Article August 30, 1913 Issue

DREAMS DISPELLED

ISRAEL GITTELSON.

It seems that the word "dream" is derived from an Icelandic word which means "to harm, hurt, try to hurt." It also stands for whatever is fanciful and unreal, and in Christian Science it may be said to represent the illusive nature of mortal existence. I have read many opinions on this subject, but none have proved satisfactory, though one writer comes to a close analogy when he says that "a dream is like a running clock without hands; it indicates nothing, it means nothing." To the sleeper, however, a dream is real, and it is obvious that this sleep dream is symbolic, and is paralleled with the mortal dream. Mrs. Eddy says in Science and Health (p. 530): "The dream has no reality, on intelligence, no mind; therefore the dreamer and dream are one, for neither is true nor real."

Some time ago I dreamed I was visiting Russia, and as I landed on its border a soldier seized me by the arm, saying in good English, "You are my prisoner!" I had never seen him before, nor did I ever hear of a Russian soldier speaking English (no more so than Eve's serpent could speak Hebrew). I had an American pass, which he disregarded and insisted that I was a subject of Russia, although I had emigrated to America forty years previous when a child. I felt his tight grip on my arm, and the fear and suffering were so real that I actually shed tears. Nothing would persuade him to release me, and as he was pushing me forcibly into a cell I awoke. Oh, how thankful I was to God that this was only a dream! But it kept me thinking until I concluded that the mortal conception of matter and suffering, pain and sin, is just such a dream,—full of nothingness,—and that the only remedy is to awaken to the truth, to awake into that higher state of spiritual consciousness where there are neither sleeping dreams nor waking dreams, where all is light, all is Truth, all is perfection; therefore all is harmony, peace, and health.

In "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 28) Mrs. Eddy writes: "In proportion as mortals turn from this mortal and material dream, to the true sense of reality, everlasting Life will be found to be the only Life." A realization of this fact brings peace and abiding progress. Jacob's dream was symbolic of his desire to rise higher in the scale of being, and he awoke from it to a higher state of consciousness, to see that material gain is unreal, and that God is All-in-all. So we read in Genesis, that Jacob on awaking exclaimed: "Surely the Lord is in this place; and I knew it not." Pharaoh's dream was real to him while he was in it, and it is the same with mortal dreamers, who do not stop to reason that the real man, the image and likeness of God, cannot suffer, sin, or die. The Christian Scientist who is a faithful student of Mrs. Eddy's text-book and its teachings, who is awake, and who guards the avenues to his thought, will gain harmony and peace.

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