Editorial March 10, 1945 Issue

What Dreams?

Paul Stark Seeley

When we were in Cape Town, South Africa, my good helpmeet had a dream. She dreamed she was telephoning to one who was in our home in Oregon. They talked chattily, as ladies like to do, and without much regard for the transoceanic telephone rates. When the chitchat was ended, my wife bethought herself to ask the operator what the toll was for the call. The operator said, "One hundred and eighty-nine dollars and seventy-five cents." That ended the dream; my wife woke up!

That is the way with dreams. They often are enjoyable for a time. Then something happens that shocks one into awakening. Sometimes we are reluctant to let go of the dream, even though the alarm clock is calling us.

A dream is rather a good illustration of the nature of the temporary material sense of existence, which seems so very real to the thinker who consents to accept at par the testimony of the material senses. Educated to believe that what he physically sees, hears, and feels is the last word in reality, he wraps himself up in a bundle of self-deception and wonders why his life is so restricted, difficult, and often afflicted.

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