Concerning the phantastical dreams, which "come from another source," there is no direct teaching given in the Writings, but their origin is somewhat clearly indicated.

These phantastical dreams undoubtedly form the largest part of the modern dream world. For most dreams of this day, are vague images flitting before the mind's eye, without order or connection, with meaningless changes and transformations, and with mocking elusiveness,—phantasies, ludicrous and also horrible, even to nightmare.

Swedenborg speaks of dreams he had which are evidently to be classed under this head of phantastical dreams. These dreams were of material and corporeal things without any order, and every time he woke from them, he perceived that there were spirits about him who had infested, but whose efforts were averted by angelic choirs sent by the Lord, which he also then perceived and heard. (D. 4026.) From this I infer that phantastical dreams come largely, though not wholly, as we shall see directly, from that great host of evil spirits in the world of spirits, who are ever in the latent effort to infest man, but who are as yet not relegated to their own places. They are filled with phantasies, with shallow empty thoughts and imaginings, loving nothing but merely worldly and external things, thinking nothing but vain pleasure, and such spirits fill the world of spirits with the sphere of their phantasies; and we may realize their nature and their multitude when we reflect on the prevailing characteristics of men at this day—pursuing shadows, not reality, gathering like moths around the flame of the world's pleasures, led by impulse to flock wherever the senses may be gratified and thinking hardly at all above the senses. Such are the spirits who are mostly in the external sphere of the world of spirits, and such are the spheres by which man's spirit is surrounded and which are so often reflected in the vain phantoms of his dreams, and too often find a home in his waking thoughts. As a writer has with great acumen, observed, our dreams are so largely silly, meaningless and ridiculous, because our waking thoughts are little better. So often they are but vapid wanderings and imaginings fixed on nothing in particular and everything in general. Our minds are well nigh empty so far as real solid thought is concerned and we act largely from impulse. We stump our toe against a chair, he continues, or bump our head against a door, and we are at once seized with senseless rage at the innocent object that has caused our discomfort; so slight and insignificant are the causes that raise our passions, or our passing feelings, and so often are our thoughts nothing but the unrestrained and irrational reflections of purely animal feelings. It is no wonder that our imaginations are like so many chords which readily respond to they vibrations or activities of the phantastical spheres by which we are surrounded. Not that the phantoms seen in our dreams are the same as or similar to the phantasies of the spirits who induce them. The images of our dreams are taken from our own sensorium; but because such dreams as we are describing are caused by wild, disordered, confused and inharmonious spheres, therefore the disorder and confusion is faithfully reflected in the confusion of the images which they stir up and by which they are presented. Almost as is the case of a man when he lacks judgment and whose imagination is wild and unfettered, whose productions are for the most part vain and empty fancies and phantasies.

But within these vain and phantastical spirits from which come these dreams lurks the spirit of evil and hatred. They are nothing but subjects of infernal spirits and were they allowed, could they come to the knowledge that a man is sleeping, they would at once rush in to destroy him; they would implant their own memory into him and his dreams would then be not phantastical but horrible and destructive of all power of freedom of will and thought. It is against this influx that angels guard men in sleep. The phantoms do indeed appear in man's dreams, caught up from the spheres around him, but the evils themselves he feels not. This might be compared to a man whispering evil things in a sleeping man's ears. The words may affect the sensorium and there present images, but the evil itself does not otherwise affect the sleeper.

In addition to this spiritual cause of phantastical dreams there is a natural cause arising from, the state of man's body and of his external thought. Thus we read in the Adversaria, that the dreams of spirits, with some, are mere illusions and contain almost nothing but mockeries and snatch up things suggested by the blood or by past thoughts. (2 Ad. 183.)  These causes make one with the cause alluded to above, and they are in general the state of the body and blood by which the sensorium is variously affected; but more especially they are the state of the cortical glands themselves, formed by our vain memories, our disordered imagination and the disharmony produced by our external thoughts. These too often furnish the needed ultimate which readily catches up and faithfully reflects the phantastical spheres of spirits.

But the thought arises that these phantastical dreams are sometimes accompanied with horror even to nightmare when the very body is moved and the voice screams out in the effort to escape from the horrors of our dreams. Does not this indicate that evil spirits have been allowed to infest us? and that the protection of good spirits has, for this time, been of no avail? I think not. For horror is not natural to dreams and so far as it is present in them it is an affection arising rather from the state of the body than from the spiritual surroundings. Thus a dream may be as phantastical as you please and yet have nothing of horror; but the very same dream may suddenly exhibit a horrible phase. This we can see illustrated in a very lively manner when we are disturbed from sleep by extraneous causes. Thus among the flitting scenes of our dreams we may be sailing in a boat—there is certainly no horror or fear, and there may be a feeling of pleasure. Suddenly the heavens open and we are drenched with the most terrible storm, or perhaps the boat upsets and we find ourselves in the horrors of drowning, and we wake,—to find some one is trying to rouse us by sprinkling the face with water; so in other cases which will readily suggest themselves to the reader, all of which go to show that the disturbance and horror of dreams arises from the body. The case I have adduced is one in which something wholly external to the body caused the feeling of fear. But there are more effective causes in the body itself, such as an overloaded stomach, undigested particles in the blood, and diseased blood; then there are various discomforts to the body caused by uncomfortable postures, or by discomforting conditions of the bed on which we are lying, etc. All these cause more or less of unpleasantness in dreams, by producing from without a greater or less modification of the vessels of memory and imagination. Indeed phantastical dreams may arise solely from causes in the body, i.e., from disturbances in the brain, as is the case with the phantasies of delirious fevers, etc., where modifications are produced on the cortical glands which do not correspond to what actually affects the external senses, but which are nevertheless perceived by the mind as indications of things really existing. It is to an inmost bodily cause that I think we must ascribe that supreme horror of the dream world, the nightmare. Here the man is bound hand and foot, is utterly powerless and subject to the extreme of terror as he sees sure destruction descending upon him. The dream itself may be induced by spirits, or it may be the result of the surrounding sphere in the spiritual world, but the nightmare feature of it seems due solely to the condition of the brain. On the cause of nightmare Swedenborg says in his work on the Fibre, "The cerebrum labors from lack of arterial blood, which does not penetrate to the cortex, but irritating the surface of the meninx, suddenly glides into the veins and sinuses of the dura mater. Thus the vascular substance which is abundant in the medulla of the cerebrum becomes void of blood and thus, extended and stretched, implicates the fibres. Thus an impotence of acting seizes the brain, yea, of feeling, except obscurely." (Fib. 535.) He adds that the cause of this is lying on the back. It is this impotence of the brain to control its body, due to the withholding of arterial blood, that causes in the dream that terrible feeling of utter impotence that is the distinguishing characteristic of nightmare. That nightmare is due to bodily causes and not to the effects of spirits, seems to be a natural conclusion from the teaching that evil spirits are not allowed to infest man during sleep. Moreover, if nightmares were caused by evil spirits we would expect evil men to be specially subject to them, and good men more or less free from them, which is by no means the case.

Unnatural horror, then, in dreams indicates some disordered state of the brain or body, and, if continued, would point to the need of medicinal treatment, or to the cultivation of that calmness of mind and freedom from worry and anxiety which are so necessary to the preservation of the brain's health.

But before going further with this class of dreams, it may be well to recur to what has already been implied, namely, that the operation or influx of the mind into the memory is the same in sleep as in wakefulness with the exception that in sleep the mind itself raises up images in the memory without the voluntary control of man, while in wakefulness those images are under man's control, and their activity and the manifestation of the mind's operations in them rests ultimately on sensation flowing from without. Something similar to the state of the dream world is present with man when he gives himself up to what is called day dreams, when all manner of grotesque, meaningless and transient pictures are raised up in the imagination. In these states the man has temporarily given over the reins of rational control, and he sits or lies with his senses, as it were, closed to outward sensations; his mind has free play to conjure up various images before his gaze. This state of day dreams, while of no great harm if not over-indulged, is yet not an ideal state; for man is intended to be rational, and rationality consists in the control over and voluntary harmonizing of what flows from without with what flows from within. Moreover, day dreams, if much indulged in, as is apt to be the case with those who give too much way to imagination and do not direct their energies to the occupations and uses of the world, becomes absolutely dangerous and the man comes into the state of a visionary with whom the images of the imagination become more powerful than the images of the external senses. Spirits can then play upon him at will, with greatly lessened ability on his part to hold them in check by ordered sensations. Of these visionaries we read that when they see any object in obscure light, as in moonlight, certain spirits, by holding the man's mind and thus his imagination fixedly on any given thing—as an infant, an animal, monster, etc.—can induce the appearance of that thing on the object which appears before his eyes. And so long as his imagination is held by spirits he is persuaded that he really sees such things. (A. C. 1967, S. D. 1752.) That many of the visions of hermits, saints, and other so-called holy men, who have secluded themselves from the world, are due to this cause, is evident. Their waking life is almost like a dream, and in this respect they are like evil spirits, of whom it is frequently said that in dreams and phantasies they think themselves to be most awake. (D. 4544, 3792.)

But to return to the dreams induced by the spirits near man when he sleeps. Dreams thus induced form a very large proportion of the visions of the sleeping world, though not the largest, for at the present day, the greatest number of dreams seem to be purely phantastical. In general, however, I should say, that all dreams in which a certain order is maintained, which do not consist of a meaningless jumble of images, are induced by spirits around man and are of the class of which we are about to speak. From the fact that these spirits are distinguished in the Writings from angelic spirits, who protect man during sleep and who also induce dreams, we conclude that the former, i.e., the spirits who are near man when he sleeps, are those in the external sphere of the world of spirits who are in agreement with the man's external loves. i.e., spirits whom, by his tastes, occupation, activities and affections, he has associated about him. They are not to be confused with those spirits of man's real life by whom he is held in connection with his own society in heaven or in hell. These latter sleep when man sleeps, being, with the man, deprived of their external life. Thus the mathematician, whatsoever the quality of his life may be, has gathered around himself spirits who are in the love of mathematics, that is to say, his mind is responsive to the activities of their loves. And so with the doctor, the theologian, the business man, etc. Every man has spirits associated with him according to the extension of his thoughts and activities—the narrow-minded and ignorant, few; the broadminded and cultured, many. When man sleeps all these spirits do not necessarily sleep also, or they may be in various degrees of sleep, as was proved to Swedenborg by actual observation on one occasion when he woke from sleep. (D., 2437.) They may also continue their sleep when the man wakes, as was also experienced by Swedenborg, (D. 4284), which explains why men, after waking, do not at once come into the accustomed activities of their mind, and also, perhaps why we sometimes wake up in an entirely different frame of mind than that which we had when we went to sleep.

But whether they are waking or sleeping, it is by means of these spirits that most ordered dreams come to man, but with this difference, that when they are awake they induce dreams directly, but when asleep they are the means by which dreams are induced by other and probably more interior spirits. And I should imagine that this difference it is which is manifested in two types of dreams more or less clearly distinguished—the one, in which the dreamer is following the usual actions and thoughts of his daily occupation and life, and the other, in which he is more of a witness of some drama in which he may or may not be a participant, but which is outside his external occupations and seems to be directed by some superior force. In the one kind of dream the preacher would preach or teach, the business man would be occupied with the affairs of his business, the mathematician would consider some problem, the politician would be occupied with affairs of state and so forth, and all of them would in their dreams continue the activities of their waking thoughts. But in the other kind of dream, that which comes through man's associate spirits, rather than directly from them, the man sees the representative play of various passions and virtues common to all men, though variously represented according to the state of the man's individual thought and imagination. Certainly, on the basis of such a distinction, we can understand one very curious and remarkable class of dreams. I refer to those dreams in which are solved the unanswered problems of the day. It is recorded of a certain mathematician that, after he had in vain sought the solution of a problem, he found it wrought out for him in a dream. Then it is said that not unfrequently schoolboys going to sleep after a fruitless effort to commit their lessons to memory, have waked up with a more or less perfect lesson. Of cases like this latter I do not feel very certain and I adduce it only on the authority of a writer who was at some pains to ascertain facts relating to the dream world. But of the next example there can be no room for doubt, as there are not a few recorded and well attested cases. I refer to dreams in which the hiding place of a lost or forgotten article may be found. For example, a little girl lost a penknife which she highly prized. Greatly worried with this loss she went to sleep, and in her sleep she dreamed her dead brother took her by the hand and led her to the identical spot where the penknife lay. She woke from the dream, and calling her sister, insisted on going to the place at once, where, sure enough, she found the missing knife. This is merely one case, but similar cases could be multiplied. Then it is recorded of various men of genius that they have received inspirations, or even open suggestions, from their dreams. Thus it is on record throughout all dream literature that the Kubla Khan of Coleridge was substantially revealed in a dream, and that Thomas Moore composed Lalla Rookh in a dream. The latter had studied long for the production, but the final inspiration is said to have come to him in a dream. As to the accuracy of this I can only repeat that it is recorded in most dream literature and it seems to be generally accepted as a fact that this was Moore's own opinion.

Such examples as those I have adduced, while not very common, yet are sufficiently frequent to form an important characteristic of dreams. And this characteristic becomes more marked when we reflect that many, if not most, thinking men have had similar dreams, though not with so dramatic a denouement. Probably many of my readers have had at some time a dream in which they have continued some waking thought and in their dream the light of solution has come upon them. But alas, when they wake they can remember nothing except the bare fact that they had had light in their dream. The light itself does not remain with them when they wake, and they fail to remember what was so clear in their dreams. The well known fact of such dreams seems sufficient evidence, without further proof, to justify us in believing that with some men the memory of the dream has so far remained that it has actually assisted them in the solution of some waking problem. There certainly can be not the slightest doubt that hidden and lost articles have been discovered by being located in dreams. Now such dreams as these become explicable if we consider that the spirits whom man has associated with himself by the determination of his thought and activity, and from whom indeed he receives his inspiration, may still be in their activity while the man is asleep, that his mind is affected by the sphere of their activity, and the mind then represents itself in the memory exciting therein in the one case, things which the man knew not that he knew, i.e., the location of mislaid or forgotten articles—and, in the other, displaying therein its own superior insight untrammeled by the gross appearances of the senses, whence comes the superior perception which men sometimes seem to enjoy in dreams. (D. 1086, 1309.) Swedenborg indeed speaks of the superior memory exhibited in dreams wherein he says the quality of the internal memory may be seen in that the memory of particulars is not so active as in wakefulness, and, consequently, every smallest Particular, of faces, clothes, scenery is presented such as the man himself could never know merely from his memory of particulars. (D. 880a.)

Many writers are disposed to be cynical when they hear any one claiming that he was in some superior enlightenment and perception when in a certain dream, and they hint that if he could actually remember the things he had then heard or said he would probably find them the most arrant nonsense. Indeed, an instance is given in which a man in his dream was filled with the loftiest emotion at some poem he heard; but on waking he jotted down what he could remember of it and found it to be mere doggerel. Without discussing this case we would merely observe that in dreams, when corporeal things are laid aside, the mind may be in a superior fight and activity, though without that reflection which is necessary for fixing things in the memory. This is evident from Divine and prophetic visions in which the mouth obediently speaks wisdom unknown to the prophet himself. It is also testified to by Swedenborg in the Adversaria where he states that he heard celestial speech in a dream whereby he seemed to understand universal things, and yet when he woke he knew nothing about it. (3 Ad., 4785.)

He speaks also of another dream about dancing at weddings of which he could remember but the facts; and yet he doubts not that in it was contained something of the arcana of heaven. (D., 2083.)

We are also given the general teaching that what is seen and represented in dreams is indeed perceived in the dream but is inexpressible in wakefulness. (D.7 ½) But upon this feature of dreams we shall touch later on. We would merely add, that we ourselves have a similar experience when, in elevated states, we see interior things in words heard or spoken and yet in other states the same words seem almost empty.

Here we might consider what I may call telepathic dreams, i.e., dreams in which a distant or unknown place is seen, or in which the dreamer beholds an action which is really happening in some more or less distant place. Thus a well attested dream is one of a railway accident with all its horrible details, which was proved to have taken place at about the time of the dream. So men have dreamt of sick and dying relatives when they had no reason to dream of their being either sick or dying, and their dreams have told the truth. According to the teaching concerning dreams it would seem that such dreams as these are induced by spirits who have put on or are in the memory of some man with whom the scene of the dream is actually before the eyes, or, it may be, in the cases of friends and relatives, that they are sometimes induced by the spirit of the friend or relative himself. For the fact that spirits induce dreams seems to involve the at any rate, possibility of dreams being induced by the spirits of men still on earth. In such a way would we explain the remarkable series of dreams which were recorded by a gentleman of the fact of which there can be no doubt. He was engaged to a lady living in a distant place, whom he deeply loved, and he had every reason from letters received and from conversation, etc., to suppose his love was as deeply returned. Yet despite this he was continually troubled by dreams in which the lady showed herself utterly faithless, and this in ways which he was unwilling to divulge. He never gave credence to such dreams, nor would so far insult his lady as even to hint at them. Then while they were still separated in space the lady died. On her deathbed she had given directions that her private diary should be forwarded to him, and in this book he found the full confirmation of his dreams. The lady had been utterly faithless, and yet in the very midst of her deceit her mind had been torn with the pangs of remorse. Here it would certainly seem that the activity of the lady's mind had some effect on the sleeping mind of her lover.

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