Lehal Library

There are some important exceptions to this general put-down of dreams, but for the vast majority of people in our society today, dreams are not things that serious people concern themselves with. What are we to make of a person who takes exception to this general belief, who claims to have had experiences during sleep or other forms of unconsciousness that were not only impressive to him, but which he feels were real? Suppose this person claims that on the previous night he had an experience of flying through the air over a large city which he soon recognized as New York. Further, he tells us that not only was this "dream" intensely vivid, but that he knew at the time that it was not a dream, that he was really in the air over New York City. And this conviction that he was redly there sticks with him for the rest of his life, despite our reminding him that a sleeping man could not really be fiying by himself in the air over New York City. Probably we will ignore a person who makes such a report, or we will politely (or not so politely) inform him that he is becoming a little weak in the head or crazy, and suggest that he see a psychotherapist. If he is insistent about the reality of his experience, especially if he has other strange experiences too, we may with the best of intentions see about committing him to a mental hospital. Our "traveler," on the other hand, if he is smart, will quickly learn not to talk about his experiences. The only problem with that, as I have found from talking to many such people, is that he may worry about whether he's going crazy. For the sake of argument, let's make our "traveler" even more troubling. Suppose in his account he goes on to say that after flying over New York City for a while he flew down to your apartment. There he saw you and two other people, unknown to him, conversing. He describes the two people in detail, and mentions a few things about the topic of conversation occurring in the minute or so he was there. Let's suppose he is correct. At the time he had his experience, you were holding a conversation on the topic he mentions with two people who fit our "traveler's" descriptions. What do we make of things now? The usual reaction to a hypothetical situation of this type is that it is all very interesting, but as we know that it could not possibly happen, we need not seriously think about what it might mean. Or we might comfort ourselves by invoking the word "coincidence." A marvelous word, "coincidence," for relieving mental upsetsl