the dreams of augustine
do we sin in our sleep?
Whether it's trying to hold a conversation, preparing midnight cheese on toast, or composing flowery letters to an imaginary valentine with nail polish on your bathroom mirror*, sleepwalking is highly amusing to all but the sleepwalker. It has been used as an explanation for criminal offences; it almost caused unforgettable embarassment for the girl who jumped naked into the bed of her boyfriend's parents (they didn't tell her); but can what one does while sleepwalking ever be called sin? Perhaps, but if you sleepwalk as often as I do (not for years) this is not the interesting question. Our concern here is not with sleepwalking, but with dreams. Can we be tempted to sin in our dreams and have we truly sinned if we do not resist the temptation? The answer to this question could only come in one form. On the appointed night, the night of the first of January 2002, I dreamed a dream...
I had to take year 10 all over again. No explanation—just a classroom, my old history teacher and a pencil case. One of my superiors from work sat in the chair in front—he told me that he was a Christian, but only because of his guilty conscience. The teacher interrupted our conversation to ask where my exercise books were. I said that I had forgotten that I needed any. (That one never worked at school.)
A friend* from my original year at school was also present but wouldn't explain why. I assumed he was embarrassed about it and left him alone. I had been quite loud in the class room, chatting with the people I was surprised to see there, and making a lot of comments on the work we had to do. In a flash, I realised why I was so vocal: I was a mature-age student! I couldn't ride this cliché, so I shut up.
As the teacher strode around the room to make sure we were doing our Maths problems, I got out of my chair, walked outside and started doing a silly dance in the brilliant sunlight. I explained to another returned school friend* that since it was a dream, it didn't matter what we did. I could dance around like an idiot and not worry about my Maths homework!
This idea was of great interest to him—he could go surf and forget about sitting in a Maths class—but he wanted to clarify the guidelines. I calmly explained, as we walked towards the car, that it was ok to wag school—why should we sit and be bored in our sleep? But if I had started calling the teacher names, that would have been wrong. Then I would have sinned.
He nodded thoughtfully. We got in the car and drove to the beach.
I think there is some wisdom there, but there is another distinction that needs to be made. (I can't think of everything in my sleep now, can I?) Before we make that distinction, however, it is worth listening to a man who thought about these things some 1,600 years ago. Here, in its entirety, is chapter 30 of book 10 of St. Augustine's Confessions, in which he struggles to understand his response to the temptations he faces in his sleep.
Do the words “attention span” mean anything to you? Skip the old man and summarise it for me.
Confessions Book X Chapter 30
It is truly your command that I should be continent and restrain myself from gratification of corrupt nature, gratification of the eye, the empty pomp of living. You commanded me not to commit fornication, and though you did not forbid me to marry, you counselled me to take a better course. You gave me the grace and I did your bidding, even before I became a minister of your sacrament. But in my memory, of which I have said much, the images of things imprinted upon it by my former habits still linger on. When I am awake they obtrude themselves upon me, though with little strength. But when I dream, they not only give me pleasure but are very much like acquiescence in the act.
The power which these illusory images have over my soul and my body is so great that what is no more than a vision can influence me in sleep in a way that the reality cannot do when I am awake. Surely it cannot be that when I am asleep I am not myself, O Lord my God? And yet the moment when I pass from wakefulness to sleep, or return again from sleep to wakefulness, marks a great difference in me.
During sleep where is my reason which, when I am awake, resists such suggestions and remains firm and undismayed even in the face of the realities themselves? Is it sealed off when I close my eyes? Does it fall asleep with the senses of the body? And why is it that even in sleep I often resist the attraction of these images, for I remember my chaste resolutions and abide by them and give no consent to temptations of this sort? Yet the difference between waking and sleeping is so great that even when, during sleep, it happens otherwise, I return to a clear conscience when I wake and realize that, because of this difference, I was not responsible for the act, although I am sorry that by some means or other it happened to me.
The power of your hand, O God Almighty, is indeed great enough to cure all the diseases of my soul. By granting me more abundant grace you can quench the fire of sensuality which provokes me in my sleep. More and more, O Lord, you will increase your gifts in me, so that my soul may follow me to you, freed from the concupiscence which binds it, and rebel no more against itself. By your grace it will commit in sleep these shameful, unclean acts inspired by sensual images, which lead to the pollution of the body: it will not so much as consent to them. For to you, the Almighty, who are powerful enough to carry out your purpose beyond all our hopes and dreams, it is no great task to prescribe that no temptation of this kind, even such slight temptations as can be checked by the least act of will, should arouse pleasure in me, even in sleep, provided that my dispositions are chaste.
This you can do for me at any time of life, even in the prime of manhood. But now I make this confession to my good Lord, declaring how I am still troubled by this kind of evil. With awe in my heart I rejoice in your gifts, yet I grieve for my deficiencies, trusting that you will perfect your mercies in me until I reach the fullness of peace, which I shall enjoy with you in soul and body, when death is swallowed up in victory.
For those who skipped him, Augustine has been troubled by the fact that in his sleep he is tempted by and takes pleasure in (presumably sexual) things that, when awake, have no great influence over him and which he would never consider doing.
Some of you who read this may have been disturbed by things that you have done in your dream-life. Some will be horrified, some disgusted, some won't know what to make of it, and some will feel no responsibility for such things at all.
Perhaps all of these readers, however, will have noticed something that Augustine has left out: not all dream states are alike. There are dreams that we have in the middle of the night when soundly asleep—nonsensical, freaky dreams that can be trippy or terrifying. I would like to comfort those who have woken up from such dreams remembering something awful that they have done. You are the victim of things you have seen, heard about or imagined but you have not sinned.
There is, however, a state of sleep that is often called “lucid dreaming”. They are the kind of dreams that you have in the morning, when sleeping lightly, maybe on the train or after lunch. Such dreams are typified by the presence of something that is absent from deeper sleep—your will. Often in such dreams we have control over our actions, we can direct the flow of events, we can sin.
The difference between such dream states is not always clear but I believe that if you are honest with yourself, you will know when you have taken advantage of the state you have found yourself in. Sometimes I see most clearly what I truly am by what I desire when I find myself with a will in my dreams. Sometimes what I do is as innocent as dancing around outside a Maths classroom, sometimes it is not so. When I realise I am dreaming and that my actions have no consequence in the real world, my response reveals something of the true effect of society on my godliness.
A little too black and white? You're probably right, but I will know that I am deeply changed when even in my sleep, with no society to perform for, I desire only good and hate evil.
Ben Beilharz is a renowned sleeper and had to be woken up by his best man on the day of his wedding.
compares favourably to Ben in most other areas.
Comments
Commenting is not available in this weblog entry.