Nutrition And Dreams

ONE morning I awoke from an unusual dream which I found difficult to understand. In the dream I was sitting silently in a Quaker meeting. A man entered the room and sat down on my right. Almost immediately he seemed to be moved from within to come over to me: he put his hand just in front of my right ear and said, ‘Did you know you have an ear condition?’ I told him I had not even thought of such a thing, which was true. He then said ‘Well, there is something wrong with your ear. It is caused by two things. Firstly you have an infection arising from a tooth, and you are also eating too much.’ There the dream ended.

Being accustomed to interpret my dreams symbolically, I tried to understand it in that light, but could not come up with any valid meaning. That morning I worked in the garden, earthing up potatoes. I noticed I had a slightly dry throat, but such things usually disappeared working outdoors. But as I worked the dryness spread to my left ear that began to ache slightly in the cold wind. This disappeared and spread to my right ear, which now persistently ached.

I naturally began to see the dream in a new light, I couldn’t believe there was anything wrong with my teeth as I had only recently visited the dentist, and he had said that my teeth were okay. However, it was only after many weeks that the earache eventually disappeared. During this time I felt lethargic and bloated after meals, and I experimented with smaller more frequent meals, which left me feeling cleaner and happier inside.

Know your body from the inside

I made an appointment with another dentist who found several cavities needing attention. One in particular just under the right ear, was the source of the problem, and as soon as it was dealt with, the earache disappeared.

Such dreams are quite common in those who watch the events of their dream life, and they can be explained scientifically. It has been discovered that the subtle sensations in the body, which are unnoticed consciously, are often dramatised in dreams. In this way, serious or minor illnesses are frequently diagnosed from dreams long before they make their appearance in evident symptoms. But quite apart from this, dreams often display a remarkable knowledge of what is needed by the body in particular circumstances. Also, such dreams are usually quite logical, as mine was.

In talking about such dreams in my book ‘Do You Dream?’, I mentioned the case of a pregnant woman. She was feeling very much under the weather and had a dream in which a voice told her she should take iron and calcium tablets. She followed the suggestion, taking kelp and iron, and soon regained her health. This same woman seems to have such dreams fairly frequently. At a time when her husband was ill through overwork, she dreamt that he should take vitamin A and more butter. Remembering the truth of her ‘pregnancy’ dream, he did this, and it was the beginning of his gradual recovery. It is worth stating that neither he nor his wife had previously given much attention to vitamin therapy.

Whatever the source of information is for our dreams, it certainly believes in using vitamins, minerals, and particular diets. Edgar Cayce, who was able to bring up information at will from a sleep state, nearly always gave nutritional and diet therapy to those who consulted him for their illness. (See: The Story of Edgar Cayce.) Again in a sleep state, he once gained the information that ‘Vitamins are the life force or creative energy of God from which the glands take those necessary influences to supply the energies which enable the various organs of the body to reproduce themselves’.

Such information is quite astonishing in that Cayce never studied medicine or dietetics. In fact his schooling finished when he was still a boy. Yet, again in sleep, he received the information that the B vitamins, besides aiding the function of the nerves, supply ‘to the chyle that ability for it to control the influence of fats, which is necessary to carry on the reproducing of oils that prevent the tenseness in the joints, or that prevent the joints from becoming atrophied or dry, or to creak.’

We have to remember that Cayce died in 1945, so most of such information was given in the 30’s. Yet he said of vitamin C that it supplies ‘the necessary influences to the flexes of every nature throughout the body, whether of a muscular or tendon nature, or a heart reaction, or a kidney contraction, the batting of the eye or the supplying of the saliva and the muscular forces in the face.’ A deficiency caused ‘bad eliminations from the incoordination of the excretory functioning of the alimentary canal, as well as the heart, liver and lungs, through the expelling of these forces that are a structural portion of the body.’

But he did say that it was best not to take supplementary vitamins over too long a period of time. This was because the body activities that produce these vitamins atrophy if oversupplied. Also, if there are too many vitamins, they become as drosses in the system. So balance is the key note of his suggestions.

Warnings from dreams

Something about one’s own dreams however, is that they are such a personal source of guidance. They take one’s own special situation into account. For instance I once experimented with a diet including several high protein supplements such as milk powder, lecithin powder, wheat germ and brewers yeast. I had felt easily tired before, but felt bursting with energy on this diet. But there was also a woolly mindedness and an oedema of the tongue. A dream at that time told me that too much protein over-stimulates the production of muscle tissue, and causes bloating of the system, thus the swollen tongue. Experimenting further I took only brewers yeast and wheat germ, and those in smaller quantities – two dessertspoons each. This dosage provided a satisfactory balance.

Other such personal advice is shown in a certain woman’s dream. She saw a cup of coffee decorated with a skull and crossbones. On being questioned she admitted to drinking 15 to 20 cups per day. The dream was a warning and she cut down to six cups per day.

Another woman on a crash reducing diet dreamt she had cut her stomach (abdomen) open, and was afraid of infection getting in. That is, she had literally opened herself up to infection because of the diet.

A similar diet dream occurred to a man. In the dream he was climbing a staircase, but on every step were salads and dairy produce. This is implying that every step of his self improvement or climb in life, depended on the right type of food.

A woman dreamt of a cow moving its bowels. She could not move out of the way in time, and the second cowpat hit her on the right shoulder. The dream had no significance until two days (2 cow pats) later when she had to stay in bed with a chest infection and bursitis of the right shoulder. The dream indicated that faecal matter needed to be cleansed from the system.

Dreams have been called ‘The Royal Road to the Unconscious’ – ‘A Meaningless Mess’ ‘The Language of the Soul,’ ‘Life’s Messages’ – or even ‘Irrational Association.’ But our dreams are not always a meaningless mess, or even messages from the gods. Perhaps they are sometimes simply plain common sense and the wisdom of the body speaking to us. See Functions of dreams