Author Archive

Carrying the dream forward

Imagine yourself in the dream and continue it as a fantasy or daydream. Consider what it is that troubles you or is not what you want in your dream. Now take time to think how you would alter it and how to have an ending that would satisfy you. Not, in your imagination enter your dream and alter the dream in any way that satisfies. Experiment with it, play with it, until you find a fuller sense of self expression. It is very important to note whether any anger or hostility is in the dream but not fully expressed. If so, let yourself imagine a full expression of the anger. It may be that as this is practised more anger is openly expressed in subsequent dreams. This is healthy, allowing such feelings to be vented and redirected into satisfying ways, individually and socially. In doing this do not ignore any feelings of resistance, pleasure or anxiety.

Satisfaction occurs only as we learn to acknowledge and integrate resistances and anxieties into what we express. This is a very important step. It gradually changes those of our habits which trap us in lack of satisfaction, poor creativity or inability to resolve problems.

These are very important steps. They gradually change those of our habits that trap us in lack of satisfaction, poor creativity or inability to resolve problems.

Example: When my husband died, for quite a few times I had this funny dream. I was walking along a field and saw a lot of sheep guiding me, and I followed them. Suddenly they disappeared into a cave. I went in the cave and a row of mummies were there. One was wearing a medallion on a chain round its neck. The dream recurred quite often. One day Tony came to me and I told him the dream. He asked me to sit in a chair and relax, which I did. Then he said for me to go to the cave, and in my relaxed state I went and walked to the mummy with the medallion. Then he said take off the bandage from the top. As I unwound it the face of my husband was uncovered. I screamed and screamed and came out of the relaxation. Tony then said now let him go. I have never had that dream since. Betty E.

Business and Dreams

Although the world of business and the world of dreams are often considered to be incompatible, this is not so. Once one realises that dreams may be the ‘printout’ of the most shrewd and capable computer we have access to, we can see them as a source of useful information.

If you are in business, there is information in your memory, along with considered projects, questions about problem areas, which have never been, and perhaps cannot be put on a computer. Also, there is no computer program outside your own mind that can handle and manipulate all the variables, the integrating of different information sources – written words, feeling hunches, spoken information, personal observation and experience – and then sift through and explore different combinations, and reach into pure creativity by leaping into the new.

Dreams should not be seen as oracles, but if you take their information into account along with your other sources, you will find them a real addition to your business equipment. See: creativity and problem solving dreams.

As for why this is a practical possibility a little information may help to clarify.

Our brain is segmented into what has been defined as three levels. The base level we share in common with reptiles and this deals with our flight and fight, habitual behaviour and sexual impulse.

The level above that is called the mammalian brain, and its technical name is the Limbic System. This is wrapped around the reptilian brain, and is something we share with other mammals such as cats, dogs and horses. It developed about 60 million years ago and deals with your emotions, feelings responses to people and events, the subtler inner life you feel in love and sex, problem solving, and it provides a deep wisdom about social and individual relationships. Dreams often use mammals or apes to portray the influence in your life of this part of your unconscious drives and intuitions.

The action of this brain is largely unconscious, but it does express its enormous insight into people, their body language, social situations, as feelings, hunches and dreams.

So here is one of the aspects of our mental functioning that greatly enlarges our waking assessment of a person or a situation.

There is also a function I have named mega-awareness. It is a mental activity found more often in dreams than in waking. It is an ability the mind has to scan enormous amounts of information at the same moment. We are doing it all the time when we speak and listen to replies. In a flash we scan for possible meanings of the words and the context of them. It happens so fast we usually miss what is happening. But our mind can do that with the millions of bits of information we have gathered, even those bits seen or heard out of the ‘corner of our eye’ so to speak.

What megawareness does is to summarize what it scans, putting together unrelated bits of information in new and creative ways, and our dreams are a major way these insights are expressed. This function can be greatly enhanced by actually pursuing a question and watching for a ‘felt’ or dreamt response. But sometimes the process present things we haven’t asked for because they are relevant to the important situations we face.

See: Using Your Intuition; creativity and problem solving dreams.

Use the body to discover dream power

The brain sends impulses to all the muscles to act on the movements we are making while in the dream. This is observable when we wake ourselves by thrashing about in bed, or kicking and shouting. A part of the brain inhibits these movements while we sleep.

The important factor is that a dream is more than a set of images and emotions, it is also frequently a powerful physical activity and self expression. If we explore a dream sitting quietly talking to a friend, even if we allow emotions to surface, we may miss important aspects of our dream process. Through physical movement the dream process releases tensions and deeply buried memories that are stored in our body. These do not release and heal by simply talking about them.

It is often enough to realise this aspect of dream exploration for such spontaneous movements to emerge when necessary. By being aware of the body’s need to occasionally be involved in expression of dream content, we may catch the cues and let these develop. Frequently all you need to do is to let the body doodle or fantasise while exploring a dream. Jung suggested this technique for times when the person was stuck in intellectual speculation. To practice it you can take a dream image and let the hands spontaneously doodle, watching what is gradually mimed or expressed. When you have gained skill doing this, let the whole body take part in it. This can unfold aspects of dreams that the other approaches might no help with. A fuller description of this process is contained in my book Liberating the Body.

Black Magic, Evil and Dreams

Although thorough investigation of claimed injury or death attributed to black magic has shown the real cause to be malicious aggression or murder, scientific research into the deaths of people who were said to have died as the result of a curse or a voodoo ritual, has shown the victims to have died of fear.

Death through fear is fairly common, and is reported by some doctors in connection with surgical operations, especially in the past. In 1887 Dr. Crile had watched helpless as his friend, William Lyndman died of shock after amputation of both legs. My uncle also died of the shock of losing his arm. My uncle, like William had lost little blood, and no vital organs were injured. Crile went on to develop anaesthesia and blood transfusion to counteract death through shock. But some forms of shock appeared to be outside any physical cause. In 1898 Crile was on an army transporter off Cuba and examined a young officer who was delirious with fear due to facing his first battle. He was as deep in shock as if his legs had been crushed by a wagon as William Lyndman’s had. This led Crile to become interested in exopthalmic goitre, an illness which produces a similar type of anxiety condition. Despite the use of anaesthetics, no one had successfully operated on such a goitre condition. Every patient died. Crile discovered why when he attempted such an operation in 1905.

While under anaesthesia the patients heart rate rose to 218 and the body temperature rose to a dangerous level. Despite no physical injury or infection, the patient died that night with a temperature of 109.6 F. Crile realised from his previous observations that it was fear which had killed the patient. Therefore he told his next patient, a young woman who needed the goitre operation, that he was going to give her a simple inhalation treatment. When she breathed in the anaesthetic, she therefore thought she was having a ‘treatment’ not an operation. She was the first person to survive the operation for exopthalmic goitre. Crile called it “stealing the goitre”, and was so impressed by the influence of emotion on the body he constantly stressed the importance of self control, and taught that calmness is strength.

Crile’s experience illustrates what can occur through threat of a curse or black magic. In our dreams we often portray something we deeply fear as an evil influence or person, or as an awful monster or ghost. Such fears usually relate to our own urges, such as anger or sexuality, but can be about any urge or thought that we have been led to feel is not permissible, or downright evil. A demonic figure or environment might also be connected with very early babyhood experiences. The pain of birth is often depicted as hell or demonic influence in our dream symbolism. On exploring dreams that have a very evident evil force or devil in them, what is discovered is that the ‘evil’ is actually the person’s own repressed or hurt sexuality or urges. See: evil; witchcraft; The Con About Evil.

Because the unconscious will use any belief system or cultural symbols we have absorbed to express a theme, the powerful images of witches or evil characters we see on films or in fiction are often used to depict important experiences. For example a dream in which a spell or curse is placed on one can portray the influence a painful experience has left on ones emotions. If you had been deeply hurt while in your mother’s arms, your unconscious would equate pain with being held close by a woman. This ‘cross wiring’ of associations could meaningfully be portrayed as a ‘spell’ which makes one feel frightened in the apparently loving situation. See Victims; Dream Like a Computer Game; spell.

Bio-feedback

Observing internal changes is not new to the twentieth century. Practitioners of Eastern and Christian meditation techniques have been using it for centuries. They observed changes in respiration, heartbeat, and states of consciousness, and therefore had an immediate personal feedback concerning what influence their meditation or breath-control was having. They could thereby reinforce or modify it.

Using electronic equipment to give feedback allowed external observers to be sure of what changes were being produced in the body and mind of the subject. It also enables people who have not spent years in meditation practices and the development of self observational techniques to make changes in their mood and body much more quickly because of the feedback given. In essence this allows the subject to gradually gain a greater degree of voluntary control over their usually involuntary internal processes such as temperature, heartbeat and mental states. In recent years instruments and techniques have been developed that allow epileptics to reduce attacks. That means you are no longer a victim of your own unconscious responses. See Victim.

The equipment allows the subject to focus on a particular internal response, such as heartbeat or brain patterns. Using various techniques such as imagery or relaxation, the subject can be aware, through a tone, or a signal on a screen, how well they are reducing tension, slowing heartbeat, or whatever they are aiming to do. When the signal shows they are succeeding this results in a positive feedback that enhances their performance by pointing out what approach is working. Therefore bio-feedback devices are training devices that can help people learn skills connected with mental and physical control.

This modern approach to bio-feedback has its roots in the 1940’s, but it did not gain recognition until nearly twenty years later. Neal E. Miller and Leo DiCara discovered that by using a means of electrical stimulation to the pleasure centre in the brain of laboratory rats, the rats could be trained to do extraordinary feats like decrease their heart rate at will – dilate the blood vessels of one ear more than the opposite ear, or control the rate of urine formed in their kidneys. Miller was regarded at the time as one of the world’s leading authorities on animal learning abilities from his 40 years of work in the field.

Miller and DiCara concluded that because people are smarter than rats, and already have developed voluntary control over some functions, they should be able to learn such skills more easily. His reasoning was that through such techniques humans might be able to control blood pressure, even out irregular heartbeat, release spastic colon, deal with tension, without the use of drugs.

Miller and DiCara’s work was not replicated by others. But unfortunately tests with humans started before this had a negative effect on further research. At the National Institute on Ageing in Baltimore USA, Bernard Engel and Theodore Weiss had found in the late 60’s that people who suffered from epilepsy, when linked to a machine which provided visual and auditory signals were able to control the symptoms which usually led to an epileptic fit. In this way they managed to reduce the number of epileptic attacks they suffered.

Joe Kamiya of the University of Chicago worked to provide another landmark. Using subjects who had no background of mental training, Kamiya monitored their brain activity with an EEG machine, and had the subjects guess whether they were producing the alpha waves indicating relaxation. If the subject guessed correctly, Kamiya would tell them. This led to a rapid increase in the ability of the subject to produce alpha waves at will. Instead of his verbal feedback, Kamiya later built the machine to produce a tone when alpha rhythm occurred. Subjects then quickly learned that a relaxed and empty mind would produce the tone, and attempting to think about a problem would shut the tone off.

Kamiya’s experiments were the first to show how humans can learn to control internal physical and mental states. It was therefore hoped that the altered state of mind and body which produces alpha rhythms could be clearly defined. However, further experiments showed that alpha could arise in other situations than those of quiescent rest. So there has been no clear definition.

The main use of bio-feedback is in helping subjects change behaviour patterns which have a physiological basis. Of course this influences the mind and emotions through the body-mind unity. See: the slow breath; example in Buddhism and dreams; dream yoga; yoga and dreams.

In connection with dreams, the act of dreaming can itself be seen as a form of bio-feedback. Even the most modern of dream theories suggest that although dreams arise from a chaotic aspect of brain functioning during sleep, the content of dreams is still directed by factors of body, memories and personal idiosyncrasies. Other investigators such as Vasily Kasatkin have found evidence for dreams directly depicting physiological processes. Dreams can therefore be thought of as having the possibility of giving direct feedback on what is occurring in ones body and deeper levels of consciousness. When they do this they are a means of bio-feedback. But I see dreams originate from our core self – see See: the two powers; body dreams; Kasatkin, Vasily.

The vast majority of dreams however, when investigated are seen to be giving very full feedback on the structure and processes of ones identity, along with ones mental and emotional processes. Particularly they display the functioning of the self-regulatory processes active in the psyche. By working with a dream and its imagery, one gains some degree of ability to enter into the self-regulatory process and aid its functioning. For instance if one gains from a dream the insight that ones drive for love is constantly thwarted by fear of being abandoned, there is the possibility of working with that fear and altering ones relationship with it. It is from this type of action that we can be sure dreams offer a useful form of bio-feedback. (See the examples in such features as active imagination and compensation theory. See the features on what we need to remember about dreaming; self-regulation and fantasy, compensation theory, and biological dream theory.)

Considering the state of modern electronics in giving feedback on what the body and brain are doing, and what state ones ‘identity’ or sense of self might be in, dreams are by far the most subtle of feedback methods if one learns how to use them. The range of areas dreams comment on is extraordinary. But, perhaps because of the confused and injured state dreams portray as being the condition of most people’s psyche, the vast majority of dreams are about the history of hurt and fears we carry from childhood and undealt with trauma in adult life. See: processing dreams.

Birth Dreams and ones Natal Experience

Few people who have not re-experienced it for themselves, can believe, or comprehend, the enormous influence ones birth has upon personal development and adult behaviour and feelings. Many images in dreams link directly to the influences/memories still alive within us relating to our birth. Being in a tight place and struggling to escape, being under water without breathing, being strangled, crawling through a tunnel, coming out of a pool of water, difficulty in breathing – may all relate to birth experiences. See: active imagination.

The experience of being in the womb and of being born lie at the very foundation of all we learn and accomplish in the further years of our growth. The way we react to that earliest of life dramas defines the way we react to later situations. I am not saying such reactions emerge from a self-aware centre in the baby – far from it, but like any other mammal or living creature, we as a baby can learn conditioned reflexes to given situations. We can and do make a sort of ‘life decision’ about things, a decision in the form of a massive feeling response.

So, if for instance the emergence into life outside the womb is difficult and without any compensation of loving contact and welcome, we might very well have a deep feeling of withdrawal, of not wanting to be ‘here’ in the external world. In later life this will be experienced as difficulty in wanting to be involved in everyday life or other people.

The psychoanalyst Nandor Fodor has written extensively about the subject of birth dreams, and gives the example of a woman who was born with the umbilical cord wrapped around her neck, and in adult life frequently dreamt of being strangled. Also an example is quoted of a person who received a head injury during birth, and in adult life frequently dreamt of being scalped.

Such stories are of course not definite evidence for the influence of birth experience in later life. But I believe it is something that is very important to consider in any attempt to understand ones adult behaviour or tendencies. I myself was born two months premature, at a time when there was no intensive care in hospitals for such babies. My recovered memories of that experience, gained from working with dreams, are intense and have convinced me that enormous personal difficulties regarding relationship with people and with meeting opportunity in life, have their roots in my premature birth. My memories revealed to me that being born so early left me feeling physically and psychologically inadequate to relate to and deal with independent life. My digestive system was immature, as were my breathing organs. My vulnerability caused my mother anxiety, leading to a lack of bonding between us. In my condition I needed months of being held close to her body and bathed in feelings of confidence and care. Instead of that I felt deeply anxious and alone. My lack of psychological readiness to be in the world also meant that I had an inner feeling of not being as capable as most of my peers. The constant desire to be back in the womb remained into adult life. I didn’t know that my interest in meditation and the unconscious was in fact a desire to find the ‘heaven’ of life in the womb again. This fixation of delving deeper into my inner life also caused a lack of understanding of motives that led other people to grasp opportunity in external life. In fact external life didn’t mean much at all to me. The disruption this caused in achievement and in feeling a part of everyday social interaction has been enormous. Now, seeing the extraordinarily premature babies who are kept alive, I cannot help but feel pity for what they will face as adults.

Whatever it is we may have lost during our birth, or whatever gained in the way of painful or disruptive decisions and conditioned reflexes, our dreams try to lead us back to the Garden of Eden that was our life in the womb. They try to recreate the scene of the expulsion from Eden, so we can understand and perhaps grow beyond the afflictions gained at that time. To lead us back to this recovery of our lost selfhood or wholeness, our dreams represent our story in symbols or in a sort of personal mythology. As I have explained in the feature active imagination, finding ones way through the imagery back to direct meeting with oneself as the baby, needs certain skills to be learnt and practised. Without these skills, or the help of someone who can introduce us to the skills, we may become lost in the shifting world or imagery and imagination, where resistances to meeting our pain play with us in a shadow world of truths disguised in dream landscapes and imagery.

Van de Castle quotes the description of Jane English, a physicist who writes about her dreams and how they helped her uncover the influence of her caesarean birth on her life – (her book is Different Doorway: Adventures of a Caesarean Birth.) Jane’s dreams were not direct expressions of a birth situation, but held within the symbols the feelings and sense of being overwhelmed that when met and allowed more fully into consciousness, led to the direct insights into her birth.

There appear to be several reason why dreams do not directly represent such early experiences and experience resistances. One is that they have never been thought about, or been a part of the refined imagery and concepts which arise as we learn language. Another is that they are usually intense body and feelings experiences, and to truly remember or represent them, needs us to actually feel emotions and physical sensation at that intensity again – something few adults are willing to do. Such memories are not neatly separated off from our personality and labelled ‘birth memories’. They usually arise as intense emotional reactions which we fully identify with and do not necessarily see as having to do with anything more than present experience. Many a relationship has foundered because the powerful emotional response in a marriage has not been seen as relevant to birth rather than to a problem in the marriage.

A report of a man experiencing the trauma of premature birth

The man was born prematurely in the 1930’s, before great efforts were made to care for such babies.

so this premature baby was thrown aside after its umbilical cord was cut and the baby was not breathing. This led to the infant meeting death, but fortunately his grandmother took hold of his body and bathed it in hit and cold water and his breathing started.

“I am so alone. Even when someone loves me I can’t feel it. I want to change. I don’t want to keep hurting. My wife feels like she is feeling like she isn’t there at an emotional level. But that is the feeling world I have lived in – who is there for me? I was part of something and I lost it. I was part of something that was good, and I lost it. I was a part of a woman and I lost her. I was rejected. Now I face this struggle just to exist, just to breath, just to be. This feeling of life being a terrible struggle just to keep going has pervaded me all my life. I’ve got to struggle to exist just to keep alive. Got to struggle just to keep alive! GOT TO STRUGGLE TO EXIST – JUST TO KEEP ALIVE! GOT TO STRUGGLE BECAUSE THERE’S NOTHING THERE. I WANT SOMETHING TO HOLD ONTO. I’VE GOT TO STRUGGLE JUST TO KEEP ALIVE.

I cry like a baby. The question burns in me – Why is life like this? I cry again. Then I realise that at first when I was born I was too small and undeveloped even to be able to cry properly, so I couldn’t let out my misery. It is such a relief to cry now and be understood, to have known what I felt at that terrible time.

I am aware of my connection with my stream of life having been broken – the umbilical cord. What I realise as the adult watching this, is that because of its proximity to the genitals, there is an unconscious connection made between the genitals and the connection I seek to sustain my life. So even as a baby I am reaching for that connection with my genitals. I want to be fed. I attempt to reconnect through my genitals, but the pain of the separation is so acute even when I do try in adulthood through sex, the pain of the separation turns me back. This is the story of the Garden of Eden. I was in the garden and was cast out. Now when I attempt to return, an angel with a burning sword turns me back. Not only was it painful every time I attempted reconnection/sex, but I had the unconscious expectation to be fed, to be nourished. Instead of that every time I had sex I felt cheated, deceived and betrayed. I was not fed, but deeply sucked dry of what small nourishment I had managed to build up. I wasn’t fed, I was fed upon by a predator. Each sexual act was a betrayal, a predation, and a torturous pain. Yet I had to find my way to the garden again, because there lay the secret of my genesis and myself. So, I would return, to be wounded once more. It is even painful to look back on those years of misery now. Why is life so painful?”

When you experiences a dream which may relate to your birth, one of the most helpful tool’s to use in exploring the deeper levels of the dream associations is fantasy or active imagination. Skill in using fantasy can help you create an environment in which the spontaneous processes of the psyche are set free, enough at least to move beyond the boundaries of common experience and present the strange, awful, wonderful world of babyhood. See Processing Dreams – Opening to Life

In doing this certain basic psycho-physical facts are worth remembering.

Firstly the self regulatory process underlying the fact that your body and mind are still functioning without your conscious effort, holds in it the continuous move to heal whatever hurts you experienced. It does this by pushing those experiences toward your conscious awareness in any way it can. The depressed feelings, psychosomatic body pains, irrational reaction we have to some situations, and of course the strange and sometimes frightening dreams we experience, are all ways this process attempts to make conscious what was hidden.

Secondly, the difficulties we need to deal with are all lined up just beneath conscious awareness, like a queue behind a closed door waiting to come through.

Thirdly, the reason things do not surface, become known and resolved is because we resist them. These resistances are obvious and need to be meet for healing to take place. Dreamers wake with terror from a nightmare for instance and desire nothing more than to blot it out from their feelings. The nightmare is an attempt to make conscious the intense feelings from a trauma, but we resist this because we have not learned the ability to witness such feelings and personal emotions without fear. Another resistance is the automatic withdrawal from pain. Just as we automatically draw our hand away from a hot surface, so we draw our awareness away from a painful memory. The methods we use are many – using redirected attention, as when we rush to entertainment, alcohol, talking with friends, nicotine, breath holding, and so on.

Such resistances are the main reason we do not find healing through dreaming, even though dreams are constantly trying to heal us. Of course another one seen in massive number of dreams is fear. Fear acts just like pain to make us avoid/resist the action of dreams.

So recognising these processes in oneself is the first step to self discovery. See: Integration – Meeting yourself – active imagination; self regulation fantasy and dreaming; Life’s Little Secrets; fundamental processes; self regulation; lifestream – A Psychotherapeutic Experience of Premature Birth

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Biological Dream Theory

In his book Dreams and Nightmares, (Pelican 1954) J. A. Hadfield puts forward what he calls a Biological Theory of Dreams. He says the function of dreams is that by reproducing difficult or unsolved life situations or experiences, the dream aids towards a solving or resolution of the problems. He gives the example of a man climbing a cliff who slips fractionally. He then may dream of actually falling and waking terrified. Subsequently the dream recurs, but in each the dreamer tries out a different behaviour, such as clasping for a branch, until he manages to act appropriately to avert the disaster. Hadfield sums up by saying dreams stand in the place of experience. They make us relive areas of anxious or difficult experience. They thus help problem solving. But they not only look back at past behaviour, they act just like thinking in considering future plans and needs.

Adrian Morrison’s findings with animal dreams, (see movements during sleep) opens the possibility that practicing and developing skills and strategies may be the function dreams performed in early animals. They may enable us to economically learn from experience, and to play with experience in untidy or irrational ways. This ‘untidiness’ enables experience to be juxtapositioned in so many ways that it enables useful new behaviour to arise from the occasional creative juxtapositioning. See: Evans, Christopher.

Hadfield also emphasises a slightly different aspect of the compensatory process in dreams than Jung, although there is great similarity. He writes in Dreams and Nightmares, ‘If a branch of a tree is cut, new shoots spring out; if you injure your hand, all the forces of the blood are mobilised until that wound is healed and you are made whole. It is a law of nature. So it is psychologically: every individual has potentialities in his nature, all of which are not merely seeking their own individual ends, but each and all of which serve the functions of the personality as a whole. Our personality as a whole, like every organism, is working towards its own fulfilment.’

He connects this even more directly with the overall self-regulatory physical processes in saying ‘There is in the psyche an automatic movement toward readjustment, towards an equilibrium, toward a restoration of the balance of our personality. This automatic adaptation of the organism is one of the main functions of the dream as indeed it is of bodily functions and of the personality as a whole. This idea need not cause us much concern for this automatic self-regulating process is a well known phenomenon in Physics and Physiology. The function of compensation which Jung has emphasised appears to be one of the means by which this automatic adaptation takes place, for the expression of repressed tendencies has the effect of getting rid of conflict in the personality. For the time being, it is true, the release may make the conflict more acute as the repressed emotions emerge, and we have violent dreams from which we wake with a start. But by this means, the balance of our personality is restored.’

The difference between Jung and Hadfield is that Hadfield is saying the dream is not merely ‘compensating’ for something the conscious personality is doing but is being purposive in pushing toward healing or growth. As with the physical process of self-regulation, which overall supports growth and stability, this psychological process in dreams appears to have much the same function. See Life’s Little Secrets and LifeStream.

One might argue that any growth arising from the self-regulatory process might come spontaneously from the integration of experience. Caron Kent, in his book The Puzzled Body, argues that in fact the internal process of adjustment presses for growth. I believe that the unexpressed potential for growth is both physical and psychological, and if it is not fulfilled, manifests as an internal sense of dissatisfaction. The body and the mind therefore drive to find a fuller measure of satisfaction as well as they can. Because the area of dreams is so plastic and formative, this is exactly the area that these often subtle and deeply unconscious urges toward growth can manifest. See: compensation theory; self-regulation and fantasy.

Dream Books – Bibliography

This feature is an excerpt from The New Dream Dictionary by Tony Crisp, published by Little Brown, UK. It is therefore copyright material.

Aaronson and Osmond. “Psychedelics”. Doubleday, 1970.

Adler, Gerhard. Studies in Analytical Psychology. International Universities Press 1967. Adler’s view of dreams. To see book click here

Ackroyd, Eric. A Dictionary Of Dream Symbols. Blandford, 1993. To see book click here

Alex, William. Dreams, the Unconscious and Analytical Therapy. C. D. Jung Institute of San Francisco, 1992. To see book click here

Anch A. and others. Sleep: A Scientific Perspective. Prentice Hall 1988. To see this book click here.

Anon. The Universal Interpreter of Dreams and Visions. Baltimore, USA, 1795.

Antrobus, John. The Mind In Sleep. Hillsdale. 1978.

Arthos, John. Shakespeare’s Use of Dream And Vision. Bowes and Bowes, London, 1977.

Barclay, David and Therese Marie. UFO’s The Final Answer? Blandford, 1993. Has a great deal about dreams, the mind, and environmental influence on the mind and hallucinations. To ssee this book click here.

Becker, Raymond De. The Understanding of Dreams – And Their Influence On The History Of Man. Hawthorn 1968.

Bogart, Greg. Dreamwork and Self Healing – Unfolding the Symbols of the Unconscious. Karnac Books Ltd. This is a very readable book giving a great many insights into the dreaming process, how dreams can heal, and how to work and understand one’s dreams. It does this by giving masses of people’s dreams with some commentary and insights from the dreamer, and also from Bogart’s long experience working with people on their dreams. There are chapters giving a client’s dreams and seeing how they worked through to a healing experience. But there are other chapters such as a wonderful list of archetypes and their meaning. The work owes a lot to Jung’s influence.

As some other reviewers say: “This is a book on dreams like no other”. “This book will be a beacon for anyone seeking the guidance that comes from the mystery within.” “That Jungian dream work can advance psychological healing is convincingly illustrated in this book.”

Bogart, Greg. Dreamwork in Holistic Psychotherapy of Depression – An Underground Stream that Guides and Heals. Published by Karnac Books Ltd This book describes how dreamwork can help alleviate depression, in both long-term and time-limited psychotherapy, and in self-treatment. The author shows how dreams shed light on issues contributing to depression—including drug and alcohol abuse, divorce, death and bereavement, conflicts about sex, health and body image, parenting, workplace stress and burnout, and ancestral, intergenerational trauma.

Bonime, Walter. The Clinical Use Of Dreams. Da Capo Press. 1983. To see this book click here.

Bro, Harmon. Edgar Cayce On Dreams. Warner Books 1970.

Bro, Harmon. Edgar Cayce – Seer Out Of Season. Aquarian 1990. Biography of Edgar Cayce. To see book

Bro, Harmon. Dreams In The Life of Prayer. Harper And Row, New York 1970. To See this book .

Brook, Stephen. The Oxford Book of Dreams. Oxford University Press 1983. A dream anthology, from pre-Christian to present times. To see this book click here.

Brooks, Janice (with Jay Vogelsong and J. Allan Hobon). The Conscious Exploration of Dreaming: Discovering How We Create and Control Our Dreams. Published by Unknown, ISBN: 1585005398.

Bunker, Dusty. Dream Cycles. Para Research, 1981. To See this book click here.

Burroughs, William S. My Education: A Book of Dreams. First published Viking Press, U.S.A. 1995. Also Picador, London, 1996. To See this book click here.

Caldwell, W. V. LSD Psychotherapy. Grove Press, 1969. Caldwell travelled widely in the USA and Europe visiting and studying results in the practices or clinics of psychiatrists using LSD as a psychotherapeutic tool. In the book he gives an excellent synthesis of the mass of information and experience gathered. In doing so he maps the heights, depths and fantasies of the human psyche, in a way that is beyond any particular school of thought. Such a map is of great use to anyone seriously investigating dreams.

Campbell, Joseph. Myths To Live By. Paladin 1988. Wonderful reading, although not directly about dreams. Campbell shows how human beings create certain myths, no matter what their culture or historic period. This myth creating faculty is obviously linked with dreaming, and portrays life and death as the unconscious sees them. To see book click here.

Campbell, Joseph. The Portable Jung. The Viking Press, 1974. To See this book click heree.

Cannegeiter, Dr. C. A. Around The Dreamworld. Vantage Press, USA, 1985. To See this book click here.

Capacchione, Lucia. The Creative Journal. Newcastle Pub. Co. 1993. To See this book click here.

Caprio and Hedberg. At a Dream Workshop. Paulist Press, 1988. See this book click here.

Carskadon, Mary A. Encyclopedia of Sleep and Dreaming. Macmillan, 1992. To See this book click here.

Cartwright, Rosalind. A Primer On Sleep And Dreaming. Addison Wesley. 1978.To See this book click here

Cayce, Edgar – For all books about Edgar’s work see ARE Press

Cartwright, Rosalind. Crisis Dreaming. Aquarian Press. 1993.

Cerminara, Gina. Many Mansions: The Edgar Cayce Story on Reincarnation. An affirmation of the age-old belief in reincarnation, a profile of the legendary psychic reveals Cayce’s remarkable healing abilities and prophecies and examines the legacy of his work in terms of such issues as past life regression, hypnosis, parapsychology, karma, and more.

Chetwynd, Tom. Dictionary for Dreamers. Paladin 1974. Good dictionary.

Circlot, J.E. A Dictionary of Symbols. Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1962.

Clift, J.D. and W. Symbols Of Transformation.

Cooper, J.C. The Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Traditional Symbols. Thames and Hudson, 1993. To See this book click here.

Corriere, Karle. Dreaming and Waking. Peace Press 1980. Exploring the idea of whether, if we meet the feeling content of dreams, they gradually cease to be symbolic. A landmark in dream theory.

Cotterell, Arthur. A Dictionary of World Mythology. OUP, 1986. To see book click here.

Coxhead and Hiller. Dreams – Visions of the Night. Thames And Hudson 1981. To See this book click here.

Crisp, Tony. Do You Dream. Spearman, 1971.

Crisp, Tony. The Instant Dream Book. C. W. Daniel Co. Ltd. 1984. Explains techniques which can be used to transform the fears and emotions of dreams without analysing them. It also considers the different areas of dream activity, such as body dreams, problem solving, extra sensory, sexual dreams, etc. To see book click here.

Crisp, Tony. Mind and Movement. C.W. Daniel Co. Ltd. 1987. Considers the problem solving or self-regulating psychological and physiological process underlying dreaming. It also considers how the process which produces dreams underlies many other puzzling phenomena such as ESP, abreaction, flashbacks to past events, etc.

Crisp, Tony. Dream Dictionary. Macdonald, Optima. 1990. Revised version as . Little Brown, 1994. One of the most comprehensive and researched of dream dictionaries. To see this book click here.

Crisp, Tony. Liberating The Body. Aquarian. 1992. Using the dream process to use resources of the unconscious for health and intuition. An update of Mind and Movement.

Crisp, Tony. Dreams and Dreaming. London House. 1999. To see book Click here.

Crisp – For all 40 odd of Tony Crisp’s books see My Books

Cunningham, Scott. Sacred Sleep: Dreams and the Divine. Crossing Press, 1992.

Dee, Nerys. Your Dreams and What They Mean. Aquarian 1984. To See this book click here.

David-Neel. The Secret Oral Teachings of The Tibetan Buddhist Sects. Published by Martino Fine Books (February 14, 2017. “This is the most direct, no-nonsense, and down-to-earth explanation of Mahayana Buddhism that has been written. Specifically, it is a wonderfully lucid account of the Middle Way method of enlightenment worked out by the great Indian sage Nagarjuna.” —Alan Watts,

Delaney, Gayle. New Directions In Dream Interpretation. State University Press. 1983. To See this book click here.

Delaney, Gayle. Living Your Dreams. Harper and Row, 1988. To see book click here.

Delaney, Gayle. Breakthrough Dreaming. Bantam. 1991. To See this book click here.

Delaney, Gayle. Sexual Dreams. Piatkus 1994. To See this book click here.

Diamond, Edwin. The Science of Dreams. Eyre and Spottiswoode 1962. A fascinating collection of researched information on dreams.

Edinger, Edward. Ego and Archetype. Shambhala, 1991. To See this book click here.

Eliade, Mircea. Yoga Immortality and Freedom. Princeton University Press, 1970.

Empson, Jacob. Sleeping and Dreaming. Faber and Faber, 1989.

English, Jane. Different Doorway: Adventures of a Caesarean Birth. Description of dreams and work leading up to Jane’s memory of her caesarean birth and its influence on her life. To see book .

Evans, Christopher. Landscapes of the Night. Victor Gollancz 1983. The computer theory of dreaming, with excellent survey of other theories. To See this book click here.

Fagan and Shepherd. Gestalt Therapy Now. Harper Colophon 1970. Contains an explanation of Fritz Perls approach to achieving insight into ones dreams.

Faraday, Ann. Dream Power. Hodder and Stoughton, 1972. Good basic textbook, written for lay people, but intelligently. To see the book click here.

Faraday, Ann. The Dream Game. Harper and Row, 1974.

Fay, Maria. The Dream Guide. Centre For The Healing Arts. 1978.

Flanagan, Owen J. Dreaming Souls: Sleep, Dreams, and the Evolution of Mind. Publisehd by Oxford Univ Pr (Trade); ISBN: 0195126874.

Fordham, Freida. Introduction To Jung’s Psychology. Penguin Books, 1972.

von Franz, Marie-Louise. On Death and Dreams. To See this book click here.

von Franz, Marie-Louise. The Way Of The Dream. Windrose 1988. Recorded conversations with von Franz taken by Frazer Boa – a transcript of the film The Way Of The Dream.

Freud, Sigmund. The Interpretation of Dreams. Allen and Unwin 1955. The first of all modern dream books.

Fromm, Erich. The Forgotten Language. George Allen and Unwin 1952. This is subtitled – An introduction to dreams, fairy tales and myths. To see the book click here.

Fromm, Erich, The Art of Loving’

Fromm, Erich, The Art of Being

Fromm, Erich, The Fear of Freedom

Garfield, Patricia. Creative Dreaming. Ballantine 1974 – 81 edition. Clear description of taking dreams to satisfaction. To see the book click here.

Garfield, Patricia. Pathway to Ecstacy. Holt, Rhinehart and Winston, 1979.

Garfield, Patricia. Your Child’s Dreams. Ballantine, 1984.

Gaskell. G.A. Dictionary of All Scriptures and Myths. Crown, 1960. To See this book click here.

Gendlin, Eugene. Let Your Body Interpret Your Dreams. Chiron, 1986. To See this book click here.

Gnuse, Robert Karl. The Dream Theophany of Samuel: Its Structure in Relation to Ancient Near Eastern Dreams and Its Theological Significance. University Press of America, 1984. To See this book click here.

Green, Celia. Lucid Dreams. IPR 1968. The foundation research on Lucidity in dreams. To See this book click here.

Green, Celia. (With Charles McCreery)Lucid Dreaming : The Paradox of Consciousness During Sleep. Publisehd by Routledge; ISBN: 0415112397.

Grof, Stanislav. Realms of the Human Unconscious. All Grof’s books are incredible because he was involved in exploring the unconscious and the  different dimensions of human experience for years. An excellent book.

Hadfield, J. A. Dreams and Nightmares. Penguin 1954. Hadfield proposes a biological theory of dreams, which stands between Freud, Jung, and more modern theories. It is also an interesting book.

Hall, Calvin S. The Meaning of Dreams. Harper and Row 1953. Hall worked a lot with series of dreams, and with content analysis. This is the result of his research, written in easily readable form.

Hall, Calvin S. Jungian Dream Interpretation: A Handbook of Theory and Practice. To See this book click here.

Hamilton, Edith. Mythology. Re-issue. New American Library, 1991. To See this book click here.

Hannah, Barbara. Encounters With The Soul: Active Imagination. SIGO, 1981. To See this book click here.

Harary, Keith. Lucid Dreams In 30 Days. Aquarian. 1990. To See this book click here.

Harding, M. Ester. The I and the Not I. Princeton UP, 1965.

Harris, Thomas. I’m OK – You’re OK. Pan books, 1975.

Hartmann, Ernest. The Nightmare. Basic Books. 1984.

Hearne, Dr. Keith. Visions Of The Future. Aquarian, 1989. An investigation of premonitions.

Heyer, G. R. Organism of The Mind. Kegan Paul, 1933. Although Heyer is not writing directly about dreams, the book is an interesting commentary on what was being discovered by Analytical Psychology in the early part of the 20th century.

Hillman, James. Re-Visioning Psychology. Harper, 1975.

Hobson, J. Allan. The Dreaming Brain. Penguin, 1990. Latest information on research into dreams and the brain. A good section on understanding dreams – not as things with hidden meanings, but as straightforward expressions of our own unique self. To See this book click here.

Hobson, J. Allan. Dreaming As Delirium : How the Brain Goes Out of Its Mind. Publishsed by MIT Press; ISBN: 0262581795.

Hodgson and Miller. Self Watching. Published by Century Publishing Co. 1982.

Holbech, Soozi. The Power Of Your Dreams. Piatkus. 1991.

Hubbard, Ron. Dianetics. Bridge 1985. To See this book click here.

Hunt, Harry. The Multiplicity of Dreams. Yale University Press. 1991. To See this book click here.

Jacobi, Jolande. The Way Of Individuation. Hodder and Stoughton 1967. Explanation of Jung’s concept of the stages in becoming a person.

Jobes, Gertrude. Dictionary of Mythology Folklore and Symbols, Parts 1 and 2. Scarecrow, 1962. To See this book click here.

Johnson, Robert A. Inner Work: Using Dreams and Active Imagination for Personal Growth. Harper and Row, 1986. To See this book click here.

Jouvet, Michael. The Paradox of Sleep: The Story of Dreaming. Publisshed by MIT Press; ISBN: 0262100800.

Jung, Carl. Dreams. Ark Paperbacks 1986. Very technical consideration of the subject. To See this book click here.

Jung, Carl. Mandala Symbolism. Princeton University Press 1972.

Jung, Carl. Man and His Symbols. Aldus 1964. The breadth and depth of dreams. It is in paperback, excellent reading. To see the book click here.

Jung, Carl. Memories Dreams Reflections. Collins and Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963. To see the book click here.

Jung, Carl. Modern Man in Search of a Soul. Kegan Paul 1933. To See this book click here.

Jung, Carl. On The Nature Of Dreams. Princeton University Press, 1974.

Jung, Carl. The Portable Jung. Edited with an interpretive introduction, chronolgy, notes and bibliography by Joseph Campbell. The Viking Press, 1971. To See this book click here.

Jung, Carl. Secret of the Golden Flower. Kegan Paul 1942. Jung’s commentary on this ancient Chinese book on meditation, is wonderful reading for those seriously interested in their own inner life. To See this book click here.

Karagulla, Dr. Shafica, an international neurologist, has explored the professional use of intuition in her book Breakthrough to Creativity

Kelsey, Morton. Dreams – A Way to Listen To God. Paulist, P, US, 1978. To See this book click here.

Kent, Caron. The Enigma Of The Body. An unpublished mss.

Kent, Caron. The Puzzled Body. Vision Press, 1969. A voyage of discovery of how the mond and body interact leading tyo depression and human problems. To See this book click here.

Kleitman, Nathaniel, Sleep And Wakefulness. Chicago, London: University of Chicago Press, revised edition 1963. To See this book click here.

Kluger, Yechezkel. Dreams and Other Manifestations of the Unconscious.

Krippner, Stanley. Dreamtime and Dreamwork. Jeremy Tarcher. 1990. To See this book click here.

Krippner, Stanley. Dreamworking. Bearly. 1988. To See this book click here.

LaBerge, Stephen. Lucid Dreaming. Ballantine Books, 1985. To see the book click here.

LaBerge, Stephen and Rheingold, Howard. Exploring The World of Lucid Dreaming. Ballantine Books, 1990.

Langs, Robert. Decoding Your Dreams. Unwin Hyman, 1989. A good basic handbook on learning to discover the wealth of information and wisdom in ones own dreams. To See this book click here.

Layard, John. The Lady Of The Hare. Faber and Faber 1944.

Leach, Maria. Standard Dictionary of Folklore Mythology and Legend. As author, 1949.

Lee, S.G.M. and Mayes, A.R. – Editors. Dreams and Dreaming. Penguin 1973.

Lincoln, J. S. The Dream in Primitive Cultures. The Cresset Press, 1935.

Ling and Buckman. “Lysergic Acid and Ritalin in The Cure of Neurosis”. Published by Lambarde Press, 1964.

Linn, Denise. A Pocketful of Dreams. Piatkus. 1993.

MacKenzie, Norman. Dreams And Dreaming. Bloomsbury Books 1989.

Macmillan, Willian John. The Reluctant Healer, Gollancz 1952. An extraordinary autobiography of an equally extraordinary healer.

Mahoney, Maria. The Meaning in Dreams And Dreaming. Citadel Press, US, 1987.

Martin, P. W. Experiment in Depth. Routledge and Kegan Paul 1964. Martin was one of the early pioneers, along with Rev. Leslie Weatherhead, who started helping people to adequately explore their own dreams – i.e. without the psychiatrist.

Mathews, Boris. The Herder Symbol Dictionary. Chiron Publications, US, 1993. .

Mattoon, Mary Ann. Understanding Dreams.

Maybruck, Patricia. Romantic Dreams. Pocket Books. 1991.

Meddis, Dr. Ray. The Sleep Instinct. Routledge and kegan Paul, 1977.

Mindell, Arnold. Dreambody: The Body’s Role in Revealing The Self. Sigo Press, 1982. To See this book click here.

Mindell, Arnold. Working With The Dreaming Body, 1984.

Moffitt, Alan. The Function of Dreaming. State University Press. 1993.

Monroe, Robert. . Journeys Out Of The Body Anchor Press, 1975. Monroe describes his experiences of leaving his physical body in sleep.

Moody, Raymond A. . Life After Life. Mockingbird Books, 1975. The wonderful description of research into near death expereinces.

Moorcroft, William. . Sleep, Dreaming and Sleep Disorders, University Press America. 1994. To See this book .

Moon, Sheila. Dreams of A Woman. Sigo P, US, 1991.

Morse, Dr Melvin. Closer to the Light. Ivy Books, 1991. An investigation into Near Death Experiences.

Murray, Alexander. Who’s Who in Mythology. Studio, 1992.

Natterson, Joseph. The Dream In Clinical Practice. Jason Aronson. 1994.

Neihardt, John G. Black Elk Speaks. University of Nebraska press, 1979. The story of an American Indian Holy Man. To See this book .

Newland, Constance. Myself and I. Frederick Muller Ltd, 1963. Suffering frigidity, Constance Newland successfully underwent a number of psycho-analytical sessions using the drug LSD. The connection with dreaming is the enormously rich and potent fantasies she met and dealt with during her analysis. The book is therefore a powerful description of the world one meets in dreams, and the personal fears and forces which underlie the strange imagery of the unconscious. She also spontaneously understood some of her dreams.

Noone, Robert – and Holman, D. In Search of The Dream People. William Morow, 1972.

O’Conner, Peter. Dreams And The Search For Meaning.

Oldis, Daniel. Lucid Dream Manifesto. iUniverse Inc. 2006.

Oswald, Ian. Sleep. Penguin 1966. The great landmark in researched basis of sleep and dreams.

Ousby, William J. When I was 15 he taught me a method that changed my life.  See his book – Theory and Practice of Hypnotism.

Parker, Julia. The Secret World of Your Dreams. Piatkus. 1990.

Partridge, Eric. Origins. Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966.

Patanjali, Bhagwan Shri. Aphorisms of Yoga. With commentary by Shree Purohit Swami and introduction by W. B. Yeats. Published by Faber and Faber Ltd., 1938. There are many modern translations and commentaries still in print. To See this book click here.

Perls, Fritz. The Gestalt Approach. Science and Behaviour. 1989. To See this book click here.

Priestley, J. B. Man And Time. Aldus Books London, 1964.

Rainer, Tristine. The New Diary. Angus and Robertson, 1980.

Rawson, Wyatt. The Way Within. Vincent Stuart 1965. Interesting results of a dream group working together over some years. Arising from the work of P.W. Martin.

Reed, Henry. Getting Help From Your Dreams. Inner Vision.

Reich, Wilhelm. The Function of the Orgasm. The Noonday Press, 1961. A landmark in the perception of psychological stress as it works in the body and mind. .

Rennick, Teresa. Inner Journeys. Turnstone Press, 1984. Handbook on the use of visualisation and fantasy in problem solving and personal growth. It is useful to work with dream images in this way, especially in taking the dream forward toward satisfaction.

Rossi, Ernest. Dreams And The Growth Of The Personality. Pergamon Press, 1972.

Russo, Richard. Dreams Are Wiser Than Men. North American Books 1987. To See this book click here.

Rycroft, Charles. The Innocence of Dreams. Hograth Press. 1991. To See this book click here.

Rycroft, Charles. Anxiety and Neurosis. Penguin Books. 1968. To See this book click here.

Sanford, John A. Dreams And Healing. Paulist P., US, 1978.

Sanford, John A. Dreams – God’s Forgotten Language, Lippencott, 1968. To See this book click here.

Seafield, Frank – (Alexander Grant) The Literature and Curiosities of Dreams. 1865.

Sechrist, Elsie. Dreams – Your Magic Mirror. Cowles 1968. Expressive of the Edgar Cayce view of dreams. To see the book click here.

Shohet, Robin. Dream Sharing. Thorson, 1985. Working as a dream group.

Sparrow, Gregory Scott. Lucid Dreaming – Dawning of The Clear Light. A.R.E. Press, 1976.

Stafford and Golightly. “LSD – The Problem Solving Drug.” Published by Award and Tandem Books.

Stevens, William Oliver. The Mystery of Dreams. George Allen and Unwin 1950. Examples of different types of dreams.

Sugrue, Thomas. There Is A River. Dell. The extraordinary life of Edgar Cayce. If you read no other book about the possibilities of human life, read this. To See this book click here.

Talbot, Michael. The Holographic Universe. Grafton Press, 1991. Not directly about dreams, but fascinating reading for those trying to understand the dimension out of which dreams occur, and occasionally reach beyond the normal. To See this book click here.

Tart, Charles. Altered States of Consciousness. Doubleday Anchor 1969. Has a whole section on dreaming and self induced dreams.

Taylor, Jeremy. Dreamwork. Paulist Press 1983.

Ullman, Montague. Working With Dreams. Delacourte, 1979.

Ullman and Krippner, Dream Telepathy. Turnstone 1973. Researched results of telepathy during dreaming.

Ullman And Limmer. The Variety Of Dream Experiences. Delacorte, 1979.

Ullman and Zimmerman. Working With Dreams. Crucible, 1989.

Van de Castle, Robert L. Our Dreaming Mind. Aquarian. London 1994. Too see the book .

deVries, Ad. Dictionary of Symbols and Imagery. North Holland Pub. Co., 1974. To See this book click here.

Walker, Barbara G. The Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets. Harper and Row, 1983. To See this book click here.

Weaver, Rix. The Old Wise Woman. Vincent Stuart Ltd. 1964. To See this book click here.

Weatherhead, Leslie. Psychology In Service Of The Soul. Epworth Press (Sharp). 1929.

Webb, W. B. Sleep, The Gentle Tyrant, Prentice Hall, 1975.

West, Katherine L. Crystallising Children’s Dreams.

Whitmont and Perera. Dreams: A Portal to the Source. Routledge, 1991. To See this book click here.

Williams, Strephon K. Jungian-Senoi Dreamwork Manual. Aquarian Press, 1991. See: Dreamwork 2000

Wiseman, Ann Sayre. Nightmare Help.

Zeller, Max. The Dream, The Vision Of The Night. Sigo, 1990. To See this book click here.

Zimbardo, Philip. “Psychology and Life.” Published by Scott, Foresman and Company, U.S.A. Harper Collins, 1992. Excellent summary of psychology today. To See this book click here.

Zweig, Stefan. Mental Healers. (Contains a chapter on Anton Mesmer.) Cassell, 1933.

For any of these books that are out-of-print, try Used Booksearch. They trade in UK and in USA.

Bible – Its Dreams and Symbols

And He said, “Hear now my words: If there be a prophet among you, I the LORD will make myself known unto him in a vision, and will speak unto him in a dream” (Num. 12:6).

“I will pour out of My Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams” (Acts 2:17).

“For God speaketh once, yea twice, yet man perceiveth it not. In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falleth upon men, in slumberings upon the bed; Then He openeth the ears of men, and sealeth their instruction, That He may withdraw man from his purpose, and hide pride from man. He keepeth back his soul from the pit, and his life from perishing by the sword.” (Job 33:14- 18).

There are about 121 mentions of dreaming in the Bible and 89 mentions of sleep. (King James version.)The very first description of a dream is that in connection with Abraham.

Genesis 015:012 And when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram; and, lo, an horror of great darkness fell upon him. And – The Lord – he said unto Abram, Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years; And also that nation, whom they shall serve, will I judge: and afterward shall they come out with great substance. And thou shalt go to thy fathers in peace; thou shalt be buried in a good old age. But in the fourth generation they shall come hither again: for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full.

From that point on dreams are mentioned openly in such phrases as ‘020:006 And God said unto him in a dream’ – or ‘020:003 But God came to Abimelech in a dream by night, and said to him’ or ‘028:012 And he dreamed’. But no dreams of women are mentioned in the Old Testament.

Most of us can understand that such dreams or visions as Abraham experienced, and later Jacob and Joseph, are not recognisable as the type most of us wake from and remember. One might say these are a ‘once in a lifetime’ kind of dream. Explaining these dreams, and criticising the modern regard for dreams, some Christians are inclined to believe that only in the past did God directly communicate with ordinary men and women, and such a relationship does not apply to us today.

It must be remembered however that these early tribal people did not emerge from a vacuum. They inherited from previous cultures views and concepts about all aspects of life including dreams. They also lived within a particular view of the world and a system of beliefs which coloured their dreams, what they expected of them, and their manner of reporting them. Therefore it is worth looking at this background to biblical dreams. But in modern terms it can still be seen that dreams come from our core self – whether we like to call that self God or Life – see Core; The Two Powers for an explanation.

The very first mention of sleep occurs when we are told that God caused Adam to fall into a deep sleep. These statements were written in Hebrew, a language whose alphabetical characters each had a symbolic meaning, much as the characters alpha and omega mean something by themselves in the Greek alphabet. The words ‘deep sleep’, when used in connection with Adam were ‘thareddemah’. The roots of this word – according to Fred Myers – are rad and dam. In the English language we use the ‘rad’ root in such words as radiate, radium, radical. The Hebrew word ‘radah’ means to rule to govern. The same root used as a ‘passive’ verb means to be insensible, to be fast asleep, or to lose consciousness and control.

The root ‘dam’ means to be connected through blood, similarity, kinship or identity. The whole word suggests a form of sleep in which the person loses self control and is directed by the will of another, perhaps as happens in hypnotic sleep.

This concept of sleep and dreams having the possibility of ones mind and experience being directed by another will, in fact the Divine will, lies at the root of the way dreams were considered in the Bible. Both Adam’s sleep, and Abraham’s vision, have to do with identity. With Adam something emerged from him that had a separate identity from himself, and which led to an awareness of self outside God. So this story is about the emerging of a personal will into an existence that had previously been linked wholly with the will of God.

If the concept of God has difficult associations we can substitute the idea of early humankind having little sense of separate identity from their environment and from their tribe. Their feeling of a collective identity with nature and their tribe we can give an overall name of God – the forces which gave them existence. A study of the Australian aborigines particularly illustrates this enormous identification with the tribal territory and with the tribe itself. With the Aborigines their sense of self was in direct relationship with the territory in which they lived, and their tribal group.

This is important because much of the story in Genesis is about a tribal people trying to attain and maintain an identity. This is true of most tribal people. The struggle to establish and maintain their identity as a group of people, and in competition with other tribes or kingdoms, explains much of their behaviour. Just as our body destroys millions of bacteria each day in its attempt to maintain its integrity, so the tribal peoples often killed their rivals as a part of establishing and maintaining their own existence, identity and territory. Belief systems such as the tribal religion were of immense importance in this. Abraham’s visionary communication with God – the overall and powerful factors underlying his existence – set a path which enabled Abraham’s people to survive as a group through experiences which could easily have disintegrated the tribal cohesion. A common religious belief acted as a social ‘glue’ and a means of establishing mutual direction and the ability to work toward a goal as a group. It was a form of agreed law which established order in the community. Anything threatening the religious belief threatened the community, just as much as bacteria that disrupt the integrated working of our body threaten our personal existence.

Looked at from this standpoint, many of the dreams reported in the Bible are about the direction an individual can take regarding the destiny of the family or nation. Such dreams were not only important to the individual, but also became landmarks and pointers for later generations. They were and still are great statements summarising the beliefs, possibilities and character of the people. They looked at possibilities from the collective viewpoint – the good of the tribe or group – and gave insights that would benefit the tribe or nation. In the book Black Elk Speaks, the American Indian Black Elk tells how many of his great visions were about the healing of tribal conflicts or uncertainties. See: Prayer And Dream Interpretation; Native American Dream Beliefs.

The vision of God, the dream in which the Divine is directly experienced within us is not isolated to any one culture. Remembering this helps one to gain a clearer picture of just what such dreams or visions are. For instance a Hindu visionary does not meet with the divine in the image of the Christian God, but with a vision of Krishna or Shiva. The Indian visionary or dreamer makes contact with their own sense of the collective via their personal cultural images of the divine. The American Indian visionary met their sense of the collective psyche or tribe through an image of their own totem animal or family spirit. If ones own identity is deeply embedded in one religious belief system, then such alien images as those belonging to another culture might be as threatening as the invasion of bacteria already mentioned. They would undermine ones sense of self based on a particular belief system.

If we can accept that as a human we have the capacity to touch parts of the mind that have the amazing ability to integrate personal and cultural information, and from it present a view of where current trends and social moods are leading, then we have an understanding from which insight into Biblical dreams and visions can arise. If it is also seen that the form of the vision is shaped by cultural ideas and feelings about divinity – the collective and underlying forces of personal existence – then many of the Biblical dreams become understandable.

As the Bible proceeds, the dreams mentioned become more linked with personal rather than social identity. Joseph’s dream of his brothers sheaves of wheat bowing down to him, and paying homage, is less to do with tribal direction than the vision of Abraham. (Genesis 37:05). But Pharaoh’s dream of the fat and thin cattle is back in the mould of a dream showing the way for his nation.

Example: 037:006 And he said unto them, Hear, I pray you, this dream which I have dreamed: For, behold, we were binding sheaves in the field, and, lo, my sheaf arose, and also stood upright; and, behold, your sheaves stood round about, and made obeisance to my sheaf. And his brethren said to him, Shalt thou indeed reign over us? or shalt thou indeed have dominion over us? And they hated him yet the more for his dreams, and for his words. And he dreamed yet another dream, and told it his brethren, and said, Behold, I have dreamed a dream more; and, behold, the sun and the moon and the eleven stars made obeisance to me.

Joseph and his family clearly understood that the sheaves of wheat in his dream represented themselves. The meaning of symbols and images was clearly understood by many ancient people. Perhaps they could not verbalise exactly what the image meant, but it was often a deeply felt part of their life. It is this aspect of the Bible which is often completely overlooked by readers today. Is the story of Adam and Eve talking about two individuals who were divinely created and walked the earth in a golden age? Is the story of Jonah and the whale literally true? Are the stories of Jesus about a historical character? Or are they wonderfully evocative images which tell of another sort of truth than that of historical fact?

This side of the Bible is incredibly rich. It stands beyond all the attempts to fix a literal and dogmatic meaning to it, and speaks of life experience which most of us can identify with and understand. If we look at the Bible as if it were a description of a dream instead of a statement of history, light shines through the stories and enlivens us.

Starting with the story of Adam and Eve, it is clearly about the beginning of life. It is about human consciousness and its beginnings. In the manner of dreams, where each part expresses some aspect of our own life and feelings, God, Adam, Eve and Eden are all aspects of the one being – the human being. In fact in Hebrew the word Adam is a plural word, not singular, so the story is talking about the human essence, not about a man and a woman.

And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. See God and the Big Bang are the Same.

Notice that God is given to speak the word ‘us’ showing there are creative forces rather than one creator. Also the man who is created is referred to as ‘them’.

The Garden of Eden suggests a state of mind or a state of existence other than our present normal waking awareness. The story tells us that there was a condition humans lived in prior to their present one. This prior condition was lost. And if the descriptions in the story of the state of Eden are compared with the condition that Adam and Eve found themselves in after Eden was lost, we can see that the story suggests women and men at first had no will of their own. They responded to life out of their sense of connection with what is called God – their connection with their life process, with their innate and instinctive urges and insights.

This is not a revolutionary idea. Every one of us go through such enormous personal changes. From the condition of the womb, in which we know no language or organised thought, where there is no need to make an effort to breathe or exist, we are thrust into separation, into survival, into independent existence. But we still have no language or organised thoughts. In yet another fantastic leap, our brain takes in the programming of language and achieves self awareness and the sense of aloneness. Prior to this we had no concept of time or space.

So Adam – the human race – at first existed in a state in which there was no sense of time, without any personal identity. In an animal we would call this instinct. Instinct guides the animal without the animal needing to have any personal ideas or decisions. It doesn’t have to think, it responds. Many people have associated this life in Eden as the period we each spend in the womb, and when we are cast out of Eden that is birth. But the story has a larger picture. In fact human beings in their development have lived in a transitional period when they were guided by instinct, and later developed refined language and the ability to make personal decisions in some degree. In our growth from the womb we pass through the whole range of our developmental modes, right from the creature with gills to the air breathing life form with a developing sense of personal identity.

Reading about Eve (Aisha), and how she listened to promptings to do a deed her inner life, her habits, her instincts, forbade, the story takes us to the emergence of personal will. Interestingly, in the original Hebrew, up until this point in the story the word for mankind was always Adam. But as soon as this new being is formed the word for mankind is Aish, and the new being is Aisha. The new human being that has come about, Aish (Adam) says is ‘now bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh’ confirming that in fact the story is about one being, not two. But it is a new being with a will of its own.

Many years ago I read the true account of a Bali tribesman who had need one day to leave his tribal village. This was the first time in his life that he was going to depart from his people. As he got to the boundary of his tribal territory he fainted.

If we have been born and raised in a modern Western society, we will find it difficult to understand the enormous part the tribal group and the tribal beliefs play in the psyche of the tribesman. It is difficult for us to understand what it is like to feel so much a part of a group or a family that simply walking away from it can cause one to collapse. Developing a will of our own, learning to exist outside of our family and tribal group, has cost us a lot, and the story of Adam who becomes Aish and Aisha, sums up the price that is paid by modern humans as they meet the anxiety, the guilt, the loneliness of life as an individual. We are, like Aisha, caste out from a sense of belonging to the universe, nature, and our tribe. We have lost a feeling of being in harmony even within ourselves. We no longer have the innocence of an animal or a child. We are alone together.

The New Testament moves on and uses different symbols and images. The story of Mary’s virgin birth while married to an old man; of how a divine child is born, and how this wondrous child matures and heals others and is the way to regain heaven, is a further chapter in the story of human development.

Looking at the New Testament once more as a dream, Joseph represents the rational mind which is not capable of going beyond reason to touch any sense of personal wholeness. Only Mary, the integrated feelings and thoughts, which are capable of being virginal, without prior conception (without holding on to prior conceptions as to the nature of life as the rational mind does) can bring forth the birth of an intuition, a new response to oneself and ones environment, that transforms ones life. This is a living relationship with the mystery that underlies our life. If we generate a ‘Mary’ part of us, a part that is not held prisoner by habits of thought, stereotypes of behaviour, by habitual patterns of thinking, then we can begin to allow into consciousness what was previously impossible to know. Mary, the virginal or open state of mind and feelings, acts as a link between the identity or personality, and the deep unconscious life processes. This link allows the birth of realisations and inner change that brings healing and a possibility of experiencing the eternal aspect of oneself. This is a great boon considering the rational mind, the independent will, has closed the door to personal experience of the timeless. This experience of the transcendent, or ones own wholeness is what Christ represents. See The Inner Path of Christ.

The story of Joseph, Mary and Jesus is a continuation of the events depicted in the Old Testament. The emergent individual lost any sense of connection with the whole, and with the community of which he or she was a part. Erich Fromm, in his book Escape From Freedom, explains the recent historical events and psychological changes in people that have widened this gap between the security that was at one time felt by individuals with a sense of being part of nature, or part of a community. The shift the New Testament symbols depict is that of the individual rekindling an awareness of his/her connection with the living power of the creative power, nature and community. In fact one of the major rites of Christianity – communion – directly celebrates this. This communion is not a loss of self as portrayed in Eastern religious teachings, but a willing connection made between an aware individual and the whole.

Example: It was perhaps the dream experiences that led Saint Jerome to mistranslate the Hebrew word for witchcraft, anan, as “observing dreams” (in Latin, observo somnia) when commissioned to translate the Bible by Pope Damasus I. Anan appears ten times in the Hebrew Scriptures (the Old Testament), but Jerome translates it as “observing dreams” only three times, in such statements as, “you shall not practice augury nor observe dreams,” which more accurately reads, “you shall not practice augury or witchcraft.” These simple changes, which made the Bible appear to discourage attending to one’s dreams, significantly altered the course of how dreams were viewed for centuries.

Looked at through its symbols instead of its historical relevance, the Bible unfolds the drama not only of your personal growth toward maturity, toward an independent identity, and toward a greater realisation of your own potential, it also paints the great picture of the pathway humanity took toward personal awareness and a sense of separate identity. It depicts in its stories and characterisations, the wonder and difficulties of becoming an individual and of discovering satisfaction in ones life. See:archetype of Christ; meeting with Christ; Individuation; myths legends and fairy tales in dreams; spiritual life in dream

But remember Christianity as it is expressed today, was set in this way by the Roman Catholic church many years after Christianity started – The early Christians were name ‘Atheists Of The Ancient World’. Inhabitants of the Roman Empire had a variety of gods and goddesses, but there were people back then who would be considered early Christians. Ironically, these people were considered atheists by the ancient Romans because they didn’t pay tribute to any of the pagan gods.

Behavioural Modification Therapy

Modifying the behaviour of other human beings has a long history. Whatever can change the way we feel and act can be a means of altering behaviour. Methods as widely separate as religion, political torture and brain washing, can be thought of as behavioural modification techniques. A major demarcation can be seen in the use of such techniques with people – there are those who want them applied, and those who have them applied against their will.

As a form of therapy or aid to mental and social health, behavioural modification has been practised in every culture in all periods of history. Rituals in which individuals or groups felt more in harmony with each other, or which induced a feeling of cohesion against a common enemy, can be thought of behavioural modification.

In more recent times, although the age old techniques are still used, an enormous amount of research has been undertaken to define exactly how human beings, and of course animals, can be changed or manipulated. After all, such information is incredibly important to religious and political organisations, and to businesses that wish to induce people to buy their products. This has given rise to such varied approaches as physical and mental intimidation, brain surgery, brainwashing, electric shock therapy, drug use, subtle advertising and propaganda, the use of suggested fear to sell or induce and psychotherapy.

In modern psychology, the term behaviour modification means something specific. Ivan Pavlov developed the foundation for modern approaches through his work with conditioned reflexes in dogs. Apart from showing that a dog could be conditioned to salivate when a bell was rung, Pavlov experimented further and performed experiments in which a dog was trained to salivate when the image of a circle was projected on a screen, but when an ellipse was shown it was not trained to have any response. When this was established the shape of the circle was gradually changed toward and ellipse. As the circle was changed the dog showed signs of agitation and lost the response to salivate. The disturbance experienced by the dog was seen as an ‘experimentally induced neurosis’. See: Example under  brain levels.

In 1920 these methods were tried on human beings. The American psychologists John Watson and Rosalie Rayner worked with an eleven-month-old baby who showed no fear while playing with a white laboratory rat. By producing a loud noise each time the baby touched the rat, the baby was conditioned to experience a fearful response when the rat was present.

Having learnt how to artificially create fears in children, Mary Cover Jones experimented with reducing fears already established in children. The two methods she found most effective were 1) Linking the feared object or situation with a new stimulus capable of arousing a positive response. 2) Putting the anxious child with children who showed no fear of the object or situation.

Later, people like Joseph Wolpe, Hans Eysenck, and M. Shapiro, used and developed these methods. This was mostly in connection with people with disabling fear reactions. The ideas of B. F. Skinner who led the behavioural movement in psychology, played a leading role in some approached to modifying human behaviour. Different approaches evolved, and some of these became well known enough to have particular names – systematic desensitisation; aversion therapy; and biofeedback.

There are usually five steps in behaviour modification.

1. Defining what the individual needs to improve their problem.
2. Putting together a method that changes undesirable behaviour and aids the development of desirable responses.
3. Using the program according to the principles of behavioural modification.
4. Careful observation and recording of results .
5. Changing the approach if it aids improvement.

See: aversion therapy; desensitisation therapy.