STRANGE, IRRATIONAL DREAM...

Had a strange and irrational dream yesterday. I dreamt that my father was retiring from Fergusson College (where he is a Professor, and in fact going to retire next year) and so the time had come to return all those hundreds of library books which I had issued on his name (Very fortunately for me, faculty members can issue as many books as they want for any amount of time). Among the books is Linus Pauling's (Two times Nobel Laureate) classic book "The Nature of the Chemical Bond" which many people call the most influential chemistry book ever published. Anyway, the book has been with me for a long time, and in the dream as well as in real life, I don't want to give it back! So I make a valid plan, namely that I would make a deal with the library people; classify the book as being on a sale, something quite common, and I would buy it. So off we go to the library, and the negotiations start on a slow and peaceful note. All to no avail. The ladies will just not budge. Finally the debate becomes really heated, and I become so emotional that I am almost on the verge of tears. I make a desperate plea to the librarian, a strict motherly looking lady who can nonetheless exude great impassiveness. I say "Look here, this guy won two Nobel Prizes, both unshared. This book is the Bhagavad Gita of Chemistry. Let me tell you that if any time I am sentenced to death, when they are hanging me, I will hold this book, and not the Gita, in my hands! No no no! If you take this away from me, these priceless gems of knowledge will be lost from me forever...Please, please!!" I could well have spoken to a stone. Finally, to make an attempt to end this pitiful spectacle, the other lady calls security...
I do not know what "Security" did with me, because long before I could observe my plight, I woke up with a start, sweating profusely. The irrational part of the dream? Well, if even in a dream I could think rationally enough to try to persuade them to put up the book on sale, couldn't I have been rational enough to do the much simpler job of xeroxing (I know the correct word is 'photocopying', but popular and much steeped culture makes saying 'xeroxed' second nature to me) it, to prevent the loss of "priceless gems of knowledge"? Especially considering the fact that I have already xeroxed at least 15-20 books, some simply on impulse...That was the hilarious part of the dream. But this actually brings me to its interpretation. Without wanting to read Freud's book, I want to make a few points. First and most importantly, even in dreams, we can think rationally. I actually worked out a plan with my father, of persuading them to classify the book as being on sale. Is this rational thinking similar to or the same as the thinking we do consciously? Its hard to answer this, because the only thinking we are aware of is conscious thinking. Secondly, what dictates the details of a dream. Of course, the answer is 'subconscious thought'. But exactly which ones? For example, what dictates the details of the room in which the library was housed (it was NOT the Fergusson Library), the colours of the walls, the shirt styles of the clerks which I saw, and the faces of the library ladies, one of whom looked like a hybrid between my usual lady from whom i got most books xeroxed, and the mother of one of my best friends? Its interesting to compare the two streams, of consciousness and unconsciousness....Can we ever find the answers?....