r is made through the dream-images which are mechanical
phenomena like mirages.

Nightmares which have purely mechanical images may terrify us, give us
a great shock, but the shock does not enter our souls. We are
surprised, in the morning, to find that the bristling horror of the
night seems now just nothing--dwindled to nothing. And this is because
what was a purely material obstruction in the physical flow, temporary
only, is indeed a nothingness to the living, integral soul. We are
subject to such accidents--if we will eat pancakes for supper. And
that is the end of it.

But there are other dreams which linger and haunt the soul. These are
true soul-dreams. As we know, life consists of reactions and
interrelations from the great centers of primary consciousness. I may
start a chain of connection from one center, which inevitably
stimulates into activity the corresponding center. For example, I may
develop a profound and passional love for my mother, in my days of
adolescence. This starts, willy-nilly, the whole activity of adult
love at the lower centers. But admission is made only of the upper,
spiritual love, the love dynamically polarized at the upper centers.
Nevertheless, whether the admission is made or not, once establish the
circuit in the upper or spiritual centers of adult love, and you will
get a corresponding activity in the lower, passional centers of adult
love.

The activity at the lower center, however, is denied in the daytime.
There is a repression. Then the friction of the night-flow liberates
the repressed psychic activity explosively. And then the image of the
mother figures in passionate, disturbing, soul-rending dreams.

The Freudians point to this as evidence of a repressed incest desire.
The Freudians are too simple. It is _always_ wrong to accept a
dream-meaning at its face value. Sleep is the time when we are given
over to the automatic processes of the inanimate universe. Let us not
forget this. Dreams are automatic in their nature. The psyche
possesses remarkably few dynamic images. In the case of the boy who
dreams of his mother, we have the aroused but unattached sex plunging
in sleep, causing a sort of obstruction. We have the image of the
mother, the dynamic emotional image. And the automatism of the
dream-process immediately unites the sex-sensation to the great stock
image, and produces an incest dream. But does this prove a repressed
incest desire? On the contrary.

The tru