PSY 212: Comparing Freud's Unconscious Dream with Buddhist Tipitaka

This report presents a comparative analysis of Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic theory of the unconscious and the perspectives found in the Buddhist Tipitaka, specifically concerning the interpretation of dreams. The report begins with an overview of Freud's structural model of the psyche, including the id, ego, and superego, and his views on the unconscious as a repository of repressed memories and a source of anxiety. It then explores the characteristics of the 'id', the pleasure principle, and the death instinct. The report then attempts to draw parallels between Freud's concepts and relevant terms within the Buddhist Tipitaka, such as 'bhavanga', 'anusaya', and 'asava'. The report also touches upon the concept of the 'collective unconscious', the concept of 'rebirth' and the challenges of translating Freudian concepts into Buddhist doctrines. The analysis highlights the similarities and differences in how these two frameworks understand the nature of the unconscious, its role in shaping human behavior, and the significance of dreams in understanding the mind. The report concludes by emphasizing the value of comparing these diverse perspectives to enhance our understanding of the human psyche.

Evaluating the “Unconscious in Dream” between
Sigmund Freud and the Buddhist Tipitaka
P.B. Tan
Department of Buddhist Studies,
Mahidol University, Thailand.
Email: [e-mail]
Abstract
Sigmund Freud, an Austrian psychologist, psychoanalyst, psychiatrist and
neurologist, is best known as the founder of psychoanalysis, which has had a signifi cant
impact on psychology, medicine, and sociology. Among the achievements of Freud, one of
the most important is the development of a three-component structural model of the psyche
(consisting of “id”, “ego” and “super-ego”). Although almost every fundamental postulate
of Freudian theory was criticized by prominent scientists and writers, his contribution to the
creation of psychotherapy does not lose its value, and what he did is considered incomparable.
This paper presents an attempt to compare the concept of unconscious in dream in the works
of Sigmund Freud and in the Buddhist Tipitaka. Although it does not seem possible to fi nd an
exact term from the Buddhist corpus to match Freud’s notion of the unconscious, there may
be some terms or a grouping of them, which come closer to it.
Keywords: Evaluating, Unconscious in Dream, Sigmund Freud, Buddhist Tipitaka.

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Introduction
Sigmund Freud, based on his clinical psychoanalysis, distinguished three different
systems of psyche: ‘unconscious’, ‘preconscious’, and ‘conscious’ and relate them to the
respective concepts of ‘id’, ‘ego’, and ‘superego’. A constant movement of impulses of stored
unconscious data is passing from the ‘id’ to the ‘ego’ and becoming ‘preconscious’, and
through the efforts of the ‘ego’, undergo the modification process and become ‘conscious’.
The unconscious system is the source origin of memory data that transmit to the preconscious
system and the conscious system. The Preconscious and Conscious items were all evolved
from the Unconscious.
The preconscious is involved with data retained in the ‘id’ that can readily be brought
to conscious form. The preconscious mind rejects all the undesired elements Freud called
‘defenses’ - to deny elements of the Unconscious (all that are uncertain or unknown) in
order to safeguard our self-esteem, self-ego, etc. The ‘superego’, which is at least partially
conscious, serves as a censor on the ego functions and comprises the individual’ S awareness
of the present perceptions, feelings, and thoughts, towards family and society, at any particular
moment. Freud uses the term ‘unconscious’ in several ways, but the term is used primarily to
designate a functional system of the mind which acts as an archive of memory data and exists
independently of the individual’s conscious awareness. Dreams and slips of the tongue are
examples of the unconscious.
To find an exact term from the Buddhist corpus to match Freud’s notion of the
Unconscious would be futile, except finding only its surface meaning used to describe general
situations. However, there may be some terms or a grouping of them, which come closer
to it.
The ‘unconscious’ in the Id and the Ego
Freud’s theory postulated the ‘unconscious’ as both a repository for repressed traumatic
memories (for example, the ‘Oedipal Complex’) as well as the stimuli source of inducing
anxiety to individual from certain socially or ethically unacceptable behaviors (for example,
an offence of a religious taboo). These unconscious events are not directly observable. In
the following sections, I shall extend the explanation of ‘unconscious’ to include its other
peculiarities and the Buddhist renderings for it.

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Characteristics of the ‘Id’
Freud describes the characteristics of id as: an impulse to get satisfaction for instinctual
needs with no recognition of the passage of time; it has no negatives but its content elements
are energized with either greater or lesser strength. It is interesting how Freud explains this
degree of intensity of the id content:
“...no means of showing the ego either love or hate. It cannot say what it
wants; it has achieved no unified will. Eros [sexual instinct] and the death instinct
struggle within it; we have seen with what weapons the one group of instincts
defends itself against the other.” 1
This aspect of the id-forces of unconscious is precisely the point I made, according to
the Abhidhamma, how our latently stored mental concomitants will behave:
joint-forces by several factors to achieve a common purpose; the good
supplementation and harmonization of isolated qualities were used mistakenly as
the opposing forces instead of using as supporting forces.” 2
Pleasure Principle and Death Instinct
The unconscious system of the ‘id’ works on the “Pleasure Principle”, demanding
immediate gratification of its urges, to the extent of even disregard the undesirable effects (for
example, stealing, rape, incest). The id unconscious elements also act on the “Death Instinct”
of dangers or obsessional neurosis, either as ways of defusing them, emotionally unmoved,
or acting confrontationally as Freud describes it:
1 Smith, Ivan (compiled, 2011), Freud, Sigmund (auth), strachey, James & Freud, Anna (ed.).
The Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. “The Ego and the Id” (UK: Hogarth Press, 1974),
p. 3992.
2 PB. Tan. An Anatomy of Mind. Being Essence of the Dhammasangani in Abhidhamma. (Germany:
Grin Publishing, 2015), p. 231.

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“... instinctual diffusion and the marked emergence of the death instinct
call for particular consideration among the effects of some severe neuroses 3; ...and
death instincts are in part “rendered harmless by being fused with erotic components,
...diverted towards the external world in form of aggression, ...continued in their
internal work unhindered.” 4
The ‘ego’ operates mainly in conscious and preconscious levels, but it also contains
unconscious elements because both the ‘ego’ and the ‘superego’ are also furnished by the ‘id’.
The ‘ego’ works on the ‘reality principle’ which takes the most strains to either satisfy or deny
the id urges as soon they arise, and simultaneously respond to the restraints imposed by the
‘superego’ or reality of the physical world. The function of the ‘ego’ is liken to an arbitrator,
controlling and organizing the id instincts, as well as balancing the conflicting drives of both
‘id’ and ‘superego’. Inappropriate desires are not satisfied will be suppressed by the ego and
these repressed memories are retained in the unconscious ‘id’.
The unconscious neuroses of ‘Rebirth’
Freud also mentions the clinical implications of the unconscious notion of ‘Rebirth’.
Freud’s attributes the phantasy of ‘rebirth’ to the imaginative life of the neurotics such as
the mutilated version of the homosexual wishful phantasy, and in another euphemism, the
phantasy of incestuous intercourse with the mother or father (the womb-phantasy). 5 Freud’s
notion of the unconscious ‘rebirth’ is a psychoanalytic approach to neuroses. In contrast, the
Buddhist explanation of the unconscious in its sense of the afterlife and rebirth, could be quite
surprising. According to Tibetan Buddhism:
3 Smith, Ivan (compiled, 2011), Freud, Sigmund (author), strachey, James & Freud, Anna (ed.).
The Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. “The Ego And The Id” (UK: Hogarth Press, 1974),
p. 3975.
4 ibid., p. 3988.
5 Smith, Ivan (compiled 2011), Freud, Sigmund (author), strachey, James & Freud, Anna (ed.).
The Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. “From The History Of An Infantile Neurosis”. (UK:
Hogarth Press, 1974), p. 3579-3580.

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“... after having been unconscious for up to three and a half days, you will
be awaken from unconsciousness and wonder, “What has happened to me?” So,
recognize this to be the intermediate state [bardo]... ” 6; “If you are to be born as a
male... If you are to be born as a female... experience the perceptions... [Emotional
arousal] will cause you to enter a womb... in the midst of the meeting between the
sperm and the ovum. From that state of bliss you will faint into unconsciousness,
and as time passes, the embryo will come to maturity in the womb .. ,” 7
It is not easy to find the best rendering of the Freudian version of ‘unconscious’ in
the Buddhist literature as there is no direct parallel. I will include these terms as the closest
for discussion: bhavanga (the factor of becoming or existence); anusaya (the underlying
tendency); asava (the metaphorical “canker” or “intoxicant”).
The idea of ‘Collective Unconscious’
Interestingly, Freud comes up with the notion of ‘collective unconscious’ 8 9 but no
significant progress had been made as it was not easy to translate the concepts of individual
psychology into group psychology. Similarly, very little had been mentioned in the Buddhist
doctrines about the topic of “collective unconscious”, which I presume it to have a direct
relationship to the aggregate of “kamma”, of either the individual or the collective mode
as group. The research on “collective unconscious” should be a profound and rewarding
attempt.
The concept of Bhavanga
When we keyword-search for the term ‘bhavanga’ in the Theravada Tipitaka, we can
see the term appearing in only two collections - mainly however: inside the Abhidhamma.
6 Padmasambhava (comp.), Gyurme Doije (trails.), Graham Coleman & Thupten Jinpa (ed.). The
Tibetan Book of the Dead. (US: Penguin Group, 2005), p. 236.
7 Ibid., p. 289-290.
8 Freudj Sigmund (autli.), Jones, Katherine (trails). Moses And Monotheism (UK: Hogarth Press,
1939), p. 208
9 Thank you to Dr. Dion Peoples, the editor of the JIABU, for doing a keyword-search on the
Digital Pali Reader Firefox browser-software, for this term, and for providing a screenshot of the authentic
results, and for making a correction in Illy text to reflect the accuracy of the information.

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Whenever the mind is in a state such as a dreamless deep sleep, or at the final moment
of death, or right after the end of every thought process, or stop receiving a fresh external
object or thought-freed (vlthimutta), we say the mind is in the state of ‘bhavanga’. Thus, we
can also say bhavanga acts like a buffer as it arises and perishes between two consecutive
thought-process. Nyanaponika Thera likens bhavanga to ‘subconscious’, ‘stored-up memory’,
‘kamma’, rebirth’, ‘life-continuum’, which seem closer to the Freudian sense of the dynamic
‘unconscious’:
“Since time immemorial, all impressions and experiences are, as it were,
stored up, or better said, are functioning, but concealed as such to full consciousness,
from where however they occasionally emerge as subconscious phenomena and
approach the threshold of full consciousness, or crossing it become fully conscious.
This so- called ‘subconscious life-stream’ or undercurrent of life is that by which
might be explained the faculty of memory, paranormal psychic phenomena, mental
and physical growth, karma and rebirth, etc. An alternative rendering is ‘life-
continuum’.”10
S.z. Aung and Mrs. Rhys Davids view bhavanga as a functional moment of
subconsciousness, a subliminal consciousness, but disagree for it to be treated as a sub plane
from which thought emerge from the substrate to surface:
“Bhavanga means function... a functional state or moment of subconsciousness...
below the threshold’ of consciousness by which we conceive continuous subjective
existence as possible. ... a flow of momentary states of subliminal consciousness...
constitutes the stream of being... The stream IS liable to be interrupted constantly
by thought... it cannot be regained as a sub-plane from which thoughts ‘rise to the
surface’.” 11
10 Nyanaponika Thera. Buddhist Dictionary: Manual of Buddhist Terms & Doctrines. (Kandy:
BPS, 1980),p. 70
11 S. z. Aung (trans.), Mrs. Rhys Davids (eds.). Compendium of Philosophy: Being a Translation
of Abhidhammattha- Sangaha. (Oxford: PTS, 1910), p. 266-267.

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In my view, bhavanga does not correspond to a sub-plane; it is not a subliminal
consciousness, nor is it a functional state of subconscious existence. The author’s description
as “below the threshold” of consciousness, and “continuous subjective existence” is
suggesting the coexistence of subconscious and consciousness, but there are no two types
of consciousness that can coexist according to Abhidhamma - they arise and perish in an
infinitesimal split-moment. The following illustration of bhavanga by Mrs. Rhys Davids as a
vibrating node in two consecutive thought-moments (second and third) of the total seventeen
thought-moments (khana) would totally rule out bhavanga as a repository of either the
subconscious or unconscious:
“...in every such act, seventeen moments or flashes of consciousness
took place, each moment being considered to involve the three time-phases of all
‘becoming’ namely, a nascent, static and dissolving phase ... after one citta-moment
(1) has passed, enters the avenue [or focus] of sight, the life-continuum (bhavanga)
vibrating twice (2) (3) ... then seven flashes of full perception, or apperception
(javana) (9 15); finally, if the percept is sufficiently vivid, two moments of retention
or registering consciousness (16, 17) ... After that comes subsidence into the life-
continuum [bhavanga].” 12
Dr. o. H. De A. Wijesekera concludes that ‘bhavanga’ can be equated with Freud’s
notion of the id forces of unconscious:
“At the non-empirical state, vinnana is unconscious and becomes conscious
only when confronted by the obj ective world in the perceptual process... Freud’
S concept of the human psyche consisting of id-forces and the Unconscious may
therefore be considered to a large extent parallel to the Buddhist notion of bhavanga
which, according to our understanding, is constituted by the sankharas or physical
forces combined with vinnana which in the empirical state appears as consciousness
which Freud attributed to the ego or the empirical agent.” 13
12 Mrs. C. A. F. Rhys Davids. Buddhist Psychology... (London: G. Bell & Sons, 1914), p. 180-
181.
13 O.H. de A. Wijesekera (1979). The Freudian Unconscious and Bhavanga. The Journal of the
International Association of Buddhist Studies, Vol. 1, p. 65-66.

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In my view, this is confusing. At the non-empirical state (or prior to the first vibrating
bhavanga), not only is vinnana stays at unconscious, the sankharas are also in unconscious.
Sankharas are not physical forces but is the term designated in Suttanta, and for which in
Abhidhamma are being translated into 50 mental factors excluding vedana (feeling) and
sanna (perception). It is perhaps only true to say that, according to Theravada Abhidhamma,
some of the biased 52 mental factors arising with the different consciousness as a result
of influence by corporeal objects (or mental visuals), and together as a whole constitute a
working process similar to Freud’s notion of the empirical ego-forces.
Anusaya (latent tendency)
The term ‘anusaya’ is seemed comparable to the Freudian id-forces. The PTS’s Pali-
English Dictionary defines ‘anusaya’ as: “bent, bias, proclivity, the persistence of a dormant or
latent disposition, predisposition, and tendency. Always in bad sense.” According to the Yamaka
in Abhidhamma, there are 7 latent tendencies of the: (1) sensual craving (kamaraganusaya),
(2) aversion (patighanusaya), (3) conceit (mananusaya), (4) fallacy (ditthanusaya), (5)
scepticism (vicikicchanusaya), (6) craving for existence (bhavaraganusaya), (7) ignorance
(avijjanusaya).14 These English renderings has the characteristics of the dormant and lurking
tendencies, latent proclivities, thus making the term ‘anusaya’ closer to the Freudian sense of
‘unconscious’ repository.
Asava (personality-canker)
The term ‘asava’ is also closely resembles that of the ‘id’ unconscious of Freud’s.
Rhys Davids (The Expositor’ [Atthasalinl], 1976, p. 63) interprets ‘asavas’ as “intoxicants”
of the mind, likens it to juices of the Madira fruits which become intoxicants after long-
fermentation. U Kyaw Khine (The Dhammasanganl, 1999, p. 535) interprets ‘asavas’
as “defilements” that befuddle the mind. PTS Pali-English Dictionary defines ‘asava’ as
“outflow”. Other translated renderings for ‘asava’ include “canker, pollutant, taint”, and so
on. The metaphorical “canker” implicates more closely to the ‘id’ unconscious mechanism
as it means the affective capability of corroding the minds covertly, quietly, gradually, and
durably. The 4 kinds of ‘cankers” refer to the attachment and clinging to: (1) sensuous
14 Cf. SamyuttaNikaya: 45.175; Yamaka: 7.27, 7.28; Nyanatiloka Mahathera (2007). Guide Through
the Abhidhamma Pitaka. (Kandy: BPS), p. 138.

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pleasures, (2) existences, (3) fallacious views, (4) ignorance as to the Four Noble Truths and
theory of the Dependent Origination (Paticcasamuppada).15
The ‘unconscious’ in the dreams
Freud emphasizes the value of dreams as sources of insight into the unconscious
desires, especially the infantile roots of unconscious wishes in dreams. Fascinated by the
anomaly that the things we hide in the day appeared in disguise in the dark of night (such as
the incestuous acts^ murderous thoughts, etc.), he wrote’“The interpretation of dreams is the
royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind.”16
Reinforcement from the ‘unconscious’
Every dream is an attempted gratification of some unconscious wishes. That is to say,
the dream would not happen if the conscious wish were not reinforced from the unconscious.
According to Freud, in our sleep, unconscious wishes always remain active and ready to
“off-load” their intensity whenever they find an opportunity to unite themselves with the
emotions from conscious life. The more intense the emotion in the awaking hours, the more
chances the unconscious wishes will manifest in dream. An example is children often have
bad dreams after a day of intense activities. The stronger the unconscious wishes, the more
they will dominate the dream content: worry, guilt, jealousy, envy, lust, as examples.
Irrationality of the ‘unconscious’
Although the unconscious system of id is a dynamic and an affective base which
influence all aspects of our conative and cognitive personality (perception, feeling, emotion,
and so on), it, however, contains passion, instincts, and is “irrational” in contrast to the ego
which operates on reasoning and sanity. Just imagine how many times the dreams that we
had in the past were rational and expressed logic? Rationality and logic do not hold for the
unconscious mechanism of the id, typified in dreams.
15 Cf. Dhammasanganl: par. 1465.
16 Freud, Sigmund (auth.), strachey, James (ed.). The Interpretation of Dreams.(US'. Basic
Books,2010), p. 604.

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Sexual symbolism
To Freud, the representation of sexual material in dreams is symbolical in
which unconscious sexual desires play an enormous part. Apart from dream, Freud said:
“Identification is most often used in hysteria to express sexual community” which has
remained in the unconscious.”17 It is possible that unconscious phantasies could have given
in to the dominating sexual emotions or libido. These unconscious phantasies come to their
expression not only in dreams but also in hysterical phobias and in other symptoms.
Interpretations of dream in Theravada Buddhism
There is not much that had been explained of dreams in the Theravada Buddhist
scriptures but a little are mentioned in a few places in the Theravada Tipitaka. Their
explanations, which were the later additions, are controversial. It is interesting to bring out
here, of what had been recorded, into a critical review particularly pertaining to consciousness,
and how the id- unconscious fits into the arguments.
In Kathavatthu of Abhidhamma (Kv: 22.6), there was a Theravadin asking
Uttarapathakas about the morality of dream. Uttarapathakas maintained that even though a
person may commit evil thoughts and crimes in dreams, but all the consciousness in dream
should be treated as just ‘ethically neutral’. He argued because the Buddha has said that
dream-consciousness was negligible. 18 According to S. z. Aung and Mrs. Rhys Davids, the
commentary (Parajikanda-Atthakatha) remarked in response to the answer by Uttarapathakas,
that: “There is volition, and that volition is negligible.”19
Some may argue that because the visuals in the dream are vague and indistinct
presentations and hence his consciousness was irrational and absurd. But one can tell with
certainty in his dream that his consciousness after the usual three bhavanga vibration and
arrested by the two thought-moments of senses-based cognitive consciousness, passed
subsequently through “receiving”, “investigating” and “determining” thought-moments -
has actually lapsed into the seven ‘javana’ or ‘impulsion’. If his thought-moment had arisen
at ‘javana’, then his dream activity has to be judged as either moral or immoral because
17 Freud, Sigmund (auth.), M. D. Eder (tran.). Dream Psychology. (US: Feedbooks, 1920), p. 49.
18 Cf. Kathavatthu: 22.6.
19 S.z. Aung, Mrs. Rhys Davids (1969). Points of Controversy. Being a Translation of The
Kathavatthu. (Oxford: PTS, 1969), p. 261.

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kamma takes place at ‘javana’. 20 It doesn’t matter whether it is just a dream or ‘power of
will’ in dream is too weak to effect kamma because his apperception is bound by his volative
consciousness (or unconscious) as what the Buddha said:
“O Bhikkhus! Volition [intention] is what is called kamma, and having
willed, one acts by body, speech and thought.” 21
Furthermore, questions are raised by S. z. Aung and Mrs. Rhys Davids 22 regarding:
whether consciousness coming from the thought in dream and activity acted on the dream
is moral, immoral, or unmoral? How far do the dream-thoughts carry on influencing his
character (kamma)? My view is that whether the episodes of consciousness in the dream
is moral, immoral, or unmoral have to be verified by thorough recollection of one’s
intentions and motives (volition) by going through a detailed checklist of cetasikas and their
categorized constituents. Whether the activities happened in dream must be dealt with is an
ethical question. For example, the guilt consciousness that follows because the dream is true
which continues to prick on his conscience. But in some cases, the dreams simply have to
be ignored altogether because they are either irrelevant or illogical which are characteristic
of the unconscious when only a little part of the brain is working. These Buddhist views of
dream provide useful guide to Freud’s concept of the ‘id’ and unconscious.
An interesting example relevant to the concept of ‘id’ is about the emission of semen
during a dream as recorded in the Vinaya-Pitaka. 23 At one time, because of good food and
unworried life, a monk discovered he had emitted semen during a dream. This was reported
to the Buddha who answered that a formal retraining program did not apply in that case.
Monk’s intentional emission of semen during a dream constitutes a monastic disciplinary
offence. But why was it not applicable as replied by the Buddha? My view is that the thought-
moment had not reached the phase of impulsion or the thought-moment had ceased when
intention was just about to form. For example, it is also natural that for no other reason
than sleeping in the warm blanket of a very cold night, an adolescent full of sap woke up to
20 Narada Mahathera (1956). A Manual of Abhidhamma, Being Abhidhammattha-Sangaha of
Bhadanta Anuruddhacariya. (Malaysia: Buddhist Missionary Society), p. 49-51.
21 Samyutta Nikaya 12.25; 35.146; Majjhima Nikaya 136; Anguttara Nikaya 10.217.
22 S. z. Aung (trans.), Mrs. Rhys Davids (eds.). Compendium of Philosophy: Being a Translation
ofAbhidhammattha- Sangaha. (Oxford: PTS, 1910), p. 52.
23 1. B. Homer (trans.) (1949). The Book of the Discipline (Vinaya-Pitaka), Vol. 1 (Suttavibhanga).
London: PTS. p. 195-196

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discover that he had nocturnal emission. This matter of semen emission during dream was
one of the five controverted points in the debates on Arahants, brought up by Mahadeva of
the Mahasamghikas but rejected by the Sthaviras (antecedent of Theravada). 24 In my view,
the matter is a valid question. It is because only the Buddha is able to verify the validity status
of an Arahant. My earlier discussion oil the case in the Kathavatthu concerning thought-
moments, volition and consciousness in dream applies similarly here. All these facets of the
Buddhist records on dream bring US closer to the subject of ‘unconscious’ symbolized by the
Freudian concept of ‘id’.
Unconscious mind arises out of quantum field
Mark Germine (MD), wrote about the role and mechanism of the unconscious and
preconscious in dreams by referring to the work of Freud, and explained them, to some extent,
with the quantum theories.25 I add a few lines to discuss the quantum view of the unconscious
because of their close correlation to each other. Many people find it enigmatic and confused
about the quantum reality of superimposed potentialities. But the paradox of our latent
‘unconscious’ resonates very well with the paradox of the quantum field theory. The expected
possibilities of the quantum wave function become unpredictable and less real when they
are involved in an interaction with the agency of observation (wave of our consciousness).
The same when we enter the unconscious world of dreams, the less real we become. The
arbitrary reality arising out of our conscious observation of the quantum wave function was
what caused Einstein to say unbelievingly: “God does not play dice with the universe”, and
“spooky action at a distance.” Quantum reality exists in the limitless worlds of possibilities,
which is precisely how our world of the unconscious mind functions; it is even capable of
going back in time albeit with limited scientific validation. According to physicist Timothy
Ralp, although it has been possible to simulate time travel with tiny quantum particles, the
same result might not be repeatable for larger groups of particles like atoms. 26 To a certain
extent, it is perhaps true to say that, we visit quantum reality every night in our unconscious
- in dreams.
24 Prebish, Charles and Keown Damien (2006). Buddhism—The Ebook, Third Edition. (US: Journal
of Buddhist Ethics Online Books), p. 124-125.
25 Mark Germine (1998). On the Quantum Psychodynamics of Dreams. Retrieved from: http://
www.goertzel.org/dynapsyc/1998/QuantumDreams.htrnl
26 Martin Ringbauer, Timothy c. Ralph, et al. (2014). Experimental Simulation of Closed Timelike
Curves. Nature Communications, 5, 4145, p. . Pdfretrived from Cornell University Library: http://arxiv.org/
abs/1501.05014.

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According to Genuine, a dream cannot be formed by the unconscious alone because
unconscious, even though is the primary process of dreams, it links with the secondary
process which lies with the preconscious mind. Our dream is the preconscious borderland
between two worlds, namely unconscious and conscious. He adds that the process of the
unconscious, which is the quantum field, works in a “bi-directional” hierarchy of systems:
“the whole gives rise to the parts, and the parts also give rise to the whole”. In effect, this is the
principle of dependent co-arising or reciprocal causality (Paticcasamuppada). However, there
is a distinction between our inclined id-forces of unconscious and the quantum unconscious,
which is, in his words:
“In the quantum unconscious, everything is a whole. In the depths of the
unconscious, everything is “I”.”
Conclusion
From what are examined above, I would draw a conclusion to the theme that there is
none from the Buddha that can be used to describe exactly the Freud’s notion of the unconscious
system. Freud’s approach of the id-forces of unconscious was intended on the ontological
dualism of brain-mind relation and the materialism-neurosis interconnection, whereas the
Buddha explained it in the ways of Abhidhamma, which is the lurking mental factors as
the unconscious reality - collaborating with consciousness, and all that is corporeality. For
US it is unconscious, but the unconscious latency in itself is an undiscovered wisdom of
‘superconscious’, the key to unlock secrets of our personality.
Dreams occur in the boundary between the unconscious and the conscious. It thus
answers why certain dreams are illogical, nonsensical but some appear as if so real— because
the process of dream works on the principle of dependent causality in which the id-forces of
unconscious and the conscious of superego can either be partially active or fully dominant,
even totally dormant. Dreams are real only in the reality of mind, and in this regard, dreams
provide US the opportunities for the profound insight into our true personality. Whether
content of the dream is ethically moral or immoral, it requires an honest self-anatomy into
the category components of the id-forces or cetasikas, which reflect our predispositions and
dispositions.

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Notes
“God does not play dice”: One of Albert Einstein’s famous statements, who
expressed his contempt for the notion that the universe is governed by probability - an idea
fundamental to quantum theory.
Oedipal Complex: The erotic emotions of the son directed at the mother joined by
rivalry and violence or resentment toward the father, during the phallic stage of growth.
Physiological Events: Physiology refers to a branch of biology that studies the
functions and processes of living organisms including the organs, tissues, and chemical
phenomena involved. Physiological events may include sensual organs impingements,
arousal levels, and other physical variables that may affect behavior.
Pleasure principle: The psychic force, which drives individuals to seek out
immediate pleasure of instinctual, libidinal urges, etc. It overcomes the id and operates most
greatly during childhood. During adulthood, it is opposed by the ego’s reality principle.
Reality Principle: The ability of the mind to satisfy the id’s desires in realistic and
socially appropriate ways. The reality principle weighs the costs and benefits of an action
before deciding to act upon or abandon an impulse accordingly, as opposed to acting on the
pleasure principle.
“Spooky action at a distance”: A statement Einstein used to refer to quantum
mechanics, which describes the strange behavior of the smallest particles of matter and light.
He was referring, specifically, to quantum non-locality of “entanglement”, the idea that two
physically and remotely separated particles can have correlated properties, with values that
are uncertain until they are measured.
Womb Phantacy: The state of envy experienced by some males for the reproductive
ability of females, thought of as an unconscious drive to discriminate females; or the drive
experienced by a transsexual.

339JIABU| Vol. 11 No.2 (July – December 2018)
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