telling Robin Hood that I was dreaming. And he kept telling me it wasn't a dream. But all the time we are talking this propellar keeps falling off, and he has to put it back on, like a model airplane (tho this airplane is big enough for one to fly in)...and he spins it again, and the same conversation ensues. This dream was probably one of my earliest ones of trying to figure out....

It was really simple logic. I wasn't going anywhere in my young life, and it was presented as an airplane whose propellar keeps falling off. The Robin Hood gear and color dream was probably my whimsical nature and sense of fun.

Seems Bradbury got it down to a science, some of this dreaming ...where he is well disciplined to put a lot of this down onto paper. Before it dissipates... Wow!

Remembered dreams are the basis of a great deal of literature. A perfect example is "Kublai Khan" by S.T. Coleridge. He woke from a fantastical dream, began writing it down, got interrupted, and lost it forever. The fragment that remains is pretty awesome, though!

Great poem!!!

That's the point of the dream journal. You keep it by your bedside. If you write AS SOON AS you wake up, it's amazing what you can remember. But five minutes later, it's gone. Pretty amazing.

I don't know whether or not it is useful, but I think the theory is that if you look for recurring images and themes, they may help you find your way to some enlightenment as to things you are working through on a subconscious level.

Mr. Dark:

That may be, but sometimes delving too deep into the unconscious is dangerous. Maybe things are hidden away for a reason. Sometimes a little repression can do a world of good.

This reminds me of a thought I had about Schizophrenics who hear voices. I was studying them in my psyhology class, and we watched a video that played a recording of the actual voice heard by a schizophrenic women. Pretty scary for sure. In fact, it was probably the scariest voice I could imagine, and the things it said chilled me deep down.
Anyway, I was thinking perhaps this is actually the voice of a "demon" should they exist, or else the subconscious voice of the individual which strives to discourage. Either way, I thought there may always be this voice constantly bombarding all of us, trying to persuade us to do or think God knows what. Maybe the "normal" person's brain is able to repress the actual hearing of the voices, whereas schizophrenics' brains lack that capacity, thus enabling them to hear the voice. If this is the case, then there is no doubt that repression is a blessing on some level

Well, this ain't along Bradbury lines, but...what would this world be without 'asides' anyway? And isn't THAT what Dickens literature is all about...?

This discussion ...
...brings to mind my most crazy job I ever held. It was for the 'Graham Rockley Motivational Institute'. Hired thru a simple interview at the main library at Northwestern University, outside of Chicago, I went to work having absolutely no idea what it was I was hired to do, other than 'write'. But what I wrote about...was Rockley's principles in motivating small business owners, specifically in the chiropractic profession, to get their employees to do better work.

He termed this technique, 'Power Communication'....a means whereby a subtle suggestions are thrown into the mix of everyday and produces certain results. I wound up nearly having a nervous breakdown in my 3 week stint there. It was obvious, looking back at it years later, that this 'Power Communication' technique was readily used on me.

After I wrote thru the night and turned this completed "insightful" manuscript to Rockley, he made a remark I shall always remember. The work I produced was very interesting...but he had to let me go because we had "detuned".

The methods of the mind, the soul, the spirit, is overburdened with all sorts of dangers. Scripture says stay away from all that stuff. I guess it's like sending a puppy out into traffic. There are a lot of things there that one will never be equipped to handle.....if he is to remain himself.

That is right, Nard. Dickens greatest writing often takes place with a few characters sitting around a fireplace sipping some port. He begins, I believe with Martin Chuzzlewitt in having a main theme to his books but he couldn't help himself even then with going off on tangents. Pickwick Papers, his first so called novel, you can see he could give two damns about plot. It is really not a novel in the same sense that Dandelion Wine is not one, or so I think.

This "Power Communication" is what, brainwashing? I just love how these companies always buy what is essentially New Age garbage to sap the last drip out of their employees.

Yestermorrow:
I thank God that I've never heard anything like that. I really do. A sound mind is taken for granted. I would not be appreciating a lot of things that I do now if mine were somehow reduced. Just think. How religious would or could a person be with extreme mental handicap? A slight of chemicals here can make one hell of a difference to your world outlook, too much there can incapacitate you.

Not sure I'm comfortable with the idea of repressing, or voluntarily refusing to understand, the workings of the subconscious. Some great literature (Charles Brockden Brown, ETA Hoffman, Hermann Hesse, and EA Poe come immediately to mind) work toward identifying what is going on "inside" the human. While they end up writing gothic and dark novels, the attempt to understand what is "within" seems important.

The idea that we shouldn't "play" in this arena because of the risk seems to parallel the arguments against reading in F451 -- that we don't want to rattle the boat or risk unhappiness or conflict (whether internal or inter-personal).

According to a lot of psycho-therapy, repression is the root of the problem. Confronting ourselves and our "demons" seems to be the only way to "let the monsters out of the closet" so we can honestly deal with them. Isn't this what good literature does?

The human condition is constantly being altered by outside influences. Imagine a world where the subconscious mind was probed and addressed prior to prescribing the massive doses of medication readily available for sedation and placation of our issues and malodies in today's troubled social structure. We are over-medicating our youth and the repercussions of that trend haven't even begun to manifest in the bigger picture.

The dream state does hold the potential for some answers, but remains evasive to probe. A dream journal is a great idea. I approach the dream state from the opposite perspective by using a technique of light meditation prior to sleep while trying to inject thoughts I'd like to dream about. Sometimes it works, other times not. Amazingly, I do remember when the thought projections are successful.

When you consider how little of the brain we engage on a typical day, who wouldn't want to explore what remains untapped?


[This message has been edited by Celestial (edited 12-29-2003).]

I agree with 95% of what 'Ought Not' posted....

Mr. Dark:
Scripture says... put on the mind of Christ, because the rest of who we are is unrepairable. It can't be fixed! The Mind of Christ brings about the human mind and spirit as it was intended.

Here, a 15 second scripture read-bite:
Colossians 4, verse 9-10:
"Don't lie to each other, for you have stripped off your old evil nature and all its wicked deeds. In its place you have clothed yourselves with a brand-new nature that is continually being renewed as you learn more and more about Christ who created this new nature within you."

In some sense I agree with Mr Dark and in some I do not. I cannot say much about those authors except Poe so thanks, Mr Dark, for giving me ideas for some future reading. I was watching an interesting, though depressing and disrespectful in ways, show on the History channel, I think, about the peculiar deaths of certain famous individuals. Poe was given a good deal of time with the cause of death unknown. But the theme of his life was that he was almost never happy. I do not know if this is true but the program said that the reason he wrote on the darker subjects is that the public craved them but he rather write in other areas. I'm sure, Mr Dark, that you would know more about this with your critical eye.

Celestial:

You're right. Why would a doctor be considerate and have patience with a child when they can dope them up? I heard recently somebody say that Tom Sawyer's and Huckleberry Finn's don't exist today because they would be so medicated their personality would be just like the kids who read during recess.

Nard:

I just reread this thread and the truest statement that I've seen is your thought on belief. You believe, like I do, that belief is not enough. It is better than nothing, yes, but not what a religious person should feel contented with. I think a lot of people are lazy with their faith and have an idea that they are set up for a nice lawn chair and some iced tea in Heaven.

You guys raise some interesting points, but to get back to the topic for the time being, this reply came by way of the Booksleuth Forums at Abebooks.

From:� MessyJames

Food For Thought by Roberts Gannaway.

It was turned into Love Hungry on Roald Dahl's Tales from the Dark Side.

Dandelion,

Forgive me for going off topic but, here goes -

Celestial and Ought Not,

Both of you may have unintentionally lobbed a potential firebomb with your comments on over-medicating children. (Then again, maybe I'm the only one with concerns in this area.)

As the parent of a child diagnosed with ADHD, I can avow the benefits of medicating children who desperately need it. My wife and I spent 4 years pursuing other avenues of remedy for our daughter, partly because we were convinced, like you, that our youth are over-medicated. Turns out, our darling daughter does have a problem that has responded beautifully to medication. We kick ourselves now for delaying relief to a problem that is so obvious to us now. To expect her to somehow how with her problem without medication would be like trying to have her cope with nearsightedness without corrective lenses.

Would Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer be medicated today? I don't know. But if they had problems that could be helped by the use of medication, I think to not do so in the hopes of "nurturing" a free spirit would be close to criminal.

Otherwise, and as always, a fascinating thread.

Pete

If we're getting into analyzing dreams, I had a particularly vivid one the other night which either lasted a long time or I kept going back into it. It was about three little boys, aged about 9-12. Two were brothers and the other was a friend. All three had names in the dream though on waking I could only remember the middle one was Willie. It was presented as if it were a children's book first published around 1911 and updated about 40 years later, so that during their travels they met celebrities contemporary to the times and so on. In other words, a popular story which might even be updated again into a movie. I was amused by the copy of the book, the later printing, but not so amused that it was so well-used several pages were torn out. For some reason I had to read the whole story and was wondering where to get another copy of this now-rare, out-of-print, book. In the story they were traveling cross-country by any means at their disposal: hitching rides in cars, stowing away in trains and trucks, or even "borrowing" a car they were underaged to drive. All through it they kept reminding each other not to do anything that would show they'd had "help," such as accepting gifts they couldn't possibly have carried across the country, as they'd made this bet with friends that they'd hike from Washington State to New York State, then back across country to Washington State and south to California, and to look big to their friends they had to make the entire journey on foot! They knew that by accepting rides they were "cheating," yet continued to seek them out hoping no one would "tell" on them. As they neared home, after all sorts of adventures traveling cross country and back, there was a lot of discussion about ditching the car they had, so they wouldn't be caught driving it, and walking the last 30 miles or so to be welcomed as heroes. About this time, they came to a farmhouse where the family was very friendly and tried to help them, but the "help" included gifts the boys viewed with suspicion. One gift was a slingshot and one boy was saying, man, if we'd had this earlier we could have caught our own food and another was saying, just throw them all away and run. They then became alarmed and decided to make a run for it. This dream was just so vivid, does anyone know of any actual story like it?

Pterran, I feel for ya. The currently-available medications were not yet invented when I was in school, so I did the whole thing "the hard way" and can never be sure what life might have been like were they available then. Then the arrival of the Prozac group of drugs was accompanied by such horror stories I again delayed until starting on Zoloft after a lifetime of hell at the age of 32! There was this friend of mine and his father who gave me a terribly hard time about it, said the medication would make me "drug dependent," that it was a sign of character weakness not to get along without it, so on and so forth...but they didn't have to live my life and have no idea of the contrast!

Can you believe, I even caught hell from someone accusing me of being a suicidal maniac and taking the medicine just to avoid killing myself! This was a clear cut case of the pot calling the kettle black, as this individual was on Paxil, which is the EXACT same medicine as Zoloft! But oh, of course, I took the medicine because I was "crazy" while this person took it just to calm a perfectly normal set of nerves!

The difference when my dad went on Paxil was phenomenal. In fact, if it had been around when I was a kid I believe just as much would have been accomplished by US putting HIM on it--whether or not I took any myself! Now--you didn't hear this from me--and you must never, never give one person's prescription to another--but I know of a wife who did this very thing. She was prescribed the Paxil because she was a bundle of nerves due to her husband's behavior. She found that by slipping it into his cocoa, his behavior improved so drastically that she didn't need to take it!