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THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE.
being, they would have their individual experiences in consciousness, namely, feelings, sensations and the like, of which he cannot but be aware. But since this is not the case, it is clear that these phantoms have no individualities of their own, and merely play the part assigned to them in the drama of thought by the understanding of the dreamer. Hence, the dream-creatures are soul. less beings, and cannot be compared with men, into whose ears Vedanta unhesitatingly whispers the divine and vivifying formula of initiation, the “That thou
art."
* There is nothing in the nature of a dream to upset our notions of reality and life. It is merely a pictorial mode of thinking, and differs from waking hallucination in no important particular. There can be no doubting the fact that the primary mode of thought is pictorial, since words only replace images when we become familiar with langnage. Those born deaf and dumb have also no other method of thinking available to them than the one by means of images. Even the words we atter and hear give rise to images, but as practice enables us to grasp their significance with extreme rapidity, the images which they tend to invoke remain nascent, and, consequently, unperceived. It is only when our feelings are concerned in any particular idea, or train of thought, that mental images become visualised. A tyrant gloating over the downfall of his victim, for instance, can, owing to the intensity of the feeling of triumph, almost perceive the terror, the dismay, and the helplessness of the unfortunate object of his tyranny. And, when we allow ourselves to dwell upon the details of some highly agreeable or painful experience, the persons concerned in the affair seem to stand out before our very eyes, and in the positions which they had occupied at the time when the experience was an actuality. Under such circumstances, we are apt to forget our surroundings and to identify ourselves with the personality of the past, acting like the hero of the tale from the Arabian Nights, who, having built up a vast fortune, in imagination, from the proceeds of a basketful of eggs, and having successfully wooed, likewise in his imagination, the fairy-like daughter of his king, allowed himself to be angry with her, purposely to snub her for her high birth, and actually administered her' a kick which sent the basket flying out of the window, shattering his fool's paradise of a happy home along with the hopeful eggs. Our dream personality is exactly like the millionaire personality of the hero of this tale, and possesses no more indiziduality than that of a memory image visualised into perceptible form by the intensity of feelings and emotions.
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