Netherlings

An Emotional Reaction

Dream guides can appear anywhere in dreams — both those that are brightly-lit and those that are dark. Dream guides can appear where horrible things are going on, and they, of course, appear in heavenly dreams. But there other types of sentient characters in the dream ecosystem.

One type seems to have only the business of eliciting an emotional response. For example, in a well-lit dream, I am sometimes approached by a small animal or a child. I’ll pet the animal or child, and in doing so, am exuding a caring and nurturing vibe. It is an emotion — the sheer pleasure of wishing someone well — but I don’t know if there is a word for it in English. In German, I’d say “Pflegefreude”. This goes on for not more than a half minute. Then the animal or child scampers away. There is no other theme. I recognise no one from waking life.

It is tempting to say that all dreams be Freudian dreams; after all, we are seduced only by those dreams that correspond to our predilections. I mention these animal/child dreams to dispell that notion. The latter are not personal — or if they are, they curiously lack personal detail. The point is that impersonal dreams exist.

There are other emotions on the human menu other than pflegefreude, and most of them are negative: fear, anxiety, shame, dread, anger, outrage… and there are dream characters who are interested in eliciting these emotions. Some seem specialised for particular kinds of emotion. The characters never appear in brightly-lit dreams, for whatever reason. And perhaps most chilling: they know you are dreaming.

Over and over, these dreams have two things in common: there is some triggering situation and someone who is administrating it or supervising it.

I woke up from an unremembered dream once with the following words echoing in my head: “They don’t want to be called ‘netherlings’. They don’t want to be named.” I’ve used that word since.

The Unwanted Wallet

My favourite illustration comes from a friend who dreamt that she was walking home on a deserted city street late at night. She began to suspect that she was being followed and changed her path. A large man in shadows behind her matched her changes. Finally, she broke into a run. When she rounded a corner, there was the man, magically before her. She whimpered, “I know what you want. I’m going to put my wallet on the ground and back away, but you can’t come forward until I’m at least ten paces away.”

She put her wallet on the side walk, and began backing away, but the man advanced toward her. “You promised!” she cried. Here is the critical part of the dream: As she backed away and he advanced, he eventually reached the wallet and simply stepped over it. He did not satisfy her expectations of her dream. She broke into a run, and he ran after her, careful to neither catch nor to lose her, but merely to remain at a fear-provoking distance. She awoke sometime later, still in flight.

The invisible hand of suffocation

sent to me over chat:

I had trouble sleeping last night, being awake for long stretches. Thinking that I was still awake, I heard my husband next to me talking in his sleep twice – he said something I could barely understand. I was lying on my back, and he was on his side, facing me. In his sleep, he accidentally lay his hand around over my neck. I removed it, but immediately thereafter started choking. I couldn’t breathe properly and made asthma sounds. I could not speak. My husband was sleeping with noise cancelling headphones, both in my dream and for real, so I knew that he could not hear my panicked breathing. Nevertheless, I thought that he should be sensing my panicked movements; I was irritated that he did not react. I tapped his shoulder, whereupon he awoke for real — startled, and making a surprised noise. He had apparently not been lightly but rather deeply asleep. His startled movements, in turn, woke me up (for real). I realised that I had been dreaming because I was immediately able to breathe normally once he awoke.

I love the nightlife, baby

In one of my own dreams, I was standing on the sidewalk before a nightclub late at night. A homeless man approached me and asked to speak to, coincidentally, the nurse from the first dream. I hesitated, but I thought, I’m a progressive, non-judgemental person, so I’ll take him to her. We went inside to her, but within seconds he began to molest her. I said, “Right. That’s enough.” I descended on him and pummelled him with blows. I became lucid. In wonder, I said, “Wait! What am I doing? I don’t want to be doing this. This is a dream!”

The man, seemingly caught off-guard, said, “No, it isn’t!”

I was so shocked by his response, I awoke.

Second-Order Traps

In a first-order trap, like a snare, the victim is disabled — unable to free himself. The victim is aware of the trap, and fights it. In a second-order trap, the victim is not ensnared, but rather, enabled. He becomes fascinated with the opportunity to exercise his lower impulses. Whatever narrative he has to explain that, to justify that, is the reasoning that traps him. He is unwilling to free himself.

If you find yourself delivering blows to someone who keenly deserves them, you are trapped in a nightmare in which someone is horrible enough to deserve blows and someone is horrible to mete them out. You refuse to exit the nightmare because it is of your own making.

Every hero defeating a worthy villain has chosen to dream of violence and has found a way to justify it, to nurture it, to embrace it.

This is what it means to be had.

This is of striking significance in the dream world, but of historical significance in the waking world.

Consent

The existence of second-order traps forces one to update his understanding of consent. Consent is not to be understood as a conscious decision about anything. That is a Santa Claus understanding. Consent is a deeper and more complicated topic. For example, when one agrees the the terms of service of a web site or credit card company without actually reading and understanding the terms of service, one is consenting to one thing: abuse. Ignorance is no defence. Wilful ignorance is merely a vehicle of consent.

Anyone who has a nightmare about domestic abuse instead of trench warfare has chosen domestic abuse. Anyone who has a nightmare instead of waking up from it is consenting to the nightmare and every rotten thing happening in it.

Coin Toss Dream

I dreamt that I was hanging out with the adult sons and daughters of a bohemian Czech family that was touring in a van. In one of our conversations, I was told that one could dismiss netherlings by throwing them coins. Not by handing them coins, but throwing a coin or two into them. I took this to be simply some magical fact about the dreaming world.

In a later dream, that same night, I was ascending a darkened stairwell to an attic party in a wooden 18^th century tenement house. I made my coins ready. A two meter tall hairy monster approached the landing to block my path. It was hideous. However, I had in mind only to make use of my recently acquired advice. I threw a coin into his pelt. He stepped aside and said, “Right, in you go.” Before I could advance, I awoke. Seemingly, the exercise was over.

I want to take a moment to describe this example of dream logic. Tossing a quarter into the pelt of a monster might seem like nonsensical magic from a children’s book. However, consider what it is not: it is not an act of fear; it is not an act of aggression, and it is not an act of submission. It isn’t even a reaction to anything the monster might have done, other than appearing. It is a proactive attempt to disable the situation. In the end, any act that is not inspired by emotion is a signal that the dreamer is not to be had. The emotional branches of the dream have been cut off; there is nothing for the netherling to invest in. I present this as a good example of dream logic; things that might seem nonsensical, do make sense from a strategic perspective.