The unthinkable velocity of time in dreams may be inferred from
the fact that between the moment of impact of an impression
at the sense-periphery and its reception at the center of
consciousness--moments so closely compacted that we think of them as
simultaneous--a coherent series of representations may take place,
involving what seem to be protracted periods for their unfoldment.
Every reader will easily call to mind dream experiences of this
character, in which the long-delayed dénouement was suggested and
prepared for by some extraneous sense-impression, showing that the
entire dream drama unfolded within the time it took that impression
to travel from the skin to the brain.
Hasheesh dreams, because they so often occur during some momentary
lapse from normal consciousness and are therefore measurable by its
time scale, are particularly rich in the evidence of the looping of
time. Fitzhugh Ludlow narrates, in _The Hasheesh Eater_, the dreams
that visited him in the brief interval between two of twenty or more
awakenings, on his walk homeward after his first experience with the
drug. He says, "I existed by turns in different places and various
states of being. Now I swept my gondola through the moonlit lagoons
of Venice. Now Alp on Alp towered above my view, and the glory of
the coming sun flashed purple light upon the topmost icy pinnacle.
Now in the primeval silence of some unexplored tropical forest I
spread my feathery leaves, a giant fern, and swayed and nodded in
the spice-gales over a river whose waves at once sent up clouds of
music and perfume. My soul changes to a vegetable essence, thrilled
with a strange and unimagined ecstasy."
Earlier in the same evening, when he was forced to keep awake in
order not to betray his condition, the dream time-scale appears to
have imposed itself upon his waking consciousness with the following
curious effect. A lady asked him some question connected with a
previous conversation. He says, "As mechanically as an automaton I
began to reply. As I heard once more the alien and unreal tones of
my own voice, I became convinced that it was some one else who spoke,
and in another world. I sat and listened: still the voice kept
speaking. Now for the first time I experienced that vast change which
hasheesh makes in all measurements of time. The first word of the
reply occupied a period sufficient for the action of a drama; the
last left me in complete ignorance of any point far enough back in
the past to date the commencement of the sentence. Its enunciation
might have occupied years. I was not in the same life which had held
me when I heard it begun."
This well-known fact, that we cannot measure dreams by our time scale,
proves that subjective time does not correspond with objective, and
that the "dream organ" of consciousness has a time scale of its own.
If in our waking state we experience one kind of time, and in
dreams quite another, the solution of the mystery should be sought
in the _vehicle_ of consciousness, for clearly the limit of
impressionability or power of response of the vehicle establishes
the time scale, just as the size of the body with relation to
objects establishes the space scale. Time must be different for the
ant and the elephant, for example, as space is different.
Our sense of time is wholly dependent upon the rapidity with which
impressions succeed one another. Were we capable of receiving only
one impression an hour, like a bell struck every hour with a hammer,
the ordinary term of life would seem very short. On the other hand,
if our time sense were always as acute as it is in dreams, uncounted
aeons would seem to be lived through in the interval between
childhood and old age.
Imagine a music machine so cunningly constructed and adjusted as not
only to sound each note and chord in its proper sequence and relation,
but to regulate also the duration of the sound vibration. If this
machine were operated in such a manner as to play, in a single
second of time, the entire overture of an opera which would normally
occupy half an hour, we should hear only an unintelligible noise a
second long. This would be due to no defect in the _sound-producing_
mechanism, but to the limitations of the _sound-receiving_ mechanism,
our auditory apparatus. Could this be altered to conform to the
unusual conditions--could it capture and convey to consciousness
every note of the overture in a second of time--that second would
seem to last half an hour, provided that every other criterion for
the measurement of duration were denied for the time being.
Now dreams _seem_ long: we only discover afterwards and by accident
their almost incredible brevity. May we not--must we not--infer from
this that the body is an organ of many stops and more than one
keyboard, and that in sleep it gives forth this richer music. The
theory of a higher-dimensional existence during sleep accounts in
part for the great longing for sleep. "What is it that is much
desired by man, but which they know not while possessing?" again
asks Leonardo. "It is sleep," is his answer. This longing for sleep
is more than a physical longing, and the refreshment it brings is
less of the flesh than of the spirit. It is possible to withstand
the deprivation of food and water longer and better than the
deprivation of sleep. Its recuperative power is correspondingly
greater.
Experiments have been made with mature University students by which
they have been kept awake ninety-six hours. When the experiments
were finished, the young men were allowed to sleep themselves out,
until they felt they were thoroughly rested. All awoke from a long
sleep completely refreshed, but the one who took longest to restore
himself from his protracted vigil slept only one-third more time
than was regular with him. And this has been the experience over and
over again of men in active life who have been obliged to keep awake
for long periods by the absolute necessities of the situation in
which they have been placed.
In this fact there is surely another hint of the sublimation of the
time sense during sleep. While it would be an unwarrantable
assumption to suppose that the period of recuperation by sleep must
be as long, or nearly as long, as the period of deprivation, the
ratio between the two presents a discrepancy so great that it would
seem as though this might be due to an acceleration of the time
element of consciousness.