The Reincarnation of Peter Proud Read Online Free Page B

and Toyotas and Pintos. Most of the faculty drove small cars. A couple of professors, getting out of their cars, stared at his vehicle and then at him. They seemed to resent both it and him. Ordinarily he might have been a little embarrassed. Today, in his present mood, he didn’t give a damn.
    He walked out of the garage and over to Bunche Hall. It stood on huge stilts, its entire facade made of some metallic-like material reflecting the other buildings and trees. It was a beautiful day, clear and sunny and very warm for December. Groups of students, the boys in beards and Levis, the girls also in Levis, with hair long-flowing, sprawled on the grass, or near the gnarled old olive trees on the south side of Bunche Hall, or on the low brick wall bordering the parterre in front of the building.
    He walked into the lobby, then paused briefly to study some of the cards tacked up on a student bulletin board. There were the usual announcements: Pad to rent. Roommate needed, female, non-smoker. Charter trips to New York and Europe. Somebody wanted to sell a Showman Kustom Electric Bass Guitar. Somebody else wanted to unload a rebuilt Yamaha motorcycle, CASH! Must Sacrifice! The Kung Fu Club was meeting again.
    But these were far outnumbered by announcements pertaining to the occult and their practitioners. Tarot Readings by Cassius. The Voice of Isis, Cosmic Mother. Tanya Sings Poems of Myth and Infinity—Small Gatherings Only. Guru Ram Das, Karmic Reader.Spiritualist Center—Expand the Brotherhood of the Source. Cosmic Joy Workshop. Christ on the Tree of Life. Breath, the Key to Spiritual Attainment. Bio-Energetic Anal Workshop. Hexing, Institute of Human Abilities. Astro-Psycho-Logical Encounters. And THE TRUTH SHALL SET YOU FREE Workshop.
    Everybody was Edna, these days. The world was full of idiots, all of them looking for answers.
    And so was he.
    Peter’s second graduate student of the day, Ed Donan, came in for his dissertation interview. He was tall and bearded and a little uneasy. He carried a thin folder containing a brief outline of his proposed dissertation subject.
    “Sit down, Ed.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    Peter could never quite get used to the “sir?” part. Or the Doctor Proud part. He was only a couple of years older than Donan.
    “Now,” he said, nodding toward the folder. “Tell me all about it.”
    “The area I’d like to examine is the parallel between Freud’s
Interpretation of Dreams
and the divinity-of-dreams culture of the Iroquois.”
    My God, he thought,
what is this?
First Nora, now Ed Donan. This is going to be some day.
    “Tell me about it.”
    “Well, there’s no evidence that Sigmund Freud had ever heard of the Iroquois divinity-of-dreams idea. Yet their dream rites offered the same ‘therapeutic strategy’ of catharsis. They had ritual opportunities for wish fulfillment through dreams. They had dream guessing games, and they were a dream gratification society.”
    “What’s your documentation, Ed?”
    “The reports the Jesuit missionaries sent back to their superiors. From 1611 to 1768.”
    “You mean
The Relations?
” Donan nodded. “And particularlythe
Relation
sent back by Father Regueneau in 1649—he uses language that might have been used by Freud himself.”
    “Go on.”
    “The Iroquois knew, just as Freud did, that the dream might conceal, rather than reveal, the wish of the soul. I’m talking of both their personal and visitation dreams. Their idea of therapy was to actually reenact their dreams—make them come true. If the dream desire was not granted, it revolted against the body, causing various diseases. They called it
Ondinnonk
, a secret desire of the soul manifested by a dream. I could give you a few examples….”
    “Yes?”
    “For instance, the personal dreams of the Senecas, as reported by a Father Fremin.”
    Yes, sir. This is going to be some day
.
    “A Seneca warrior dreams during the night that he was taking a bath. Just as soon as he wakes up, he