Appendix: A Simple Guide to Dreams

Author: Zhang Ru

I. Basic Common Sense About Dreams

(1) The logic of dreams is the opposite of that of reality.

Dream Example 1: "The flames were burning fiercely, as if they were about to engulf me."

You feel incredibly hot. Looking around, you realize your house is on fire! Panic sets in, but just as you're about to escape, you wake up and discover that you've simply turned the electric blanket up too high and forgotten to turn it off.

The logic by which the same thing appears in dreams and in reality is completely opposite. In real life, our emotions and thoughts arise after we see something, and we easily question the specific reasons and causes that evoke our emotions. For example, seeing a tree makes us think of life, spring, and vitality; seeing a snake makes us think of its deadly venom; seeing fire might make us think of warmth and light. Such associations conform to our consistent daily cognitive patterns. If we abstractly define what we see as a kind of symbol, and compare the various emotions that arise to the interpretation of that symbol, then our waking thought process becomes interpretative. Symbols are at the bottom of the logic hierarchy, and emotions and meanings are derivatives that begin with symbols.

Dreams, on the other hand, are the opposite. In dreams, emotions and meanings always precede symbols. In dream example 1, the "I" in the dream did not feel the heat because I had seen or touched the flames, but rather dreamed of the flames because I felt the heat—and the flames here are not real flames—the real reason for the heat is an electric heater that was not turned off in reality! In this typical dream caused by physical stimulation, the heat stimulation caused by the electric heater in reality continuously affects the dream in the sleep state, which then causes the dream to make various responses and interpretations around the sensory stimulation of heat, thus resulting in the appearance of flames.

In reality, meaning interprets symbols. In dreams, symbols interpret meaning.

In fact, even in reality, using symbols to interpret meaning is a common phenomenon. Musicians use beautiful musical notes to express their emotions, painters use paintings to convey their artistic conception, and even in everyday conversations we constantly search for the most suitable language to express our meaning. These are all thought processes that move from meaning to symbols. Symbols and meanings are constantly transforming into each other, rather than simply pointing from one specific symbol to one or more specific meanings.

(2) What we dream about are emotions, not symbols.

Dream Example 2: "We embraced tightly, gazing together at the calm waters in the distance."

You stand on the beach, your beloved embracing you. Together you watch the sunset paint the sea with gold, stretching your shadows long, and the occasional gentle waves kiss your heels. You feel so content.

Dream Example 3: "Cold, dark, silent, I gradually sank into the sea, reaching out but unable to grasp that flickering sliver of light."

You sink into the sea, unable to see the sunlight or hear any sound. You let your body drift with the current, allowing the seawater to carry you elsewhere. Perhaps a sliver of sunlight shines in, and you try to reach out and grab it, only to find it quickly swept away by the churning water, plunging you back into darkness.

Dream Example 4: "If these cracks are not filled, the surging seawater will surely swallow everything."

You arrive at the seaside, but instead of a sandy beach, there's a massive concrete seawall, with the surging sea on the other side. Perhaps there's a door in the seawall, but the seawater isn't flowing in through that door; instead, it's creating cracks somewhere else in the seawall, seeping in from there. You search everywhere for something to fill the cracks and finally decide to use cars, one by one, to plug the leaks.

When it comes to dream interpretation, the most common question we encounter is probably, "What does dreaming about XXX mean?" However, the very question that arises is the first obstacle preventing us from understanding dreams—we are trying to interpret dreams, which are interpreted as symbols, using the habitual way of thinking that interprets symbols in terms of meaning. This misconception in our thinking ultimately leads us to focus too much attention on the images and symbols that appear in the dream, trying to find connections between symbols, only to find them to be bizarre, absurd, and illogical.

However, what we actually dream about are emotions, not the images presented in the dream! For a dream, what exactly you dream about is not the most important thing; what matters most is the emotion you feel when you dream about these things. The same image can have completely different interpretations in different situations, at different times, and with different people. This is not because the image itself has many rich and potentially contradictory interpretations, but because we are in different emotional states when we dream about these images, and we invoke these elements from our memories for completely different reasons.

In dreams 2, 3, and 4, the most important core image is "the sea." However, simply reading the written descriptions of these dreams reveals that their meanings are actually completely different. In dream 2, the ocean is calm and peaceful, even bathed in the golden glow of a sunset—a scene that can be described as "beautiful." In dream 3, the scene shifts to the sea, where the most prominent feature is that it submerges and engulfs "me," highlighting the helplessness and despair felt by "me" sinking into the sea. In dream 4, the seawater surges and churns, yet is blocked by a massive concrete dam, symbolizing the self-suppression of turbulent emotions within. In these three dreams, the same image manifests in completely different forms; it is actually a representation of three entirely different emotional states.

Now we will analyze these three dream examples in detail, hoping to help readers understand that the same symbolic image can express completely different or even contradictory meanings in completely different contexts. This is to remind readers that the core of a dream is never the image, but the emotion.

In Dream Example 2, the most important emotion is "satisfaction." A key action in the dream is appreciation, and the satisfaction seems to stem from the appreciation of the beautiful seascape. Based on the fundamental principle mentioned earlier that emotions take precedence over imagery in dreams, we can understand that although the satisfaction in the dream superficially comes from appreciating the beautiful scenery, the true source of this appreciation is likely other factors—a satisfying feeling in real life, expressed in the dream as the appreciation of the seascape. The detail of "embracing a lover" hints at this factor—the dreamer's true satisfaction is not from the beautiful seascape, but from the sweetness of love. The calm and vast ocean actually embodies the dreamer's yearning for the bright future of their love; the dreamer's beautiful imagination of their future love is directly transformed into the beautiful seascape. Here, although almost all the objects have changed, the core emotional factor remains unchanged. "Yearning and satisfaction for the bright future of love."

Dream examples 3 and 4 also satisfy this basic rule. In dream example 3, the scene shifts to the sea, the most important emotion is "despair," and the most prominent behavior is "sinking." This indicates that the dreamer believes her life situation is like slowly sinking in this sea, unable to exert any strength in her limbs, with nothing to hold onto, darkness and cold being the most direct feelings, and the only apparent hope seeming extremely distant and unattainable.

The emotions in Dream Example 4 are more complex than the previous two dreams, and our focus should still be on the emotions within the dream. The theme of this dream is actually "restraint." The churning seawater may represent some strong negative emotion, possibly anger or hatred, but the specifics are unclear. The huge dam blocking the seawater from flowing in actually refers to the dreamer's efforts to use their rationality to restrain this intense emotional impulse. The cracks in the dam naturally represent inner turmoil, and the detail of using a car to plug the cracks is quite special. This is because a car, as a means of transportation, is often associated with action, movement, and change. This may indicate that the dream is suggesting the need for concrete action to escape the predicament and to restrain oneself, rather than simply brooding over it.

(3) The purpose of dream interpretation is to interpret and understand emotions.

Emotions are complex. In our daily lives, we often use words such as anger, sadness, joy, hatred, despair, and depression to describe our emotional activities; however, such descriptions are inaccurate. First, emotions are always a dynamic process of development. They always begin somewhere, develop, reach a climax, and then subside or transform into a new and different emotion. One emotion can easily trigger another completely different emotion, and at the same time, it can be triggered by another emotion. Such a dynamic process is not easily summarized by a simple and specific word. Second, almost all emotions are divergent; they either subside or constantly generate new stimuli, and these new stimuli and new emotions are mostly not entirely the same in nature as the original emotional activity. This divergence creates differences. However, in a clear linguistic concept, a precise word to describe an emotion means summarizing all such emotional activities, which leads to the neglect of differences, the condensation of dynamic processes into static standards, and thus the inaccuracy of language arises. We thus see the boundaries of language.

Therefore, we must understand that the object of dream interpretation is not the bizarre plots and phenomena in the dream, but the emotional activity that evoked these plots and phenomena at the time of dreaming. In a dream, all plots and phenomena can deviate from reality, but only the emotional activity must originate from reality and be consistent with reality.

Dream Example 5: "I kept stabbing his body with a sharp blade, and it felt great."

It was in an abandoned city. No light, no people, no stars or moon. I stabbed him in the body with a knife; it felt good. So I stabbed again, and again.

Let's look at dream example 5. This is a typical short but not simple dream with a lot of blank space. It's considered blank because it contains an element that rarely occurs in daily life, but which, if it happens, would inevitably bring intense stimulation—murder. We've already pointed out that the core of a dream lies in emotions and stimulation. Once a strong stimulating element appears in a dream, it usually means the entire dream will revolve around that element. However, compared to our usual understanding of murder in reality, the content of this dream is clearly abnormal. Many emotional factors that should be closely related to murder are absent—the victim's identity is unknown, there is no blood, no fighting, no motive, and the victim shows absolutely no struggle or even reaction. But from the dream's description, the victim is indeed a living person. The scene is also intriguing. An abandoned city without anyone and a night sky without stars or a moon are extremely rare, and the absence of these common elements obviously has important underlying reasons.

If we don't try to understand the dreamer's emotions and empathize with them, our understanding of the dream can easily go astray. We might assume the dreamer's "pleasure" comes from their violent behavior in the dream, a release of repressed impulses, with the feeling of satisfaction stemming from this release. This interpretation has some merit, but it also has limitations, as it cannot fully and completely answer the unanswered questions in the dream. Why is the victim unidentified? Why is there no confrontation or fighting associated with the violence? Why does the violence only appear as a continuous act in the dream, as if this serious act of killing the same person can continue without actually killing them? Why is there no terror in a dream containing so many terrifying elements, with a predominantly pleasurable tone? Why are there no other people, or even stars and the moon, in the scene? Why is it that sometimes the release of repressed impulses results in killing, and sometimes in being killed? These questions cannot be reasonably explained. Most importantly, the emotions in a dream are the driving force behind its content, and the true source of these emotions is real life. Therefore, we cannot assume that the dream content is the source of the emotions within the dream.

Therefore, based on the principle of prioritizing emotions in dreams, we need to find a separate possible interpretation. The most prominent emotion in the dream is "pleasure," so "pleasure" is the starting point for the interpretation. We cannot place murder at the center of the dream simply because the most intense phenomenon in the dream is murder, and this act of murder seems so eye-catching from the waking perspective. To trace the emotional motivation that triggered the dream in reality, we can ask the dreamer about their experiences in real life and their emotional reactions when recalling the dream to find clues. In this case, the dreamer is a 19-year-old sophomore male. The dream actually occurred around the time of his breakup, and it happened right after he finished his college entrance exams and entered a new school environment. This gives us a clue: breakup, setbacks in the college entrance exams, and a new environment can easily cause a young person to experience intense self-doubt. The pleasure in the dream actually comes from the inner growth that accompanies this self-doubt; the dreamer is going through a process of maturing from a boy to a man.

In a more specific analysis, the act of killing is precisely an exaggerated and intensified manifestation of self-denial. The victim is not without identity, but rather represents the part of oneself that needs to be discarded during the process of change—the aspect that the dreamer subjectively and strongly attempts to alter. Because this process of self-change and reshaping is not yet complete during the dream, the killing in the dream is an ongoing process without an end. Since the victim corresponds to the part of the self that needs to be discarded, the dreamer's most prominent emotional experience in the dream is the attempt to escape this shadow of themselves. This confrontation is inherently unequal; therefore, we can only see a one-sided catharsis and suppression in the dream. There is no intense confrontation between the two individuals. Furthermore, although the altered self is changing, it remains in the memory and has not been completely erased. Thus, the victim in the dream seems to be perpetually in a state of being killed yet never truly dying. Moreover, we can go further and interpret the peripheral content. The absence of any other people in the scene indicates a completely private process, an internal psychological activity unrelated to complex social relationships. Similarly, the nighttime setting and the absence of stars and moon suggest this might be a process "unseen by the light," indicating the dreamer's desire to remain unseen by outsiders. Seeing one's changed state, perhaps especially because of a desire to avoid seeing the past one desperately tries to deny. The city may refer to civilized society and ethics, particularly those cities characterized by highly developed skyscrapers but simultaneously deserted. According to the fundamental principle of prioritizing emotion in dreams, this connection arises because we often experience a similar feeling beneath the edifice of civilized society and ethics as when we first enter a highly developed metropolis: these are direct results of thousands of years of human civilization, born from long-term, gradual accumulation, possessing a powerful oppressive force almost impossible for an individual to resist, always standing on the "right" side, and in which we all live. Because the interaction between each individual and the overall social culture is personalized, an individual's understanding of social culture usually doesn't specifically involve other individuals. The city in the dream merely represents the relationship between social culture and the individual, without involving the masses living in society. Thus, many times, the city image appearing in dreams in this emotionally stimulating form is deserted. Furthermore, the city in the dream also possesses a sense of "abandonment," indicating that certain ethical and moral elements within the dreamer are undergoing a process of collapse, or rather, they are experiencing a reshaping of their worldview.

(4) Dreams lack reflection

The function of dreams is the release of emotions, not the generation of emotions. The generation of emotions usually stems from certain very specific real-world factors. Either some external stimulus triggers a certain emotion, or our in-depth thinking about a particular issue causes an emotional reaction. In other words, for a memory detail to evoke an emotional response, it must first be noticed and processed by consciousness; otherwise, the detail will be overwhelmed and dissipated by a large amount of unnoticed, redundant, and ineffective information.

From this perspective, unless a lucid dream occurs, a person's consciousness during sleep cannot revisit the details of a dream that has already occurred. Once this happens, it usually means the person has already woken up. Without secondary attention and processing of the details in the dream, it means that whatever emotional response these details represented when they first appeared, they can no longer evoke new emotional responses in consciousness before the person wakes up and recalls them. Dream details that are not re-noticed cannot evoke any new emotional responses; therefore, dream imagery is volatile. These contents are like dissipated smoke; once they form a certain shape, they can never be restored to their original state. They cannot be grasped but inevitably dissipate naturally.

This is fundamentally different from the stimuli from the external world that we perceive in our waking state, which are generally referred to as objects. Stimuli from objects are fixed and unchanging; we can repeatedly contemplate them, and the resulting thoughts can become new objects, triggering new reflections. This process can continue indefinitely because our ability to actively shift our attention is unrestricted. However, the information in dreams cannot undergo such a thought process; we cannot actively choose our objects of attention during a dream. In other words, there is no reflection in dreams; all information is one-off.

Why do we find absurd things commonplace in our dreams?

"Absurdity" itself is something that can only arise from reflection. Dreams lack reflection, therefore absurdity does not exist in dreams. If we are to feel that an event is absurd, it means that firstly, the event must attract our attention, then we must retrieve relevant experiential details from our memory, compare it with those details, discover significant discrepancies, and thus arrive at an impression of "absurdity." This process is actually far too complex, involving too many thought mechanisms that can only function properly in a waking state, therefore it cannot essentially occur fully in dreams. First, attentional resources in dreams are limited; all information appearing in a dream cannot be noticed a second time, and attention usually cannot be actively and continuously focused on a specific object during the dream process; second, memory retrieval in dreams is usually dominated by the emotional impulses of the dream. The information that can be retrieved from memory into dreams depends primarily on the needs of emotional impulses. Since emotional impulses are usually uncontrollable, the retrieval and selection of memory material in dreams is a spontaneous and uncontrolled process. Therefore, it's impossible to actively extract memories based on cognitive factors such as concepts and differences. Finally, contrast is usually absent in dreams. Because the dominant force in dreams is emotion, not concepts or cognition, there are no conceptual boundaries like nouns within dreams. Without clear boundaries, in this chaotic state of "you in me, me in you," contrast is impossible. We must recognize that all absurd impressions of dreams stem from conscious awareness after waking. Objectively speaking, this is because we mistakenly interpret dreams using logical methods based on nouns and concepts in a conscious state.

(5) The specific meaning of dream imagery and the central theme of the dream

Since the root of dreams is emotion, symbolic phenomena and images can change and dissipate freely. Only emotional changes are traceable and consistent. Therefore, the first step in dream interpretation is to quickly grasp the emotions within the dream. In fact, because dreams cannot be reflected upon, all content appearing in a dream is merely a way to vent emotional impulses under similar circumstances. Therefore, these bizarre images, without exception, cannot further evoke new emotional changes in the dreamer. They are generated by emotions but cannot generate new emotions in return. This leads to the imagery in dreams having a distinctly "partial" nature. An image whose inherent meaning may be extremely complex may appear in a dream as only a very insignificant detail among its many meanings, rendering all other meanings invalid. For example, the flame in Dream Example 1 can be interpreted in many different and complex ways from a cultural perspective when the dreamer is awake. Flame may represent light, warmth, hope, wisdom, destruction, anger, etc. However, in Dream Example 1, the flame in the dream may only represent light, warmth, hope, wisdom, destruction, anger, etc. In this context, fire simply represents heat; all other interpretations are clearly inappropriate, falling into the category of ungenerated emotional factors. Adopting these inappropriate interpretations would inevitably lead the meaning of the dream into an unpredictable trap of multiple interpretations, turning dream interpretation into a mere cultural appreciation. The narrow, biased, and specific nature of dream imagery stems from the fact that these images are merely fragments within the dream as a whole. Without departing from the boundaries of the dream, they cannot be noticed independently, nor can they form new meanings or emotions. Therefore, apart from the single, essential meaning necessary for their creation, they cannot be given any new extended meanings. As for the inherent meaning, the image's inherent meaning is "embedded" within the indivisible whole of the dream; it exists functionally as an inseparable part of that whole. Just as an image cannot be noticed separately, its inherent meaning cannot exist independently of the dream as a whole, much less be dissected and analyzed separately.

The functional characteristics of imagery in dreams determine their single-center nature. A dream has only one clear logical center, which is the exogenous emotion that caused it. If the center shifts, two different dreams will inevitably be generated. In some complex dreams, this emotion can become very complex and difficult to accurately describe with a single word. In such cases, multiple different words may be needed to describe different aspects of this emotional center. However, it is important to note that adopting multiple different words does not equate to the dream having multiple centers. In different dreams of different individuals, this emotion is usually different, even if we might use the same word to summarize it (that is, even if both are sadness, sadness is different for different people). Similarly, different emotional centers described by the same word cannot be equated with equivalent emotional centers. Likewise, even within a specific dream that should be considered as a whole, because dreams are a process of dynamic emotional development and fluctuation, there may still be significant differences between the early and later parts of the same dream. However, these differences do not affect the overall logic and continuity of the dream from beginning to end, and therefore should still be considered as a whole dream closely surrounding a central center. In addition, primal internal stimuli such as cold, heat, sex, appetite, and pain may also need to be considered. The role of these stimuli in dreams is equivalent to that of basic emotions, and their role in the construction of dreams is completely consistent with that of basic emotions. Therefore, this book will not analyze them separately.

Once we identify the emotional center and underlying emotional tone of a dream, we essentially hold the key to the logical unfolding of the entire dream's content. All the imagery, actions, details, and changes within the dream must revolve around this single, clearly defined emotional theme, which must be the root cause of all the bizarre and varied imagery and changes in the dream. Mastering the method of finding the center can greatly help us improve our efficiency in understanding dreams.

Dream Example 6: Ghost Piano Music

Thunderous applause erupted, the piano played on its own, but I felt a wave of dizziness.

(I did practice that piece for those few days, and I made great progress; I felt like I had taken a whole new step.)

I couldn't remember how to play the piece ( Chopin's Grande Valse Brillante, Op. 34, No. 3). My fingers couldn't even produce a sound on the keys. But the competition continued, and it became my solo. Thousands of eyes were glued to the stage, and I stepped onto the stage in a splendid tuxedo. But I still couldn't play. I simply couldn't play. I bowed to the audience; I couldn't play. I walked to the piano; I still couldn't play. I sat down at the piano; I still couldn't play. The entire hall was silent for a long time. I sat on the piano bench, utterly ashamed, waiting for everyone to discover my secret and boo me off the stage. But then, the piano began to play on its own. Melodious, beautiful, ethereal—it wasn't the sound of this world, but rather holy water that had accidentally fallen from some otherworldly paradise. Many people began to cry at the sound, and some exaggeratedly danced to express their emotions. But this wasn't me playing. Anyway, now I was sitting at the piano, and I immediately pretended to fly my fingers across the keys, putting on a completely absorbed performance. The performance ended, and I went to the front of the stage. The host, with tears in his eyes, congratulated me on winning first prize, asking how I had managed to play such beautiful music. But my mind went completely blank; I almost thought he was questioning why I couldn't play the piano. Then... After a long while, it seemed I remembered what I wanted to say. But before I could speak, the piano began to play again on its own. This time, it was even more piercing, more awe-inspiring, a soaring melody that seemed to tear at the soul. I felt dizzy; everyone was staring at me, dumbfounded, watching the piano play itself without anyone else playing. The music finally stopped, and the entire room fell silent for several seconds. In that silence, I felt an overwhelming fear. Now everyone knew the secret to my inability to play the piano. Then, a round of applause broke the silence, followed by continuous, thunderous applause. I heard someone shouting my name in adoration; no one questioned whether it was the music I was playing. I felt dizzy again...

Dream Example 6 is a dream rich in detail. However, this richness in detail stems largely from the dreamer's exceptionally detailed descriptions and keen inner sensitivity, rather than from a complex underlying logic. In fact, it's a dream with a very simple internal logic. The central emotion is "lack of self-confidence." This lack of self-confidence is different from inferiority complex; it primarily refers to the dreamer possessing a certain exceptional talent, being aware of it, and having this talent recognized and appreciated by those around them, even contributing to their achievements. He possesses excellent qualities, yet he subjectively chooses to ignore these strengths, focusing excessively on minor, perhaps unimportant, imperfections, magnifying his flaws to the point of blinding himself to building self-confidence. He becomes blind to his achievements, strengths, and the appreciation of others. This suggests the dreamer may have some perfectionist tendencies. It is precisely this subjective disregard for his own strengths that causes him to treat piano playing as irrelevant—"You all say I'm very good" (the music is melodious), "but I always feel I'm not" (he can't play the piano; the melodious music isn't his own).

(6) Dreams lack diversity

In dreams, imagery exists merely as a functional part of the overall dream. Images cannot be noticed a second time within a dream, and therefore cannot be isolated from the dream's context for individual analysis. Consequently, dream interpretation lacks diversity. Many mistakenly believe that dream analysis, especially dream imagery, possesses rich connotations, but this is based on the assumption that these images can be analyzed independently of the dream's overall context. Some schools of dream interpretation don't even consider the dream as a whole. Separating dream imagery for individual analysis is extremely dangerous; it can lead to an uncontrolled influx of content unrelated to the dream into the imagery, resulting in unnecessarily complex dream interpretation.

Example 7: Blackboard Story

(This is not a dream example)

Xiao Zhang noticed a blackboard on the ground, so he said, "There's a blackboard here."

Xiao Wang began to analyze, "Why did you find a blackboard on the ground? The blackboard is black, and black symbolizes the unknown and the mysterious. A board is a writing tool; it can hold our thoughts and record them in written form. However, there are no words on this board yet, so it is actually in a state of 'possibility,' which can be understood as a kind of 'door.' You have placed such a door to the unknown beside you, and among so many complex things around you, you have focused on the special image of the blackboard. This must be because your subconscious is at work, trying to tell you something very important that is suppressed deep within you: you are yearning for new knowledge, yearning to find such a door to explore a new and magical world."

Xiao Zhang said, "Uh, no, I just meant that this blackboard seems to be pressing down on the impatiens I planted here yesterday. If this continues, my flowers won't get any sunlight."

Example 7 is a hypothetical, typical short story. In Xiao Wang's analysis, we can see that his verbal analysis is actually quite logical, self-consistent, and has a certain degree of reasoning. In certain special circumstances, his analysis might even be correct. His biggest problem isn't a fatal flaw in his analytical method using the blackboard image, but rather that his analytical object is the blackboard, not the person speaking, Xiao Zhang. Although Xiao Wang uses the second person in his narration, and his tone seems directed at Xiao Zhang, this is merely a "facade of appearance." The only connection between Xiao Wang's reasoning process and Xiao Zhang is that Xiao Zhang mentioned the word "blackboard." All of Xiao Wang's analytical process revolving around the blackboard can completely ignore Xiao Zhang's other personal characteristics. After reading Xiao Wang's "deep" analysis... Even after analyzing the statement, we still cannot definitively know what kind of person Xiao Zhang is, or what his original intention was when he first mentioned the word "blackboard." Although Xiao Zhang's initial statement was not a dream, it still possesses the "central" and "partially specific" characteristics mentioned earlier. "There is a blackboard here" is a clearly central statement; it describes a visible fact. The two images in the statement, "black" and "board," both have partially specific characteristics. They are combined to specifically refer to an object called "blackboard," negating the many other meanings that "black" and "board" have in the Chinese vocabulary. To interpret "black" and "board" separately in a divergent manner is essentially to isolate these two images from the context of the entire statement and analyze them individually, ignoring the overall central theme of the statement and the partially specific characteristics of the images.

If we draw an analogy between Xiao Wang's analytical approach and general art appreciation, we'll find that the methods are the same. Art critics or connoisseurs use the same thinking methods Xiao Wang employed in his "blackboard story" when analyzing a work of art. Connoisseurs' appreciation of art has become a form of re-creation; their analysis inevitably carries their own subjective imprint and color, which obviously conflicts with the subjectivity of the artist. For a work of art, the same thing cannot simultaneously possess multiple different and conflicting subjective interpretations. Therefore, we cannot definitively say that the interpretations of works by connoisseurs are necessarily what the creator imbued in the work. Faced with this dilemma, the general consensus is to acknowledge the difference between appreciation and creation. As we often hear, once a work of art is created, it becomes an entity with its own soul, independent of the creator.

While the creation of dreams shares similarities with the creation of works of art, interpreting dreams using the same methods as appreciating art will inevitably lead astray. For a work of art, a thousand readers can have a thousand Hamlet. However, if a thousand dream interpreters can offer a thousand different interpretations of a single dream, a significant problem arises. Artworks are a form of public expression; artists always yearn to share their work with the world. Dreams, however, are entirely private. Most of the time, we don't want to actively reveal our dreams to complete strangers. Without the motivation to display, a dreamer seeking help from a dream interpreter is unlikely to be hoping for a unique perspective on their dream; their goal is to resolve their confusion. Once the dream interpreter transforms interpretation into appreciation, the dream becomes an independent work of art detached from the dreamer, and the resulting appreciation will inevitably be detached from the dreamer themselves. Such appreciation may possess other aesthetic values, but it will certainly fail to resolve the dreamer's own confusion.

The fundamental problem is that the appreciator's interference and overly strong presence are excessive in the act of appreciation. Appreciative dream interpretation treats the imagery, symbols, and phenomena in dreams as the primary material for analysis. Most of the analysis revolves around imagery and symbols, treating the final state of the dream as a fixed and unchanging object. This inevitably leads to the analyst's self-intrusion into the analytical process. Many meanings and thoughts that should reflect the appreciator's own perspective replace the creator's as the dream's "content." Since different appreciators have different selves, this substitution eliminates the possibility of a single, definitive answer to the dream. Thus, dream interpretation seems to become a multifaceted process. The process of sexuality. Since it's impossible to judge which interpretation given by different observers is more correct, we can only assume that everyone's answer is correct. However, the essence of dreams lies in emotions, not symbols; symbols are merely a secondary derivative of emotional changes. And regarding emotional changes, a person's emotional changes are a completely private process, making another person's appreciation and interpretation meaningless. Only symbols can be appreciated; emotions can only be experienced, empathized with, and understood, but not appreciated. If we consider emotional changes as the foundation and essence of dreams, then dreams are not works of art, nor can they be appreciated and interpreted from different perspectives. Therefore, dreams lack diversity; there is only one answer.

Readers can carefully compare the following several completely different interpretations of the same dream content, appreciate the subtle differences between them, and think about the real reasons for such serious differences and deviations from the expected attributes.

Dream Example 8: Elysium Illusion

"The ecstatic zombies dance gracefully, as the eternal sun of the west illuminates the twilight of the earth."

(1)

I saw a blissful illusion.

It's just across the river; you can get in by simply stepping across that small wooden bridge that's barely knee-high.

But I didn't go over. I stood on this side of the riverbank, gazing at the world on the other side across the shallow stream.

It was truly a beautiful place. Sunlight melted into gold, shimmering and spilling onto the ground, yet no one bent down to pick it up; honey and milk flowed freely across the land, their enticing aroma filling the air and sending shivers down one's spine; people ran and frolicked naked, their faces beaming with the sweet, innocent smiles of children. Birds, butterflies, small animals, and large animals all played together harmoniously and carefree, without malice, without harm, and unaware of danger. There was only joy, and more joy, and more joy.

But I knew I absolutely could not set foot on that territory.

Because once you enter that place, it's impossible to ever come out of it again.

So I turned around, ready to leave this place. I started looking around for an exit. I knew this wasn't the real world.

However, I could not find a way back to the real world. Just then, I heard a deep, mysterious, and friendly voice resound in my heart. I immediately understood that the illusion itself was speaking to me directly through my will. She told me that I had passed the test. Now that I had rejected the illusion's invitation, it would no longer prevent me from leaving this place, but it would always welcome me back, provided that I signed a long contract with it.

Then, the contract came into my hands. It was a pale blue linen sheet, filled with a whole page of requirements and stipulations. I read it carefully from beginning to end and found that the entire page didn't impose any special or excessive demands on me; it only required that I insist on not losing two things. I signed my agreement to those two requirements without hesitation, because I knew all too well that those two things were the most important things to me, a part of my life, and I would never give them up.

(2)

I woke up again, this time in my familiar bedroom. Everything seemed unchanged. Warm sunlight streamed in through the window, shimmering like gold, as if the whole room was melting. I realized I had a very long dream, a dream of arriving at an incredibly beautiful place, but leaving without ever setting foot there. I also seemed to dream of many other things, but I can't quite remember them now. The dream gave me a strange feeling, but I decided to put it aside for now and face life happily from now on.

So I washed up, got ready, went out, and prepared for work.

The hectic day passed quickly, everything proceeding as usual, until I saw another mirror in the company restroom mirror—a mirror that didn't exist in reality. Then, in that mirror's mirror, I saw the illusory world I had rejected, its doors wide open as if welcoming my arrival. It was still as beautiful as ever, milk and honey still flowing freely across the land, so outrageously beautiful, yet I was terrified. I remembered—just as stipulated in the contract I had signed, this illusion had now infected me. Although I had gained immunity through that contract, ensuring I would never be trapped by this illusion again, I couldn't guarantee I wouldn't spread it to others around me.

Sure enough, the tragedy I feared most began. My best friend, his eyes red and contorted in agony, collapsed to the ground before my very eyes. Less than three minutes later, he opened his bloody mouth and began to tear at those around him in a convulsive manner. His skin had begun to fester and swell, and his empty eyes no longer held any trace of his soul. Yet, in those eyes, I saw his hallucination. He entered that beautiful place, where he sang and danced, choosing to abandon his body so that his soul could ascend there, and then letting his abandoned flesh rot freely.

He turned into a zombie.

More and more people began to experience the same hallucinations, and more and more people came to that beautiful illusion. Without exception, they chose to stay in that place, and then their real bodies became empty shells, wandering the world and continuing to spread this terrible illusion to more people.

(3)

I was terrified. On one hand, I knew I could never be infected; on the other hand, I watched helplessly as everyone else was infected and irrevocably, excitedly, and joyfully rushed into that illusion, never wanting to return. I wanted to save them, and only I could. I kept entering and leaving the illusion, searching for those who could resist the temptation and leave, or warning healthy people around me who hadn't yet entered. But whenever these people saw me, they would always be drawn into the entrance of the illusion, and whenever they were about to sign a contract with it, they would always refuse one of the last two conditions, or refuse both. This would turn the contract into a curse that bound them to the illusion forever.

(4)

More and more people flocked into the illusion, and I was exhausted but found myself with nothing. I couldn't stop their madness at all; after all, the world on the other side of the illusion was so joyful and happy, and everything they wanted could be fulfilled there. Even if they hoped to gain something through effort, the illusion would easily grant their wish to work hard.

I felt helpless, wandering alone among the abandoned city buildings, watching hordes of zombies, lost in a spell of happiness, convulsing and tearing at each other, their faces bearing eerie, childlike, innocent smiles of happiness, even though their limbs were broken, twisted, and their intestines were spilling onto the ground. They wouldn't hurt me, but I could never bring them back from this illusion.

(5)

In the western sky, the Sun grew ever brighter, seemingly fixed in its position, never to set again. Beside the Sun, a large hole appeared in the sky above the horizon, within which, separated by two layers, lay the illusion—like a mirror within a mirror, distant yet seemingly within reach. People within it sang and danced, celebrating this great day. As long as the Sun did not set, night would never return. The illusion of the other world grew larger and larger, spreading wildly across the sky, as if about to devour the real world. On the ground, people convulsed and danced wildly.

Analysis 1: The dreamer's intensely repressed sexual instincts are prominently displayed in this dream. The illusion at the beginning of the dream symbolizes the dreamer's subconscious. The contrast between reality after the illusion fades and the beauty of the illusion metaphorically represents the repression of subconscious desires in real life, preventing their free release. The flowing milk and honey in the illusion, as flowing liquids, are analogous to bodily fluids and semen. Nakedness and running and playing are actually expressions of sexual desire. The dreamer sees people in reality turning into zombies who have lost their sense of self. This is a projection of the dreamer's intensely repressed desires onto the external environment. These dancing zombies are actually a manifestation of the dreamer's own inner conflicts and the fulfillment of their instinctive desires. The apocalyptic madness at the end of the dream is actually a strong warning to the dreamer—if they succumb to these instinctive desires, they will become like zombies, devoid of self, and their lives will be destroyed. When the desires of the id lose the restraint of the superego and spread uncontrollably into real life, it will lead to a terrible and destructive outcome, just like the ending of this dream.

Analysis (Analysis 1): Analysis 1 is a classic Freud dream interpretation model. Combined with the "blackboard story" mentioned above, it's clear that Freud's dream interpretation method is a typical Blackboard Dream Interpretation Method, where the analyst, not the dreamer, is placed at the center. If you are a dreamer, the biggest feeling when accepting Freud dream interpretation is that regardless of your own interpretation, you first need to trust and accept the analyst's series of analyses. In Freud's later psychoanalytic theory, this process of the dreamer partially or even completely relinquishing their ego and actively submitting to the analyst, making the analyst the dominant figure in the communication, has a specific technical term: transference. To demonstrate the rationale for transference, Freud proposed the "Oedipus complex," claiming... Empathy is one of the innate instincts of all humans. Freud traced this back to early childhood and the family environment, finding that children whose personalities and minds are not yet fully developed often place themselves in a secondary position in their interactions with their parents, accepting the subtle interventions and transformations their parents exert. In early interactions with their parents, children are always in a subordinate position, allowing themselves to be influenced by their parents. Based on analogical reasoning, Freud may have further argued that this psychological mechanism and process continues to play a significant role even in adulthood. In psychoanalysis, the analyst must actively assume the role of a parent, providing comprehensive guidance and intervention to the analysand, much like educating a naive child.

If Freud had limited this method to the treatment of mental illness patients using psychoanalysis, it might not have caused the serious problems that led to his later criticism. In this relationship between the patient and the doctor, the patient does indeed have a position similar to that of a child. It is understandable that, for better treatment, the patient allows the doctor to lead the communication, even viewing the doctor as a guiding and caring parent figure. However, if this unequal relationship, which only exists between children and parents or between mental illness patients and doctors, is extended to everyone, it becomes clearly inappropriate. If a reader applies the Freud analytical methods described in the book to a relatively healthy, ordinary adult male whom they don't know well, who hasn't actively sought their help, and who has little psychological knowledge, they will quickly discover what this inappropriateness feels like. This man is highly likely to ignore the various analyses conducted on him, will not develop "transference" towards them, and will not accept their dominant role in the analysis. In this case, the analysis naturally fails.

Once the technical essence of Freud's theories is understood, all the other theoretical details he proposed for self-consistency become irrelevant. Discussing terms such as libido, the unconscious, the id, the ego, and the superego outside of Freud's context is meaningless; these concepts are not valid within the context of this book. In fact, Freud's method for understanding human consciousness is the egocentric approach pioneered by Plato and others since Greece. This method naturally places the thinker as the center, intuitively understanding the world from this center. All Western philosophical thought since Plato... Scholars all followed this tradition, so Freud merely applied it to a new field, thus exposing the limitations of this traditional method. In the general world of experiential intuition, the world we experience and the world we think about are sensorily unified, so it's usually not a big problem for us to consider ourselves the center of the process of understanding the world. Typical examples include Descartes ' "I think, therefore I am" or Berkeley's "To be is to be perceived," which all assume that experience and thought must be unified under a single subject. However, in the process of dream interpretation, the experienced... The world of experience and the world of thought are separate. The subject of experience is the dreamer, while the subject of thought is the dream interpreter. Unless someone masters the technical details of dream interpretation to interpret their own dreams, this separation means that experience and thought have never been, and are almost impossible, to ultimately unify. Therefore, continuing to use egocentric, intuitive methods will lead to significant problems. Freud's approach is to use the technique of transference to allow the dreamer to relinquish their own thought processes and fully accept the dream interpreter's thinking. He then uses systematic and structured fixed interpretations, such as libido, the unconscious, the id, the ego, and the superego, to unify the dreamer's experiential world with the interpretation. In the dream interpreter's world of thought, the dream interpreter's world of thought becomes the only valid subjective world, thereby resolving the problem of subject-matter separation. Under this method, all structural formulas such as libido, the unconscious, and the id, ego, and superego are merely descriptive tools for the behavior of the experiential subject, originating from the thinking subject. This method of processing dreams is not the best approach advocated by this book. To better understand the series of methods presented in this book, readers are advised to abandon the egocentric approach of intuitively unifying the experiential world and the thinking world now, and try to understand the dream interpretation process using the new methods proposed in this book.

Analysis 2: This dream reflects the dreamer's inner struggle and contradictions. Dreams are actually a manifestation of the collective unconscious, a force that emerges from the depths of the dreamer's subconscious and expands into the dream's real world, manifesting as a rampant, out-of-control zombie virus. This zombie virus infecting all of humanity reflects the intrinsic connection between the dreamer and the collective unconscious rooted in the history of human civilization. The zombie is an archetype, reflecting the repressed, distorted, and conflicted part of the dreamer's self. In fact, all parts of the dream are manifestations of the dreamer's self; those appearing as zombies or viruses represent the parts of the self that the dreamer cannot accept. This dream reflects the dreamer's inner struggle and confusion, as well as a conflicting yet inseparable connection between the dreamer and the real world.

Analysis (Analysis Two): Analysis Two imitates the dream interpretation method of Carl Jung, a disciple of Freud. Although it doesn't explicitly mention some of the terminology from Jung's theory, this analytical method still basically follows the techniques pioneered by Jung. Carl Jung was a student of Freud and also an analytical psychologist who, even while Freud was still alive, fiercely criticized Freud's ideas and established his own school of thought. From the analytical approach of Analysis Two, we can see that Carl Jung clearly recognized the fatal flaw in the method Freud used in analyzing dreams; however, he mistakenly identified the fundamental problem with Freud's theory. On the surface, the biggest problem with Freud's dream interpretation method seems to be its overly clear analytical conclusions and its disregard for the individual characteristics of each dreamer. In Freud's case, it seems that no matter what is dreamed about, it will ultimately be applied formulaically to a few... This is based on already established and unambiguous conclusions. For example, if you dream of kissing a friend, Freud might say it's the fulfillment of your inner desire because you like this friend; but if you dream of killing the same friend, Freud would still say it's the fulfillment of your inner desire, even if you argue that you still like this friend. According to Freud's theory, killing him is still to satisfy other repressed or hidden desires in your subconscious that you are unaware of. The reason for this seemingly counterintuitive result is that the content of Freud's theory itself is not the most important part of Freud's method of dream analysis. The most important part of Freud's dream analysis is transference. Therefore, the rigor of the theory itself is not important, as long as the analysand is willing to accept your explanation, can generate transference, and your explanation itself does not have obvious loopholes or flaws. As long as it's self-consistent, that's sufficient. To address this apparent flaw in the eyes of non- Freud, Carl Jung became interested in Eastern philosophy, religion, and mysticism. Unfortunately, while Carl Jung may have indeed discovered a system in Eastern philosophy distinct from the egocentric Western philosophical system—a separate system altogether— Jung still failed to truly grasp the essence of Eastern philosophy. He adopted many of the worst aspects of Eastern philosophy and mystical theory, namely, replacing clear, logically sound empirical reasoning with vague and ambiguous statements. Reading Carl Jung's theory of dream interpretation, we might find that every sentence he uttered seems perfectly reasonable, yet none of them clearly convey any meaning. After a long passage, we feel as if he has said a lot, but upon closer examination, it seems as if he has said nothing at all. Compared to Freud's libido... Concepts like the id, ego, superego, and unconscious, as well as the collective unconscious, archetypes, shadow, and personality, are far more general, vague, and elusive. Unlike concepts like libido, whose connotations are clearly defined—we can fully understand their underlying meaning simply by seeing these words— Jung's terms like archetypes and personality offer an almost endless space for interpretation. These terms can be extended to the individual characteristics of an infinite number of different individuals. This variability and generality is precisely an influence of Eastern philosophy and mysticism on Jung. Although he no longer crudely homogenizes the dream content of different individuals as Freud did, this generalization also makes dream interpretation lose its logic. If readers believe that dreams are definitely illogical, or that dreams cannot be explained by logic, then this misconception is likely partly attributable to the proliferation of mystical methods in dream interpretation techniques.

Analysis 3: Zombies, seemingly devoid of blood, have become spiritually indifferent. Such individuals are numb to life, completely shutting down their inner emotions, showing no emotional response to the world, and behaving mechanically towards others. Their emotions are extremely repressed; they become rigid and lifeless due to a lack of feeling and love. Dreaming of zombies symbolizes, on a spiritual level, a manifestation of certain emotions.

Analysis (Analysis Three): Analysis Three is an analytical method that combines the shortcomings of both Freud and Jung. This analysis reveals both a separation between the thinking subject and the experiencing subject, leading the dream interpreter (the thinking subject) to make various definitive interpretations of the dreamer's personality from a superior position; and a mystical logical flaw, as its conclusions regarding the zombie concept lack rigorous logical proof. Furthermore, Analysis Three treats a specific detail or image in the dream as the central focus of the analysis, thus disrupting the dream's overall integrity; and by treating symbols rather than emotions as the object of analysis, it turns the analysis into an art appreciation exercise.

Interpretation 4: Dreaming of zombies indicates that lucky things will happen in your life, possibly bringing you great surprises. Ghosts represent bad things and are an ominous sign. Dreaming of ghosts means you will encounter danger. Dreaming of attacking ghosts is a good omen, indicating you can avoid disaster. Dreaming of running away as soon as you see a ghost means you will conquer your enemies. Dreaming of ghosts in the yard means your worries will dissipate.

Analysis (Analysis 4): A non-psychological approach to dream interpretation. Dreams here are treated as purely mystical omens. This method will not be discussed in this book.

Conclusion: The diversity of dreams is essentially due to the immaturity of dream interpretation methods. Because there is no single, suitable explanation, nor a correct standard for judging the scientific validity of dream interpretation methods, and because we cannot refute the numerous erroneous interpretations, we are forced to accept that there is no truly correct explanation, and all interpretations are correct. To address this difficulty, this book will systematically propose a dream analysis method with clear standards and rigorous logic. After introducing the basic requirements of this method, we will return to a detailed discussion of the dream "Elysium."

II. The Principles of Dream Interpretation

(1) The separation of experience and thinking

The biggest and most fundamental problem in dream interpretation lies in the separation between the experiential subject and the thinking subject. The dream interpreter, as the thinking subject, is not the dream creator of the experiential subject. Even when the same person interprets their own dream, this separation still objectively exists because the thinking subject is in a conscious state after the dream ends, while the experiential subject is in a dream state that is not fully conscious. It's just that for some people with strong self-reflection and awareness, this separation is not as severe as between two strangers. Therefore, the first step in establishing a systematic and scientific method of dream interpretation is to consider how to unify the experiential subject and the thinking subject.

Experience, described using the most basic definition of reductionism, refers to the various stimuli that directly enter our brains. From the characteristics of dreams, we can see that, without conscious thought, it's impossible to distinguish whether the stimuli entering the brain originate from the external environment (such as hot, cold, pain, itching, also known as perception) or internal memories (such as joy, anger, sorrow, and happiness, also known as emotion). Although these two seem fundamentally different in nature, this doesn't change the fact that in a dream state, these two stimuli are completely equivalent, and they are almost constantly transforming into each other. A person might dream of a raging fire because of intense anger; here, the emotional stimulus is expressed as a perceptual stimulus, and anger is expressed as a visible flame. Sometimes, we can also find perceptual stimuli transforming into emotions. An example of impulsiveness is a child about to wet the bed who dreams of his house on fire because he needs to urinate. He then urinates to put out the fire and rationalizes this behavior. The stimulation from holding in urine is a perceptual stimulus, while the psychological need to rationalize urination and avoid punishment is an emotional impulse. Essentially, the difference between perceptual and emotional stimuli lies in their different sources: the former comes from the objective world, while the latter comes from the subjective mind. However, without the normal functioning of the thought process, there is no distinction between the subjective and objective worlds. Dreams are a special case where this distinction between subjective and objective is absent. Precisely because of this lack of distinction, the person in the dream cannot consciously recognize who they are, nor can they realize that they are actually "dreaming," since the word "dreaming" itself is a concept with a clear distinction between subjective and objective.

Therefore, when discussing what experience is, we cannot assume that experience is the perception of the external world by a self-aware subject. This assumption confuses the thought process within experience (pre-distinguishing between the subjective and objective worlds) and excludes stimuli from within the subject, such as those from memory. If we disregard thought mechanisms and only discuss pure experience itself, then the subject of experience cannot distinguish between the internal and external environments, nor between emotional and perceptual stimuli. More precisely, since the most fundamental distinction—the distinction between self and object—does not exist in the world of pure experience, a world composed solely of experience without the participation of thought is, in reality, devoid of any distinction. This does not mean that all these indiscriminate stimuli are considered "the same." This is because "sameness" is essentially a distinction; it still relies on comparing two things, only arriving at the specific conclusion of "no difference." Therefore, sameness is actually a special kind of distinction. Here, "sameness" is an adjective, a conclusion of an action, while "distinction" is a verb, referring to the act of "making a distinction." In the empirical world, distinction does not exist because, due to limitations or absence of cognitive functions, the ability to distinguish based on cognitive functions is lost in the empirical world; therefore, such a subject is incapable of distinguishing anything.

From the above discussion, we can infer that one of the most important abilities of the thinking subject is to make distinctions. Among all distinctions, the most important, and usually considered the first clearly identifiable distinction, is the distinction between self and object, i. e., the "distinction between self and things." When an individual possesses the ability to think, the two things they first clearly distinguish are almost inevitably themselves and the entire world outside themselves—the so-called "subjective world" and "objective world." Only when this individual can distinguish between the subjective and the objective, between themselves and the world, and between emotional stimuli and perceptual stimuli (generally considered the former subjective and the latter objective), can they become aware of themselves and form a clear "self-awareness." Therefore, "self-awareness" is equivalent to the first result obtained by the thinking mechanism through distinctions; it is essentially equivalent to a barrier or boundary, dividing the entire world matrix transmitted by experience into the "self" and the part "outside oneself." Only when this barrier or boundary is established and clear can the thinking mechanism develop all other types of distinctions based on it, and on the basis of various distinctions, develop concepts, symbols, nouns, persons, and language.

However, dreams do not have such a clear distinction. Dreams are a world dominated by experience, and thought plays a very small role. This does not mean that thought is completely absent in dreams, but rather that reflection is impossible in dreams. As we have discussed earlier, the stimuli in dreams are a continuous flow that cannot be noticed a second time. This inability to be noticed a second time means that these stimuli dissipate immediately upon occurrence, unable to generate any new meaning, which also means that these stimuli that cannot be re-noticed are almost destined to be completely forgotten immediately. Conversely, any experience that can be remembered must be a processed experience that has been interfered with by thought mechanisms to some extent. The more it is interfered with by thought, the more processed these experiences become. The more detailed the details, the more often they are noticed, and the easier they are to remember. A world of experience completely devoid of thought is essentially a pure "stimulus-feedback" machine, lacking any inherent meaning and unable to retain any information—this doesn't align with our mental state during sleep. Therefore, dreams should be considered a limited state where experience dominates, thought is suppressed and relegated to a secondary position, and the level of basic, clear distinction between "self and other" still plays a role. Conversely, waking consciousness is a state dominated by thought, where experience is subordinate to the thought mechanism, and various types of memory retrieval, emotional changes, and sensory stimuli are actively selected and controlled by thought.

Dreams are environments dominated by experience and lack strict distinctions. However, if we completely disregard distinctions, we cannot accurately grasp the meaning of dreams in our waking state. If we assume that distinctions don't exist, we are essentially assuming that all nouns and concepts are nonexistent, because a fundamental characteristic of concepts and nouns is that they must have a boundary that distinguishes them from other concepts or nouns. Without nouns and concepts, our accustomed linguistic environment and linguistic thinking become ineffective; in this state, no meaning can be conveyed, and there is no possibility of communication with others. In this sense, our inability to understand the actual meaning of dreams in our waking state does not mean that these meanings do not exist in the dreamer's mind—practice shows that no matter how complex or jargon-filled the interpretation of a dream may be, as long as the interpretation is directed at the dreamer, the dreamer will immediately understand the interpretation when it is successful. This illustrates that dream interpretation is not a creative application of existing material information, but rather an attempt to approximate an answer already predetermined in the dreamer's mind. Because dreams are dominated by experience and not for communication, viewing dreams from a communicative perspective using linguistic thinking will yield no conclusions. In a linguistic environment, the dominant mechanism is thought; therefore, we can easily find a correspondence between a symbol or image and a meaning or property, and then develop connections and combinations between multiple symbols based on this clear correspondence. When we see a phenomenon or symbol, we habitually think about the "essence" behind it, using this "essence" to explain the phenomenon or symbol. This mode of explaining phenomena through essence is the most typical mode of thinking, but it cannot be applied to dreams dominated by experience. Forcibly viewing dreams as a combination of symbols or phenomena and questioning the "meaning" behind these images is destined to fail.

Therefore, in discussing dreams, readers must abandon this mindset of a stable correspondence between symbols and meanings, and first understand that a dream is an experience-driven environment without strict distinctions. On this basis, we can then consider the first major hurdle that is bound to be encountered in the process of dream interpretation—the separation of thought and experience.

In our conscious state during daily life, we are unaware of the separation between experience and thought; they are unified. If we describe human consciousness as a beautiful song, then experience and thought, with their completely different mechanisms and independent operation, are like two different instruments playing simultaneously. To maintain harmony, the two instruments may divide into different parts according to certain harmonic rules, but the rhythmic pattern and development of the main melody remain consistent to ensure overall musical harmony. When we are immersed in the beautiful atmosphere of the overall music, we don't notice the inconsistencies between the different instrumental parts. However, if two different instruments are played separately by two musicians who don't coordinate much, according to their own subjective interpretations, the discordant musical parts will quickly and abruptly become apparent. Both the performers and the listeners will naturally notice these dissonant intervals immediately. The unity of experience and thought is essentially similar to how different instruments can maintain harmony in the same ensemble piece—the coordination and consistency of two mechanisms during conscious activity.

For humans, the entire socio-cultural environment serves as a vast training ground for the coordination of experience and thought. For newborns, it's easy to observe a disconnect between their experience and cognitive functions. They cannot accurately express their internally generated experiences; for example, crying is used to express typical internal needs like hunger or the need to urinate, making it difficult not to question their ability to effectively differentiate between these two stimuli. Similarly, these infants cannot correctly understand experiences from the external environment; it's difficult to expect a newborn to correctly understand the intentions you want to convey. However, as infants grow older and learn within their socio-cultural environment, their experience and cognitive functions quickly develop and become more coordinated, enabling them to... Children can correctly understand experiential stimuli from both internal and external sources, and process and think about these stimuli in the right way. When a child can correctly understand personal pronouns and grasp the correspondence between the initial symbols "mother," "I," and "father" and their referents, they have actually mastered an effective way of thinking about experience. From this stage onward, their consciousness gradually transitions from an experience-driven, dream-like environment to a thought-driven, language-based environment that we are accustomed to accepting. It can be deduced that all language develops on the basis of the coordination between experience and thought. Conversely, if we want to communicate with others, express our thoughts, and understand the intentions of others, then we must allow our thinking function to dominate our conscious activity and use language to process experiential information.

This language ability—the ability to coordinate experience and thought correctly—is something acquired through training and can be lost. However, because this ability is so crucial for communication in a language-based environment, we may forget the non-linguistic, experience-driven environment once we become accustomed to it. After all, in a language-based culture, almost all information expected to be understood strictly adheres to the principle of consistency between experience and thought. However, once experience and thought become incompatible, or the dominant function is no longer thought, the language method becomes completely ineffective. In fact, such inconsistencies between experience and thought are far more common than we often imagine. There are many more possibilities. For example, the speech and behavior of all schizophrenic patients (whose thinking functions are impaired, partially or completely restricted), all dreams during lucid dreaming (where thinking functions are dormant during sleep, effectively restricted), infants (whose thinking functions are not fully developed), elderly people such as those with Alzheimer's disease (whose thinking functions decline with age), and certain religious and mystical activities (actively seeking to make experiential functions dominate). Although this book discusses methods and strategies for dream interpretation, in principle, dreams are just one typical example of the experiential world, and the strategies used in this book to explain dreams should also be applicable to explaining other situations in the experiential world.

(2) The Mirror Law and the Transference Principle

Dream interpretation is a communicative process, therefore a language-based activity that requires the coordination of experience and thought. However, since most of the time the dreamer may not possess sufficient knowledge and experience in dream interpretation, their own thinking functions cannot fully understand their own dreams. In this case, the subject that needs to utilize their thinking function becomes the dream interpreter. Thus, two different people and four different functions emerge: the dreamer's experiential function, the dreamer's thinking function, the dream interpreter's experiential function, and the dream interpreter's thinking function. What originally required only one person's experience and thinking functions to achieve coordination now requires two people and four functions to coordinate simultaneously. If any of the four functions fails... If the dream interpretation fails to coordinate with the other three functions, it will fail. In everyday life, consciousness typically has only one dominant thinking function and one subordinate experiential function that work in harmony. The simultaneous presence of two different thinking or experiential functions almost always indicates conflict, difference, or dispute. In dream interpretation, the primary functions that need to play a role are the dreamer's experiential function and the interpreter's thinking function. Therefore, at least two of these four functions—the dreamer's thinking function and the interpreter's experiential function—are the differentiating functions that create obstacles and conflicts. To limit the influence of these two obstructive functions, the Mirror Law and the Transference Principle must be employed in the dream interpretation communication process.

The Transference Principle restricts the dreamer's thinking functions. Under the influence of transference, the dreamer develops a strong sense of trust in the dream interpreter, sometimes even to the point of idolizing the interpreter. Freud described the formation of this mechanism and popularized it as one of the foundations of his psychoanalytic method. The stronger the transference, the stronger the dreamer's trust in the dream interpreter, and the more inclined the dreamer is to actively restrict their own thinking functions, allowing the interpreter's thinking functions to replace their own. The effects of transference vary among different individuals in a population. The degree to which this manifests varies. Women are generally more prone to empathy than men. Those with strong empathy, who are more receptive to others' viewpoints than their own, and who are easily influenced, are more likely to empathize. Conversely, men with strong competitive spirits and assertive personalities find it difficult to empathize. If empathy is not possible, the interpreter's analysis and reflections may fail to resonate with the dreamer, leaving the interpreter feeling rejected. The dreamer, in turn, may be indifferent to the interpreter's explanations, viewing them as baseless nonsense. In the previous chapter's "Blackboard Story," Xiao Zhang represents the perspective of the dreamer, while Xiao Wang represents the perspective of the dream interpreter. Xiao Zhang feels that what Xiao Wang said is irrelevant to him, and this sense of "irrelevance" stems from a lack of empathy. This is because Xiao Zhang has actually given considerable thought to his purpose in mentioning the blackboard. Conversely, if Xiao Zhang were easily influenced by others, and the term "blackboard" was used in a very vague and generalized context, such as a dream, then even if Xiao Wang's analysis didn't fully consider other factors, Xiao Zhang might still consciously ignore the illogical parts. By conforming to Xiao Wang's analysis, one allows oneself to be "suggested." The popularity of games like astrology, fortune-telling, and divination among some groups stems from this principle. The logic behind astrological divination and similar practices is vague for most people. Therefore, even if we understand the surface results of a divination, we often lack the knowledge and ability to form a systematic understanding and perspective on these results. In other words, the apparent ambiguity of divination directly limits our thinking, making it difficult for us to directly clash with the diviner regarding interpretations. This essentially opens a channel...

The Mirror Law limits the interpreter's experiential function. Different people's experiences of the same thing are actually different. Although different people's external experiences of the same object at the same moment may generally be the same in a sense—a tree seen by one person is still a tree to another, and the tree won't be seen as a flower just because the person seeing it is different—their internal experiences under the same external conditions are usually different. For example, one person sees a tree and thinks it can be cut down and sold for money, while another person seeing the same tree might think of a beautiful promise made with someone important under that tree ten years ago. Experience itself is a continuous whole; therefore, due to differences in their early experiences, different people will not have completely identical results in their later stages of experience regarding the same thing. Differences in memory and experience will lead us to have different interpretations of the same thing. Different perspectives and feelings arise from different people, and these differences in feelings can become a significant reason for failed dream interpretation. Freud's theory does not restrict the interpreter's experiential function, so those who cannot accept Freud's theory usually feel that Freud's psychoanalysis, especially its pansexualist tendencies, is a form of violent analysis. They believe that Freud imposed his own feelings and understanding on others because many of Freud's theoretical views on sex are actually a manifestation of his own experiential function. Therefore, it is necessary to propose the Mirror Law, which requires the dream interpreter to relinquish their own experiential function and allow the dreamer's experiential function to take its place. For the dream interpreter, it is not about using their own eyes and mind to perceive the dreamer's dream, but rather using the dreamer's eyes and mind to perceive the dreamer's dream. Therefore, the dream interpreter should not have any form of feeling, evaluation, or value judgment regarding the dreamer's dream. For example, if the dreamer expresses in the dream that they plan to kill someone, such as their mother... Dear reader, the dream interpreter should not offer any advice to the dreamer at this time, nor should they express any opinion or feeling about this behavior. The dream interpreter absolutely cannot, from their own perspective, consider matricide a heinous act and then condescendingly try to advise or instruct the dreamer to "change" them. Such admonition or instruction reflects the dream interpreter's experiential function. If the dreamer expresses a plan to commit suicide in the dream, even if this behavior seems plausible from the dream interpreter's perspective, the dream interpreter should not show sympathy or pity, nor attempt to "help" or "save" the dreamer. These actions all stem from the dream interpreter's experiential function from an outsider's perspective, judging the dreamer using external values and feelings unrelated to the dreamer's inner world. At least during the dream interpretation process, the dream interpreter should ideally transform themselves into an "object," a ruthless dream interpretation machine composed purely of technology and knowledge. Of course, there are no absolute bottom lines. Therefore, regardless of the dreamer's inner thoughts, the dream interpreter should unconditionally accept them. The dream interpreter can use their thinking abilities to analyze specific problems for the dreamer, but must understand that they must never make any choices for the dreamer, nor can they advise the dreamer on any so-called standards of right and wrong. Only in this way can the dreamer enter the dreamer's inner world of experience without harming its integrity. This is the so-called " Mirror Law." When the dream interpreter becomes a ruthless dream-interpreting machine, as long as the empathy mechanism is also in effect, then the empathy mechanism limits the dreamer's thinking abilities, and the Mirror Law limits the dream interpreter's experiential abilities. The remaining experiential abilities of the dreamer and the thinking abilities of the dream interpreter have the opportunity to achieve a high degree of matching and coordination. At this time, the dream interpretation communication process is like looking in a mirror. The mirror is the dream interpreter, and the dreamer sees a clearer version of themselves through the mirror of the dream interpreter.

Further analogy reveals that dream interpretation is essentially a form of broad communication. The two principles for improving dream interpretation accuracy —the Transference Law and the Mirror Law— can be applied to all forms of communication. In daily life, we often see the notion that an insurmountable gap exists between people, that each person is an island, that everyone is alone, and that complete mutual understanding is impossible. This perception describes an objective obstacle: a communication process not simultaneously governed by the Mirror Law and Transference Law involves four different cognitive functions, any two of which will inevitably clash. When two cognitive functions conflict, the communication process becomes... It can be extremely cold, and one party will clearly feel their indifference towards the other. "Human joys and sorrows are not shared; I only find them noisy." This statement is a typical example of how cognitive function hinders communication. The person exhibiting this understanding hasn't empathized with the other party, so they are subjectively in a natural state of rejection, and naturally won't understand the joys and sorrows of others. We often react differently to seeing a familiar, close friend cry versus seeing a stranger, even someone we dislike, cry. A friend's tears usually evoke more empathy than a stranger's tears because we've already built a relatively stable social relationship with them, and we've developed empathy for them through our daily interactions. This empathy means that when we hear a friend say something that might contradict our own value system, our first reaction isn't to immediately point out the errors and demand they correct their views. Instead, we're more likely to temporarily set aside our differences in opinion and consider the reasons behind our friend's statement, even trying to understand the logic and reasoning behind their perspective. This temporary setting aside of differing viewpoints and setting aside our disagreement and judgment is essentially using the Transference Law to actively constrain our thinking to adapt to the other person's perspective. Similarly, when two experiential functions conflict, the communication process can turn into a heated argument and conflict. The most intense conflict between experiential functions... A possible scenario is two people who hate each other. Unlike the indifference caused by conflicting thought processes, two people who hate each other have actually established sufficient empathy, and their levels of empathy may even be very high. Because of this high level of empathy, typical internal experiences such as the emotions of the two individuals can strongly influence the other. However, because their experiential functions operate independently, the emotions transmitted from one experiential function may be severely distorted by the other. We often say "love turns to hate," which refers to this situation: both love and hate are products of high empathy in social relationships, but the mismatch in the degree of matching of experiential functions leads to the influence of high empathy going in two different directions.

A significant difference between everyday conversations and dream interpretation lies in the absence of a fixed distinction between the interpreter and the dreamer. Each person in a relationship is both the interpreter and the dreamer, needing to understand and empathize with others while also expressing their own views and feelings. This constant shift in identity undoubtedly makes communication far more complex than dream interpretation. We can easily observe a variety of conflict types in everyday conversations, but they can generally be categorized into one of the scenarios shown in the coordinate system diagram above. It's important to note that because identity is a constantly changing and uncertain entity, the simplistic assumptions we make about conflicts stemming solely from cognitive or experiential functions are not valid in reality. When conflict arises during communication, it almost inevitably involves a conflict between cognitive and experiential functions. The only difference lies in the observable manifestations of this conflict in individuals with different dominant functions. For example, when a couple faces a breakup due to one partner's infidelity, the person who has fallen for someone else may exhibit indifference and apathy towards their former lover, while the betrayed partner experiences intense hatred and resentment. The source of the argument and conflict is the breakdown of their relationship, and since emotion clearly reflects the experiential function, the breakdown of their relationship during a crisis represents a severe mismatch in their experiential functions. One partner, due to infidelity, exhibits low empathy, directly manifested as indifference and apathy towards the other; the other partner, still harboring some feelings, maintains high empathy. Thus, this mismatch in experiential functions leads to hatred.

If both parties in the exchange possess high levels of self-cultivation, and assuming they can both effectively utilize the Mirror Law and Transference Law to adjust their experiential and cognitive functions according to the actual situation, reducing conflicts between similar functions and increasing complementarity between different types, then this relationship can achieve a high level of harmony. Both parties in this relationship will feel a profound spiritual fusion with each other. Theoretically, this might be an idealized ultimate form of love. If neither party can simultaneously reach such a high level of self-cultivation, then at least one party can achieve a high level, using the Mirror Law and Transference Law more extensively than the other to adjust themselves, much like a dream interpreter uses the Mirror Law to limit their experiential functions to satisfy the dreamer. Such a relationship can also avoid conflict, preventing the satisfied party from experiencing a one-sided spiritual fusion. However, this relationship state is not... An unstable relationship based on equality. The more unequal the positions of the two parties in this relationship, the closer it becomes to the state of the dream interpreter and the dreamer. The positions and identities of both parties become increasingly clear until one party withdraws due to the intolerance of this inequality. The relationship between the dream interpreter and the dreamer is an extreme case of this one-sided, highly compatible relationship. However, regardless of which of the above hypotheses applies, as long as the Transference Law and Mirror Law correctly and minimize the conflict between similar functions of the two parties, the relationship can at least bring great spiritual satisfaction to one party. If an independent individual in a linguistic environment is a lonely island, then once we step out of this linguistic environment and look towards the wider world beyond language, we will find that not only does the boundary of the island no longer exist—this boundary is essentially the boundary of language—but even the entire world becomes a unified and harmonious whole.

(3) Unity of experience

The world of experience is dominated by the function of experience, characterized by the inability to distinguish experiential information. Therefore, the world of experience is a world without distinction, and this world possesses uniformity. Dreams are a typical world of experience, and therefore dreams are uniform.

Understanding the unity of dreams is not an easy task. Daily thought processes are entirely based on language, and one of the fundamental characteristics of language is that it is built upon strict distinctions. Unity, however, is a concept that doesn't exist in a linguistic context. Therefore, to understand unity, one must first clearly distinguish the different distinctions commonly found in conscious activity. This will allow for a better understanding of which distinctions are missing in dreams.

① No self

Of all the distinctions, "I" is the first. Before the distinction of "I" is formed, everything in consciousness is a fluid entity composed of pure experience, and dreams are such a state.

In dreams, the dreamer lacks a clear concept of "I." While the dreamer may possess a perspective as a "narrator" or "observer," this identity is not a stable symbolic structure. The dreamer doesn't perceive a clear distinction between this narrator "I" and other parts of the dream environment, nor does it consider them separate. This identity merely serves as a replaceable perspective. In some cases, dreams exhibit frequent perspective shifts. One moment the dreamer is observing from a first-person perspective, the next they might be observing from God perspective, and then back to a first-person perspective. These frequent shifts feel natural in the dream because the "I" in the dream is essentially an empty shell. This tool has no inherent meaning; it merely serves as a clue connecting the entire dream's structure and content, maintaining consistency with waking habits. After all, during the day, we are accustomed to... We are accustomed to having a clearly defined "self" and viewing the world from this "self." In reality, all clearly appearing images in dreams are empty shells without actual content, not just the "self" existing as the perspective in the dream lacking content. This is because dreams themselves are a world dominated by experience, mostly internal experiences like emotions derived from memory, and a smaller portion from external experiences derived from sensations like sexuality, hot/cold, and pain. As discussed earlier, these experiences cannot be noticed a second time in dreams, nor can they be reflected upon. Therefore, they cannot serve as a starting point to develop more reactions beyond the single reaction they directly point to. The inability to generate two or more reactions means they have no space for interpretation and development; therefore, they actually have no content whatsoever. The only reaction they point to is the form they present in the dream, that is, the way they are dreamt. This is fundamentally different from the language-based thinking environment we are accustomed to in our waking state.

In a linguistic context, when we see a so-called objectively existing thing, such as an Apple, we first perceive the various definite experiences that the Apple brings us, such as its color, smell, shape, texture, and sound. These experiences are then processed separately in our minds. All experiences from this thing are selected from all the experiential information received by our brain at that moment, and then specifically linked together, as if they have been labeled with a special tag indicating that these stimuli come from the same definite thing. This process of selecting, classifying, and labeling stimuli is crucial. The process is about differentiation. Clearly, this labeling process requires at least two stages of brain attention: one when the stimuli are received and selected, and another when the selected stimuli are categorized and labeled. Stimuli that aren't selected and labeled don't receive this second attention, and therefore cannot be labeled or categorized. As discussed earlier, they become one-off stimuli that dissipate and are forgotten. Labeled and categorized stimuli, on the other hand, can be remembered. However, starting from the second stage of attention, our... The brain is no longer actually paying attention to the original stimulus itself, but rather to an abstract stimulus abstracted from memory, while the original stimulus has already vanished. Intuitively, we can perceive a fundamental difference between this abstract stimulus from memory and the physical stimulus from the actual environment; the abstract stimulus from memory is far more unstable than the physical stimulus from the environment. Once the second attention begins, countless more attentions become possible, and once the number of attentions reaches a certain point, we can no longer distinguish how many times the stimulus information has been noticed. Each time it is re-noticed, the stimulus is relabeled. However, because this labeling is a spontaneous process, no longer based on the initial reception of the first physical stimulus, this spontaneous process is prone to errors. These errors may accumulate, and after many labelings, we can no longer distinguish how many times these errors have accumulated. Eventually, we can even clearly feel that the memory information on the label is no longer completely consistent with the original physical stimulus information. At this point, we call this distortion "subjectivity."

The existence of "subjectivity" implies a fundamental difference between the first and subsequent attention to experience, and this difference can be perceived under certain conditions. In some philosophers' theories, the experiential information noticed for the first time is called a "symbol" or "phenomenon," while the experiential information noticed for the second and subsequent times is called "content" or "essence." Although the descriptions differ, the reason why people make such seemingly unbreakable divisions, including binary oppositions such as "matter and spirit," "objective and subjective," and "object and subject," is precisely because they have discovered a difficult-to-cross gap between the information remembered after the second attention and the information noticed for the first time. All these dichotomies are merely describing the distinction between the second and subsequent attention and the first attention. In the descriptions of these philosophers, it is very difficult to directly perceive the so-called essence through purely experiential phenomena. This may be because the so-called essence they assume itself does not originate from the same mechanism in our brains as intuitive experiential perception. The former is the second and subsequent attention, while the latter is the first attention; the former comes from memory, while the latter usually comes from the body, but may also come from memory.

This difference is, in fact, "I." If this book requires a most precise and fundamental descriptive definition of "I," then that definition refers to this difference described in the above passage. Or, more accurately, "I" refers to this awareness of the difference between the feedback received from the first attention and the feedback received from the second and subsequent attention. It is because of this difference, which we can directly perceive, that we can perceive the difference between the feedback received from the second and subsequent attention and the first attention. Only then can we further summarize the widespread existence of this difference, discovering how clearly and explicitly it divides all types of experiential stimuli we can receive. And from this division, the most primitive awareness of the distinction between "internal" and "external" arises. This distinction is the first distinction to appear among all distinctions, and it is also the starting point of all distinctions. Based on this distinction, we gradually realize that "I" and "the whole world outside of me" are different, and only then can we recognize the so-called self.

In dreams, this distinction usually does not appear. This may be related to the fact that the relevant functional areas of the brain involved in performing secondary attention are dormant during sleep. Most of the time, since all experiential information in dreams cannot be a second time noticed, this distinction does not actually occur, and there is no clear awareness of self in dreams.

② Anonymous

In dreams, not only is there no self, but there is also no name. As discussed earlier, all the inner meaning of a dream disappears; a dream is essentially a pure experience devoid of any inherent meaning. The absence of inner meaning also means the absence of a name. If you don't understand that dreams are pure experience, consider this simple analogy: If you pull your hair, you'll feel intense pain. This pain is pure experience; no one analyzes its "essence" or "inner meaning," because we generally consider the sensation of pain itself to be perfectly clear, requiring no further analysis, and concealing nothing behind it. Dreams can be simply likened to a series of pains combined to form a vivid hallucinatory experience. For example, if I dream of my mother, this mother appearing in my dream is not my real mother. I cannot have a truly effective conversation with her, nor can I learn any secrets about my mother from her that I don't actually know in reality. This means that this mother is a false mother without "inner meaning," merely a collection of impressions of my mother remaining in my memory. The psychological motivation that led to this dream (i. e., the center of the dream) influences the formation of this dream. Numerous experiences and impressions gained from daily interactions with the mother are selectively extracted from memory and combined to form the "mother" in the dream. In every detail, from behavior to speech, the mother in the dream is simply the impression I have of my mother, and these impressions are actually the various experiences my mother has given me. This applies not only to the mother in the dream but to everything in the dream. Everything in the dream is actually a reproduction of impressions, concepts, and other experiences in my mind. A certain... It was supposed to be raining, but what I actually dreamed about wasn't the rain itself, but rather "the feelings that rain evoked in my mind." The rain itself isn't particularly analytical, but what exactly the feeling was associated with the rain in the dream is. This requires considering many details in the dream, such as whether the rain was heavy or light, whether there was thunder or wind, and the setting—whether it was in a city or a deserted suburb. Analyzing these details aims to determine what specific feeling the rain in the dream represents, as the feelings evoked by heavy rain, light rain, and rain with or without thunder and wind are all different.

Secondly, dreams become an indivisible whole, where everything is closely interconnected. In a waking state, all objects we see are individually closed, and behind each closed concrete thing lies its own inherent meaning. This line of thinking is a cognitive habit brought to us by language. This sense of closure comes from differentiation; differentiation gives rise to self-awareness, differentiation also gives rise to language, and differentiation also brings about the closed attribute of names in language. Without this closed attribute, it is equivalent to abolishing differentiation, and we actually return to the world dominated by experience, that is, the environment of dreams. Therefore, there is no closed attribute between different concrete things in dreams. In daily life, when we see an Apple, we think of the Apple as a closed, independent entity, and that the Apple has no relation to the unwashed suit we are wearing. However, if the same scene appears in a dream, then the Apple cannot be regarded as an independent entity unrelated to the surrounding things. The Apple does not have independence; it exists functionally as an inseparable part of the entire experience flow of the dream. Its existence in the dream is certainly because it, together with other parts of the dream, expresses a certain specific feeling or meaning. It exists here as a specific experience. For example, in the example of rain mentioned in the previous paragraph, thunder and rain are closely linked. If they occur simultaneously, they usually present a specific atmosphere as a whole, namely, the dreamer's own feeling about a thunderstorm. If the dreamer broke up with their beloved girlfriend a few days ago on a stormy night, this breakup experience is a very strong experiential stimulus, linked to the atmosphere of thunder and rain. This constitutes the dreamer's impression, an experience, of the atmosphere of thunder and rain. In this case, if the dreamer dreams of thunder and rain again, it is very likely not because of the thunder and rain itself. The dream's meaning isn't determined by the impression it evokes or the symbolic significance of thunderstorms, but rather by the specific memories they trigger. It evokes the dreamer's experience, specifically the heart-wrenching pain of their girlfriend leaving during a thunderstorm that night. In this example, "thunder," "rain," and "heart-wrenching pain" form a unified whole, conveying the same feeling evoked by the same event. Separating this whole, such as discussing "what does dreaming of thunder mean" in isolation, might fail to connect it to the dreamer's emotional state during the stormy night, thus disrupting the dream's overall coherence.

③ No action

In the experiential world of dreams, the third major difference from the linguistic environment is the absence of agency. In a linguistic environment, all definite nouns or concepts have a clear purpose; for example, a written symbol points to the meaning it intends to represent, or a word is explained using a multitude of richer words, thus making the original word point to more words used to explain it. However, because the phenomena appearing in dreams are essentially just pure experiences—no substantial difference from the pain of pulling one's own hair—they possess no other directional significance when considered in isolation, either individually or in a few specific instances. The only possible direction for these experiences is the subject experiencing them. However, this concept of "the subject itself" is still inaccurate, because it can only exist within a linguistic environment and can only be understood from the perspective of that environment. The concepts of "the subject itself" and "direction" only emerge during the process of experiential movement. In reality, this makes it impossible to truly clarify whether "the subject itself" is a result of experience or a result of the linguistic environment. In this book, I tend to believe that "the subject itself" is a result of the linguistic environment. This aligns better with the book's fundamental stance of focusing on the world of experience rather than the linguistic environment, and also better reflects the unified characteristics of the world of experience derived earlier. In the purely experiential world, such as dreams, the concept of "the subject itself" is practically impossible. For example, although most of us have normal, healthy eyes in our dreams, we don't actually use those eyes to observe anything in the dream. The purpose of those eyes is merely to conform to a habitual experience, because we use our eyes to see the world in daily life. Without eyes, it would seem very incongruous due to the lack of everyday habits. Naturally, the things observed in dreams are not truly observed in a meaningful sense. From the moment they appear in the dream, they are already in a completed state of being observed. Therefore, there is no process of observation. Thus, what is rationalized in dreams as "visual information I see" is merely a direct representation of the state of "seeing information" in the form of experiential habit, while the process of "seeing" itself does not exist. Even if the act of "seeing" appears in a dream, it is simply dreaming of the act of "seeing," an experiential feeling, not a real need to exercise the function of "seeing" in the dream. If this act disappears, it will not affect the presentation of visual information in other dreams; even if this act appears, it is not fundamentally different from the visual information in other dreams, still just an experiential feeling. This explains why we dream... In dreams, we can often know information that seems impossible to perceive directly, even without direct dialogue. For example, we might know the intentions and thoughts of other characters without any direct conversation. We can often see behind us or even far away without any visual limitations, or we might inexplicably learn the reasons why certain things happen in a dream. These situations occur because although perception may occur as an experience in dreams, the process of perception and the true function of perception do not exist. The experiences that can occur in dreams have already been perceived. Even if we sometimes dream of being unable to speak or being blind, the "self" in these dreams usually does not actually lose the ability to express itself or observe the world in the dream because of this inability to speak or being blind. Instead, the "inability to speak" and "blindness" themselves are included in the dream as new experiential stimuli.

In this sense, dreams have no object. Since there is no object, there is also no subject. This is a significant difference from our accustomed linguistic thinking. In a linguistic environment, when we decide to perform a specific action, we can always find a motivation that evokes that action. Fame, wealth, knowledge, power, love, security, even desire and fear—much of our culture revolves around these obvious motivations. We often see people trying to ask profound questions like "What is the meaning of my life?", "What kind of person am I?", and "Why am I doing this?", but it must be clarified that these typical questions are only effective within the context of a linguistic environment. In the purely experiential world of dreams, concepts like "meaning" and "motivation" are simply not valid. Due to limitations in our ability to distinguish and our cognitive functions, our consciousness in this state effectively loses the capacity to ask these questions. For example, we sometimes cannot ascertain the specific and precise motivation behind the behavior and language of a schizophrenic patient. The reason we don't understand the purpose of their actions is because their cognitive functions are impaired. Therefore, dreams are not actually the fulfillment of desires or the accomplishment of wishes. Desires do exist in dreams, but they are not fulfilled. As a form of internal experience, desires can indeed appear in dreams in various forms; however, the mere appearance of such desires does not mean they are truly satisfied. Such desires are merely ordinary experiential stimuli, similar in nature to the pain caused by pulling one's own hair. More accurately, there is no essential difference between a desire appearing in a dream and a desire imagined while awake; the only difference is that fantasies in the waking state formally process the desire in the dream, making it more rational. If we insist that a hungry person drawing a cake on the ground can satisfy their appetite, and that this act of drawing a cake does indeed satisfy their appetite, then perhaps dreams are indeed a form of desire fulfillment. But if we consider drawing a cake to satisfy hunger not to be a truly satisfying act of desire, then dreams are also not a truly satisfying act of desire. This book leans towards the latter view.

Now, we can see the following very common dream example. From the analysis of this dream example, we can better understand the unified nature of dreams.

Dream Example 9: The Chaser

"No matter where I fled, he seemed to know everything."

He kept chasing after me.

I knew very well that I absolutely could not let him catch me.

I couldn't make out his face clearly anymore; his other physical features were also blurry, and I couldn't quite remember them. But I knew he exuded a dangerous aura, the kind of presence that was absolutely untouchable. He seemed incredibly powerful; I had no way of confronting him head-on. But I couldn't let him catch me. I had to escape.

I kept running. Sometimes I ran faster, sometimes I ran slower because I was tired. I tried all sorts of ways to get around many different places, but I still couldn't shake him off. He was always right behind me. I tried to find a place to hide, but I was always spotted by him before I could hide for long. I could only keep running before I was caught. No matter where I ran or where I hid, he seemed to know everything about me and I could never shake him off.

Analysis: Many people have probably dreamed of being chased, which is actually a very typical and common dream. To understand the meaning of this typical dream, we must first grasp the core starting experience from which this dream originates. This core experience is neither the person chasing me, nor the outcome of whether I was ultimately caught, but rather the feeling of "I am being chased by something, and I want to escape from it but I can't get rid of it." The outcome of the chase, the shadowy figure chasing me, and even the act of escaping are not truly concrete feelings, nor are they truly "pure experiences." Therefore, these are not the true core of the dream, but only partial tools used to represent the pure experience that forms the true core.

Once we understand this, we can understand the many "strange" aspects of this dream, and those seemingly illogical and incomprehensible parts can all be reasonably explained. First, there is the ambiguity of the pursuer's identity. In almost all dreams related to the theme of pursuit, the pursuer's identity is very ambiguous. This pursuer usually has no name, no physical characteristics, no speech, and may not even have a clear gender, nor any other clear behavior besides pursuing. This is because the dream is about pursuit, not about the pursuer being a person in black. The pursuer's identity is superfluous in expressing the central theme of the dream, "Being pursued by something you want to escape but can't get rid of." According to the principle of unity in dreams, anything superfluous must be something inconsistent, and anything inconsistent must be linguistic. Therefore, the superfluous thing must be a product of linguistic thought, not something inherent in the pure experience of a dream. There is no nonsense in dreams. Suppose that the pursuer has a very specific identity, such as someone you know well in real life, like your girlfriend. Then, because of the clear identity of your girlfriend, the central theme of the dream becomes... The theme shifts; it's no longer the feeling of "trying to escape something I can't get rid of," but rather "the emotional relationship between me and my girlfriend." The driving force behind the dream becomes concretely the process of my interactions with my girlfriend in reality. According to the principle of unity in the experiential world, such as dreams, changing one part of a dream will inevitably trigger a butterfly effect, changing all the details of the dream. In the original chase dream, not only is the identity of the chaser ambiguous, but the dream itself has neither beginning nor end. The specific beginning and end of the chase don't appear in the dream because the dreamer originally dreamt of the feeling of being chased and trying to escape; the beginning and end are not part of this feeling, so they don't appear. But if the theme of the dream becomes "the relationship between me and my girlfriend," then the beginning and end are very likely to appear because a complete chase story is more conducive to showing the overall development of the relationship between me and my girlfriend. This ambiguity in the chaser's identity is a very typical manifestation of "namelessness" in the experiential world. In a high-experience environment like a dream, everything is essentially blurred, losing its own individual characteristics, and becoming pure experience without any real meaning.

Other details appearing in the dream no longer seem incomprehensible. For example, although the pursuer's identity is vague, the impression of this pursuer is clear. Therefore, the dreamer clearly describes that "he exudes a dangerous aura, the kind of existence that is absolutely untouchable." This impression is actually a kind of experience and feeling of the dreamer himself. "There is no way to resist," "I absolutely cannot be caught," and "I must run away" all describe a strong feeling in my heart at this moment. This part belongs to the emotional experience surrounding the central experience, which is like ripples extending from the central experience. No matter how fast or slow I run, no matter where I hide, he seems to be able to find me immediately and follow me closely. I can't shake him off no matter what I do. Here, although I can't shake him off, conversely, he hasn't really caught me. This is because the real center of the dream is "escape." What is really dreamed is the feeling of trying to escape but being unable to escape, not the process of being caught. Therefore, neither the event of shaking off nor being caught will occur, because their occurrence would mean the end of the escape.

In conclusion, dreams are a unified whole. This concept of unity holds a very important place in classical Chinese philosophy, which does not rely heavily on deductive logic but highly values individual internal experience and feelings. Daoist philosophy, represented by Laozi and Zhuangzi, is essentially a philosophy discussing the world of experience. All the important concepts in Laozi and Zhuangzi's thought are actually attempts to describe the unique characteristics of the purely experiential world. In Daoist thought, unity is directly regarded as the starting point of everything. "The Dao begot one, one begot two, two begot three, three begot all things," describes the process of the unified experiential world gradually establishing distinctions and transitioning to the linguistic world. The "highest realm" assumed by Laozi and Zhuangzi, namely "the unity of heaven and man," describes a unique experience of achieving unity between man and all things in the universe—that is, discovering the inherent unity between the individual and all things in the universe. Unfortunately, a clear theoretical system of linguistic logic did not exist in the era of Laozi and Zhuangzi. The axiomatic method based on conceptual reasoning, originating from ancient Greece philosophy, had not yet appeared, and typical experiential materials such as dreams only began to emerge in the last century. Psychologists attempt systematic research, so philosophers of Lao-Zhuang's time lacked both theoretical tools (axiomatic logic) for analyzing the experiential world and typical experiential materials (dreams) for analysis. Therefore, they could only use a very simple and primitive literary method to try to convey their findings in the experiential world. We must recognize that although the core of Lao-Zhuang thought is very valuable, the language they used to express it is absolutely outdated from today's perspective. We should never assume that language itself is flawed simply because experience is a more fundamental form of logic than language, and thus abandon the use of language in daily communication and writing, or imitate experiential materials like dreams to make our language obscure and ambiguous. This is actually a regressive act that cannot bring any creativity. In a complete process of consciousness, experience and language are indispensable. What we should pursue is neither pure reason that abandons experience, nor pure experience that abandons reason, but rather the harmonious unity of reason and experience.

(4) Continuity of experience

Experience is dynamic, yet unified, and flows through time. Therefore, experience is continuous.

Dreams are also continuous. To understand the continuous nature of dreams, we need to understand them from the perspective of their dynamic nature.

The written language we use daily is itself a static, fixed standard. Every language includes nouns and pronouns, and a fundamental basis for these two parts of speech is the fixed referential relationship between the noun symbol and the noun's meaning. The Switzerland linguist Saussure offered a classic summary of this: if we call the symbol and image of a noun the signifier, then the meaning of the noun hidden behind this symbol and image is the signified. The signifier points to the signified; this referential relationship is stable and does not easily change, therefore it is actually static, or synchronic. However, such a referential relationship does not exist in dreams. As discussed earlier, dreams are a pure... Pure experience, or purely experiential experience, is only sequential in terms of the time it occurs, but there is no one-to-one correspondence. For a definite noun, its signifier and its signified are in one-to-one correspondence. For example, when we say the word " Apple," we mean the fruit called Apple. And if I need to express the meaning of this fruit, I will naturally choose the word Apple. However, in a dream, if the central experiential impulse that triggers the dream is "the grief and pain I feel after breaking up with my girlfriend," then this emotional impulse will not be "hidden" behind the dream, but will occur directly during the entire dreaming experience. This impulse will not... Referring to any specific image in a dream—for example, we cannot definitively say that having feelings of grief and anger after a breakup will necessarily result in dreaming about something specific, nor can we say that a specific image in a dream, such as a thunderstorm, necessarily stems from some emotion of grief and anger; the appearance of a thunderstorm in a dream could very well be due to other reasons. Although there is a factual causal relationship between the central impulse that triggers the dream and the many image experiences that actually appear in the dream, there is no stable and precise one-to-one correspondence between them, similar to the signifier and signified in a linguistic context. For any specific dream, it is actually always a certain experience. The impulses, such as cold, pain, or a certain emotion, develop and change during the dream. The images that appear primarily visually in dreams are actually just byproducts of the stimulation of certain areas of the brain when these experiential impulses occur. As discussed earlier, in most cases, due to limitations in cognitive function, the dreamer cannot pay secondary attention to the visual signals in the dream, and these byproduct visual signals cannot, in turn, affect the central experiential impulse that triggered the dream. These visual information may or may not appear. Although they are the entry point for analyzing and understanding dreams, they are not actually important to the dream itself.

Therefore, experiential information such as dreams is unstable; it cannot even satisfy a crucial premise of deductive logic—the law of identity. In deductive logic, the law of identity is vital, ensuring the consistency of a basic concept throughout logical deduction—an indispensable premise. However, for pure experience, it's impossible to expect an experiential stimulus to remain consistently consistent. Suppose I pull my hair; the act of pulling causes me pain, a physical experiential stimulus. As long as I don't let go of my hair, the pain will continue, but this continuous pain is different at every moment. Changes in the force of pulling, the brain's gradual adaptation and desensitization to the pain as the duration increases, and various other sensations accompanying the pain, such as itching, the warmth from the contact between the hand and scalp, etc.—countless microscopic factors constantly influence and alter this pain stimulus. Although all are pain... However, the pain of having your hair pulled, the pain of being stabbed, the pain of indigestion, and the pain of a fall are all different, and these pains are different at every moment during the entire process. Therefore, the logical law of identity completely fails when it comes to pain, a purely experiential stimulus. It is precisely because pain, as an experiential stimulus, does not conform to the law of identity that we can perceive changes and differences in the environment through this constantly changing and unstable experience. When the pain of having your hair pulled gradually lessens, we know that the hand pulling our hair has indeed gradually loosened its grip; the stomach pain caused by indigestion shows differences and changes before and after, so we can try to determine the cause of the stomach pain and make a diagnosis based on the changes and different characteristics of the stomach pain. If all pain were the same, it would mean that we would not be able to subjectively distinguish the difference between the pain of being stabbed and the pain of having our hair pulled, which would be equivalent to directly depriving the body of its ability to perceive the environment. We would never be able to know what changes have occurred in the environment.

All other types of experiences share the same dynamic nature as the pain experiences listed above. Take color as an example: while everyone understands what "red" means when we say it, it's impossible to find an absolute definition of red in detail. The wavelength range of visible light is a continuous spectrum—red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet—and the number of different colors that can be extracted from this continuously changing spectrum is virtually infinite. For two different colors, such as red and yellow, there is no absolute boundary between them. This illustrates that the boundary distinguishing different colors does not exist in objective nature. This distinction arises from our consciousness actively selecting, processing, and classifying stimuli received from nature—a subjective product. For a red entity, such as a red Apple, although we perceive the Apple as red, and red is an inherent attribute of the Apple, in reality, for the Apple itself, red is merely the visible light reflected under certain specific conditions, such as sunlight, as perceived by the human eye. This is an experience. If the Apple were in other environments, such as complete darkness, we wouldn't actually see the red of an Apple in the dark. If the light illuminating the Apple wasn't sunlight, and the light source itself didn't have a wavelength of red, the Apple might appear a completely different color. If the observer of the Apple wasn't a normal human eye—for example, some animals with a different color perception range than humans, or those who are red-green colorblind—then the Apple wouldn't appear red to them either. Although we consider red to be an attribute of the Apple, this attribute is actually influenced by many other factors unrelated to the Apple; changing any one of these factors directly alters the final perceived result. Our perception of red involves not only the perceived red object and our consciousness as the perceiver, but also many other complex environmental factors. As an experience, red is neither simply an absolute attribute of the red object itself, nor some absolute concept entirely existing within the perceiver's consciousness, but rather a specific result that occurs dynamically in a specific environment at a specific moment, involving both the red object and the perceiver.

Therefore, instability, or dynamic nature, is a fundamental difference between experience and language. The law of identity cannot be applied to the experiential environment; experience is always changing. This constant change must be continuous. While there may be discontinuous points in the change of experience, these discontinuities cannot, like concepts in language, serve as boundaries to define the actual connotation of a concept, thus failing to function as an expressive tool. Discontinuities in experiential change have only one possibility: the experience has ceased. Experience is fundamental to life. Life can lack the capacity for thought, deductive reasoning, and conceptual definition. But it absolutely cannot lose its capacity for experience; it cannot lose endogenous emotional experiences like desire and fear, nor exogenous sensory experiences like pain and temperature. These experiential capacities are indispensable for the survival of a life. To interrupt these experiences is tantamount to declaring the death of life, and indeed, only death can create continuity. The only interruption in life. In this respect, this is fundamentally different from the concept-focused logic of language, which is governed by the law of identity. In the logic of language, any clear concept has clear boundaries, and there is always an interruption between different concepts. It is precisely this clear interruption that strictly distinguishes the differences between different concepts. However, the ultimate source of these interrupted concepts is still experience. Only through experience can these concepts be connected with the world we actually live in, just as the concept of red ultimately comes from the red visible light perceived by our naked eyes. However, as we have discussed earlier, experience involves not only the object being experienced and the subject of the experience, but also the specific environment in which the entire experiential process takes place. Many other factors in this specific environment can have a decisive influence on the final result of the experience. The object is merely the source of experience, and the subject is merely the end point of experience. Experience itself is a continuous process of change from object to subject in a specific environment.

(5) Certainty of experience

Experience is deterministic. This mainly means that the flow of the result and the source of the cause of experience are both definite. The law of identity and deduction do not apply to experience, but the law of causality still holds true. For any experience, we can always find its source and analyze its flow and result. In daily life, if I see an Apple that is red, then I cannot simultaneously see it as blue. Although the red color of this Apple undergoes relatively complex environmental changes in the process of being perceived by me, and is affected by many factors such as light source, environmental medium, and photosensitive organs, as long as I ultimately see that it is indeed red, then I can clearly determine that this relatively complex environment, at least in my perception... The time I spend seeing this red Apple is relatively stable; the red Apple doesn't flash or change between red and blue due to the dynamic process of this red stimulus. Similarly, if I feel my hair being torn apart and in great pain, then this tearing pain is definite; generally, I can be certain that something is tearing my hair. If I feel thirsty or hungry, then I definitely need to drink water or eat something; this need for water or food and my conscious experience of thirst or hunger form a clear causal link. Thirst and hunger are definite; they don't need to be questioned.

Language is also deterministic. We know that deductive reasoning is reliable; conclusions reached with a clear conceptual foundation are trustworthy and definite. However, if we try to translate information from experience into language, or attempt to extend definite conceptual conclusions existing in language to actual experience, trying to cross the boundary between experience and thought, then uncertainty arises. For example, if I feel something tearing at my hair and causing pain, this painful stimulus is definite; I can be certain that my hair is indeed being acted upon by something. But if I try to use this pain to determine what is causing the tearing of my hair, what or who is acting on it, then I am making an uncertain judgment. In fact, this crosses the line between experience and thought, attempting to process information from experience using the mechanisms of thought. This is because such thinking has already reached a basic level of consideration regarding the external environment, assuming that the existence of something called the external environment is necessary for this kind of reflection on the source of stimulus information. For some animals whose thinking functions are not as powerful as humans, we can still observe them reacting to various stimuli, but whether they explore and think about the source of these stimulus signals is a question. Perceiving stimulus signals and reacting is a basic experiential function, but classifying and processing experiential information and attempting to derive some generalized fixed conclusions based on it is a complex thinking function.

Similarly, uncertainty arises when we extend conclusions based on explicit concepts to empirical facts. For example, most conclusions in physical theories are explicit conceptual forms derived from deductive reasoning. However, these theoretical formulas cannot guarantee their absolute correctness solely through deductive reasoning. Correctness here refers to whether these conclusions remain consistent when extended to empirical facts. Experimental verification becomes an indispensable factor in determining the correctness of these physical theories. However, since it is impossible to exhaustively enumerate all possible experimental scenarios, experiments can only eliminate those physical theories that are clearly inconsistent, but cannot completely prove that a given physical theory is absolutely correct. Moreover, experiments are essentially empirical acts. No matter how cleverly an experiment is designed or how comprehensive and abundant the statistical data is collected, it cannot change the fact that an experiment is an empirical act. All of this illustrates that conceptual thinking and empirical reality are two completely different systems. Although all derivations are deterministic within their respective systems, once a transformation occurs between the two systems, the derivations become uncertain.

(6) Induction

There are at least two different types of induction: induction that attempts to derive general conclusions from empirical facts, and induction that does not attempt to derive general conclusions from empirical facts. The former type of induction crosses the line between experience and thought, and therefore is insufficient. The latter type of induction does not attempt to cross the line between experience and thought, and therefore the conclusions reached by this type of induction are sufficient.

(The rest is omitted.)

III. The Principles of Dreams (An unused and abandoned version)

1. There is no self-awareness in dreams.

The most important dividing line in understanding self-awareness lies in our ability to clearly distinguish between ourselves and the world outside ourselves. The most intuitive understanding of self-awareness is the ability to recognize one's own existence. However, recognizing one's own existence is not a concrete conclusion; rather, it refers to our ability to effectively categorize all stimuli entering our attention, clearly distinguishing stimuli from memory, imagination, and our own physical body from stimuli from our surrounding natural environment, and collectively labeling these stimuli as the "self." In other words, self-awareness is not merely recognizing one's own existence; it also means recognizing that the entire world outside oneself is not the self. It is not a direct, intuitive understanding of what the self is, but a clear recognition of the dividing line between the so-called self and the world outside oneself.

This means that self-awareness is a form of differentiation.

Dreams lack this ability to distinguish; a person cannot clearly recognize in their sleep whether the stimuli appearing in their dreams originate from their own bodily memory or external environment. If we let a person fall asleep in an air-conditioned room with the temperature set very low, this physical stimulus of cold will enter their dream. However, according to the above argument, this person cannot actually distinguish in their dream whether this coldness comes from their own memory or from the actual external environment. Therefore, they will not clearly recognize in their dream that the coldness is because they set the air conditioner too low; instead, they are more likely to dream of being in a frozen snowfield. Although the source of the cold stimulus is the external environment, the consciousness in the dream confuses the source of this coldness with their own memory.

The lack of self-awareness in dreams is also reflected in our inability to recognize that we are dreaming. This is because the distinction between dreams and reality is equivalent to the distinction between the self and the external environment. Reality and virtuality are actually paired, mutually complementary concepts. Only when an individual is able to distinguish between the self and the objective material world outside the self can they perceive the internal world as a dream and the external world as reality. Therefore, the ability to distinguish between dreams and reality is a corollary of self-awareness. The inability to recognize that one is dreaming is not due to confusion about whether one is actually in a dream, but rather because we lack the consciousness to attempt to distinguish between dream and reality. From another perspective, as long as the dreamer can generate the consciousness to try to identify whether they are in a dream, and this motivation to identify arises, they are already destined to recognize that they are indeed in a dream. In this context, the specific methods used to determine whether one is dreaming are completely irrelevant; the motivation itself is the distinction. Once the motivation emerges, self-awareness is already awakened. The specific criterion the dreamer chooses to convince themselves they are in a dream or reality merely provides a reason for their judgment. This aligns better with our everyday habits of rational thinking, but it doesn't determine the final conclusion. Therefore, different people might choose different details as criteria for determining whether they are dreaming, such as biting or pinching themselves. The results of these actions are already expected. They won't produce unexpected outcomes in the dream, but will always follow the self-suggestion towards an anticipated result. These behaviors arise simply from habit.

The lack of self-awareness in dreams is also reflected in the dreamer's absence of a clear concept of "I." That is, although the dreamer may possess a perspective identity as a "narrator" or "observer" in the dream, this identity is not a stable structure. This is because the dreamer does not perceive a clear distinction between this narrator's "I" and other parts of the dream environment, nor does it perceive them as separate entities. This identity merely serves as a replaceable perspective; it lacks any real meaning or substance. In some cases, dreams can easily exhibit very frequent shifts in perspective. In one moment, the dreamer is still... From a first-person perspective, the viewpoint can shift to God one in a moment, and then back to first-person again a short while later. This frequent shifting of perspectives doesn't feel out of place in dreams because the "I" in the dream is essentially just an empty shell, a lens through which the dream is observed. This lens connects the entire dream's structure and content, maintaining consistency with our daytime cognitive habits. After all, when we're awake, we're used to having a clear "I" as the lens and viewing the world through that lens. The appearance of this "I's" perspective in dreams is also a matter of habit.

In dreams, there are no reasons, no curiosity. Let's take the Apple as an example again. In real life, when I see an Apple, I feel curious about Apple. I unconsciously think about the Apple as an object and the reasons behind the phenomena it brings. For example, I might want to taste the Apple to know its flavor, and I might wonder where the Apple came from, and why Apple's there.

Because dreams lack a clear self-concept and a clear distinction between what is and isn't the self, everything in a dream exists in a chaotic state of "distinction between self and object." If the reader is familiar with any psychological techniques related to dream interpretation, they will find that everything in a dream is, in a sense, an internal manifestation of a part of the dreamer's self. In Freud's dream interpretation theory, he believed that dreams are the fulfillment of desires, a projection of instincts, and that desires are actually the motivation for the movement of conscious awareness. In Jung's psychological theory, he proposed a series of personality type classifications, all of which are interpretations of the self. Broadly speaking, everything in a dream can be considered a part of the dreamer's inner self; no single part can be listed separately and a boundary between it and the dreamer's self can be clearly defined. In reality, when we see a specific object, such as an Apple, we clearly know that the specific Apple object and I... They are different. I am not the Apple, and the Apple is not me. For me, the existence of the Apple is something that cannot be confirmed, because I know there is a boundary between me and the Apple that my consciousness cannot cross. However, this confusion does not exist in dreams. The Apple in a dream is not Apple outside the boundary, but Apple without boundaries. This Apple in a dream must be connected to some feeling in my heart, perhaps a memory related to Apple, or perhaps an impression that Apple bring me. But whatever the specific reason or connection this Apple has, the impression or emotion related to Apple is the most important part that truly appears in the dream, while the visual image of the Apple is merely a byproduct of this impression or emotion, an echo or ripple brought about by this emotion. And the impression or emotion is definitely closely and directly connected to the dreamer's true spiritual self, and it can even be said that it is the manifestation of the dreamer's self itself.

This logic, based on impressions, emotions, and feelings, is fundamentally different from the logic built on clear self-awareness and based on concepts and distinctions. The latter is the foundation of almost all Western philosophy, all modern science, and all thought systems centered on "reason." Take Descartes as an example; he believed "I think, therefore I am," thus he didn't actually discuss the intrinsic nature of self-awareness, i. e., "I think," but rather used self-awareness as the basis for all his theoretical deductions. According to our theory, self-awareness is actually the brain's ability to distinguish the sources of attentional stimuli. Descartes... The "I think, therefore I am" principle gradually reveals that the world is binary, discovering the dualistic opposition between matter and spirit, subject and object, and subject and object. This is essentially a reinterpretation of the essence of self-consciousness—all dualisms are variations of self-consciousness, and without exception, they all originate from the boundary that distinguishes between the so-called self and the entire world outside the self. All the problems that dualism cannot solve are because its starting point presupposes the existence of self-consciousness. Therefore, dualism is a theory destined to be unable to explain the phenomena of consciousness when self-consciousness is absent, nor can it explain how self-consciousness itself actually arises.

This book does not intend to discuss the rational world beyond self-awareness, nor does it intend to refute or criticize dualism. It is a theoretical work specializing in the origin and development of self-awareness, and the form of consciousness in the absence of self-awareness, based on a strong practical foundation. Its aim is to fill the gap where rationalism and dualism are ineffective outside of self-awareness. While the book chooses dreams as its entry point, all conclusions are applicable to any conscious activity under the same conditions outside of dreams. Although the main scope of the research is outside of self-awareness, the methods used are still strictly rationalist, emphasizing logical deduction and practical verification. Because this book is currently the work of the author alone, limited by personal ability, all conclusions have not been experimentally verified beyond the author's own experience in dream interpretation, thus remaining in a very immature early stage. Nevertheless, due to its unique analytical perspective, the relatively niche areas it covers, and the support of numerous case studies—representing a long-neglected area of mainstream science—and the fact that most conclusions are rigorously logically sound, this book is a valuable resource. The book provides logical derivations and proofs, thus retaining some reference value. However, it's important to note that because the subject matter differs significantly from mainstream science, its analytical methods and perspectives differ considerably. Therefore, readers should avoid applying established mainstream scientific or philosophical standards to the conclusions and viewpoints presented. Inevitably, the book will exhibit significant differences in terminology and concepts compared to mainstream academia, and may include many new terms not found in other disciplines. Readers should understand that this book presents a pioneering new theory rooted in the unknown, distinct from any existing system. Readers should approach this book with an open mind, striving to understand the specific viewpoints first before offering critical opinions. It's unfair to rush to judge the book's conclusions simply because some viewpoints are unfamiliar, the terminology differs from mainstream understanding, or the research methods seem outdated.

2. Distinguishing and Negating

The essence of self-consciousness is differentiation, but differentiation is not solely self-consciousness. If we are to discuss the nature and origin of self-consciousness, we must analyze what differentiation is.

In a linguistic context, when we see a so-called objectively existing thing, such as an Apple, we first perceive the various definite experiences that the Apple brings us, such as its color, smell, shape, texture, and sound. These experiences are then processed separately in our minds. All experiences from this thing are selected from all the experiential information received by our brain at that moment, and then specifically linked together, as if they have been labeled with a special tag indicating that these stimuli come from the same definite thing. This process of selecting, classifying, and labeling stimuli is called differentiation. Obviously, this labeling process requires at least... The brain pays attention to stimuli more than once. The first time is when the stimuli are received and selected by the brain; the second time is when the selected stimuli are categorized and labeled. Stimuli that are not selected and labeled do not receive a second attention, and therefore cannot be labeled or categorized. They become one-off stimuli that dissipate and are forgotten. Stimuli that are labeled and categorized are remembered. However, from the second attention onward, our brain is not actually paying attention to the original stimulus itself, but rather to an abstract stimulus abstracted from memory; the original stimulus has already vanished. The fundamental difference between primary and secondary attention lies in the source of the stimulus. Intuitively, we can perceive the difference between abstract stimuli from memory and physical stimuli from the actual environment, because abstract stimuli from memory are far more unstable than physical stimuli from the environment. Once secondary attention begins, subsequent attention becomes possible, and once the number of attention sessions reaches a certain level, we can no longer distinguish exactly how many times the stimulus has been noticed. Each time it is re-noticed, the stimulus is relabeled; however, the act of labeling... This process is spontaneous, no longer the initial reception of the first physical stimulus. This spontaneous process is subject to change. The labels may differ due to the information being re-recognized each time, and these changes can accumulate. After a certain number of re-recognitions, we can no longer determine exactly how many times these labels have been re-recognized. Eventually, we can even clearly perceive that the memory information associated with the label is no longer entirely consistent with the original physical stimulus. At this point, we call this transformation "subjectivity," and these labels become the most primitive form of "concept."

From the above analysis, we can draw the following important conclusions.

First, what is truly distinguished is not the experiential stimuli themselves, but the labels that surround them. Experiential stimuli are categorized around these labels, but subjective rational thinking based on differentiation and self-awareness, and all concepts, cannot bypass the labels to directly connect with the experiential stimuli themselves. These concepts can only act on the labels, not the experience itself. The existence of labels means that there is an insurmountable gap between experience and concepts. This gap is determined by the mechanism of thinking itself.

Secondly, the intrinsic motivation behind labeling and differentiation is the search for the source of experiential stimuli. All labels are constructed around the origin of these experiential stimuli. Without awareness of the source of experiential stimuli, there would be no labels, no differentiation, and no self-awareness—a situation very similar to dreams. Because the focus is not on the source of the experiential stimuli but on their expression, the various seemingly absurd images appearing in dreams are actually attempts to find more extreme and extreme expressions of experience. These images become so absurd and bizarre precisely because, in dreams, consciousness abandons the pursuit of the origin of these stimuli and only cares about what they can bring. The source of the stimulating information is completely irrelevant; therefore, a dream can use a vast, turbulent ocean to represent an overwhelming and unstoppable emotional impulse, or a raging fire to represent inner hatred and anger. As long as the feelings expressed by the scenes and phenomena recreated in the dream are consistent with the emotional feelings in the dreamer's mind at that moment, then no matter how absurd the scene or phenomenon, it can appear in the dream. This is because the dream does not care where these absurd phenomena come from, nor whether they conform to reality. In this state, absurdity itself does not exist, and the person who dreams of absurd scenes will never think that their dream is absurd.

Third, all distinctions begin with the second attention, which is actually equivalent to the countless subsequent attentions. Any attention that is not the first attention is a second attention in relation to the previous one. When the experiential stimulus is first noticed by consciousness, the distinction is not established.

If a specific person appears in a dream, such as my mother, then this mother in the dream must refer to "my impression of my mother." She is always the collection of all my prejudices and impressions of my mother, not the real mother in reality. This mother in the dream actually only reflects my understanding of my mother; it is faithful to me, not to the mother herself. Therefore, we should consider this mother in the dream not to be a mother with her own intrinsic essence; she cannot think for herself, nor can she truly engage in a dialogue with me. This phenomenon can be extrapolated to everything that appears in a dream. Everything that appears in a dream is a collection of the dreamer's concepts and impressions of that specific thing, a manifestation filled with subjective prejudices and emotions, and has no direct relationship with how that thing actually is in reality. This world composed of concepts, prejudices, emotions, and impressions is precisely the essence of dreams.