The Lathe Of Heaven

“Haber opened his mouth and shut it again. So often he knew what his patients were going to say, and could say it for them better than they could say it for themselves. […] And after all, this talking was merely preliminary, a vestigial rite from the palmy days of analysis; its only function was to help him decide how he should help the patient, whether positive or negative conditioning was indicated, what he should do.”

In this passage, Haber is impatient as George tries to describe what troubles him. Haber views the conversation between himself and his patient as an unnecessary and outdated process, believing that he can describe a patient’s issues better than the patient. This not only demonstrates Haber’s sense of superiority but also his extreme desire to control and drive the action. Haber wants to immediately start a mechanical type of treatment, demonstrating his impatience, desire to control, and inability to view people as individuals with particular needs. At this point in the novel, Haber is not aware of George’s world-altering dreams, yet he still treats him as an object or thing rather than a person—something to be treated rather than someone to be understood.

“‘Because I don’t want to change things!’ Orr said, as if stating the super obvious. ‘Who am I to meddle with the way things go? And it’s my unconscious mind that changes things, without any intelligent control. I tried autohypnosis but it didn’t do any good. Dreams are incoherent, selfish, irrational—immoral, you said a minute ago. They come from the unsocialized part of us, don’t they, at least partly?’”

George believes that he has no right to “meddle with the way things go.” George does not want to change things not only because he is passive but also because he questions the ethics behind such power. While Haber expresses an eager desire to change anything he thinks needs to be corrected, George objects, leading to frequent disagreements between the two men. Indeed, George describes dreams themselves as “incoherent, selfish, irrational—immoral,” language that also describes Haber’s behavior as he gains control over George’s dreams and ability to alter the world.

“Those whom heaven helps we call the sons of heaven. They do not learn this by learning. They do not work it by working. They do not reason it by using reason. To let understanding stop at what cannot be understood is a high attainment. Those who cannot do it will be destroyed on the lathe of heaven. —Chuang Tse: XXIII.”

This quote reflects the development of the plot from the philosophical viewpoint of Taoism, which compares the “sons of heaven” against those who are not. George is a “son of heaven” in that he understands when to stop trying to rationalize and understand the world around him. While George seems ordinary, his willingness to let the natural order of the world flow demonstrates his innate attunement with the world. Further, the assistance George later receives from the aliens can be viewed as help from heaven, as the aliens provide him with peaceful dreams. Meanwhile, Haber is “destroyed on the lathe of heaven” because he cannot relinquish power and control.

“‘You’re afraid of your own mind, George. That’s a fear no man can live with. But you don’t have to. You haven’t seen the help your own mind can give you, the ways you can use it, employ it creatively. All you need to do is not hide from your own mental powers, not to suppress them, but to release them. This we can do together. Now, doesn’t that strike you as right, as the right thing to do?’

‘I don’t know,’ Orr said.”

Haber shamelessly attempts to persuade George that what they are doing is beneficial and will lead to his cure. He tells George that his hesitance to alter the world represents a fear of his mind, but his real intent is to overwhelm George’s uncertainty and feeble resistance so he can continue to change the world in all the ways he sees fit. This passage is ironic in that Haber very nearly destroys the world when he acquires the ability to dream effectively and loses the power over his own mind in an act of arrogant hubris.

“Why didn’t Dr. Haber tell me that he knows I dream effectively? […]

Why didn’t he say anything? He must know I was afraid of being insane. He says he’s helping me. It would have helped a lot if he told me that he can see what I see, told me that it’s not just delusion. […]

I wonder how he’ll stop my dreams, how he’ll keep me from changing things. I’ve got to stop; This is far enough, far enough...

He shook his head and turned away from the bright, life encrusted hills.”

George realizes that Haber is aware of his effective dreams, but he still wants to make sense of Haber, trying to convince himself that Haber means well and truly intends to cure him. George is well-meaning and tries to see the best in people, a complete contrast to Haber. While George reflects that things have gone “far enough” with Haber, the “life encrusted hills” he gazes upon foreshadow Haber’s plan to erase the suburbs as part of his solution to the overpopulation problem.

“‘He’s not... not an evil man. He means well. What I object to is his using me as an instrument, a means—even if his ends are good. I can’t judge him—my own dreams had immoral effects, that’s why I tried to suppress them with drugs, and got into this mess. And I want to get out of it, to get off drugs, to be cured. But he’s not curing me. He’s encouraging me.

After a pause, Miss LeLache said, ‘To do what?’

‘To change reality by dreaming that it’s different,’ the client said, doggedly, without hope.”

When George realizes Haber is using him and not curing him, he tries to find a legal path through which to sever his treatment agreement. He begins to realize the bind that Haber has him in and recognizes how very difficult it will be to end their relationship. Because he is being treated for emotional issues, George finds himself at the mercy of the law and those in positions of power, highlighting the theme of The Powerlessness of the Individual, as George has lost control of his own life and feels helpless, both over his dreams and his relationship with Haber.

“He was glad he brought Penny Crouch with him when he was moved to the office of the Director of the Institute last year. She was loyal and clever, and a man at the head of a big and complex research institute needs a loyal and clever woman in his outer office.”

This quote reveals that Haber has manipulated George’s dreams to make himself the director of a powerful institute studying dreams. As such, Haber’s first order of business when faced with total power was to make himself rich and influential, which speaks to his morals. This description of Penny Crouch also contrasts sharply with George and Heather, who is also a “clever woman” but someone who George has aligned himself with for protection and allyship rather than personal gain. What Haber has done intentionally, George has done intuitively. This also demonstrates what Haber values in a relationship: loyalty and cleverness, as these qualities allow him to further strategize and protect his own agenda.

“The lawyer’s presence cramped his style badly; he had to put it all in abstract terms, instead of just telling Orr what to dream. […] He varied it from session to session, seeking the sure way to suggest the precise dream he wanted, and always coming up against the resistance that seemed to him sometimes to be the over literalness of primary-process thinking, and sometimes to be positive bulkiness in Orr’s mind. Whatever prevented it, the dream almost never came out the way Haber intended.”

This passage exemplifies the problem Haber faces in trying to use George’s dreams to get the things that he wants. With Heather in the room, Haber knows he cannot tell George to dream a specific thing, rather giving him an implied direction. Such implied direction underscores The Law of Unintended Consequences—George’s dreams never turn out exactly as Haber plans, as Haber focuses on an and result rather than a process. In this quote, it is evident that Haber is not concerned with the collateral damage created by the dream process. Instead, he is concerned with Heather’s presence, as it means he has to get more creative in his instructions.

“Did you ever happen to think, Dr. Haber, […] that there, there might be other people who dream the way I do? That reality is being changed out from under us, replaced, renewed, all the time dash only we don’t know it? Only the dreamer knows that, and those who know his dream. If that’s true, I guess we’re lucky not knowing it. This is confusing enough.”

George expresses the philosophical quandary that life is really a dream, and humans are only actors in a faux reality. This question is used to confront Haber’s grandiose use of George’s dreams for his own purposes, as the Taoist notion behind the question is that every person constantly impacts the real world, often without realizing the full extent of what they have done or the effect it has had on others.

“But he’s not a mad scientist, Orr thought dully, he’s a pretty sane one, or he was. It’s the chance of power that my dreams give him that twists him around. He keeps acting a part, and this gives him such an awfully big part to play. So that now he’s using even his science as a means, not an end...But his ends are good, aren’t they? He wants to improve life for humanity. Is that wrong?”

George is trapped in a relationship with a duplicitous manipulator. Legally, he cannot escape being Haber’s single patient, and Haber refuses to tell George what he asks him to dream while hypnotized, thus leaving George in ignorance of his actions. However, George still wants to believe that Haber’s intentions are good, which is ironic since Haber induced George to dream about a solution to overpopulation, resulting in the death of six billion people. George’s question of the wrong or right nature of Haber’s plans demonstrates The Will to Power in that George wants to believe that Haber’s thirst for power is not entirely corrupt.

“‘But in fact, isn’t that man’s very purpose on earth dash to do things, change things, run things, make a better world?’ […]

‘I don’t know. Things don’t have purposes, as if the universe were a machine, where every part has a useful function. What’s the function of a galaxy? I don’t know if our life has a purpose and I don’t see that it matters. What does matter is that we’re a part. Like a thread in the cloth or a grass-blade in a field. It is and we are. What we do is like wind blowing on the grass.”

When George confronts Haber about using him without his permission and demands that Haber stops, the psychiatrist argues that what they are accomplishing together is for the betterment of humanity, capturing the utilitarian stance: The greatest good for the greatest number of people is the purpose of humanity. Here, George’s response represents Taoist principles, arguing that things simply are and that there is no implied purpose to human life. The underlying irony of Haber’s argument is that the last dream Haber suggested and George dreamed resulted in the majority of humanity dying. Thus, what they have done does not result in progress and in universal good but instead loss, destruction, and suffering.

“‘Don’t worry about control! Freedom is what you’re working toward,’ Haber said gustily. ‘Freedom! Your unconscious mind is not a sink of horror and depravity. […] Nothing of the kind! It is the wellspring of health, imagination, creativity. […] The aim of psychotherapy is precisely this, to remove those groundless fears and nightmares, to bring up what’s unconscious into the light of rational consciousness, examine it objectively, and find out there is nothing to fear.’

‘But there is,’ Orr said very softly.”

Haber continually assumes that the reason bad consequences follow George’s effective dreams is because George does not dream properly as a result of fear. Haber works to convince George that his dreams are good, despite the reality that people are negatively impacted by what George dreams at Haber’s behest. Haber’s end goal is to become an effective dreamer himself. When there are negative consequences from George’s dreams, Haber disavows his own responsibility and blames George. Haber further tells George that “there is nothing to fear” in the unconscious mind, and George argues that there is something to fear. Though George’s open resistance to Haber is slow moving at times, he makes his ethics known throughout the entirety of the novel.

“[W]hat struck her most, of that insight, was his strength. He was the strongest person she had ever known, because he could not be moved away from the center. And that was why she liked him. She was drawn to strength, came to it as a moth to light. She had had a good deal of love as a kid but no strength around her, nobody to lean on ever: people had leaned on her. Thirty years she had longed to meet somebody who didn’t lean on her, who wouldn’t ever, who couldn’t....”

Heather finds George hiding out in his cabin in the country, refusing to allow Haber to manipulate his dreams any longer. He is simply afraid of going to sleep since he has no drugs to prevent his world-altering dreams. While George is portrayed as consummately average in appearance and behavior, his lack of ambition through his dreams is actually what Heather admires most about him. Thus, the strength Heather describes here comes from his personal integrity. George refuses to buy into the manipulative tripe Haber repeatedly employs to convince him that what they have done is worthy, justified, and proper, demonstrating a strength of character that cannot be swayed.

“‘Do you—’ He stuttered several times. ‘Do you remember anything about April, four years ago—in ninety-eight?’

‘April? No, nothing special.’

‘That’s when the world ended,’ Orr said. A muscular spasm disfigured his face, and he gulped as if for air. ‘Nobody else remembers,’ he said.”

This end-of-the-world event George discusses here is obliquely referred to in the opening section of Chapter 1. Due to a thermonuclear exchange, George lay dying in the rubble of Portland and dreamed that the world did not end. This is the original dystopian setting of the text, shifting the scene from one series of negative worldly realities to another. As George points out, no matter how often he changes the world with his dreams, the prevalence of negative and positive realities remains in balance, highlighting The Powerlessness of the Individual.

“She halted. All of a sudden she was scared; a cold qualm took her. What was she doing? This was no play, no game, nothing for a fool to meddle in. He was in her power: and his power was incalculable. What unimaginable responsibility had she undertaken?

A person who believes, as she did, that things fit: that there is a whole of which one is apart, and that in being a part one is whole; such a person has no desire whatever, at any time, to play God. Only those who have denied their being yearned to play at it.”

With George in a desperate condition from a lack of sleep, Heather convinces him to allow her to hypnotize him and induce an effective dream to give George peace and undo much of what Haber has initiated. Unlike Haber, when the moment of suggesting the dream presents itself, Heather recognizes the inestimable danger that she faces: Any suggestion she makes will change the world and, ultimately, every human life. This scene demonstrates the difference in character between Heather, who is aware of her responsibility, and Haber, who is not in touch with the magnitude of his actions and how they might affect others. This also highlights the compatibility between George and Heather, as they both question access to unlimited power.

“Haber considered himself a lone wolf. It never wanted marriage nor close friendships, he had chosen a strenuous research carried out when others sleep, he had avoided entanglements. He kept his sex life almost entirely to one night stands […] He got what he wanted and got clear again, before he or the other person could possibly develop any kind of need for the other. He prized his independence, his free will.”

This quote displays Haber as someone who is isolated and purposely avoids forming attachments with other people. Whenever he interacts with another person, such as his assistant, Miss Crouch, or George, it is because he wants that person to do his bidding. There is no intimacy, no shared wisdom, and no common goal. The author contrasts Haber with George, who bonds first with Heather, and then with the aliens, who proved to be his friends. As he unites with other like-minded individuals, his anxiety decreases, and his ability to accept what is happening increases, in contrast to Haber, who only grows more isolated. This suggests that companionship provides a reflection of the self that allows for better self-awareness and decision-making.

“A flat, toneless voice came out of the elbow joint. ‘Do not do to others what you wish others not to do to you,’ it said.

[…] ‘Great self-destruction follows upon unfounded fear. Please cease destruction of self and others. We do not have any weapons we are non-aggressive unfighting species.”

As Haber puts George to sleep with the command that he should end the invasion, the psychiatrist is interrupted by the surprising presence of an Aldebaranian alien, who looks like a giant sea turtle and speaks by lifting his left elbow. In this conversation, the alien expresses a consummate pacifist Taoist philosophy, specifically highlighting the harm being done to the “self and others.” Haber has been arbitrarily harming other people according to his own will and disregarding the desires of any other human being, including George, throughout the narrative. The root of disregarding the rights of others, the alien, expresses, is unfounded fear. For the first time, Haber is confronted with reality and the potential consequences of his violation of basic ethics.

“The quality of the will to power is, precisely, growth. Achievement is its cancellation. To be, the will to power must increase with each fulfillment, making the fulfillment only a step to a further one. The vaster the power gained, the vaster the appetite for more. As there was no visible limit to the power Haber wielded through Orr’s dreams, so there was no end to his determination to improve the world.”

This quote demonstrates the nature of balance as expressed in Taoism through the character of George. George remains centered and balanced throughout the narrative, with all its ups and downs. At the other extreme is Haber, who is never satisfied with what he has achieved, the abilities of his Augmentor to impact the human mind, or the seeming capricious nature of George’s dreams. For George, the world simply is. For Haber, the world is desperately wrong, and he strives to gain the power to set it right. He will never stop, because to Haber, the world will always need further fixing, and Haber will always want more for himself. Haber’s insatiable hunger for growing his power as an end goal reflects the systems of imperialism that Le Guin frequently critiques in her works.

“No wonder you’re depressed. You haven’t fully accepted the use of controlled violence for the good of the community; you may never be able to. This is a tough-minded world we’ve got here, George. A realistic one. But as I said, life can’t be safe. This society is tough minded and getting tougher yearly: the future will justify it.”

This quote is part of the debate between George and Haber; Haber acknowledges everything that he intends to accomplish through the use of George’s dreams. George saw a citizen’s arrest of a man with cancer who was then euthanized before him. Haber, whose Institute is emblazoned with the utilitarian slogan “the greatest good for the greatest number,” perceives the world as a place desperately in need of correction, and he believes he is the person who should transform it. His statement here expresses the totalitarian notion that the end justifies the means. George believes changing the world comes from living within it rather than standing outside, judging it and decreeing change. This quote highlights the essential difference between these two opposite characters.

“And, quiet as a thief in the night, a sense of well-being came into him, a certainty that things were alright, and that he was in the middle of things. Self is universe. He would not be allowed to be isolated, stranded. He was back where he belonged. […]

He knew that this was nothing he had accomplished by himself.”

The distress that George has experienced vanishes in the midst of a dream in which an alien appears to him, telling him that help is available, and he will not be deserted. George realizes afterward that this help comes from outside of himself and will always be present for him. George’s new state of serenity, something he had felt before his effective dreams began to trouble him, is the antithesis of the mindset and the attitude of Haber. The intensity of Haber’s life increases as he grows more and more isolated. For George, his isolation has ended, and peace of mind returns to him, along with certainty and confidence about what he must do.

“[J]ust believing you’re right and your motives are good isn’t enough. You have to be…be in touch. He isn’t in touch. No one else, no thing even, has an existence of its own for him; he sees the world only as a means to his end. It doesn’t make any difference if his end is good; means are all we’ve got. […] He is insane…He could take us all with him, out of touch, if he did manage to dream as I do.”

As George contemplates his gift and the difficulties associated with being able to do anything at will, he realizes at last the virtue of not being able to tell what will happen when he has an effective dream. He also recognizes the real danger that Haber poses to the whole world if he acquires the ability to dream effectively. George understands that Haber views himself as completely detached from the world—he is completely out of touch with the human experience. George makes the determination that this is a form of derangement which, therefore, must preclude Haber from having the power that George possesses.

“‘After this dream you will never dream effectively again. Now lie back. Get comfortable. You’re going to sleep.’ […]

As he said this last word, George’s lips moved and he said something in the faint, remote voice of the sleep talker. Heather could not hear what he said but she thought at once of last night; she had been nearly asleep, curled up next to him, when he had said something aloud: air per annum, it sounded like.”

The expression spoken by George as he fell into hypnotic sleep was actually “Er’ perrehhnne,” a phrase aliens taught him that would invoke the presence of friends to help George deal with any situation, and his effective dreams in particular. The author reveals that Haber has decided not only to acquire the gift of effective dreaming but also to take it away from George—the one who has given him the gift. George’s act of trust cements him as a person deserving of this gift, thus highlighting the danger of Haber, his polar opposite, seizing power.

“Everything dreams. […] Rocks have their dreams, and the earth changes…But when the mind becomes conscious, when the rate of evolution speeds up, then you have to be careful. Careful of the world. You must learn the way. You must learn the skills, the art, the limits. A conscious mind must be part of the whole, intentionally and carefully—as the rock is part of the whole unconsciously. Do you see? Does it mean anything to you?”

George gives this advice to Haber after he has gained the power to dream effectively. George warns Haber that dreams are incredibly potent and that trying to use them without wise assistance, as the aliens would give, could result in disaster. Haber’s quick, casual response—comparing what George says to pop cultural references—is an indication that he has no idea what George means, and what is more, he does not care. When George mentions that the dreamer must “learn the way,” it is a direct reference to Taoism, for which one synonym is “the way” or “the path.” In contrast, Haber continues to embody single-minded utilitarianism.