Dreams. Those things that we struggle to explain, and when we do, they don’t seem to ‘make sense’. I believe it’s Jung who said that if a dream ‘made sense’ it would not be a ‘dream’ (but don’t quote him on that). Plotinus of lycopolis describes the soul the same way one would describe a ‘dream’:
“The soul cannot be described at all except by phrases which would be nonsensical if applied to the body and its quality, or to the determinations of particular bodies” (Thomas Whittaker, ‘The Neo-Platonists’, 1901, p42)
The word itself shows us the astounding difference in how different people-groups interpret the world and its phenomena. In the language that you’re now reading, ‘dream’ comes from the proto-Germanic word ‘draugmas’ (etymonline version), and roughly means ‘illusion’, ‘deception’, ‘phantasm’, pretty much what we think a ‘dream’ really is.
Here’s the kicker, ‘Dream’ in Arabic (and in the Semitic languages) is a totally different concept — so different you’d think ‘dream’ is not the right/equivalent term!. It’s written as ‘حلم’ (pronounced ‘Hulum’; the same word in Hebrew), and, as ‘dream’ are, it’s layered with meanings (which I doubt could be summed up in English). It contains the same opening letter (ح, unpronounceable in English) used in words that signify ‘intelligence’, ‘erudition’, ‘wisdom’, ‘competence’ , and most notably ‘Truth’ (حق, pronounced Haq). It’s also one of God’s names in the Quran (الحليم; which includes the letter ي; indicating continuity), and it’s understood in the completely opposite sense to that which modernity has accustomed us.
Even in the west where positivism and phenomenalism have done a great deal of damage to people’s ability to think and reflect, there emerged a number of intellectuals who took this ‘dream’ stuff seriously. Jung for instance writes in the collaborative work ‘Man And His Symbols’ (1964), published posthumously, that:
“The two fundamental points in dealing with dreams are these: First, the dream should be treated as a fact, about which one must make no previous assumptions except that it somehow makes sense; the second, the dream is a specific expression of the unconscious” (1964, p18)
The Quran and Bible narrate the story of how Abraham nearly slew his son because he saw himself doing it in a dream. He was prevented from doing so last minute when — as he put the knife to his son’s throat — God suddenly called, telling him that he’d ‘fulfilled’ the ‘vision’ (I only use these approximately, the original Arabic terms are not fully translatable)
We read elsewhere that Joseph, Abraham’s great-grandson, had a similar encounter with ‘dreams’. He saw eleven planets ‘prostrating’ to him (‘prostration’ here is not in the physical sense of ‘bowing’ etc., but a shorthand for ‘servitude’, ‘complaisancy’, ‘compliance’). This ‘dream’ turned out to be allegorical, a clairvoyant episode, a ‘foresight’, as by the end of the story (Chapter 12 of the Quran) the ‘dream’ comes true, and the eleven planets turned out to be his own brothers! who are now paying homage (and allegiance) to their brother, a then powerful Egyptian high official.
There is a plethora of other examples, but these two give us the gist of it; that ‘dreams’ at least to the Semites are as real as life itself.
