Book Books Bookshop

Especially if old, a book can suggest your life experience or memories; therefore experience you have learned from. They can also indicate other people’s experience and ideas that you are considering, learning from or in disagreement with. In this sense they are acquired information – or information received from other people.

A rejection or acceptance of a book could point to your attitudes toward learning or to other peoples opinions. In some dreams the books, while suggesting past experience or phases of your life, show you either still involved with them or moving on to something new.

Old books: These can also link with inherited wisdom and learning or awareness of the synthesised overview you have gained form your life.

Bookshop: Your gathered experience, even from the long past. An attempt to find a solution to something, to find answers. It could also suggest a confrontation with the many and varied opinions and standpoints people have, or a search for who you are and what the meaning of your life is.

Pages of a book: If it is one that has been torn out and kept, it is probably a reminder of something important or a reference to something. A page marked is probably similar as that of a page torn out, or an important part of a story, or even where you have got up to in your life story. A page is only representing a whole book, and so needs to be part of a whole.

Then there are different coloured  pages indicating things like ‘yellow pages’. Or look at colours to see any other meaning.

Reading a book: Sometimes this points to your searching for something, your curiosity or desire to learn, or a search for your own meaning. It might also, depending on the feelings in the dream, shows you discovering something new, a new approach or standpoint. It can also indicate the way you escape from the world and your own anxieties or fears, as in the example.

Example: I dreamt I was sitting at home in my armchair reading a book. It’s something I do quite often, so the dream seemed very real. Then I looked up from the book and I was high up in the air flying, still in the armchair. It was wonderful but I was terrified I wouldn’t be able to get down again. Why does one have strong feelings about such strange things? Sara.

Sara experiences flying because reading has taken her away from her down to earth everyday experience. It has helped her escape from the difficulties or loneliness of her life. Then, when she feels what it is like to be at a remove from such difficulties she is feels scared of re-entering her normal life.

Example: It was a being from another planet, completely human, but with a furry body and tail. It had a son with it. I slammed the door because I was afraid, but the catch did not connect and the door opened again. I threw a book in for the aliens to read. They threw out a book for me to read. It had loose pages – like my ready reckoner. I put them in order and read the story and lived some of it. As I read some of the words were in alien symbols, but I could understand them. Gradually the book changed to alien words. I/it progressed. All the lines sloped down from left to right. Now the sky was like a vaulted or squared ceiling. The two aliens looked down from one of the open squares and called. There was an answering call from two others of their kind. I knew these were the only ones on our planet. I also knew that they had to completely be themselves. I wondered why, and they told me it was because their whole race was within them. Peter M.

This dream of Peter’s that he explored shows his religious feelings, the church, directly presenting him with something alien. This new experience is gradually seen as himself – ‘I now looked within myself and also began to see all of them within, and was becoming like one of them’. Not only is Peter accepting this aspect of himself more fully, thus not seeing it as completely alien or different, but also it presents him with a new type of awareness – a feeling of connection with all of his race. In fact Peter had been a loner and very independent, feeling disconnected from society as a whole. This was a massive change, with very deeply felt fears and joy.

Useful Questions and Hints:

Is the book in my dream suggesting I am learning, escaping my life situation, or looking back on my own experience – whatever it is, what can I gather from that?

Do I get particular ideas or feelings from the book(s) – if so what are they?

If this is a very old book, what do I feel if I imagine holding and opening it?

Try Talking As or Processing Dreams