The royal roads to the unconscious...

Before meeting Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud, I had never thought there could be people stirred to a much greater extent by the phenomenon of dreams than I was! Ignorance was bliss!

Amongst the numerous things that have fascinated me in my life are my dreams. I sometimes repent not having maintained a diary of the dreams I had had.

I have had many random thinking bouts totally devoted to Dreams. Why are they so elusive? Why can’t I remember them once I wake up? Why can’t I have the same feeling, the same adrenaline race once I wake up? Why is the wonderland so coveted? The questions were endless…

At the time of my examinations, I used to have a dream which goes like this,

“I am passing through one of the crowded market bylanes. The smallest features of the faces of the people, the various colors in the scene and the noises etc are accentuated, sharp and life like. After taking a turn to the left, I see two really hefty men engaged in a battle. Out of concern I reach out to them trying to conciliate. The moment this happens, they would forget about their ongoing fight and start beating the hell out of me!”

This particular dream was quite consistent too. Every time, at the end of the dream I would get up from sleep with a sand dry throat, inevitably! This seemingly non-offensive…rather funny dream was bothering me to an extent I couldn’t just ignore and walk away! I had to do something!

Around that time I was introduced to the psychologist, Sigmund Freud. The maverick kind! The kind of heuristic impact this fellow’s work had on the evolution of the subject of psychology can itself be too large a topic for even a Ph.D. dissertation. His importance can be gauged by this statement, “The history of psychology can be broadly divided into two periods, before Freud and after Freud!”

While going through the Psychoanalytical Theory by Freud, I came to know that one can have (at least a little) control over his dreams. This is called as ‘Lucid Dreaming’. Had I been told the same thing by someone else, I would certainly have refuted the idea outright! Freud says that we can actually participate in our dreams and can actively change the course of the dream if we DECIDE! It was intriguing.

That day I went to bed with a vengeance!

I remember, 5 minutes before going to sleep I was continuously thinking about my reaction if the men start hitting me again.

Sometime that night I started having the same dream! This time I was surprisingly more anxious while passing through the same market as if I knew what was in store for me! I took that turn, saw the men fighting, I went ahead trying to conciliate. Till this time everything was rather mundane, boring…But as soon as one of them raised his fist to impart a blow on my face, the tempo of the dream suddenly changed to the one, shot with a high-speed camera! Very articulate, each motion emphasized! I reached to his arm, arrested its motion towards me and gave a crunching blow to him on his stomach! Phew…the poor thing was thrown in the air, backwards in an embryonic position!! He went straight through the two walls behind him in succession and finally rested on the debris! I gazed at the other man; he was watching aghast, visibly stoned by what he just saw. The feeling was mutual, though I was happy at what I did but I still couldn't believe I did.

I felt like GOD!

I woke up with a strange satiated feeling. I switched on the lights and immediately jotted down everything in great detail.

That dream could never bother me again. Felt as if the two men were successfully trapped in a gothic dungeon never to be seen again!!!