DREAMS OF CONTEMPORARY EVENTS dream meaning

There are unquestionably certain people who, in their dreams, witness events that are actually taking place at the time.A lady I knew, Mrs. P., who lived in Gloucester Place, W., dreamed one night she was in a big seaport town, where the streets were all numbered and laid out in blocks according to the American system, and where in one part of the city the tramlines descended over a series of plateaux. The houses were very lofty, and in one street a single hotel occupied an entire block. Shortly after her arrival, the entire town shook and heaved under the influence of a stupendous earthquake; houses collapsed like packs of cards, and, amidst the most appalling shrieks and groans, the whole city burst into a lurid sheet of fire. Everywhere was the wildest confusion and despair. People of all nationalities, from fair-skinned Europeans and yellow-visage Chinese — of which there were legions — to swarthy Dagos and bullet -headed negroes, vied with one another in their mad efforts to escape the falling bricks and burning timber. In trying to elude one death men only courted another, and the dreamer saw scores of human beings who leaped from burning buildings, only to be dashed to pieces on the cruel stone pavements. Nor was the heroic element wanting, for many men and women perished in their efforts to rescue the infirm and sick, and to help those to escape, who were either too old or too young to help themselves. For some time, the dreamer was merely a spectator, but very suddenly, and by some inconceivable impulse, she became imbued with personal interest in what was going on, and, labouring under the impression that her home and family were in danger, fought her way to get to them. The city was now no longer strange to her, and she found herself turning first to the right and then to the left in the most familiar and natural manner possible, until she came to 119th Street, where her anxious eyes immediately travelled to the house she imagined was her own. It was a mass of flames, and at one of the windows she saw the white and agonised faces of her husband and children.With the fury of a tigress she beat and pushed her way through the dense crowd of fugitives, whom she besought — but besought in vain — to assist her in the rescue of her family. Eventually she arrived opposite her house. Her husband and youngest child were still at the window clawing frantically at the iron bars, through which neither of them could crawl, and as soon as they saw her they yelled and grinned, and thrust out their hands at her. As she gazed at them, dumb with the agony of despair, there was a hideous rending, tearing and tottering of woodwork and masonry, the entire building fell to the ground with the noise of thunder, and, with this appalling crash still resonating in her ears, Mrs. P awoke. This dream occurred contemporary with the last great fire and earthquake at San Francisco, and those to whom she narrated it — namely, those who, like myself, knew the city — were assured that her description of it was exact in every detail. Here again projection may explain much.Mrs. P , forewarned by a super physical power of a danger threatening those between whom and herself there was a strong bond of spiritual sympathy, had in her sleep unconsciously projected herself to the spot where the catastrophe was taking place, hoping thereby to save those she loved from their impending fate.T. Charley, in his News from the Invisible World, furnishes another example of this type of dream, namely, as follows:”Dr. Donne and his wife lived for some time in London with Sir Robert Daury. Sir Robert having occasion to go to Paris, took the doctor along with him, leaving his wife, who was in a delicate state of health, at Sir Robert’s house. Two days after their arrival at Paris, Dr. Donne was left alone in the room where Sir Robert, and he, and some other friends had dined together. Sir Robert returned in half an hour, and as he had left so he found the doctor, alone; but in such an ecstasy and so altered in his looks as amazed Sir Robert to behold. He inquired the cause, and after some time the doctor told him he had seen a dreadful vision. “I beheld,” he said,” my dear wife pass twice by me through this room, with her hair hanging about her shoulders and a dead child in her arms.” A messenger was immediately despatched to England to inquire after Mrs. Donne; and it appeared that, at the very time Dr. Donne affirmed he had seen her, their child had died, and she had been completely prostrated with grief.”In this case I am inclined to believe the vision was due to projection on the part of Mrs. Donne — which projection had taken place during the delirium characteristic of her illness — and that the figures seen by Dr. Donne were actually those of her astral body and the spirit of the dead child.Of course, I do not assert that all vivid dreams are due to projection; many, I know, are merely caused by an over -tired or excited brain going through a recapitulation of the events of the day. For instance, when I was about fourteen years of age and at a public school, I was put under gas during the extraction of a couple of very firmly rooted grinders. Owing to some difficulty the dentist had in extracting them, I ”came to” before the operation was over, and suffered agonies. That night in my sleep I again went through the grim proceedings, detail for detail, from my entry into the surgery and the anxious gaze around for the dreaded instruments, to the final look at the gold-fish in the aquarium, before my jaws were propped open, and my nose and mouth enveloped in the soft and spongy cap, I had so uneasily remarked in the hands of the anaesthetist. Again I smelt the sweet and sickly odour of the gas; again I heard the voices of the doctor and dentist growing fainter and fainter till they died away altogether; and again there was a sudden blank, followed by an excruciating pain, in which I seemed to feel the entire upper part of my head slowly wrenched away from the lower. Youth undoubtedly magnifies all things — joys and sorrows and pains; and in our after-life we do not feel things so acutely as we did in our childhood. The torture of the rack, I am sure, was as nothing compared with the torture I endured in my sleep under those forceps; and then — blessed relief! — The diabolical cause of my suffering flew out, and the vague unearthly hum of voices grew louder and louder, till they finally became recognisable human accents; when, as I had actually done under the anaesthetic, I awoke. But it was all real — cruelly, wickedly real; and it was due, I have no doubt, to the overtired condition of my brain, which allowed the hyper-morbid memory-cells to have it all their own way.