Gilgamesh Dreams
How is it possible to know the meaning of anything?
Gilgamesh is wise. Gilgamesh sees in his dreams what is to come.
He has a dream, he knows it is meaningful, but he does not know its meaning.
Fortunately, his mother is the goddess Ninsun, and he can ask her.
He tells her: I dreamed a star blazed bright in the sky and then fell to the ground. I approached it and tried to lift it but it was too heavy; nor could I push it over.
People flocked to worship the fallen star and I,
I held it and kissed it like a lover. Then I was finally able to carry it. I brought it to you, mother, and laid it at your feet. In the dream you told me: This star is your equal!
His mother explains the meaning: a man is coming who is your equal. He will be your ally and you will love him.
Gilgamesh has another dream. This time there is an axe in the marketplace and people flock to see it. He lifts it and brings it to his mother who, in the dream, says: This axe is your equal!
Gilgamesh is wise and doesn’t rush to conclusions, but asks his mother for the meaning of the dream.
She says: the axe is the man I told you about before. He is your equal, and will be your ally. You will love him.
In previous posts we’ve seen how different forms of consciousness might respond to vivid dreams. Sense-certainty declares all truth to be in what is immediately before it: the whole truth is found in the vision of the dream, which needs no interpretation. If your dream tells you to go to Cairo then that is the meaning of the dream.
Perception, on the other hand, must carry out its police work before arriving at any conclusion. It looks at the dream from this angle and that, before deciding the meaning of the dream. Usually the common sense of perception will declare the dream to be meaningless, just a bunch of random impressions. It would be foolish to make a long journey just because a voice in a dream told you to do so.
In Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, the next form of consciousness is what Hegel calls “Force and the Understanding.” It takes up the truth of perception that objects are unknowable and that we can only know our perceptions of the object; it declares the “Thing” of perception to be “Substance”; what we perceive is the “expression” of substance; there are forces at work that we cannot fully comprehend, which on the one hand lead from the expression back to the mysterious unity of Substance, and on the other hand lead from this unity out into the various perceptible matters of expression.
When it comes to dreams, a wise dreamer like Gilgamesh can recognise the expression of a deep truth in his dream, but he will also be wise enough to know that an expression is just an expression, and a mortal cannot know the depths of its meaning. What is needed is the interpretation offered by a seer or oracle.
Sense-certainty was all surface; the whole truth is found on the surface.
Perception was all surface; everything we can see is found on the surface, and there is no chance of knowing the truth, because what is on the surface, our perceptions as we look from this angle and that, is always shifting.
With force and the understanding, what is found on the surface is an expression, and by definition an expression of something deeper. With this third form of consciousness, higher than the other two, there is a chance to know something, because there is, in fact, something deeper to be known.
Gilgamesh will discover his mother is right: there is a man called Enkidu, sent by the gods to save him from his evil ways. And she should know, being a goddess herself.
The question is: what use is this mode of consciousness to us mortals? If the substance of things is hidden from all but the gods, what sense can we make of the expressions we perceive in the world?
What is needed is an intermediary, something between “I” and “substance” that can interpret the latter for the former. Gilgamesh had his mother to do that for him. We’ll have to look for something else.
(I’ve been reading Gilgamesh, translated by Sophus Helle, and Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, translated by A.V. Miller.)