Read Online Daniel's Dream by Peter Michael Rosenberg - Free Book Online Page A

not ethereal or other-worldly; it was commonplace, down-to-earth, immediate. People spoke of the gods, not as if they were mythical beings, but more as if they were their next-door neighbours. Even the notion of what was and wasn’t sacred had a completely different spin on it; when one of the most sacred objects in a culture is the humble, docile cow, one’s views on the sacred are bound to come in for a bit of revising.
     
    But it wasn’t just religion that had secured its place in the day-to-day routines of existence. Indians were much more comfortable with matters of the mind, the psyche and the subconscious than even the most learned or open-minded people that Daniel met in the West. Without the heavy rationalist, materialist bias, the Indian mind seemed much better equipped to deal with and understand those esoteric areas of everyday existence that, at home, caused such consternation, confusion and controversy. Ghosts, spirits, visions, gods, miracles; all were a daily reality for many if not most Indians, regardless of their caste, status or education.
     
    And dreams were never marginalised, never dismissed as irrelevant or meaningless. Every dream meant something. It did not necessarily have to be profound or far-reaching; it could be relatively trivial. But it was never without relevance, and as such had to be treated with as much respect as any sensorial information.
     
    So when Daniel mentioned at breakfast to one of his colleagues that he had dreamt he had returned to his home town and spent the whole night trying unsuccessfully to find his father, it came as no surprise to hear the waiter chip in, ‘Oh, your father is missing you,’ in a manner which suggested the waiter had personally received a letter to this effect.
     
    Of course, the waiter had received nothing, save for the accumulated wisdom of generations, which informed him that, when one dreams about a friend or relative who does not actually appear in the dream, then this has one (and only one) meaning: your presence is missed - perhaps actively being sought - by said person.
     
    Needless to say, Daniel phoned his parents that very morning.
     
    Daniel had always felt that in the West - and perhaps most of all in England - people were too blasé about dreaming. The ease with which such a complex area of human existence was dismissed by supposedly sensitive, intelligent individuals was extraordinary. Even in the arts - one of the few areas that at least paid homage to dreams - there was still surprisingly little attention given to the whole process. There was no serious literature in Britain that dealt with dreams (unless one counted horror and the occasional foray by science-fiction practitioners). Otherwise, mention the subject in polite company in anything other than a trivial context and people thought you were halfbaked; a New-Age, crystal-toting, mantra-chanting weirdo.
     
    Either that or a dope-head.
     
    But dreams had to mean something. Why else did they exist?
     
     
     
    ‘My God,’ said Lisanne between mouthfuls, ‘this is fantastic. I didn’t know you could do Greek food? Why haven’t you done this before?’
     
    ‘I don’t know,’ said Daniel, in complete honesty. ‘It just never occurred to me, I guess.’
     
    ‘You’re full of surprises, you.’ She smiled then, with genuine pleasure, for the first time in an age. She could not have been more delighted. To others it might have seemed a small matter and nothing to get excited about, but to Lisanne the fact that Daniel had made the effort to cook was enough to make her think that perhaps, just perhaps, there had been a small shift in their circumstances.
     
    Maybe this was the start of the recovery that Dr Fischer had been promising for months. Perhaps Daniel would start to become interested again in all the things he used to enjoy, the things that had given him such pleasure in the past: reading,