Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Volume IV - Part 3
Fragment ID: 14771
It is a very small number of dreams that can be so explained [as arising from external causes]1 and in many cases the explanation is quite arbitrary or cannot be proved. A much larger number of dreams arise from subconscient impressions of the past without any stimulus from outside. These are the dreams from the subconscient which are the bulk of those remembered by people who live in the external mind mostly. There are also the dreams that are renderings of vital movements and tendencies habitual to the nature, personal formations of the vital plane. But when one begins to live within then the dreams are often transcriptions of one’s experiences on the vital plane and beyond that there is a large field of symbolic and other dreams which have nothing to do with memory. Of course it has been proved that a very long and circumstantial dream can happen in a second or two, so that objection to Bergson’s statement does not stand. But there are also prophetic dreams and many others. Memory holds together the experiences but it is absurd to identify consciousness (even in the restricted European idea of consciousness) with memory. This theory of memory is part of Bergson’s fundamental idea that Time is everything. As for spirituelle, in Europe mostly no distinction is made between the spiritual and the mental or vital.
1 The correspondent, who had just read Henri Bergson’s «L’energie spirituelle», asked whether Bergson is right that many dreams are brought about by external causes. He also noted that Bergson seems to consider all consciousness as memory. Finally he wondered why Bergson used the word “spirituelle” in the title of the book since there was hardly anything about “spirit” in it. – Ed.