The Atlantic provides an atlas to the subconscious, from Tijuana to Reykjavik.
The first thing I learned is: Everybody flies.
Consider the surly taxi driver I met in Ukraine who, when asked what he dreamed of at night, responded, “I jump and then I fly—higher than the trees, higher than the trolley wires.”
“I think when I die,” he mused, “that’s what it’s going to be like.”
As an instructor in psychology at the City College of New York, I teach about the power of the subconscious, whose hidden cognition comprises the vast majority of brain activity. Increasingly, research is confirming that we humans are almost entirely subconscious beings, largely oblivious to the mind’s extensive inner workings. Dreams are one of the few exceptions.
