Hidden in the domain of unknown experiences, in the infinite chain of pains and pleasures of human experience, is a humble contributor, a silent competitor, yet one of infinite power: He's the Lord of Dreams. The ancients have called him Morpheus, the god of dreams. His main characteristic is being able to take any shape or form and mannerisms of any person.
He is a master craftsman in creating the illusions found in dreams. He lives while one sleeps, for one-third of our lives, but accumulates strength while one is awake. All awake impressions are recorded and stored in his lab, the subconscious. Nothing alive can escape his presence.
He can take you on trips to the remotest places in the universe. He can make you travel at the speed of light or faster. He can show you the the woman of your dreams. But he can also frighten you to death.
His biggest hobby is the crafting of dreams. Careful, meticulous, and detailed dreams. Sometimes dreams that make sense, other times dreams that are nonsense. Sometimes a little travel in places which were visited during a different lifetime, full of feelings of deja-vu, other times places with different stars and Earths, or places where nobody but himself has any idea where they belong or whence they came from.
He is a Master Mind at what he does. He can exhaust your tiredness from a full day's work using only ten minutes of dreaming imagery or he can turn you completely insane even after twelve hours of full sleep, showing you disagreeable images and nightmares, which can gnaw on your soul.
He is commanded by the Lord of Karma, and as such he is the master of insanity. If the Lord of Karma commands him to cause you pain, the imagery and vividness of the images presented can be so permeating that can easily turn your mind into a schizophrenic inferno, with horrible nightmares from which you cannot escape even if you manage to wake up and fall asleep again.
If the Lord of Karma commands him to give you rest, sleep becomes the jewel of human experiences. The most pleasurable human endeavor. When this is the case, he takes your mind in his arms and lulls it into sweet oblivion, the same way a loving mother lulls her baby into sleep. Troubles are forgotten, any living pain is gone and the ultimate pleasure of restful nothingness engulfs your most inner recesses.
He is the master of forgetfulness. He can make you forget or he can make you remember, depending on the commands the Lord of Karma gives him. When he makes you forget, your mind is in heaven, for on Earth the mind is full of unnecessary burdens and troubles. Money trouble, love trouble, death of loved ones, disappointments, and any such predicaments are dissolved into nothingness.
When he makes you remember, you will be in for pain. There is a reason for everything, so if the Lord of Karma decides that you should remember your past deeds, the Lord of Dreams will only oblige with great pleasure. Reliving your past is an experience that requires strength and stamina. Most of our past is sprinkled with serious mistakes and seeing those mistakes again, is not for the meek.
Remembering your abusive self is painful. Remembering those things you said for which you later regretted is painful. What's worse, seeing a parallel manufactured future from the one you have now which is the result of your past misdeeds, is even more painful.
He can cause your mind to see the woman of your dreams. Your beloved one. But waking up from this dream if the woman of your dreams is not real, can cause extreme pain. He can cause sexual illusions which are stronger than the best sex you've ever had while awake.
He can mix reality with illusion in your dreams: He can make you think you are awake while you are asleep. He can play games of infinite complexity and have you wake up from one dream only for you to be found asleep in another. A nested sequence of dreams. Escaping such a sequence of dreams is often difficult: You have to explicitly hear the alarm clock ring. But the alarm clock can itself be in a dream.
Occasionally the Lord of Dreams allows you to travel outside the confines of the solar system. He presents you with a stellar target and you willfully zoom towards the new star at speeds faster than the speed of light. You see all the other stars pass you by. Is it real? I don't know, but it sure is nice to know that you can return home after such a trip.
You can try to petition the Lord of Dreams to be kind to you, but your petitions have to go through the Lord of Karma, who's the one who decides if you deserve a good night's rest. If the Lord of Karma finds that your daily deeds are deserving some good rest, the Lord of Dreams bows to the Lord of Karma and sits down at his lab, and starts manufacturing the best sleep rest you've ever had.
When this is the case, you can feel the rest when you wake up. Your whole chest feels as if it has gotten a rejuvenating shot. But when the Lord of Karma decides that your daily deeds were not worthy, the Lord of Dreams bows to the Lord of Karma and with excess happiness starts manufacturing your nightmares.
The Lord of Dreams can play games with you, too! He can make himself appear to you in your dreams and he can make it appear as if you are having a meaningful conversation with him. As he can take the shape of any human, his face does not have any specific shape, so you can never recognize him directly, but you'll know who he is from the feeling.
His craft in manufacturing dreams is ancient and the art of dream interpretation has existed as long as mankind. His creations have always been used by the ancients and by various tribes as devices for prophecy. Many prominent religious figures used dreams as a way to communicate various metaphysical ideas into the world.
You can literally go insane if the Lord of Karma instructs the Lord of Dreams to torture you for many nights in a row with nightmares. Not being able to rest for, say, three consecutive days, can turn you into a ravaging, angry, and delusional schizophrenic, who will delight in torturing others.
The pain from not being able to rest cannot be described with words. It's akin to the entire universe collapsing onto your mind. It is only natural for the mind to go insane when this is the case.
But the ultimate horror the Lord of Karma can infuse into you through the Lord of Dreams is to not be able to differentiate between reality and dreams. This is absolute insanity. You can try taking anti-psychotics, various pills, mental retarders of various sorts or seek professional counseling and treatment. It won't do you any good. The Lord of Dreams can force your mind to become completely delusional.
Yet even the worst insane nightmares are not the ultimate weapon in Morpheus' arsenal. If the Lord of Karma is displeased with your daily deeds, he can command the Lord of Dreams to reverse the purpose of sleep and give you tiredness instead of rest for your sleeping hours. When this happens, even though you'd had slept for ten hours, you'd feel like you'd stayed awake for those ten hours besides to all the previous awake hours. This little trick is enough to send you to the mental hospital for a month, where the doctors will be more than happy to load you with tons of Stelazine, Prozac, and Haldol, transforming you into a zombie, so you can sleep.
The Lord of Dreams under the command of the Lord of Karma, holds the keys to sanity. What have you gained if you have everything, yet cannot get a decent night's sleep? Nothing. What have you gained if you have everything yet are insane from restlessness? Nothing.
Always remember: The Lord of Dreams is the brother of Death and both are subordinate to Hades.