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Dreams and Your Ancient Past

Through the Eye of Dreams

There has been a conjuring trick performed in regard to our view of who we are. It is almost as if we have stepped into a photo booth, and instead of a realistic image of ourselves being produced we are given one with most of our features missing. The strange thing is we usually accept this distorted image of ourselves as real, though most of us feel odd about it, and some of us actually get around to searching for a different image.

What I mean is that we have the notion from the current popular mythology of reality that we are produced by the combination of our parent’s sperm and ovum. The genetic combination is, we believe, the print of who we are.

I know this is a massive simplification, and I am not saying it as a criticism, simply a statement of popular belief. Nevertheless it is a belief that shapes the concepts people have of themselves. But the sperm and ovum, the genes, do not provide language, they do not give us culture, books, music or religion, despite any connections there might be. Children raised by animals do not develop any of these culturally given enhancements. They are not innate. See Animal Children.

The myths of our times also suggest that our personality is either God given; or it is formed out of the whims and neurosis of our parents and events during our infancy; or perhaps it is just made that way like a piece of equipment stamped out in a factory or by the position of the stars at our birth, and there’s not much one can do about it. This modern myth goes on to suggest that the only eternal life any of us can hope for is that arising through procreation. It is only our genes, we are assured, that will live on if we successfully procreate and our children survive and prosper. Because of this, it is further explained, our sexual urge drives us all forward into the convoluted avenues of sexual relationships. And these are factors influencing how the image we have of ourselves comes out strangely distorted.

I sometimes think there is an odd quirk in human nature that makes us want only one answer to any riddle in life. It is as if there can only ever be one right thing, one truth about anything, and everything else is thereby false. This is a, ‘if religion is correct, then science is wrong’ type of reasoning, as if they are both looking at the same piece of the cosmos from the same direction. It is like the Indian story of the blind men describing the elephant. One has his hands on a leg, another on the trunk, and so on. None of them are able to see the whole animal and therefore have a distorted impression of it.

Therefore one must beware of the urge to avoid insecurity by hanging on to the tail of the elephant and feeling one is safe because at least we know what the beast is. It is in fact dubious whether we can ever know ‘the beast’, though it might be possible to have an intuition or sense of it. The universe and the mystery of life and consciousness are so vast that none of us can possibly hold all the factors involved in mind at any one time. Therefore we cannot possibly arrive at any inclusive understanding of the big questions – why am I here? What is life about? How did life come about?

Coming back to the distorted image we can arrive at of ourselves, if we take time to consider our origins, it can bring us a bit more toward a feeling of wholeness and sense of reality. For instance it is obvious and wonderful how the bodies of our parents, through the gift of their own genetic material, have shaped our own body and its inclinations. This much is now demonstrable, but where I want to go from here is to look at common human experience in an uncommon way, through the eye of a dream.

The Voice of My Dead Forebears

The dream is that of a man in his mid forties.

“I am walking along a cobbled road going slightly down–hill. I know as I dream that I am in Italy. I do not feel a stranger in this land, and am learning the language.” Ron.

Ron describes his exploration and insights into the dream by saying:

This was a very short dream and I didn’t think it had any real significance, but I was regularly exploring my dreams, and it interested me because I couldn’t understand what it referred to in showing me learning the language. I had never learned Italian and was not doing so.

When I relaxed and allowed the free flow of my associations and feelings, the first part of the dream was easy. My father was born in England of two Italian parents. So being in Italy, a country I had never visited myself, I could immediately feel and understand as referring to my family on my father’s side and the influences that has left in the way I think and live.

But I felt myself falling deeper into the dream. It was something I had learned to do. I not only kept the question ticking over quietly of what does the dream indicate, but at the same time I relaxed control of my thoughts, my body and emotions. This is like being half asleep in a state where the body can twitch spontaneously, and perhaps I can even hear myself making slight vocal sounds, and yet I am wide–awake watching what arises. Because of this state a flow of memories began to arise about my father, and I realised something I had only been partially aware of before.

My father had taken over the family shop when his father had died. The shop was in London, just over a mile away from the old Covent Garden fruit and vegetable market. Most days my father walked, pushing a barrow, and in later years drove to the market to buy produce for the shop. I often went with him, helping carry and load, and perhaps push the barrow. In my youth I wasn’t aware of it, but now in my flowing memories I realised that my father was very distant or cautious in his dealings with the market salesmen and porters. A distinct and overall realisation arose out of the many memories and impressions; it was that my father was expressing a particular type of caution in all his dealings with other people. I saw this as keeping who he was secret – keeping his head down.

As I saw this in my father it hit me with great power that this attitude had passed to me, and although I expressed it in a different way, I had inherited it with equal strength. Why? And, how?

The perception that was taking place was not like my normal thinking. It comprehensively gathered memories and put them together in a way that made patterns and themes stand out. So as the process of insight was taking place I saw just how the urge to keep my head down, not stand out in the crowd, not get involved with people, had influenced my actions. For a start I had never voted in my life. This was because I could never identify with groups pushing for power. I had avoided everyday social activity, although relationships with individuals were not threatening.

Now I started seeing how this attitude had passed to me so strongly. My thought, as I witnessed the flow of memories, was that perhaps such information was genetic, because my father had never talked to me much at all. He had certainly never urged me to keep out of the limelight – to keep my head down, and until now I hadn’t been aware that he had been doing it himself, so it wasn’t simply conscious emulation. I can only say that I ‘saw’ how it had happened. What I mean is that through the still flowing memory and feelings it was as if I could actually look into the heart of things and see how they worked. The insight I achieved was that we as humans, like other mammals, in our earliest years particularly, still learn like most mammals do, and that is not verbal at all. A massive amount of information is absorbed from our parents without any effort or awareness.

What Ron realised is that just as a fox cub ‘learns’ how to hunt from its parents, so we absorb the deeply etched survival strategies of our parents simply by being around them. If genes come into it anywhere, they perhaps create the reflex response that instinctively draws in the survival tactics that perhaps even our parents themselves have never really been aware they live by. In doing this the higher animals learn what cannot be passed on as instinct, what is not ‘hard wired’ into them. This holds in it a tremendous advantage because ‘hard wiring’ takes a long time. Through this faster method we learn what to be afraid of, what to eat, how to hunt, because the lessons learned by pain through many generations are exhibited in our parents behaviour in dealing with events. The experiments with apes in Japan, where Imo the macaque ape learned the ability to wash sweet potatoes to remove sand grains, show how this was passed on from this one female to the whole group, and then to subsequent young macaques, and illustrates how survival information is passed on non verbally for generations. An important aspect of this is that whatever of such information is held in the present generation, it is an accumulation of skills and responses learned over many generations, and is the fundamental survival strategies of that particular family or group line. Ron goes on to say:

The degree of this was staggering to me. It led me to wonder just where my father had got the information from, and although this was obvious from my own perception of where I had received the messages from, the resulting experience profoundly moved and impressed me. It taught me things about myself I don’t think I could have learned in any other way. A floodgate of impressions rushed into my awareness at such a pace I can only record the main ones.

Suddenly my mind let the power of the messages my father had carried and passed to me speak, as if they were alive. I experienced what appeared to be a direct connection with my far ancestors. This may sound strange, but my father had, as it were, handed me a recording. He and I had been impressed with the cover and it had led us to live in a particular way. But now I had put the recording on the player and the ancient originators expressed their own message.

Obviously this is only an analogy to convey the experience, but in some way the message played out in me from centuries back. From it I learned that my forebears had lived in Italy during a period of great religious and political tension. The pressures to conform had been enormous. Not only were my ancestors told to believe in a particular sort of God, but also to accept leadership from people they had no respect for. If they did not live this belief and submit to it they were killed or rejected by the community they had been born into. In their own words I heard them saying to me something like ‘The worst was they did not kill us, but they cut our vine at the roots. They burnt our land and they killed our children. If you want your sons to live, teach them not to hold their head up, but to keep their eyes on the ground.’

And out of that trauma the message had been passed to me many generations later. It was survival. I was still living it, but perhaps it was time to reappraise.

I Am an Ancient Thing

Ron’s description helps us look at what is a common experience, and in a different way, an established observation in biology. It is common knowledge that animals learn through example. It is common knowledge that traits pass on through generations. What is added here is the powerful way such behaviour can pass on in humans. It shows how we communicate behaviour to our children without any conscious intention. Looking through the eye of dreams we see here a psychological or psychic [ii] realm that extends beyond the mere transmission of behaviour. It includes or leads to meaning, to understanding ones roots. This may seem mysterious or unfeasible if one has not actually experienced the way the dream process puts apparently abstract experience into imagery leading to insight. [iii] If one has witnessed this process at work, what Ron speaks of does not seem remarkable.

Looking through the eye of Ron’s dream there is a suggestion that aspects of Ron’s personality did not begin with his birth. Parts of his personality preceded his birth, being carried and passed on by his father. This module or facet of Ron’s character had been formed hundreds of years previously. It had been part of the lives of his forebears, and had been carried forward into his life. It did not pass on to Ron through any genetic material. It entered him through absorption of the behaviour of his parent. So it is saying that just as the genes we receive are ancient and passed to us, this survival information is also ancient and passed on. It influences who we are as profoundly as any genes.

Of course, Ron is only seeing his connection with his father. There would also be packages of behaviour and information handed to him by his mother. [iv] So not only can one have a ‘gene pool’ from which our being is formed, there is also a ‘behavioural pool’ acting as a similar resource. This does not so much shape the body, but certainly gives form to the character and responses. In fact unlike the genetic passage where a set of genes in the mother is united with a set from the father, the behavioural pool may have several ‘sets’ or packages which can be triggered by different environmental circumstances. My experience suggests that the behavioural packages from the mother and father certainly do not splice as do the genes.

The behaviour Ron observed in himself, in his father and grandfather, although according to Ron’s insight it arose at a particular period in history, it obviously rested upon traits already existing in the family from an even more ancient past. So the trauma of persecution may have modified existing traits rather than set in place entirely new ones.

Because of pre–existing traits, another family might have responded quite differently to being subjugated. They might have pushed for dominance rather than anonymity. They may have aggressively opposed, sought opportunity to join the ranks of power, or actively supported as a subordinate.

This is supposition based on insufficient evidence; but if the basic idea of the passage of behaviour is correct, it shows human nature as having several dimensions to what forms who they know themselves to be. These are almost like different streams from the past meeting in the person, and in some way passing on into the future, perhaps separated again. For instance we have the stream arising from the body and its genetic material; we have the stream arising from cultural language with all its massive inbuilt data; we have the behavioural pool that we inherit, again with massive innate information. When we begin to look at what it is to be human from this perspective we see we are multi dimensional creatures, existing in the flow of huge streams of influence. And these streams themselves mingle in different ways creating a variety of experiences and further dimensions.

Coming back to Ron though, there is certainly a transitory and short lived aspect to him, in that his unique body and many of his personality traits will only exist during his physical life. But facets of Ron have existed for millions of years – in the genetic stream for instance. And even in his highly ephemeral personality itself, there are parts that have had a long life before Ron woke to his personal existence. For instance the language he was brought into existence by and the behavioural influences he absorbed.

This makes nonsense of the myth that we only have eternal life through procreation. It also suggests that if Ron identifies with the aspects of himself that are short lived, such as the transitory aspects of his body, his less permanent personality traits, his changing likes and dislikes, then he faces death. All that he thinks of as himself will perish. In this sense he cannot survive bodily death.

In fact it seems as if Western society faces the issue of death in a much more catastrophic way than other cultures. The reason for this is that many older cultures see the personality as transitory anyway, and identify more fully with the family ancestors and the longer lasting aspects of life.

It might be argued that as the behavioural traits passed on to Ron preceded him, he cannot really identify with them as himself, so cannot see them as an aspect of himself that has a long life. The problem here is that hardly anything in the personality is unique except perhaps the exact mixture of traits and responses, memories and dreams that make up that particular person. Everything is taken from somewhere else, or is a mixture or development of what already existed. We all identify with the contents of our mind, our language and our traits, yet these are not new with our own personal awakening as a person. So we cannot separate Ron from what he has inherited. It is still him. If it has a long life, then we must say aspects of Ron have a long life.

Once we grasp this idea of the passage of behavioural traits from generation to generation, I believe it can be observed fairly easily in everyday life. Much of folk beliefs suggest it without filling in the details. Such sayings as ‘like father like son’ – ‘like mother like daughter’ have the belief implicit in them. The generally held view that each nation has a different cultural identity also suggests it. In fact we often use the word culture to describe the behavioural traits peculiar to a particular group of people, in reference to their observable behaviour traits which are passed on from generation to generation throughout the group or nation. We are therefore talking about a behavioural pool with particular characteristics.

I have frequently observed family groups out shopping and seen the intense mimicry of a child for its father or mother, even to certain positions of the hands, or posture of the body. Such passage of very particular behavioural traits is especially noticeable in the learning of language. The unique sounds of certain words, even within one language such as English, are mimicked in an extraordinary way by children, creating a local dialect in which sounds are made that are often quite difficult for people outside of the area to make.

It is innate in us to soak in and mimic the behaviour of those close to us. That is obvious. All I am adding to that is the suggestion that deeply seated personality traits, and the shape of our psyche, are also radically influenced in the same way. Not only do we soak in actual behaviour, but we are capable of transforming the messages coded in behaviour into personal psychological experience such as described by Ron.

I Speak Therefore I Am

That our often closely guarded personality is made up of pieces of behaviour that existed long before we did, may be a strange idea to many people. The way we present our film stars and pop idols as special, or particularly talented; the way we often think of ourselves, is as hermetically sealed units that have been influenced from outside by environment and people, but on the whole we are unique. Sometimes people even adopt a superior attitude, as if to say ‘I am vastly different to the rest of humanity’. This makes it difficult for us to actually observe our origins.

If we think of an acorn, it is easy enough to believe that if we planted it, a tree would grow from it that would be very much the same as the trees from which its genetic material arose. In its particular growth however, factors of soil, weather and events would shape it to its own uniqueness. With human beings we think similarly, except we commonly leave out factors of great importance, factors which contribute to our personal existence in such a major way that to forget them is to be like the blind men with the elephant once more. For example a tree doesn’t learn speech, or the customs of its cultural group.

Particularly in past centuries, when there was a much closer relationship between humans and wild animals, it was noticed that if a baby was lost and raised by a creature of the wild, such as a she–wolf or bear, the child never became properly human. Being human is not innate. Something rubs off from functioning mature humans onto their babies to make them into human beings. The major differences are that the baby raised by an animal lacks self awareness; it cannot speak any language other than that of the animal it was raised by, and it lacks a sense of time; and in many cases there is a deep sense of connection with animals and the natural environment. Its reactions to surroundings are those of the animal it was raised by. Thus the behaviour traits it learned were not those of the human animal, but of the mammal that mothered it.

A headline in the Daily Star on April 17 1991, at the time the film Dances With Wolves was popular reads: “TRAGIC BOY’S DANCE IN WOLF’S LAIR.” It goes on to say:

A tragic orphan brought up by a pack of wild wolves will never be able to live like a normal man, say doctors. The boy who REALLY danced with the wolves was aged about seven when he was found 29 years ago in the wastes of Southern Russia by a team of oil explorers. He howled like a wolf and savagely bit one of the oil men who christened him Djuma – the Wolf Boy.

Professor Rufat Kazirbayev said doctors had battled to re–educate him to act like a normal human being – but failed. They are now giving up the fight.

“His mind is with the wolves. He will howl at the moon for the rest of his life,” he said.

Djuma, now about 36, is still in hospital. He still crawls on all fours, eats raw meat and bites when frightened. He can speak only disjointed phrases – “Mother dead. Father dead. Brother dead. Sister dead. Mother nice. Father bad.”

Dr. Anna Ticheenskaya said: “presumably his family were killed in a purge. He has shown us in sign language how his mother saved him by throwing herself over his body.”

Djuma has learned to brush his hair, clean his teeth and use the toilet “Like a trained animal.” But when taken to the zoo he howls as if he was urging the animals to take him to freedom. Sadly that will never happen. Djuma will probably spend the rest of his life in the clinic where, doctors say, he spends his days like a dog – half asleep and dreaming.

The autobiography of Helen Keller helps in understanding what may be the difference between an animal, or an animal man like Djuma and a human being with self awareness. Helen, made blind and deaf through illness prior to learning to speak, described how she lived in a dark unconscious world lacking any sense of self until the age of seven when she was taught the deaf and dumb language. At first her teacher’s fingers touching hers were simply a tactile but meaningless experience. Then, perhaps because she had learned one word prior to her illness, meaning flooded her darkness. She tells us that “Nothingness was blotted out.” Through language she became a person and developed a sense of self, whereas before there had been – nothing.

This ‘nothingness’ described by Helen Keller is difficult for most of us to imagine, having all our life been exposed to other human beings through behaviour and speech. Helen describes it as having no awareness of personal pain or events. She says that perhaps things happened to her, perhaps they were painful, but as she had no personal self to appreciate this, they were merely passing tactile sensations. She was not personally disturbed by them because she had no ‘person’ to be disturbed.

The learning of language was the pivot around which Helen’s self awareness evolved, with its attendant ability to think, to have a sense of ‘I’ or ‘me’ and all the personal relationships with others and the world arising from that. Without the learning of a complex language which holds in it the concept of ‘selfhood’ there is apparently no possibility of self awareness. Without the passage of the ‘behavioural pool’ from a human being to a human infant, there is no possibility of a self aware human maturing from the baby.

The information gathered from the many cases of ‘animal children’ suggests that not only do the behavioural traits of the fostering animal pass to the child, but also the state of soul can be thought of as a form of behavioural response which is also learned. In other words, self awareness, which is so taken for granted in our own life, is passed to us as a learned response by the humans who are our role models and mentors. Selfhood is not genetically given, it is a behavioural response.

The story of Imo the macaque mentioned earlier helps us imagine a possible first scene for the emergence of self awareness in the human species.

There must have been a gradual development of the complexity of language bringing the pre–human to the point where self awareness was ready to emerge, but hadn’t quite been realised. Then, perhaps an event or a particular situation in the life of the pre–human triggered the new awareness. Suddenly the pre–human was self aware and stepped into human experience.

This must have been a momentous experience for the individual or individuals it occurred to. If compared with the descriptions of people in our present times who achieve a new state of awareness such as Maurice Bucke describes in his book Cosmic Consciousness, it was probably a ‘religious’ experience – something appearing to have been visited upon the individual from a power exterior to them. In such cases the experience, the new state of awareness, usually only lasts a short time, but may become more prolonged as the individual is further exposed to it. One might even speculate that just as animals will repeat an action that provides food or pleasure, so the experience of self awareness in early pre–humans may have led to ritual performance of actions, or the re–creation of circumstances, that were part of the first experience. These I imagine as the roots of religious ritual. I believe such achievement of a new type of awareness by certain individuals is also behind traditions such as yoga and Sufism. This can be observed in particular in Subud in which one individual experienced what he was certain was a new experience and passed it on to others through contact.  In his book The Origin of Consciousness in the Bicameral Mind, Julian Jaynes gives a detailed historical perspective of these beginnings in the not so distant past.

The following dream of Joan C. illustrates and further describes the collective life of early humans, and the experience of developing from it to self awareness. Joan’s work on the dream provides us with another example of the information possible to gain through the eye of dreams.

In my dream I was in the garden of a large house. To the right of the house, my right that is, I saw the garden had been changed. I realised that I knew the garden from childhood, and there used to be a large pool by the house in which we all bathed when young. The ground sloped up from the house and was rough, but part of it had been dug over. The care and skill with which this had been done deeply impressed me.

There were no direct associations I could make with the house or the pond, so I started allowing spontaneous material to enter into the dream, allowing my mind to roam freely and show me out of what images and feelings the dream had been fashioned.

I started with the pond, and had the most unexpected set of fantasies and feelings bubble up from within. The garden when we were children referred to a condition of mind, which I now experienced, in which a group shared a common awareness, and felt at one with their environment. In other words there was no separate identity. No one in the group knew themselves as an individual. I knew as I experienced this that it was about the early condition of human beings, and was represented in the Bible as the Garden of Eden. It was about the history of our development as human beings. It showed me that in the early stages of evolution all human beings lived in a state of awareness in which they had no sense of separation from nature itself. They had no sense of individual existence either, but lived in a sort of paradise where there was no idea of birth or death or right or wrong. They felt at one with each other in their small groups and with the forces of nature.

When I experienced this I understood at last what the story of Genesis meant. It was about stages of psychological development, not physical or mythical history. Humans had come out of the pool though, out of the collective awareness, and at that point I experienced a mass of impressions and images I still cannot completely understand. The images suggested that at first, maybe one or two humans climbed out of that pool, and they left a mark. They climbed out and put one stone on top of another. The images developed further into suggesting that many ancient monuments were an expression of this enormous sense of the newly found identity – of personal existence.

I understood this to mean that one or two humans had achieved personal identity. In that state they realised something about themselves – they could say ‘I am’. They could ask ‘Who am I?’ That had never been possible before.

I need to say what arose in me were not those words or memory or vision of definite events, but a sense of touching or experiencing an overall memory, a vast overall process. So I am trying to put into words what I sensed. It was such a wonderful thing, so full of experience, to see this that I want to try to describe it. At the same time, it was an immense process and difficult to capture.

What I felt was that the pool was a collective consciousness such as Jung speaks of, and that it still exists now in our unconscious. At the early stages of human development though, it was the everyday experience, but the individuals who attained self awareness began to build a new type of life. They left stone monuments, carvings, paintings in caves, stone circles, pyramids; each person, each group realising deep down that this new level of awareness was a thing to be given and built. The Sphinx is an image of this half way state of human and animal.

This is where words are difficult, but the dug ground in the dream depicts it. If the son of a farmer takes over the farm, his work and achievement are built upon what his father did with the land. The father’s work is built upon by the son, and is a continuation, of what his father did. Even if one was to take a piece of land which had never been farmed before, one would farm it with tools, experience and attitudes developed gradually through thousands of years of human effort. I saw that I, although I am not usually aware of it, am formed out of the ideas, words, attitudes, pleasure and pain left to me as a heritage by millions of people. If I had not been raised by modern humans I would, in fact, not have developed an identity. My identity is a gift to me from the great river of human beings who left a mark, one stone on top of another, a concept enshrined in art, a struggle or love immortalised in stone, a realisation and transcendence depicted in a religious ritual or in a new word.

The garden, the dug plot was myself, my personality. But my personality, the attitudes and reactions of its very foundations and structure, the words with which my mind realises its existence, are the living remains of countless other lives and their endeavour, their love, their ignoble failure, their genius and their prayers. I AM my ancestors. That I have also dug that plot by my work on my dreams, by trying to transform the unwieldy loam of myself into finer stuff, gives me a place in the river of life, in the eternal process of continuity.

Most important of all, perhaps, in such simple acts as writing out this dream, I leave a mark. I etch upon the world the sign of my own realisation, the changed lines of transformation. For self consciousness is a sort of collective consciousness which forever depends upon giving, and upon physical records of living beings to enshrine its existence. Without living beings who carry the words and responses gradually developed by myriad ancestors; without books, paintings, music, science and architecture, we have no existence as people. In one generation we could be swallowed up by that pool, that sea of self–forgetting symbolised by the waters that swallowed Noah’s contemporaries. Even now, without the love of giving, that sea can swallow us. That was my dream.

Joan’s description further illustrates how our mind, approached in the right way, can pour out realisations and insights that are deeply educational. It is a form of outpouring and mental function that few of us are ever taught to look to or use in our schooling. But it IS a common experience in the sense of it being described in all the cultures throughout history. It IS accessible.

Joan and Ron’s descriptions taken together also say that there is a function in the human mind that takes external information, such as language, behaviour and architecture, and treats it like a code. Perhaps if the example of the printed word is used this makes it easier to understand. A book might be a couple of hundred years old. A baby who grows and is taught the language of the book can eventually read it. As it is being read, what was a physical object unfolds in the child huge amounts of information and imagery. Perhaps it moves the child emotionally also. It may even explain aspects of their own existence they knew nothing about before.

That is not an exact analogy, but Ron and Joan suggest that the external objects of culture we see around us and take for granted, actually produce in us the release of a massive amount of information and deeply felt experience. Most often however, we fail to appreciate this as it is covered, or obscured by the dominant sensory impressions and taught responses, as already described.

When it is appreciated and released, the result is probably due to a complex interaction between genetically produced inclinations, the environment, and culturally provided education, plus an up–welling of unconscious material from the ocean of information we all live within. This fuller understanding of our cultural environment is probably necessary for optimum survival, but is not necessary to become a conscious individual stumbling along through life.

The View So Far

Looking through the eye of dreams and human experience, such as Ron and Joan’s dream–work and the account of Helen Keller, a situation is described stating that our personal identity rests on –

• The passage of behavioural traits from adults to the new born.
• The learning of language.
• The interaction between people affirming personal identity.
• A collective consciousness. This is created physically by the written and spoken word, but also by all other works of humanity such as music, art, architecture, and of course social structure. Its fundamental base is living human beings who have learned language and carry ancestral behavioural traits. In a sense, the enormity of who we are is external to us and our body and brain are decoding instruments.
• The collective consciousness is a code that can come to life in the individual. Only the cultural environment plus the personal response to it make a whole.
• A collective unconscious is the source of our personal existence.

See House of the Ancestors.

Dream Within a Dream

Such a dream presents us with emotions or information we may be avoiding while awake. Usually a dream within a dream is a ploy one uses to explain away the impact of the feelings met – which is all the more reason to understand the dream.

The following example makes this very clear.

In the dream-within-a-dream, I had just gone to bed with my husband, in a house in which lots of other people lived as well. But I wasn’t asleep yet. In the darkness, I saw a woman trying to escape from the house. Even though she wasn’t an intruder trying to get in, I sat up in bed and just screamed at the top of my lungs. I felt furious. I think really I felt jealous that she was trying to get out. I wanted to alert everyone she was attempting to escape. (In real life, I’m a very quiet person who seldom gets angry or jealous.)

Then I ‘woke up’ from that dream within a dream and into the next dream, which was a similar scene. I was again in bed with my husband, but I had now woken up from this dream – and of course was still dreaming – and was worried that I had actually screamed in my sleep and woken people up. But my husband was still soundly asleep, and so I realized with relief (but also a little disappointment) that it had all just been a dream and I hadn’t disturbed anyone.

Then I woke up from that dream, and was puzzled. Having read the entry in Dream Dictionary, I was intrigued to see that it said, “Usually a dream within a dream is a ploy one uses to explain away the impact of the feelings met–which is all the more reason to understand the dream.”

I realized it was true that I had pushed certain feelings very far away. At a very deep level, I wanted escape but was furious at myself for wanting escape. Also, at a deep level, I was screaming out for attention, wanting help with my own internal conflict, but felt that no one was noticing. My ‘waking up’ within the dream and being relieved that I had not actually screamed and disturbed anyone shows how at the next level of consciousness I was still trying very hard to keep all of this suppressed. Yet I was also, at this level, a little disappointed at how good I was at keeping my true feelings hidden. Suzanne.

All that we see or seem

Is but a dream within a dream.

Edgar Allan Poe

Dream Time

As an experiment while staying with my son at Cambridge he asked me questions to be responded to by spontaneous voice. To me, the responses were so marked I want to record at least one of them.

Spontaneous voice is a process I came across as I was experimenting with allowing the dream process while awake. While dreaming we spontaneously move, speak, eat, have sex, and all these arise while our conscious will is ‘asleep’ or surrendered. Therefore we can say the unconscious itself is speaking when we speak in dreams. When I allowed this while awake the results were often startling, as what was said frequently gave information or viewpoints there were totally new or unknown to me consciously. So the following question and its response about dreaming was not previously thoughts or idea I had consciously entertained.

The first question arose because we had been talking about what it was in humans that led most of us to be unaware of the possible wider life – the unconscious – they live in. This was not the exact question but it was certainly about the relationship between the conscious self and the unconscious.

My son asked me the question and I allowed spontaneous voice to respond to it.

The response was long, and I can only remember the highlights. It started by stating that to understand the question one needed to know that it had to do with information gathering through the senses, and the way we responded or reacted to this. I will try to state it verbatim.

To understand this you need to realise that the brain works in certain ways. It is something like the brain running a computer program, like a set of responses. Or it can be like something flowing – a stream – which creates channels. So our responses to information gathered is that it runs or triggers a program or set of responses. Or the reaction flows in already created channels.

But there is something else. To explain this, to build a view of it I will have to go back to how humans developed, go back a long way in time.

Early life-forms had something like a program from which they responded to their environment in a manner to survive. This was a set of responses. One could also think of it as a limited repertoire, or set of repertoires which enabled the creature to survive. If something was not in its repertoire the organism could not respond. But the system was also an information gathering one, as this linked with survival and survival strategies.

There was a dramatic leap to another situation which was still survival based. Instead of being limited to a certain set of responses – the problem solving response function was able to do what we call dream. That is, it could experiment with situations, replay events in new ways, and try different responses. This produced a remarkable potential far beyond the actual survival needs. It was as if the process could play at life or creativity, erecting situations, forming events, trying out variety.

It was this potential beyond need which reshaped the body/brain, and was the ground out of which humans could emerge. Creatures could experience much more than they were limited to by their physical environment. (As I write this it leads me to the exciting thought that dreaming, daydreaming, imagination and fantasy, so extends ones range of experience, that one doubles or trebles ones experiential life span, and becomes that much wiser or more experienced.)

With human beings, with the great information they could gather and manipulate in this ‘dreaming’ mode, a strange thing occurred. In the dreaming play or experiment with options, one option was posited which produced a whole new set of experiences and therefore the possibility of a way of gathering new information. Therefore the new option, which was one in which the wider awareness of the organism was shut out to allow a sense of individual existence, was guarded, held onto, isolated from the rest of awareness. It was like a small laboratory was walled off within a much larger structure to isolate the area within the smaller area. The other human creatures who had not themselves developed this new option in the ‘dreaming’ were infected with it by those who had – just as ideas or moods are infectious.

The barrier is very real, and is placed to prevent the disappearance of the isolated sense of self. It had to be isolated, because when this isolated sense of self is exposed to the wider information held by the individual, it doesn’t compute. It is an unreal sense. At least it is only partially true. There is no such thing as isolation or separation within the biological life process. It is rather like having a thousand eyes looking in to many different places and dimensions, and you looked only through one and said that one was the true reality of your perception.

The barrier only goes down when the individual reaches a certain stage of maturity – what we have named enlightenment.

See: Reaction to the unconscious – Levels of Awareness is Waking and Sleeping.

Dream Meetings or Sharing Dreams

If you and I decided that tonight during sleep we would meet in our dreams, could we do it?

The question confronts us with something that is much more than a bizarre possibility.  It is an invitation to challenge the very structure of our scientific view of who we are and what consciousness is. It is a challenge of current medical and psychological convictions about life.  It would also be a Columbus voyage to a new world of possibilities and experience.

Is there any point though in attempting what, according to prevalent concepts, is impossible?

Ann, a woman I recently met, told me that one morning at work a colleague whose name was June, said, “I had a terrible dream last night.  It was so vivid.  In it my elder sister pushed me against a wall and stabbed me with a pair of scissors.”  Later in the day the sister phoned because she was troubled by an awful dream she had experienced.  She said that in it she had pushed the younger sister against a wall and stabbed her with scissors.

Despite its aggressive nature, this dream is an excellent example of two people meeting in and sharing the same dream.  That June’s dream occurred on the same night as that of her sister; that both dreams had the same interaction and showed the use of scissors, make it difficult to class the dream as purely coincidental.

Celia Green, who from 1958 to 1960 held the Perrott Studentship in Psychical Research of Trinity College, Cambridge, has made a special study of this type of dream.  In her book Lucid Dreams, she quotes the following experience of Oliver Fox.

I had been spending the evening with two friends, Slade and Elkington, and our conversation had turned to the subject of dreams.  Before parting we agreed to meet, if possible on Southampton Common, in our dreams that night.  I dreamt I met Elkington on the Common as arranged, but Slade was not present.  Elkington and I both knew we were dreaming and commented on Slade’s absence.  After which the dream ended, being of very short duration.  The next day when I saw Elkington I said nothing at first of my experience, but asked him if he had dreamt.  “Yes,” he replied, “I met you on the Common all right and knew I was dreaming, but old Slade didn’t turn up.  We had just time to greet each other and commented on his absence, then the dream ended.”  On interviewing Slade we learned that he had not dreamt at all, which perhaps accounted for his inability to keep the appointment.

Fox goes on to say that people have tried to explain away his experience by saying that he expected to meet his friend and so dreamt it.  “But” he points out that “if expectation is to explain the experience, then I expected to meet Elkington and Slade, while Elkington expected to meet Slade and me.  How is it then expectation failed us both in regard to Slade?”

In 1962 Dr Montague Ullman obtained grants that enabled him to set up a full-scale dream laboratory to test the validity of such dreams as Fox’s.  Situated within the Department of Psychiatry at Maimonides Medical Centre, and with the assistance of Dr Stanley Krippner, the research was committed to exploring telepathic communication in dreams.  The form of most experiments was to have a waking ‘sender’ concentrate on a randomly selected photograph or painting, while a sleeping ‘receiver’ dreamt.  In one such experiment Dr Robert Van de Castle as the receiver dreamt of seeing what appeared to be a bed roll.  “That faded out, and I seemed to be walking through some doors and standing straight ahead of me were three men.  They were standing equally distant apart.  They were dressed in short-sleeved blue shirts and berets, and they looked very tough.”

The target painting was Man With Arrows and Companion by Bichiter.  It is of three men.  At the feet of one is a bundle tied up in cloth.

Scientifically the results of Ullman’s research have created the realisation that dream telepathy is an observable phenomenon which deserves further research.  Experiments such as those of both Fox and Ullman have shown that the possibility exists of meeting in a dream, and receiving or transmitting information.

The work with dreams that my wife Hyone and I do, places as in the midst of people’s dream experiences and the inner life of human beings.  My own special interest has been human potential, and we have both been conducting research of our own into dream meeting. In the early days of my interest in dreams I had the experience of apparently leaving my sleeping body while I was living in Germany, and standing before my mother in London.  I felt wide-awake and completely different to the usual dream like qualities.  I was able to clearly observe the room in which I stood.  My mother sat alone, knitting.  The family dog lay asleep in front of the gas fire in our sitting-room.  Despite my loud calls attempting to make my mother aware of my presence, she remained unconscious of me.  But my dog awoke, saw me, and barked in joyful recognition, jumping around the spot where I stood.  I later confirmed that my mother had been alone and knitting that evening, and the dog had awoken from sleep and for no apparent reason barked and jumped around the back of the sofa, where I believed myself to have stood.

This and other dream experiences caused us to start our experiments in dream meeting with a sense that it was possible for some sort of real meeting to take place.  Being aware of the symbolical nature of dreams, we recognised of course that dreaming about somebody else did not constitute a meeting.  We wanted to find out what was real about attempts to meet and share, and whether there is usefulness in it in one’s everyday life.

At the beginning our experiments were with each other.  The very first night produced a dream for each of us in which the other figured.  This is fairly common except for two aspects of the dreams.  Although Hyone frequently dreams of me, I seldom dream of her.  Also, both dreams were about subtle but important feelings or attitudes that stood in the way of a fuller and more trusting relationship in our everyday activities.  My dream showed me carrying on my back an old wardrobe that had stood in the bedroom of a house in which I had lived with my first wife.  In the dream Hyone had asked me to move it. There is a suggestion in this dream that I’m still carrying around attitudes from my first marriage — old furniture – and Hyone is asking me to deal with this.

Hyone’s dream showed her involved with weaving woollen materials.  The feelings she associated with the dream were to do with her creativity and a sense of value as a person.  She realised that she felt part of her still lacked expression, so was not involved in our relationship.

Our subsequent experiments followed the same pattern.  And although our expectations had directed us toward a dramatic meeting within the intangible substance of dreams, the reality of the pattern that emerged, although different, was just as amazing.

So wishing to explore further we joined a professional experimental group made up of psychologists and lay people.  We also organised a small group ourselves.  The professional group was run by Poseidia Institute (1945, Lascin Road, Virginia Beach, 23454, USA).  The team involved the experiment lived in different parts of the USA and Europe.  Distance didn’t seem to matter.  The Institute gave monthly goals, and then acted as a facilitator and physical contact point.  There was also a monthly assessment and receipt of reports mailed by other team members.

Our own team had a slower pace and mutually agreed goals.  So far nobody has hit the jackpot of a lucid meeting.  On the professional team dreams are seldom explored for their feelings and associations.  Hardly any of us had met or known each other previously, and many of the dreams appear random or unconnected with the goals.  Those that do, have an apparent connection with themes of either searching for the group, or concern over exposure or intimacy.

In our small group, in which conscious personal connections had already been made, there was an amazing number of dreams that correspond to the set goals.  Here are two dreams that illustrate this. The goal of this first experiment was meeting.

I am walking down steps to a basement flat to meet the group.  At the bottom of the steps a psychiatrist is working with a man who is obviously embarrassed at exposing his inner self in public.  I go past into the meeting, concerned over what there is of value I have that I can share with them.

The goal of the next dream was lucid meeting — being aware you are dreaming.

I walked into a room looking for the people I was to meet.  There were people talking, who told me the group I wanted was in the next room.  On entering I saw the people I was looking for on mattresses on the floor.  They were asleep except for two or three.  These had small pointed caps like Tibetan Llamas. I understood this meant they could remain awake in their sleep. We talked, and then began to attempt to wake the others.

Fox’s dream was both lucid, and a verifiable meeting.  But Fox had an unusual ability in this area.  The experimental dreams quoted are not as lucid, not verifiable, but they are experiments exploring such dreams by people with no particular talent.  Therefore there are two outstanding features about them.  Firstly it is interesting that so many of the dreams are directly related to the goals; and secondly, that the overall themes seem to be about problems in regard intimacy or being lucid in the dream state.

In a tentative summary of the experiments so far, we believe that the part of us that dreams is deeply concerned with relationships.  Whether in regard to sexual partners or functional groups such as a team or business, dreams portray the subtle but important fears, irritations or attitudes, that stand in the way of greater cohesiveness or unity of efforts.  This suggests to us that the unconscious part of us expresses drives to do with kinship, the powerful yet often overlooked internal forces of reproduction, or survival through mutual trust and endeavour.  Our unconscious is an expression not only of our fundamental processes of life, such as cellular unity and symbiosis, but also of the racial experience of family and group bombs.  For instance, my dream with my mother is much more lucid and powerful than my other dreams of meeting.  The “hits” are more frequent when one works with those already known or has a working relationship with, such as Fox’s and the second group.

It seems trite to say that from within us we have had urged toward intimate and trusting relationships — after all, that’s what marriage, friendship and cooperative action around the world are.  But the dreams stresses to us that it is fundamental to our nature to attempt to form bombs, not simply through shared physical sex, or working together in a theme, but at a deep level where we can trust somebody with our life, and share our most intimate feelings.  In fact, just as we can emerge physically and sex, so there seems to be an intimacy and merging of feelings, or of purpose.  Just as we see in later such unlikely relationships of trust as the crocodile and the burden that sits in its open mouth and cleaners is team, so human beings at hand unconscious level of tentative forms similar mutually satisfying groupings, which enhance their survival and influence.  The difficulties surrounding such intimacy are highlighted in the dreams of meeting.

Corporations and governments use this principle of bonding informing international alliances and agreements.  This enhances other survival and influence, but unfortunately misses out the factor of mutual respect of trust.

As individuals attempting a more satisfying marriage, or as a group attempting to work together effectively, we believe you can improve the quality of your togetherness by attempting to meet your dreams, and noting the response.

Dream Meanings

Albert Einstein admitted that the earliest intimations of his Theory of Relativity occurred to him in a dream he experienced during adolescence. In his dream he was riding on a sledge.  As the sledge accelerated faster and faster it approached the speed of light and the stars began to distort. They changed their pattern and colours, dazzling him with the beauty and power of their transformation.  He said that in many ways his entire scientific career was an extended meditation on that dream.

The meaning Einstein extracted from his dream has helped shape the quality of our life today. But Einstein is not alone in having meaningful dreams. Each dream you have enshrines some facet of yourself or life. But if you fail to ‘meditate’ upon its truth, the creative impulse of your dream-genius may be lost. See – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams

True, some dreams hardly need much thought to be understood.  Mary, who suffered a chronic vaginal yeast infection following the use of antibiotics, had been advised to try folic acid (one of the B vitamins). As the prescribed medical treatment had not helped she followed the advice.  After a few days she experienced unusual cramping and dreamt she was in her kitchen wondering what to do with bowls and bowls of acid. A raggedy kitten came to her and she fed it brown bread with yeast and strawberries.  The kitten gobbled it up.

She looked to her dreams

She habitually looked to her dreams for helpful information and considered the bowls as referring to the folic acid.  Because the kitten (her pussy) looked a bit poorly, she felt it represented her physical health.  So she stopped taking the folic acid and added yeast tablets and more vitamin C (the strawberries) to her diet.  The cramps disappeared and within a few days the infection was on its way out too.

In most cases, however, our dreams are more obscure.  We might unwrap them from their enigma if we ignore the symbols for a while and consider what feelings are experienced.  Neal, for instance, was in his early forties and worked as a builder/decorator, a job he disliked.  His real love was writing, but he had never made enough money from this to support himself and family, and felt depressed as he saw his fifties approaching. He was- considering moving to where he might find less demanding work, and dreamt he was in a bicycle rally.  Each participant started from their home.  In the dream Neal lived near the bottom of a huge hill.  It took him till midday to cycle to the top.  Then the way was flat, and he realised he would cover much more ground in the afternoon and evening.

Stripping away the symbols, the first feeling is of a long uphill struggle.  This was exactly how Neal felt about his life.  It had been a long struggle, and even though he hadn’t given up, he didn’t feel he was getting anywhere.  The second half of the dream felt satisfying though, and this led Neal to see the dream as saying the first half of his life – the morning – had been an up hill struggle, but he would cover a lot more ground in the ‘afternoon’.  He gave up his plans to move, and within three months was offered work with a newspaper.

The Theme Is …

When the connections between the feelings experienced or suggested in the dream, and our everyday life are found, it can help understand the dream further if we consider its theme, or setting.  Neal’s cycle rally, for example, has the theme of trying to get somewhere in relationship with other people.  It is interesting that Neal is not in a race but a rally. This shows he does not feel in competition with the rest of the world.

This technique helps us understand the dream of a woman whose thirteen year old son was sneaking out when he thought his parents were asleep, to meet the girl next door.  “I dreamt my son is assembling a new bike in his bedroom.  His dad is very proud of his workmanship, but I unintentionally carry the handlebars downstairs.  His older brother carries them back though.”

The overall theme is about how the family relates to the younger son’s independent creativity.  The bedroom suggests his private sexuality, and the mother realised she was not helping him guide – the handlebars – his new sexual drive.

These two techniques – finding the underlying feeling, and defining the theme – will help understand most dreams.  We must not forget, however, that some of our dreams express a sense of humour and a love of playing with words.  Dr. Hadfield tells the story of an amorous young woman who had spent all day serving ice cream at a fete.  That night while dreaming, she talked in her sleep, ‘No, I have no more cornets,’ she said, ‘but I can let you have a trombone!’ The in and out movement of the instrument suggests what may have been on her mind.

One woman on holiday dreamt a baby pig in a dress ran to her as she sat at a table.  She recognised it as her pet, and wanted to take it home.  But she realised it would grow into a big fat pig if kept.  Her comment on the dream was that while one can safely be a ‘little piggy’ on holiday, if continued at home it could develop into a big fat problem.

10,000 Dreams Defined

Calvin Hall, who studied the content of. 10,000 dreams, is certain they reveal a truer image of ourselves than we can usually admit consciously. They also show us which habits or attitudes stand in the way of fuller relationships and creativity.  If we give our dreams a small measure of the attention we lavish on television entertainment, undoubtedly our own life would be enriched.  Perhaps, like Einstein, we might also enrich the lives of others from our dreams. See Dream Journal

Dream Magic

There is a strange and wonderful world in which your most secret wishes can be fully lived. In this world the things you fear take on physical form and do battle with you – yet remain ultimately harmless unless you believe them to be real. It is a world in which magic is everyday occurrence, for you can experience death and yet live on. Here the possibilities of your future are an open door for you to explore. You have many lifetimes in this domain, and are capable of living each one with vigour. Here too, with a thought or desire, you can create a living environment in which you move and play – to act out love, anger, success or failure until you grasp their essence and master them. See Dreams are Like a Computer Game

This living laboratory enables thoughts and emotions to take on their own physical reality as people, objects or places outside of you. Meeting them you live in a universe, a community of beings with which you have an ongoing relationship. Yet it is an apparently exterior world that is but a reflection of your own inner life. Because of this, if you are wise, you may discover in it the sources of your own obstacles in life, and transform them into opportunities. The magical variety of the things met in this world reveal your own impressive creativity. For you are the Grand Creator of all that exists in this special universe of experience. Yet – and here is the jewel of this – you are not imprisoned by all you have made in this world, whether noble or evil, cherished or feared. Not trapped that is, unless you choose to be.

Dreams Express The Full Spectrum Of Human Experience

It is of course the world of your sleep and dreams. A world which encompasses the total range of human experience from the egoless void of dreamless sleep, to the sharply felt pangs of personal fear and identity.

Although dreams and sleep have always fascinated human beings, it is only toward the middle of this century that real scientific breakthroughs were made in understanding them. More recently still, with the development of greatly increased sensitivity in scientific measuring of the brain and cells, dreams have been shown to be an essential part of our learning and creative process. Also, the tremendous area of experiment undertaken by individuals in the Human Growth Movement, not only defined non clinical ways of exploring dreams, but also showed them to be a wealth of information and creative experience. Freud described dreams as being more than the supernatural events or random imagery previously supposed. But his presentation left them as expressions of unconscious repression and symbolism. Today dreams are seen to represent the whole spectrum of human experience.

Dream Consciousness Transforms Your Life

If you drive a car you cannot afford to lack skill. Your life and other people’s life depend on it. However, even if you do not drive a car you are nevertheless the driver or operator of one of the most complex vehicles ever created. It is a vehicle with many functions. It can be one of the most destructive or creative implements, and so needs enormous skill to understand and handle well. The vehicle is your own body and mind.

The essential you – the naked, decision making, responsive spark of consciousness – stands in the middle of myriad flows of energy and influence. Everything from internal urges to eat, mate, be angry, to external influences such as social pressure, music or opportunity, call you to decide or respond. To respond or decide in ways which actually satisfy you takes great skill – the lack of which leads to internal tensions, ill health, frustration, social rejection or lack of recognition, depression and so on.

Because dreams portray the various aspects of your life as external objects, and play out your relationship with them as the dream drama, they are excellent maps to guide decision making. See Drama

The following dream, told by Mo, is an example of this.

She says, “I gave birth to a little girl – Charlotte. I had mixed feelings about this. There was both uncertainty and excitement. I had a strong desire to tell someone about the birth, so telephoned my friend in Australia. She listened to my excitement in silence. I felt uneasy at this, then she said to me “I’ve lost Luke” (her son). He had died a week before. Then I woke with muddled feelings.”

On considering her dream Mo felt the baby didn’t have any obvious connection with a male figure. It was beautiful, healthy and sure of being loved and cherished by Mo. When asked who or what she had lost and mourned for she immediately felt strong emotions because she had ended a ten year long relationship with a male friend and lover. It was then clear the dream depicted what was happening in regard to this. Her love life and sexuality – the baby – were alive and born anew, even without her ex-lover. But her pleasure in this was dulled because a part of herself – the female friend – was still mourning the death of the relationship. This lessened her enjoyment and excitement about the new things emerging in her life. Nevertheless, having such a clear picture of herself helped her steer a more decisive course through her feelings of loss toward her sense of new birth. See A Woman’s Creative Power

Mo arrived at her understanding of the dream by taking each figure or part of the dream and looking at what feelings, memories or information it held for her. Her new baby was obviously an expression of her pleasure and sense of well being.

The friend depicted a sense of loss. When she asked herself where pleasure and a sense of loss could be found in her life, the dream was clear. Therefore, asking yourself straightforward questions about your dream will uncover much of its information.

Not Imprisoned By All The World You Made

We are all born victims of circumstance. But we need not remain a victim.

Your natural response to your environment is to be influenced by it. A disturbing event would stimulate you to feel fear, a calming event to feel pleasure. Your moods are usually influenced by what happens to you. So being in prison would be more depressing than being free. Being rejected would cause more pain than being admired or loved.

Our emotions and feelings about ourselves are like a keyboard that is played upon by people and events. If we are praised or rewarded our self confidence and therefore performance will usually be enhanced. That is fine except it means we will usually depend upon the world to create our moods and our sense of our own value. This makes us victims. We may not be dependent on a drug, but on praise, success, being admired or wanted. Without them we may experience the lows the drug user does on withdrawal. See Avoid Being Victims

As a human being though, you have an extraordinary possibility. This dream of Ed’s explains it.

I was in a prison with several others – all in one cell. It felt as if I had been in the prison for years. I was standing near the bars angry and shouting about the injustice of my incarceration.

As I stood raging I suddenly realised that all my anger was having no affect on the world. I was the only one suffering it. I saw that the peace and freedom I wanted from release I could have now by letting go of my anger. I would then be in peace, and would be free of my own negative emotions. I forgave my judges and gaolers, and a change came over me. In the following years I learnt to drop the other ideas and emotions I tortured myself with. I was filled with joy until my bliss filled the cell. In this way all had a changed relationship. In a strange way I was now utterly free.

The greatest prison of all, the greatest of torturers, is our own emotions and our concepts or ideas – our thoughts. While Ed felt angry and held the idea he had been wrongly accused, he was tormented and trapped – imprisoned in his own thoughts and emotions. To have received a public apology and released would have changed his feelings, but he would still have remained a passive victim of events. Instead he found in his dream the greatest freedom of all – a blissful freedom – the release from his mind and emotions.

Almost every dream you have shows you what world of experience you are creating out of your memories, your habitual attitudes, your fears and hopes. Because of this, each dream can be another step toward blissful freedom. The following dream shows clearly how Emma is imprisoned in difficult feelings.

I’ve had this dream for years. I’m trapped in a long passageway or corridor. I can’t get out. I’m feeling my way along the wall – there is a small light at the end of the tunnel, I can’t get to it. I’m very frightened. I wake up before I get to the end. Then I feel afraid to go back to sleep.

Emma cannot escape by struggling. Her trap is one of the emotions and mind. No matter what helped her create the trap, she can be free by standing out of the particular web of ideas and feelings which weave together to create her trap.

You can gather from each dream how you weave a view of the world which creates either suffering or pleasure. See Secrets of Power Dreaming

Dream Mystery Explored

It can be summed up as remembering the dream; recording of dream; listing of symbols; and association of ideas. It was also seen that symbols must be understood in their right context, or can even be understood because of that context; which is rather like arriving at the meaning of an unknown word because of the way it is used in a sentence. Several other things are mentioned or hinted at while the dreams were being analysed. Some of these are so important or helpful, that they will now be further explained. See –   Techniques for Exploring your Dreams

Main Phases of The Dream

If we look at the structure of the next dream, we see that it can be split into four phases. But not all dreams are as easily broken into the different parts. Some dreams cannot be segmented in this way, while others have far less phases. The next dream is an example of the latter.

‘I had gone to Sheila’s and Uncle Frank’s house at Spearing Road. They had promised I could have a room there, but I found all the rooms occupied and people were sleeping on the floor instead of in beds. Seeing there was no room I turned away and the next thing I knew I was in a train; it had rather luxurious blue leather seats but again was almost full. It contained, as far as I could see, all ladies, and I explained to them that I had been promised sleeping accommodation. Even while I was explaining this and expecting to occupy a length of three seats, I could see they had as much right there as I, and I took the single seat offered still protesting that we were promised sleeping room.

This dream can only be broken into two, or at the most, three parts. That is, the house, the train and possibly, accepting the seat. If this is set out we have a clearer idea what the dream is about.

The House – Searching for living space in a childhood setting. Found ‘no room’ – What have I been looking for in childhood attitudes? Was the ‘promise’ of childhood unfulfilled?

The Train – Exorbitant expectations, annoyance at the fact that these high expectations cannot be fulfilled. This in a setting of getting somewhere – train. Have my expectations in getting somewhere not been as great as hoped for?

The Single Seat – Grudging acceptance of practical offer. Can I see anything of this in real life?

The whole idea of using this method is to take the general events, implications and settings of a dream, and use these as a reference for asking oneself questions.

The Dream Sequence

One of the things that is often overlooked in dreams is what we might call the ‘because’ factor. This factor is fairly noticeable when once pointed out, but difficult to see until much dream interpretation has been done. The because factor also applies in our everyday life, and can be seen when we say, ‘I was waiting for a bus and began to talk to a stranger who was also waiting. Our conversation became so interesting, that after a few minutes we went and sat in a restaurant, letting the bus go, because we had so much in common. Before he went he gave me his card because he wanted me to contact him again. I could see from what we had spoken about, that he was thinking of offering me a job in his firm. But I never followed it up because I didn’t think I could fill the post.’

If we look into this, we see that important events occur, directions followed, decisions taken, all because. The word ‘because’ in fact hides all our background, our feelings, our predisposing urges and thoughts. The word ‘disposition’ can in fact be used to sum up what lurks behind the because factor. A little thought will show that history is made up of this ‘disposition’, acting through the because factor.

I hope this doesn’t sound mysterious or complicated. This is such an important thing to understand. Our whole life, the events and outcome of it, rest upon it. Our life is what it is because of what we are – our disposition. We take an offer or reject it because of this. We succeed or fail in life because of the same factor – ourselves. ‘The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in the stars/But in ourselves, that we be underlings.’ When understood, we can see that every move we make in life is conditioned by subtle feelings of fear or pleasure, pride or love. At every decision we are directed by intangible hopes, despairs, conflicts and ideals. So, dreams also, arise out of the because factor.

Two dreams illustrate this. ‘I was waiting for a visitor. Suddenly the man I had been expecting came round to the back window and peeped in. I didn’t see him clearly, but took an immediate aversion to him and refused to let him in.’

Here we see that something ‘waited’ for by the dreamer, when it actually arrives, is not admitted due to feelings of aversion. It is not admitted because of aversion.

A clearer example is this. ‘I was surrounded by a thick wall of briars, beyond which were wild animals. I was trapped and couldn’t get out. I wondered what to do. Suddenly I noticed a hole in the ground. I looked in and saw it was a tunnel. I was just about to explore it as a way of escape, when I saw a dirty animal-like man looking up at me. I drew back from the tunnel in disgust and woke up’.

Here we see that the dreamer is trapped by his own tangle of problems, and destructive instinctive urges. A possible way out is shown in the tunnel of unconscious exploration (i.e. discovering one’s hidden contents), but the dreamer, on looking within, sees an undeveloped and repulsive part of himself which disgusts him. It is because of this disgust that he cannot get out through the tunnel. The whole dream revolves around that point. It is also because of this inability to explore further due to disgust, that the dream ends. The dream is showing that it is the feelings of disgust that are keeping him trapped in his unpromising situation. In real life, he is stuck in the middle of painful experiences because of his own feelings of disgust about a part of his nature. Thus, the because factor in dreams is very important, and is the central point in numerous dreams.

Dream Series

If we fail to understand an individual dream, light can often be thrown upon its meaning by looking at the dreams that precede and follow it. In this way one sees that the symbols are used in a gradually evolving manner. A dream series of evolving symbols is also one of the most striking proofs that dreams are not mere nonsense. The dreams that follow were all dreamt within about a month.

(1)   ‘Visit to M. Very nice house, high on the cliffs overlooking the sea. M. and others their usual welcoming selves. Met other pleasant friendly people, but we had to go down the hill to meet them and then some of them pointed out another way up the hill to another beautiful view, and came along to show us the way, which M. actually knew, but didn’t want to spoil their pleasure in showing me. A few of those in M.’s house were not quite as nice as I had believed from M.’s description, but I liked them anyway.

Here we start off with a house overlooking the sea – a state of looking over one’s hidden contents, one’s unconscious. Or we might – say the dreamer is ‘overlooking’ certain things about herself. These things she has overlooked begin to become known in the people, parts of herself, that were not quite as nice as she had believed.

(2)   ‘Met uncle George. Then he and I and a few relatives and friends went on to a small boat and began a journey. I didn’t know where we were going but others did, and it was such a new and pleasant experience for me that I didn’t bother to ask. As it grew dusk a strange but pleasant and friendly woman, who was obviously familiar with the boat, came and closed the curtains and put the light on, so that we could be comfortable during the night.’

Just previous to dream number one, the dreamer had begun, with the help of a friend who knew a little about interpretation, to analyse her own dreams. So we see that from ‘overlooking’ the sea she has quickly gone on a sea voyage. The dream sums up her situation wonderfully, ‘I didn’t know where we were going, but – others did.’ She didn’t at the time realise where the interpretations and dreams would lead her. Also, the sea is now much closer, and night is coming. That is, darkness and the unconscious are already making themselves felt, for the night sea journey is a classical dream of the exploration of one’s unconscious contents, as with Jonah and the whale. See archetype of the night sea journey

(3) ‘Found myself in a place where I could go swimming every morning.’

Already she is beginning to enter the water, or her inner life.

(4)   ‘Went into a church with someone who pointed out that I was facing the wrong way. I turned round and saw a bigger and lighter altar at the other end.’

Having begun to contact her inner life via swimming, immersing in it, she sees that her attitude to religion or her own

(5) ‘I was involved in a revolution. Everything around was collapsing, but I don’t remember being frightened.’

All her old ideas are being either revolutionised, or are collapsing.

(6) ‘I found myself being led in a particular direction by friendly pleasant people, who yet knew that on arrival I was to be executed. I had an immature woman of about twenty-five with me, and the same fate awaited her. I took her hand and tried to convey love and courage and to protect her from all her fears by behaving in a light-hearted manner.

As her old ideas collapse, her old self is to die. Also the immature twenty-five year-old part that still lives on in her is to die.

(7) ‘I found myself entering a tunnel where I encountered a rather frightening little animal, but we passed each other as he went out and I went in. Then I met a larger animal with the same results. Later I met a third, a real monster, rather like a 60ft caterpillar with a lion’s head and fore feet. I did not like the encounter as I continued to walk on the left side of the tunnel, into ever deepening darkness, and he passed me on the way out. Somehow I felt that Doctor (a friend and adviser) would not have been in the least afraid, and I borrowed his courage, and woke about half-way along this monster.’

Having been ready to die to her old way of life, she can begin the descent into her unconscious contents in earnest. The two frightening animals are two fears that came up and out. The third one is too big a fear to completely pass by at this time; and its shape shows its possible sexual nature.

Here, in just seven dreams, with very inadequate comments, can be seen how the symbols evolve as the dreamer discovers her real inner nature. The ‘overlooked’ sea becomes travelled upon. The coming darkness on the boat develops into the ‘deepening darkness’ of the tunnel; while each dream shows a development on the inward journey the dreamer was undertaking. Such a series need not be about the inward journey, however, but about commercial undertakings, health, ambitions, or even answers to intellectual queries.

These seven dreams were taken from about twice that many, dreamed during the period. The selection being based on how one can understand past dreams by seeing them in context with others occurring. The important point being that one might dream of looking at the sea for years, but never enter it. Then, with a change of ‘disposition’, a series of swimming and diving dreams take place. In interpreting our dreams in this way, we have to watch for similar symbols in changed conditions. The sea and darkness are obvious in the series. Also the crowd of people leading her, representative of her own desires to understand herself. The interpretation is arrived at by analysing the situations the dreamer finds herself in, and how the symbols change. Thus a seed seen in one dream, and a plant just growing in another suggest growth and development. A person scorned in one dream, and loved in another, would be a change of attitude and relationship.

These three methods, the Main Phase – the Because Factor, and the Series method, all help us to see the underlying meaning of the dream through looking at the dream as a whole. Particular symbols are not worked on in the same way as in the associated ideas method. It is the relationships the dream suggests that arouse questions. In turn, these questions themselves clarify the dream for us, and help us analyse our experience to see if the dream explains or explores it. As we advance in ability to deal with our dreams, these various methods are called upon and used as required. See – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams

Dream Lovers

Can you imagine eating your breakfast porridge and finding something black bobbing about in it? Then discovering with horror it is a cockroach. You flick it out with your spoon onto the kitchen floor, where it clatters on the tiles. You feel nauseous and then notice there are now two cockroaches. They are copulating, and you begin to vomit.

Maybe you feel easier if I tell you I have just described a dream. With those cockroaches copulating, it is difficult not to recognise it as a nightmare about sex. It is fairly obvious too, that the woman is ‘sick’ of sex.

Some people believe a dream is just a dream – a meaningless fantasy of the night. They see dreams as akin to a kaleidoscope of images, random and without relevance. Having heard thousands of dreams from people throughout the world, I feel differently. Again and again, the outer situation and personality are directly reflected in the drama of the dream.

For instance, one woman says, “This dream has been recurring for years. In it a man is trying. to make love to me. At the last moment I repel him, as I know it will cause a pregnancy.”

The woman, who is a mature spinster, and who wishes to remain anonymous, goes on to say, “When I was about ten, I was raped. As a result I have had a horror and fear of men for years. It has spoilt my life from the sexual angle as I hate to be touched.”

The dream is recurring, which shows that Ann (short for anonymous), has an unchanging habit in her life. In Ann’s case this can be confirmed by her actual experience of avoiding sex. Her dream and her waking life are the same. So while the dream recurs, we can feel reasonably sure that she still remains stuck in her same reaction to sex because of her anxiety. She is repressing her need for love and so the dream continues. See Avoid Being Victims

However, dreams have many functions. They do not simply reflect our everyday situation or express hidden wishes. They also explore the new, state what we are unwilling to look at consciously, and consider most likely outcomes of our present activities and attitudes.

In her book Dream Power, Dr. Ann Faraday mentions a dream which sums up these various facets. Sally dreams she is presented to a Persian King in the garden of his palace. As she talks with him, a group of laughing girls arrive with a sad looking middle aged woman. Sally felt the woman was in charge of the harem, and was sad because the King no longer wanted her sexually. Then one of the girls approached Sally and said, “Don’t you recognise me? We were together in a previous incarnation.”

Sally woke feeling depressed. She had been reading The Perfumed Garden, an Eastern book on sex, and she felt the dream was in some way about her own life. Because she and her husband had grown apart sexually, she saw the older woman as herself. What she gave of herself to the relationship now, was to devote more of her time and energy to the house and family. This helped her to understand that the young woman’s reference to a previous incarnation was about her own ‘past life’, or earlier years spent in greater sexual involvement with her husband.

Although her husband worked in the film industry and had contact with many young women, she could not understand the last part of the dream. “He’s too inhibited”, she said. Some months later, however, her husband brought a young woman home, explaining she needed temporary lodging. There followed a number of affairs with girls he brought home, while Sally acted as housekeeper.

If we can accept that dreams reflect a summary of our present situation; show us what we might not otherwise see; and look at future outcomes – what do they reveal about the sexual life of women and their dream lovers?

So far, the dreams have said that a woman can be ‘sick of sex’, and that anxiety about sex can rob her of that pleasure for a lifetime. Also, in middle age a woman may lose her man sexually. But there are also less obvious issues here which need to be brought out. For instance, even though Ann remained a virgin in her waking life, why did she refuse her dream lover year after year?

The next dream gives us insight into this. Jane dreams she meets a younger woman in a street. They hug each other warmly. Together with many other women, they queue to enter a building where a creative expression activity is to be held. The women were happy. Then somebody grabbed Jane playfully from behind and said “Guess who?” It was a man, who crouched to child’s height as Jane turned, eyes closed, to guess. She felt his head, then opened her eyes to see it was Tim, husband of a friend. They walked away together, still playful. Then Jane began to feel anxious and guilty in case her husband found out and saw the pleasure she had. It begins to snow, and the dream ends in a tortuously complicated plot to meet Tim without her husband finding out.

In waking life, Jane had met Tim while on holiday visiting relatives. He was separated from his wife – her doing – and when Jane needed somewhere to stay, offered to share his flat. Jane refused. So much for her waking life, but remember, she is dreaming. Why does she need to deny harmless pleasure while she is asleep? See Secrets of Power Dreaming

It’s called ‘introversion’. Most of us take in, or introvert, into our dream and fantasy life, things that may be vital or useful in our outer life, but have no satisfying place in our dreams. While asleep, Jane is not actually in a street; she is not in reality hugging a man; she is not physically flirting with a man. The street, the man, are her own feelings and urges given form. The plot of the dream is an expression of her creative femininity and values, So, enjoying the dream lover is, in the end, only an enjoyment of her own feelings.

Part of the function of dreaming is, for our psychological self, what sweating and shivering is for our body – a means of self regulation. Sweating and shivering regulates our temperature – dreaming balances our urges by expressing in sleep what we refuse to express in waking. So if Jane denied herself the enjoyment of Tim’s company during the day, to deny it at night too, is unhealthy. When this was pointed out to Jane, she said “I see now what a tight spot I got myself into over being with men other than my husband. Also I feel my full creativity will not be available to me until I sort this out.” Because of her awareness of this introverted tension, Jane later began to have directly sexual dreams for the first time in her life. Her realisation that her sexuality and creativity are closely linked, is an expression on her part, of a statement which appears repeatedly in sex dreams.

Many women’s dreams show great reticence in allowing enjoyable sex. This also means that they are inwardly holding back their own full expression and creativity as a person. It is also a reverse of the situation in which a young wife dreamt her husband made passionate love to a blonde. The wife was furious, and on waking, confronted the husband with what he had done. When reminded that it was only a dream she said, “Yes, but if you do that sort of thing in my dreams, what do you do in your own”

Because marriage is such an important event, dreams constantly analyse one’s chances of success. As our dreams tend to consider the needs of all aspects of our nature, they give a balanced view of whether we could relate well to the man we consider marrying. Many women have told us dreams they had prior to marriage which pointed out the problems they encountered once married. Sarah, who had a strong sexual attraction for her fiancé, dreamt he was ignoring her. She then went off with a man she was sexually attracted to, but not in love with. Feeling this as unsatisfactory, she tries masturbation, but even in the dream, feels it is a poor substitute. She then decides that if she can’t marry the man she loves, she will be his mistress. On waking, however, she realises that part of her need is for security, family life and children. So although the dream has said that her fiancé does not care for her sufficiently, and has tried various solutions, it has not yet solved the problem. However, a later dream revealed how much anger Sarah had about her fiancé’s lack of real care. She realised that she had been trying to make the best of a poor situation, and left him.

Although Sarah’s dream is openly sexual, she realises there is a need for mutual caring and the satisfaction of the desire to have children. Dreams see sex as an energetic flow, which if denied, builds up like water behind a dam. If not expressed it flows sideways into tension and irritable or depressed emotions. As energy, it can emerge not only as the sex act, but as warm feelings, caring for others, and creative activities generally. But in relationships, it exists as the subtle emotions which flow between a couple.

Brenda’s dream shows this. She says, “Ted and I are in bed together. I am feeling hurt as he has his back to me and is masturbating. I thought to myself ‘why turn your back?’ He then turns and faces me, his legs and thighs close to me. With legs apart, he openly starts to masturbate again. This time I do not feel he is cutting me off, so I share the feeling of quiet peace and pleasure.”

This is a good example of how direct and honest sex dreams can be about a couple’s intimate feelings. The dream indicates that Brenda’s reaction to how Tim relates to her is that he wishes to feel his sexuality is not possessed by anyone else. She discovers that when she allows him this he is willing to share his pleasure with her. Tim and Brenda both felt this was an accurate and helpful summary of their situation. Brenda said she had often woke to find Tim gently giving himself pleasure while he slept. This upset her as she felt left out. For Tim, Brenda’s attitude reminded him of his mother, who seemed to want to possess his sexual pleasure by trying to stop him masturbating as a youth. He felt he needed to own his own pleasure before he could share it. Sorting out these subtle reactions to each other led to a more relaxed relationship.

Like Jane, Brenda never allowed herself sexual pleasure in her dreams. Some time after the above dream though, Tim was aware that Brenda was, as she put it, “comforting herself” while she slept. As soon as he moved softly to turn in bed, she withdrew her hand. He therefore took hold of her hand and replaced it on her vagina, and told her he felt okay about it. It was her vagina and she could pleasure it when she wanted to. Then she fell asleep and dreamt – “I was with a dark curly haired man. He was very brown, perhaps a native, but he didn’t feel a stranger to me. We began to make love, and I became aware of the pleasure in my lower body. It was very slippy, slidy and wet. There was enjoyment for us both, with very intense body feelings and a child-like quality, not passion, but pleasure and joy in my vagina.”

The dream is an obvious expression of how Brenda has relaxed her usual inhibiting of her inner sexual pleasure. The man is an embodiment of her own natural desires.

Sympathetically sharing of our sex dreams with our partner can lead to the growth of mutual caring and understanding. Sylvia dreamt she was in bed with her husband Dave. She felt close and warm, and Dave began to become more intimate, but a woman came in and wanted to ask something. Dave got up and dealt with the woman. Sylvia saw he had got dressed, and felt he had given up trying to get close, and felt alone and withdrawn. But suddenly Dave was in bed again with her, but she was still hurt and cut off from him.

At that point she woke to feel in the same situation with Dave. He got out of bed and Sylvia told him her dream. He immediately responded by saying it was almost an exact replica of the day before. He had wanted to make love to Sylvia, but friends or family had kept arriving. Then when they did go to bed she had seemed distant and unattractive. But Sylvia had been withdrawn because she believed Dave was disinterested. Realising how they had misunderstood each other, Dave got back into bed and completed Sylvia’s dream.

These dreams show how much need there is for women in general to be more honest and direct sexually. Although they may choose a particular man to share their body with, in their dreams they need to let themselves loose. They need to sizzle and writhe with their own pleasure while they sleep. Pleasure is a healing force in us. Women need to bathe in it often, not only for the sake of health, but also to discover their own creativity.

Perhaps Pat’s experience sums it up. After not making love for a month, her husband Ed came home from work one afternoon and spent a long time touching, playing with, and being with Pat sexually. The next morning Pat was cleaning the house and started singing as she arranged a vase of flowers. Suddenly, she remembered a dream. In it, Ed and she were going in the same direction and she started to sing because of their happy feelings. Then she felt she ought to stop singing because Ed would say she was happy because they had enjoyed sex. But she realised Ed knew what she was thinking. As she walked quietly, Ed himself began to sing, and Sylvia walked with him, smiling to herself.

Dreams about Dead People

Click below on the links to find what you are seeking

Dreams about People We Know who have Died

Dreams about a Dead Person

How can We Talk to the Dead and They can Talk With Us?

Dreams about a Dead Husband or Wife

Dreams about a Dead Mother

Dreams about a Dead Child 

Summary of after death experience

What Happens When Our Body Dies?

Coming back to earth 

The Journey Through Death and Back

Journeying Beyond Dreams and Death

Dreams about People We Know who have Died

Dreams in which dead people appear are sometimes expressive of our attempts to deal with our feelings, guilt or anger in connection with the person who died; or our own feelings about death. When someone close to us dies we go through a period of change from relating to them as an external reality, to meeting and accepting them as alive in our memories and inner life.

It is wise to understand something before you read what else has been said. For instance, a single cell, which is a seed from which all life forms evolved from, doesn’t become old or die because it is immortal, for it keeps dividing and doesn’t die. In dividing it constantly creates copies of itself, but as it does  so it gathers new experience, it changes what is copied, so becomes the ‘seed’ for multi-cellular organism. We all started from the original one cell, and we, you and I,  are the result of gathered experience.

As adults we believe we are complete and whole. A seed is a return to the source of life and it/our beginnings under the sun. Consciousness on our planet started in the slime of creation, the slime we return to, to procreate. And from that slime which is a vehicle for our seed to exist in, our awareness goes through the whole process of evolution as we develop in mother’s womb, the dividing of cells, the forming of structure and organs, the creation of a creature with gills, and on to a human type form ready to breathe air, carrying your seed onwards.

As one textbook states, “A human is not constructed like a modern office building, as cheaply and efficiently as possible. . . but rather like an ancient historic edifice to which wings and sections were added at different times and which was not modernised until it was almost completed.” See Levels of the Brain

In doing so it uses many of the things that Life or Nature learnt from past life-forms that it  uses in dealing with human life. As an example plants use very clever system with bulbs and other root systems. A bulb can grow a new flower each year and each flower is a totally new and unique thing. The the flower dies and its essense or experience is drawn back into the bulb, and next season another unique flower emerges. This hold true for humans too.

Our present personality has never existed before. It lives with a new brain that doesn’t carry old memories. Searching within its own experience and memories it could never find memory of any past lives because our present brain has no connection with the past seeds, yet our seed is the collection of man, many lives lived. Tendencies, unaccountable fears or talents, give the clue to these past selves.  See Mushrooms

These past lives are not remembered easily because the new soul that developed in the new body had no past connections because it has a new brain. The soul or personality is built from the local memories stored in the new brain. So, memories of the past can only be attained by a deep awareness of our core awareness.

So, dead people can simply be people from our past. Considering that the major part of our learning and experience occur in relationship to other people, such learning and experience can be represented by characters from the past. For instance a first boyfriend in a dream would depict all the emotions and struggles we met in that relationship, and what we learned from it or took away from it that still influences present relationships. Therefore dreaming often of people we knew in the past would suggest that past experiences or lessons are very active at the moment, or we are reviewing those areas of our life. A woman who had emigrated to Britain from a very different cultural background frequently dreamt, even twenty years afterwards, of people she knew in her native country. This shows her still very much in contact with her own cultural values and experiences.

Example: ‘My husband’s mother, no longer alive, came and slid her arms carefully under me and lifted me up. I shouted ‘Put me down! Put me down! I don’t want to go yet.’ She carefully lowered me onto the bed and disappeared.’ E. H. – In this example the dreamer is feeling fear about being carried off by death.

Example: ‘A dark grey sugar loaf form materialised. This pillar lightened in shade as I watched. It didn’t move. I began to think it was Mrs. Molten who died in 1956. The feeling grew stronger but still the colour lightened. Then it bent over and kissed my head. In that instant I knew it WAS my mother. An ecstatic joy and happiness such as I have never known on earth suffused me. That happiness remained constantly in mind for the next few days.’ Mr M.

Here the dreamer has not only come to terms with his mother’s and his own death, but also found this inner reality.

Example: ‘A couple of months ago as I was waking I felt my husband’s arm across me and most realistically experienced my hand wrapping around his arm and turning toward him which I had done so often in his lifetime and saying ‘I thought you had died. Thank God you have not.’ Then I awoke alone and terribly shaken.’ Mrs I. – The example both shows the resolution of the loss, but also the paradox felt at realising the meeting was an inner reality.

A critic might say this is only a dream in which a lonely woman is replaying memories of her dead husband’s presence for her own comfort. Thus her disappointment on being disillusioned. Whatever our opinion, the women has within her such memories to replay. These are a reality. The inner reality is of what experience was left within her from the relationship. Her challenge is whether she can meet this treasure with its share of pain, and draw out of it the essence which enriches her own being. That is the spiritual life of her husband. The ‘aliveness’ of her husband in that sense is also social, because many other people share memories of the same person. What arises into their own lives from such memories, is the observable influence of the now dead person. But the dead also touch us more mysteriously, as in the next example. See: Dead Husband or Ex

Example: In a recent news program on television, a man who survived the Japanese prisoner of war camp in Singapore had been given a photograph of children by a dying soldier he did not know. The man had asked him to tell his family of his death, but did not give his name. The photograph was kept for forty odd years, the man still wanting to complete his promise but not know how. One night he dreamt he was told the man’s name. Enquiries soon found the family of the man, who had an identical photograph.

Dreams about a Dead Person – General Meaning:

This can represent some area of your life that has ‘died’. It can refer to death of feelings, such as hopelessness in connection with relationship and the loss of feelings about someone; the depression that follows big changes in your life such as loss of a loved partner, job, or child. It can also reflect the sense you have of your life in general, that it is without the stimulus of motivation and satisfaction, as when one feels oneself in a ‘going nowhere’ relationship or life situation. The dead person in the dream may link several of these feelings together, as symbols often represent huge areas of our experience. So the dead person my be a part of oneself you want to leave behind, to die out.

Some dreams are so clearly about the person who died. Here is an example of such a dream by a young child.

With his brothers and friends he went to bathe in a mill pool. He was only four or five at the time, and could not swim. In the recklessness of their-play, one of the children pushed him into deeper water. At that moment, the mill gates opened and water rushed through carrying him along. He was drowned – but some adults who were hastily called to the scene managed to pull him out and revive him.

As his father carried him home in his arms, the boy talked about his mother, who had died some years earlier and at first his father smiled at his story.

The boy said that as he went under the water he felt himself sinking down and down into darkness. Then there was a change and he felt himself rising up slowly until at last he rose to the surface.

He was in a huge sea. Around him, other people were also surfacing, and all were being gradually washed towards the nearby shore. There on the beach, people waited, and greeted those who were brought to them by the sea.

And as he himself drew near there on a small promontory were his grandparents waiting to welcome him – and in front – his mother, and she bent to draw him into her arms. She took hold of his hands and as she did so, a cross around her neck swung before his face. Sparkling in it were seven stones. But at that moment, something seemed to pull him away, and he sank into the sea and at last awoke on the riverbank.

The other half of the Story

At the conclusion of the story, his father’s condescending smile vanished. They were now at home and his father left the room, obviously deeply moved. Only years later did he tell his son the other half of the story.

The boy’s mother had died when her son was tiny and she had died on her birthday. For many weeks before, her husband had saved for a special present which he had kept secret. On her death, heart-broken, he had crept down to the coffin in the middle of the night, unscrewed the lid and given the present to his dead wife. It was a cross with seven stones, and the secret of it had been buried with her.

Putting together a picture of many such death experiences, we can begin to see a general view of what it might be like, what it certainly is for some, to die.

First of all comes a lessening and eventual disappearance of bodily sensations. Although all pain and physical awareness goes, most people are still conscious of their physical surroundings and of other people. In fact they often watch their own body breathe its last struggling breaths.

Usually people see themselves in a body, but it’s sometimes more perfect than the body they have just left. Their perceptions are nearly always enormously heightened in many ways. There seems to be no sensation of gravity or weight – the whole room or area can be seen instantaneously, as if with circular vision, and there is an awareness of the thoughts and emotions of those present.

See Talking with those who have passed on

Dreams about a Dead Husband or Wife:

Many dreams of dead people come from women who have lost their husband. It is common to have disturbing dreams for some period afterwards; or not be able to dream about the husband or wife at all; or to see the partner in the distance but not get near. In accepting the death, meeting any feelings of loss, grief, anger and continuing love, the meeting become easier.

But as with the example above, there are many cases where people meet their dead in dreams and have tremendous assurance.

Dreams about a Dead Mother:

As with other ‘dead person’ dreams they usually show how we are working out or unfolding our relationship with them. They can be wonderfully confirming of continued existence.

Example: ‘A dark grey sugar loaf form materialised. This pillar lightened in shade as I watched. It didn’t move. I began to think it was Mrs. Molten who died in 1956. The feeling grew stronger but still the colour lightened. Then it bent over and kissed my head. In that instant I knew it WAS my mother. An ecstatic joy and happiness such as I have never known on earth suffused me. That happiness remained constantly in mind for the next few days.’ Mr. M.

Dreams about a Dead Child:

When our child dies it is one of the most heartbreaking experiences we can meet. Sometimes it takes years to adjust to what has happened. Not only is the adjustment emotional and psychological, but also your way of life is often built around the person you have lost. Therefore the changes we meet can be enormous. However, we each have enormous resources of healing and ability to meet the new if we can access them. Very often there are experiences we have, or dreams, that continue our relationship with the child. Unfortunately we live in a culture that often denies the possibility of this.

The example below shows how this can be possible.

For instance, Dr. Morse, in his book Closer to the Light, tells of a mother who came to him because she hadn’t slept properly for 1041 nights after the death of her son. She showed him a picture of her son, but Dr Morse was suddenly called away to a ward emergency. Having dealt with the sick baby, he was writing up the notes and a nurse who had been helping said to him, ‘Who was that person who came in with you? Is he a student?’

Morse did not understand what the nurse was talking about as nobody had come into the hospital with him. As he was trying to find a pen for the notes he was writing he pulled out the photograph of the woman’s son. Immediately the nurse said, ‘That’s him. He kept trying to get your attention’.

When he returned to his office Morse asked the mother if she had ever been contacted by her son after his death. She said, ‘Oh yes. After he died, for several nights he would stand at the foot of my bed and tell me he was alright, and that I should stop crying. But that was only a crazy dream.’ However, such things are not crazy dreams, but insights into a greater reality.

After her conversation with Dr. Morse the woman slept properly for the fist time in nearly three years.

Summary of after death experience

Because after death we are still in a dream like existence, we tend to create around us those things we expect to see or experience. So someone who has no previous information about death may wander around for awhile confused. A Christian may see Christ welcoming them, so the beginnings are very varied, and a Buddhist might meet Buddha, or a Muslim might see Muhammad. But there is some sort of life review. This is about harvesting all of value from the life experience. Not only do we gathered the lessons we learned from our life, but we also relive it moment by moment, feeling and reviewing our own feelings, but also the feelings we engendered in others. But because we are no longer living a life in three dimensions and time, it will be an all at once experience, not stretched over time.

This can be quite a trial considering the life we have lived. But it is not a judgement from outside us, but a self judgement of the quality of our life. We need to pass through this because after death we have left the physical world and moving toward the spiritual. We can see this as the Big Self; the Self with Enormous Love. But there is an enormous transition taking place at death. We lived within a body, and now without it we have to be ready for life without it in what is called the spirit world. That is why the life review is necessary. All our earthly experience has to be put through a transformation to make it fit for a wider life. The wider life works through universal connections, and the less we personally can connect with the universal the less fit we are for the universal life.

Something that I have noticed is that some people believe, and therefore experience, that ‘heaven’ is exactly like life on earth except better. They see it as having houses and living much the same way. But that is not really the whole truth, because just as our body grows and changes, so do we in the after death state.

It seems as if there is a great difference between existing in a body and surviving in the grand world of the spirit. For in the spirit world there has to be found something that will link the life with giving and receiving from others, and of course the integration with a greater purpose.

Many people say they go along a tunnel toward a great light, and then a great spirit leads them through life review. Others go through a door to the light, and others go up a flight of grand stairs.

Having lost their body and its appetites there may be a period of adaptation to a life in a world without boundaries. Also because the spirit world is similar to the world of dreams, you create around you an environment made up of your own inner state. So if you are full of hate, murderous impulses and selfishness, you create a world like that is usually called hell. We are not ‘cast into hell’ we create it ourselves.

The same with heaven, it is created out of all the attitudes and ideas and feelings that are in harmony with the way the universe works or is. As a friend told me after his death, “I cannot escape myself. This is because everywhere I look is like a mirror. Every direction I find a reflection of me. It is  three-dimensional. It doesn’t matter if I look up or down, left or right, all I see are expressions of who I am.”

At first one will look much as you did at death, except if you are old or ill, then you have quickly gained a more youthful and healthy appearance.  But of course that is only your physical shape, and you will create that because that is who you think you are. But a great and probably slow swing over will occur. Because your body is gone, and you are moving toward the spiritual being that has always stood behind your life and witnessed it and given it impulses to try to live out, so gradually you may lose any sense of being male or female.

It is possible some people will not make it that far, but will go into a sleep state until their next life in the body. But if they can maintain consciousness as they meet these changes they will slowly become a greater being, and have an awareness that could be seen as super human, touching all around them. This is why some dead relatives come back to us in dreams and visions and tell us things they would never have normally been capable of knowing.

Another conversation with a dead friend stated some of this:

I seems to me that things are different for me now. I feel something that is difficult to understand. I seem to be getting  less and less of the me I knew; yet at the same time more of who I am. More of me is being lost, but at the same time more of me is being gained. A strange paradox.

Then there is the going beyond even more barriers toward what can be called real spiritual awareness.

In the next region, one sees how the person’s life has accorded not only with their own Self, but with the ‘true being of the world’. We see ourselves as we exist, in or out of harmony with that world consciousness, that essence of all beings, sometimes called God or the Christ, or Krishna, or Buddha. Here is the judging, the self judging, of the ‘quick and the dead.’

And finally, in this withdrawal, the seventh region is reached, ‘quick or dead’, asleep or awake to the highest in us. ‘The man stands here’ says Steiner, ‘in the presence of the “Life-kernels”, which have been transplanted from higher worlds, in order that in them they may fulfil their tasks.’ These ‘tasks’, expressing through the self, mediated by the soul, and materialised by the body, usually motivate us unconsciously. In this region, if consciousness remains, we know ourselves as the whole cosmos of sun, moon, planets, and stars; as all beings, creatures and kingdoms. When we look at these through our physical eyes, we are looking at our own wholeness. The ‘Life kernel’ is the doorway to other ‘cosmic beings’. ‘The life between death and a new birth, and is really a living through the world of stars: but this means, through the spirit of the world of stars,’ not the physical stars. See What Happens When I Die?

Coming back to earth

Having made this ascent to the innermost of our nature, the essence of the whole cosmos, there now comes for most of us, a return to a fresh physical experience.

There awakens a ‘desire’ or direction, to perfect one’s own being and that of the earth. ‘Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven,’ is an impulse from this region. Depending upon what fruits were brought to each region, this descent enables certain things, qualities or strengths to be ‘claimed’ from each level of our being. A new spiritual ‘seed’ or ‘germ’ is fashioned which will play its part in fashioning our body. The essence of the future personality chooses the hereditary line and its parents. Steiner says the parents provide a seed bed of physical substance, impregnated with their own characteristics of body and psyche. At conception, the material substance is broken down into the germinal level of chaos, in which all physical form is dissolved. The spirit ‘germ’ of the new being takes hold of this.

At birth the ‘germ’ of the future personality and body, is clothed with physical substance drawn from the parents, along with inherited temperamental qualities. Working with these as materials is the essence of the past life and death experience. This spiritual impulse, takes the ‘model’ given by the parents, and works into it the pattern it brings from its central experience. So there comes into being, through life and death, another life upon the earth.

Just as there was a reliving of life at death, so just prior to birth there is a reliving of death. ‘He sees a tableau which this time displays all the hindrances he must remove, if his evolution is to make further progress. And what he sees becomes the starting point of forces that he must carry with him into a new life.  See Life and Death; Steiner Life after death

Another conversation with a dead friend provided the following information.

I am in process of creating a new life. But this is something like a work of art, not however, as we think of it with brush and paint. I felt it like a constant rise and fall of possibilities and forms that I, the Spirit I, was giving birth to. As one rose it expressed a certain quality, and this was in some way compared, or its harmonic compared, with all that existed in the changing spiritual and physical world. There was as yet no total interface between what was being created in this way, and what was expressed by the changing worlds. So I was gradually sifting the emphasis of all it contained from life experience and its possible future connections with physical life, moving toward a harmonic unity. It was explained to me that the unity would be a real connection with time, place, parents and the life that would emerge from them. When that harmonic unity was made the new life would begin.

Useful Questions and Hints:

Have I dreamt of any dead person?

How did I react to the dream?

Can I accept that we have an inner world?

See Inner World – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Questions

 

Creativity – Doorway to the Wonderful Fire

While staying in London with one of my sons I had the following strange dream and experience. In the dream I was a young man living in Italy. The surroundings gave me the impression of it being during a period several hundred years ago. I was walking through the streets of a town. As I did so I was thinking about the liver disease I had and about my plans to move to another town where a learned doctor lived that specialised in liver complaints. I wanted to not only be his patient but also his student, to learn what he knew about liver illnesses.

As I walked I started to sing Ave Maria – I believe it is Gounod’s version. My singing was beautiful, exhibiting wonderful voice control and expression of emotion. I am not sure of the sequence of this but there was a building I was looking at. People wanted to have the building restored but could not raise the money. So I had painted a huge mural on the building depicting scaffolding covering the house. This attracted public attention and interest in the house, and so money was raised. I realised that I was not just an artist but also an architect and musician.

It was on this thought, and with Ave Maria still sounding its lovely quality that I realised I was dreaming and became awake enough to observe and think about what was happening. I realised that as a musician I had very great ability as a composer, and decided to compose an ‘Ode to Mozart’. No sooner had I decided this than the music poured through my consciousness. So much so I heard it as if listening to an orchestra or record. The music soared and moved in a wonderful expression of human vision and transcendence. As this occurred I could observe the process of creativity or composition, which was spontaneous to an extraordinary degree. It appeared that by asking for or seeking the composition I had opened a window in my mind. Through it I could observe a huge and unlimited sea of mind or consciousness. In it was all that has ever existed, merged and yet distinct. Every human talent and thought was in it alive and vital. My ‘Ode to Mozart’ drew on this unfathomed depth of being. I knew as I observed this that the music itself, although precise and clear and Mozart’s own work, proclaimed the human ability to leap beyond boundaries into this immense and apparently limitless world of experience – to allow the mind to soar and fly, to move beyond its own conceptions and rejoice.

I wanted to test this amazing ability and asked the huge mind how I could compose ‘modern’ music. What followed was like being instructed. The thoughts arose as if I were being told, that music was a reflection of basic life processes. Using the example of a simple life form in the beginning of evolution, such as a single celled creature or a crystal, this was like one note sounding over and over. After doing this over and over for infinite repetition, the process of life stumbles upon or manages a slight change in itself. This is when the single celled creature develops other attributes and moves toward multiplicity of cells. This would be like the playing of different notes over and over. Then maybe another basic process has learned to play three different notes, and if these two meet they play a more complex music together.

To this meeting was added theme upon theme until an orchestral music was built up, and I was told, “This is your body, with its many different processes playing together.” Or it could be likened to society in which so many opposing ‘themes’ in the end form a whole.

Creative Dreaming and Problem Solving

Few dreams are, by themselves, problem solving or creative – even so, most dreams, especially nightmares, are attempts to deal with our psychological or spiritual problems. The few exceptions are usually very clear. Also, when they occur, the problem solving can apply to a wide range of human experience. For instance the problem might be a personal or psychological one; it might be a mathematical problem, or insight that produced a creative idea, thus solving a problem to do with questions being asked or something being attempted. These first two examples illustrate how a dream can resolve a psychological problem.

Example: ‘My mother in law died of cancer. I had watched the whole progression of her illness, and was very upset by her death. Shortly after she died the relatives gathered and began to sort through her belongings to share them out. That was the climax of my upset and distress, and I didn’t want any part of this sorting and taking her things. That night I dreamt I was in a room with all the relatives. They were sorting her things, and I felt my waking distress. Then my mother in law came into the room. She was very real and seemed happy. She said for me not to be upset as she didn’t at all mind her relatives taking her things. When I woke from the dream all the anxiety and upset had disappeared. It never returned.’ Told to author during a talk given to The Housewives Register in Ilfracombe.

Example: I was lying in my bed and a man was beside me. Gradually he got older and older until he was dead. Then he became a skeleton in bed beside me. I felt horrible. When I woke there was still some difficult feelings but these went. I realised that things, emotions, troubling me for ages had all been cleared. Previously at church the vicar had talked about the healing of forgiveness, and in some way this had happened while I was dreaming. Now, quite a time after the dream I am still in the state of ease. Stephanie – Chester

Although in any collection of dreams such clear cut problem solving is fairly rare, nevertheless, the basic function in dreams appears to be problem solving. The proof of this lies in research done in dream withdrawal. As explained in the entry science sleep and dreams, subjects are woke as they begin to dream, therefore denying them dreams. This quickly leads to disorientation and breakdown of normal mental functioning. Therefore, a lot of problem solving is occurring in dreams even though it may not be as obvious as the example.

Example: I can see, from my past behaviour, I have always needed something to fight. I create a fear, then struggled to combat it. If I haven’t got a problem I will create one. I get a feeling of strength from solving problems. I want to be a hero.

This feature of dreaming can be enhanced to a marked degree by processing dreams and arriving at insights into the information they contain. This enables old problems to be cleared and new information and attitudes to be brought into use more quickly. Through such active work one becomes aware of the Self, which Carl Jung describes as a Core, but we might think of it as a synthesis of all our experience and being. Gaining insight and allowing the Self entrance into our waking affairs, as M. L. Von Franz says in Man and His Symbols, gradually produces ‘a wider and more mature personality’ which ‘emerges, and by degrees becomes effective and even visible to others.’ This is of course a very subjective event, yet it has obvious practical results. The person arrives at a greater social connectivity through it, and this usually results in marked changes in the opportunities life presents them. See Street Wisdom; Techniques for Exploring your Dreams

The function of dreams may well be described as an effort on the part of our life process, to support, augment and help to mature waking consciousness. A study of dreams suggests that the creative forces which are behind the growth of our body, are also inextricably connected with psychological development. In fact, when the process of physical growth stops, the psychological growth continues. If this is thwarted in any way, it leads to frustration, physical tension, and psychosomatic, and eventually, physical illness. The integration of experience which dreams are always attempting, if successful, cannot help but lead to personal growth. But it is often frozen by the individual avoiding the ‘growing pains’, or the discomfort of breaking through old concepts and beliefs. See Individuation

Where there is any attempt on the part of our conscious personality to cooperate with this, the creative aspect of dreaming emerges. In fact, anything we are deeply involved in, challenged by, or attempting, we will dream about in a creative way. Not only have communities like the American Indians used dreams in this manner – to find better hunting; solve community problems; find a sense of personal life direction – but scientists, writers, designers, and thousands of lay people have found very real information in dreams. After all, through dreams we have personal use of the greatest computer ever produced in the history of the world – the human brain. But if we are so afraid of our emotional responses, our creative self is made inactive.

Example: Then the throat pain became unbearable. I investigated it and I became aware of doom. If I didn’t fight it, doom would take over. I was weary of fighting it so I let doom take over and sank into the doom and it was then that I found myself at the foot of the great being and total acceptance of my life. Spontaneously, before I knew it I was offering everything as a sacrifice, including past mistakes and cock-ups, and that I had to do this. And then there were the images again of clefts: the earth, female genitals, undersea-ocean crusts opening and something, as yet formless, emerging. This, I suspect, is my creativity in the world. Sylvia

In Genesis 41, the story of Pharaoh’s dream is told – the seven fat cows and the seven thin cows. This dream was creative in that with Joseph’s interpretation it resolved a national situation where famine followed years of plenty. It may very well be an example of gathered information on the history of Egypt being in the mind of Pharaoh, and the dream putting it together in a problem solving way. See: The dream process as computer; Prayer and Dream Interpretation.

1. In the June 27, 1964, edition of the San Francisco Chronicle, golfer Jack Nicklaus described how he had fallen into a bad slump. Despite intensive analysis of what could be wrong, he continued to do poorly. He then experienced a dream in which he was holding his golf club differently and swinging perfectly. He told the newspaper reporter, ‘When I came to the course yesterday morning, I tried it the way I did in my dream and it worked. … I feel kind of foolish admitting it, but it really happened in a dream.’ After the dream, his scores improved rapidly.
2. Dana Cushing, an acquaintance of mine from Boston, has made a hobby of riding old-fashioned, high-wheeled bicycles. After he bought his first one, he spent about three months repairing it. During this interval, Dana had several dreams in which he joyously rode this velocipede. He was surprised by this because he had never actually ridden one in his waking life. When the repairs were finished, Dana discovered that he was able to successfully ride his velocipede on his very first attempt. It seemed as if the ‘practice’ sessions in his dreams had enabled him to achieve waking mastery of the complicated balancing skills necessary for such a performance.
3. From Oxford Book Of Dreams – Before the Coronation [of King Edward VII] I had a remarkable dream. The State coach had to pass through the Arch at the Horse Guards on the way to Westminster Abbey. I dreamed that it stuck in the Arch, and that some of the Life Guards on duty were compelled to hew off the Crown upon the coach before it could be freed. When I told the Crown Equerry, Colonel Ewart, he laughed and said, ‘What do dreams matter?’ ‘At all events,’ I replied, ‘let us have the coach and Arch measured.’ So this was done, and, to my astonishment, we found that the Arch was nearly two feet too low to allow the coach to pass through. I returned to Colonel Ewart in triumph, and said, ‘What do you think of dreams now?’ ‘I think it’s damned fortunate you had one,’ he replied. It appears that the State coach had not been driven through the Arch for some time, and that the level of the road had since been raised during repairs. So I am not sorry that my dinner disagreed with me that night; and I only wish all nightmares were as useful. William Cavendish-Bentinck, Duke Of Portland, Men, Women and Things, 1937
4. William Blake dreamt his brother showed him a new way of engraving copper. Blake used the method successfully.
5. Otto Loewi dreamt of how to prove that nervous impulses were chemical rather than electrical. This led to his Nobel Prize.
6. Frederich Kekule tried for years to define the structure of benzene. He dreamt of a snake with its tail in its mouth, and woke to realise this explained the molecular formation of the Benzene ring. He was so impressed he urged colleagues, ‘Gentlemen, learn to dream.’
7. Hilprecht had an amazing dream of the connection between two pieces of agate which enabled him to translate an ancient Babylonian inscription.
8. Elias Howe faced the problem of how to produce an effective sewing machine. The major difficulty was the needle. He dreamt of natives shaking spears with holes in their points. This led to the invention of the Singer Sewing machine.
9. Robert Louis Stevenson claims to have dreamt the plot of many of his stories.
10. Albert Einstein said that during adolescence he dreamt he was riding a sledge. It went faster and faster until it reached the speed of light. The stars began to change into amazing patterns and colours, dazzling and beautiful. His meditation on that dream throughout the years led to the Theory of Relativity.
11. Parkinson, a Bell Laboratory engineer, in 1940. He was attempting to develop an automatic level recorder to improve the accuracy of measurements in telephone transmission. In his dream, he was with an anti-aircraft crew in a gun pit. One of the guns brought down an airplane with every shot. One of the crew members beckoned Parkinson to come closer to the gun and pointed to the exposed end. To Parkinson’s surprise, he saw that the control potentiometer of his level recorder was mounted there. From research based upon Parkinson’s dream, the first all-electric gun director evolved and became known as the M-9 electrical analogue computer. The M-9 was the precursor of guidance systems for later antiaircraft and anti ballistic missiles.

To approach your dreams in order to discover their creativity, first decide what problematical or creative aspect of your life needs ‘dream power’. Define what you have already learned or know about the problem. Write it down, and from this clarify what it is you want more insight into. If this breaks down into several issues, choose one at a time. Think about the issue and pursue it as much as you can while awake. Read about it, ask people’s opinions, gather information. This is all data for the dream process. If the question still needs further insight, before going to sleep, imagine you are putting the question to your internal store of wisdom, computer, power centre, or whatever image feels right. For some people an old being who is neither exclusively man or woman is a working image.

In the morning note down whatever dream you remember. It does not matter if the dream does not appear to deal with the question and it can simple be an image like a photograph. Elias Howe’s native spears were an outlandish image, but nevertheless contained the information he needed. Investigate the dream using the techniques given in the entry Techniques for Exploring your Dreams. Some problems take time to define, so use the process until there is a resolution. If it is a major life problem, it may take a year or so. After all, some resolutions need restructuring of the personality, because the problem cannot disappear while we still have the same attitudes and fears. See: Avoid Being Victims; secret of the universe dreams.