43. Consciousness – Life – Form

What must first strike us about the world of dreams is the symbolic character that appears in its images. With a certain subtle attention to the colorful diversity of dream experiences, this character can become clear. From simple symbols to dramatic events, all intermediate stages can be found in this world that flits through the soul. One dreams of a conflagration; one wakes up and realizes that one had fallen asleep next to the lamp. The light of the lamp was perceived in the dream; but not as it presents itself to the senses in the ordinary world, but as a symbol, as a conflagration. Or you dream of a troop of riders that you hear trampling past; you wake up, and the horse trampling continues immediately as the beating of the clock, which has been symbolized in this way. - You dream of an animal scratching your face; when you wake up, you feel pain in that particular place, which has found its dream symbol in the way described. - A longer “dream could be something like the following. Someone dreams that he is walking through a forest. He hears a noise. As he continues walking, a person emerges from a bush and approaches him. The attacker shoots. At this moment, the dreamer wakes up and realizes that he has just knocked over the chair next to his bed. The impact of the chair has been transformed by the dream consciousness into the symbolic action described. In this way, external events or even internal facts, such as the example given above of the animal scratching, can be perceived as symbols through the dream. Affects and moods can also be represented in this way. For example, someone suffers from the oppressive feeling that an unpleasant event will occur for him in the next few days. In the dream, this feeling presents itself in such a way that he is in danger of drowning.