QUESTIONS & ANSWERS:
Dreams Department

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Question

I had this dream where nothing worked. I was trying to eat breakfast and the toaster wouldn't toast. I got mad and got into my car and while I was driving the breaks wouldn't work right. I got really scared and pushed them to the floor, but nothing happened. The car ran off the road and I jumped out and found a phone. But every time I dialed 911 I got some unknown person on the other line. It sounded like they weren't talking to me, like the old party lines. I woke up very frustrated and was wondering what this dream means.

Answer

It is very frustrating when things don't work, and even more so in dreams. But you are not alone! While the specific meaning of your dream can only be known by you, there are some common elements many of us experience.

Mechanical things just don't work very well in dreams. This is so well known that the Lucidity Institute which teaches people conscious dream control use this fact to help people recognize they are dreaming. They have a mask that flashes a red light when we are in dream (REM) sleep. This light can also be controlled by pushing a button on the mask. If you are not sure if you are dreaming, you just push the button and if you are dreaming, the button is unlikely to work. For those learning lucid control, this is a great signal, but how about the rest of us, does this hold any meaning?

Have you noticed that most technology, from the horse wagon to the computer, represents a very recent set of developments in the history of humankind. For millions of years we inhabited a world that was full of life, soul, and spirit. Even early technology, like arrowheads and baskets, were seen as having spirits and souls and interactive personalities. This is the way the dreaming mind seems to be as well, and inanimate objects can easily take on personalities and other forms of animation. Technology is stupid in the sense that it is an extension of our will and does what we want it to, or ends up in a junk yard.

In dreamland, the pushy use of will and domination is less likely to work the same way as in the material world. Thus inventions and technologies like our toaster, our cars and our phones are less likely to be extensions of our will and more likely to be representations of our relationship to will and willpower.

If I had a dream where mechanical things weren't working, I would see this as an opportunity to come into relationship with my own will (and by extension, technologies) in a different way. Here it is revealed, for example, that I am pushing way too hard and using technology to extend my brute will. I would look for other alternatives, shifting my focus to cooperation and away from domination. The key to finding out more is learning just how, when, and where our technologies are and aren't working. Why the toaster and not the light switch?

Also, if this were my dream, I would be curious about dialing an emergency number and getting someone else. I find it interesting that it is not a single connection, but a multiple one -- again reinforcing the idea that my single-minded will may need some wider spectral approach. Is this misdirection because the dreaming mind doesn't see the emergency the way I do? Am I being led to hear something beyond the emergency? If I could not stop my car, my metaphorical vehicle in life, then perhaps this dream is slowing me down, letting me hear something new, allowing me to drive a different vehicle.

2/19/98

Richard Wilkerson is general editor for The Internet Dream E-zine, Electric Dreams, and director of DreamGate, the Internet Communications and Dream Education Center. He writes the Cyberphile column for the Association for the Study of Dreams Newsletter.