Posts Tagged ‘art’

Creative Uses of Your Dreams and Incubation

From all the dreams and information that have already been dealt with, an enormous number of conclusions can be drawn. It is hoped that many of these do not need to be enlarged upon; but because it may not be clear from what has been said, the subject of purposeful use of dreams will be explained in greater detail. For instance, it was mentioned at the very beginning that dreams have helped such varied fields of research and expression as science, literature, philosophy, psychology, and so on. It has to be admitted that most dreams that have given such service have been spontaneous, and often unsought, but in a few cases people have purposely set out to gain information from dreams that they could not easily get in waking consciousness. Businessmen, scientists, laymen, and doctors, have each looked to the dream for help in their various enquiries. In some cases they did not understand the process of dreaming, and so were handicapped.

Others had gained an understanding by analysing previous experience, and were better able to use dreams as tools in their research. How this is possible must be reasonably clear from the other features. The dream emerges as an expression of what is happening in all the departments of our being. The unconscious biological processes that have made us a living being – the physical and energetic processes of our body, with its digestion, circulation, metabolism, etc. – the relationships between different parts of our being, such as body and mind, sexual and ambitious drives, self and others, all are dealt with in dreams. Likewise, all that we have ever experienced, read, thought, studied, heard or seen, is all stored in the complete memory of our unconscious. Nothing is lost. This vast storehouse of learning and experience, coup led with the wisdom latent in our very cells, built in from millions of years of life experience, are all available to the dream. A later chapter will show that we are not limited even to our own vast memory, but can pick up thoughts from others through telepathy or expanded consciousness. Therefore, to have a question answered by a dream, is to receive a reply from the most advanced and best educated computer in the world. Even a new-born babe can rely upon the biological knowledge of its cells, which open to it, as instinct and intuitive response, the wisdom of the ages.

The examples of Robert Louis Stevenson gaining ideas for his writings, Kekule discovering the Benzene ring, the dreaming of Kubla Khan, and the dream foretelling the nationalisation of Iranian oil, illustrate a little of this. Another example is quoted in Dreams, The Language of the Unconscious by Hugh Lynn Cayce. The dream occurred to a member of the New York Stock Exchange, on March 5th. 1929. He says, ‘Dreamed we should sell all our stocks including box stock (one considered very good). I saw a bull following my wife, who was dressed in red.’ This dream was interpreted to mean that a crisis was approaching on the stock market, and all should be sold. Unfortunately the man did not heed this advice, and suffered the collapse of the stock market six months later.

The famous acrobat, Tito Gaona, stated in the April 8,1974, issue of Sports Illustrated:

I have sometimes dreamed my tricks at night … and then tried to master them from the dream. … I also do what I call a double-double…. It is a double forward somersault with a double full twist at the same time. It has never been done before. No one else does it. It is a trick I dreamed one night. (Quoted from Our Dreaming Mind by Robert Van de Castle.)

Boccaccio, in his Life of Dante, gives details of a dream had by Jacopo, a son of Dante. After Dante’s death, it was discovered that the last thirteen cantos of the ‘Commedia’ were missing. This caused much debate as to whether they had been written, and all involved searched everywhere. Jacopo and his brother Piero were induced by others to try their hand at writing the missing cantos themselves, but before doing so Jacopo dreamt that ‘his father Dante had appeared to him, clothed in the purest white, and his face resplendent with an extraordinary light; Jacopo asked him if he lived, and Dante replied, “Yes, but in the true life, not your life.” Then Jacopo asked him if he had completed his work before passing into the true life; and if he had done so, what had become of that part which was missing, as none could find it. To this Dante seemed to answer: “Yes, I finished it”, and then took Jacopo by the hand and led him into that chamber Dante had been accustomed to sleep in when he was alive. Touching one of the walls, he said, “What you have sought so much is here.” Then Jacopo awoke and although still night, called upon a friend, who went with him to Dante’s old house. Waking the present owner, they were allowed in, and on coming to the bedroom and looking at the wall indicated in the dream ‘found a mat fixed to the wall. They lifted it gently up, when they found a little window in the wall, never before seen by any of them. In it they discovered several writings, all mouldy from the dampness of the walls,’ and found them to be the missing cantos.

It can be argued, of course, that Jacopo must have noticed the mat before, even if he had never seen beneath it. Therefore it could possibly have concealed a hiding place; but what is important is not the question of whether or not he had seen this, but the fact that he had not consciously thought of it as the hiding place. Even if he had considered it as a hiding place and forgotten it with the passage of time, the dream still presented him with a new combination of ideas – the mat and the cantos. If this is the limit of dream perception, and I am not agreeing that it is, then it still puts the dream in the position of a competent computer. It still shows it as having entrance to our complete memory, and seeking deductive answers from it.

Here is another example of creative dreaming. “Dimitri Mendeleyev was born 8 February 1834 in Russia. In 1869 he was puzzling over the problem of chemical elements. They were the alphabet out of which the language of the universe was composed. Mendeleyev would frequently while away the time playing patience while waiting for a train. He had the cards in rows facing him and he had written chemical symbols of an element, its atomic weight and then a shortlist of its characteristic properties. Mendeleyev realized he was on to something, there was a pattern appearing but he couldn’t quite grasp it. Momentarily overcome by exhaustion he rested his head on his arms, almost immediately falling asleep and had a dream – the periodic table.

Having admitted this much, we are still faced by a problem, namely, how can we get the dream life to respond to a particular question? Suppose we are a scientist researching on cancer cure, or an archaeologist searching for an elusive clue in his studies, or a philosopher seeking to understand life; or just you or me trying to understand how best to use our abilities; how can we go about finding an answer to our problem? The two dreams quoted already help us towards an answer, even though they are not induced dreams in the sense that we are seeking. They help us because they are induced dreams in a different sense. They are induced by the dreamer’s interests. For the one dream is by a stock broker who recorded and attempted to analyse his dreams. The dream is induced because his interests in life are deeply bound up with the stock exchange. While Jacopo’s dream was induced by the search and by others urging him to finish the cantos.

From just these two dreams we can see that a dream response can be induced by being emotionally and intellectually involved in the question or problem answered. Therefore, if we are going to ask a specific question, it will have a greater likelihood of producing a helpful dream if we become as involved as possible in it. A person I once met had a mother much given to the study and practice of positive thinking. The man wished to take his wife for a holiday abroad, but did not have and could see no possibility of getting sufficient funds to finance this. His mother persuaded him to live positively, however, and told him to plan his holiday anyway. This he did, arranging all details. As time drew near he still did not have sufficient money, and began to get somewhat apprehensive as to how he was going to pay fares and hotel costs. This situation lasted right up to a week before the holiday began. Then he had a dream of a particular horse winning a race. Searching through the papers the following morning he found such a horse by the same name, and bet on it, which was something he never usually did. The horse won, and he had his holiday.

I mention this because here we see the man not only intellectually and emotionally involved to a large degree, but also financially as well. These really are the ideal conditions to provoke a dream to answer our question or problem. I have used this method myself with some success, one dream being a direct answer to a direct question. At the time of the dream I had been researching on the psychological effects of Yoga exercises or postures. I practised the postures and tried as far as was possible to discover consciously what they did to the emotions, instincts and mind. I then asked myself, just before going to sleep, if there were inner effects I was unconscious of. If so, what were they? In this way I hoped to induce a helpful dream. In fact, I had several, but one in particular helped a great deal. In it I was on an underground train. Two black men were standing in the aisle. The train was nearing my station and I passed them to get to the door. One would not stand aside, even after I said ‘Excuse me’, so I had to push past him. This annoyed him so much that he rushed at me with hands extended to strangle me, but I caught his hands in mine, and gradually forced them down from my throat. As I did so, I thought: ‘This is what Yoga has done’ (i.e. given me the strength to stand against the black man).

The meaning of this dream is not readily understood until it is realised that these black men had appeared in other dreams. In one. he got my throat and began to strangle me, and I could do nothing, but awoke in terror. Here we see the unconscious or black parts of my nature which I associated with my instinctive drives and fears, throttling my conscious life. The second dream is therefore saying that Yoga was developing the strength to face and deal with one’s unconscious fears and repressed urges. There is still a conflict, but at least my conscious self can meet its fears on equal terms, which is a very great part of the battle.

Becoming involved in a question is not all there is to inducing informative dreams. Earlier on I suggested that a baby, even though new born, can draw upon its biological past, the result of which is instinct, but the baby cannot ask the same sort of question as we do. Its questions are all associated with survival, feeding, sleeping, relating to its mother, and so on. Even if it could ask a more intellectual question, such as, ‘How can one make a better mousetrap?’ any dream that did give an answer would be quite incomprehensible to the baby. In short, while our dream producing mechanism may have entrance to infinite wisdom and resources, it nevertheless has the problem of explaining it to a very limited intelligence – namely us! In other words, we cannot ask a question that is beyond our present comprehension. If we did get an answer it would be meaningless. The question and answer are all bound up in each other. Dr Washington Carver, in seeking inner intuitive answers to scientific questions, had the same problem. He had before him the task of synthesising various products such as milk, glue, printer’s ink and oils, from peanuts and sweet potatoes. He had to modify his questions, however, to get understandable replies.

This faces us with fresh information as to how we must approach the effort to induce dreams. First of all we have to exhaust the limits of our conscious research into the question. We should read about it, study it, experiment with it, becoming involved as deeply as possible. If an answer to our problem is not forthcoming from these conscious efforts, then we have to realise that what we seek does not lie in the known areas of our knowledge. With the present information at our disposal, we are not able to arrive at a solution. Most breakthroughs in knowledge or understanding, however, are not explainable with the old facts. So we have to let go of our present conclusions, opinions, concepts and feelings, and admit that these present aspects of ourselves do not appear to hold the solution. Or if they do, we cannot see it. Then we have to sleep on it and watch our dreams.

The result of this might be that:

(a) We have no noticeable response at all.

(b) We have only a partial reply to our question.

(c) We have an amazing dream that reveals the answer.

If there seems to be no response, we have to keep trying, and record any dreams that occur. It might be that the dreams are not properly understood, or else we are more deeply involved in some other issue. If the reply is partial, then further dreams may enlarge upon it. It may be that a total reply would be beyond our present comprehension. This is very noticeable when watching a dream series. As it proceeds, and one has gained understanding of the broad outlines of something being revealed, the dreams begin to portray greater detail, which is understandable in the light of what has been learnt; or else our attitudes and concepts are so fixed in one direction of approach, that we have to be gradually led and introduced to new areas. Then the subject proper can be introduced. In this way, a researcher into the problem of migraine headaches might be directing his experiments along the line of a particular type of chemical, but the dream might hold information dealing with it under a physiological approach. Therefore a change of attitude would have to exist at the very start of gaining what the dream holds in store. We have to be willing to let ourselves be educated by the dream. This can take a long time; but then so does any research, for we need to grow in understanding and ability to the point where we can comprehend and make use of what we are seeking. Leonardo de Vinci designed the helicopter, the submarine and the bicycle chain, but it took technology three hundred years to be able to apply this man’s ‘dreams’.

Some of those whose insight into the hidden process of human life amount to genius, have claimed that intuition is based upon vast experience or education. This education or experience can have been forgotten, or be the result of years long past, or even, as some claim, from past lives. The point is, however, that this knowledge is tapped, not by remembering it, but in receiving a sort of summary of its entire comments in regard to a particular question. As an example, let us say that a doctor examines a young girl, and has an irrational feeling that she has a rare blood condition. He cannot for the life of him think why, but nevertheless sends her for a blood test to check his feelings. Much to his surprise the condition is confirmed. This makes him really sit down to ponder how he knew; and after a great deal of searching he discovers the reason. In college he had read a novel mentioning a strange mark on a man’s body, which turned out to be a symptom of a blood disease. Later, in medical school, he noticed in passing the colour of a person’s eyes with a blood condition. Both incidents were lost to consciousness, but his intuition signals the essence of his knowledge by making him ‘feel’ uneasy about the girl’s condition, and irrationally (i.e. without knowing for what reason) suspect a blood disease.

That is an imaginary example, but there are plenty of real life ones. Seventy years ago, Morgan Robertson wrote a book called Futility. Robertson had been a seaman, and also had an inventive ability, having invented an improved type of periscope. The book he wrote was about a ship named ‘The Titan’. This had a displacement of 70,000 tons, 800 ft long, had triple screw propulsion, speed of 24 to 25 knots, was designed to carry 3,000 people, and had only a few lifeboats. In the book the Titan hit an iceberg in the North Atlantic and went down.

To understand what I mean about intuition, I have only to explain that the ‘Titanic’ had a displacement of 66,000 tons, and was 852.5 ft long. Like the ‘Titan’, it also had triple screw, speed of 24 to 25 knots, carried 3,000 people and had few lifeboats. It too sunk in the North Atlantic after hitting an iceberg.

Heinrich Schliemann not only believed his irrational feelings, he did something about them. The son of a poor German clergyman, he educated himself, worked his way into a monied business; then, at a time when all the world scoffed, he set out to discover the mythical city of Troy. Later, he unearthed one of the richest treasures in the world at the Mycenaean Palace in Greece. All this from believing his inner feelings about the ‘fairy stories’ of Troy and King Midas. Schliemann himself says it was due to a past life in ancient times, and his irrational feelings were memories from that time he could not explain with present facts. Whether we believe this or not, his intuition, from whatever source, proved correct.

The prophesies of H. G. Wells also stand in a similar light. Working from his knowledge of his day, he spoke of such things as an atomic war, aerial fighting craft, armoured tanks, air conditioning, intercontinental air travel and television. In a similar vein, as a great devourer of scientific information, Jules Verne prophesied many of the important scientific discoveries and applications that were to follow. One of the most interesting of these amazing intuitive insights into facts is displayed by Jonathan Swift in Gulliver’s Travels. Written in 1726, the fictional Laputian scientists discover that the Planet Mars has two moons, and one of these travels around the planet twice as fast as the other. It was only in 1877, that Asaph Hall, an American scientist, was able to confirm the truth of this remarkable statement. How Swift came by this information is unknown.

Another interesting case is that of Rafael Scherman. As an infant In the nursery he started collecting envelopes because of the various hand writings displayed on them. From then on his consuming passion was a study and analysis of handwriting. As his knowledge of this subject grew, his ability to determine who wrote a particular sentence became more than just a reasoned conclusion; it became intuitive. Cornelius Tabor, a newspaper man who wrote of Scherman’s work with the police in crime investigation, said, ‘I was introduced to him (Scherman) by Dr E.K. I showed him an envelope addressed by a lady he certainly did not know. He glanced at it briefly and then set to work. He described in minute detail the lady’s appearance, her figure, the colour of her hair, her features and suddenly it seemed that she came to life in front of me – he imitated her manner of speech. He seemed to know everything of her character. He told me her life story as if he had suddenly become a part of her very existence.’ (From – My Occult Diary)

What has all this got to do with dreams? They are simply used as instances of the unusual knowledge, foresight, inventiveness, and powers of insight the human mind can exhibit, especially in its intuitive side. They are but a dewdrop in the sea of examples that could be given, but as long as they bring home one point, they are enough. The point being, that any thoroughgoing dream researcher will never discard ideas presented, just because they do not fit his or her present opinions. We are always enlarging our facts to fit increased human knowledge and experience. Let us not then cast away an idea because it will not fit the smallness of our conceptions, or because it seems ridiculous or irrational. Neither let us believe it without testing it. Once more, the balanced way.

If we approach the dream with an open mind, an involvement in our question, and the willingness to be educated, we are certainly on the right tracks. If we add to this the constant interest and enthusiasm in our subject that men like Rafael Scherman have shown, then we bring to the dream an ever widening sphere of experience and knowledge through which it can express itself.

It has to be pointed out, however, that the past ‘knowledge and experience’ explanation of intuition in dreams and waking does not fully account for it. Scherman’s abilities, for one, do not entirely fit into this. If we read the lives of Andrew Jackson Davis, or Edgar Cayce – Man of Miracles – Neville Spearman, we shall soon see this. A study of their lives does show one interesting fact that furthers our knowledge of dream research. To state it briefly, the question asked, and how it is asked, has enormous influence on the answer received.

This has already been hinted at when mention was made of Dr George Washington Carver and his discoveries. When studying Edgar Cayce’s life, we find that several of the important aspects of his intuitive knowledge were not displayed until someone asked him the right questions. For instance, Cayce eventually began to give personal information on people’s latent capabilities, talents and problems, but this did not begin until a man named Lammers asked him questions on subjects he had not considered before, and so had never bothered to ask himself about.

I once made the experiment of asking a young man of very unphilosophical nature, a series of questions, rather like the Socratic method. Within fifteen minutes, as the questions awoke a realisation of his own experiences, he was talking pure philosophy, but he could not repeat this alone, without the questions.

The issues that arise from this are probably not of importance to the average person interested in dreams, but for the serious investigator they pose a very real problem; for one may have certain information that cannot be elicited because we do not know what questions to ask, or how to ask it. While this may seem of little importance at present, with very little stretch of imagination, a time can be foreseen when the present scientific method will attempt to incorporate the intuitive type of research into its sphere. Then, those found capable of dreaming or intuiting answers, will be as much a part of a research establishment as laboratory workers are today. Therefore, the framing of the question will be a serious undertaking. Basically, it has to elicit a response that remains understandable, but is not bound by preconceptions and already known facts. It must be more in the line of ‘What do I need to know? ‘What is best to consider?’ rather than a too pointed question arising from already held opinions. In this way we may discover that another intelligence other than our conscious self is working within us, and we can make contact. Of this, Shane Miller tells the amusing story of the little boy who took a pole to measure the depth of the pool at the bottom of the garden. Each day he measured it, and each day it seemed to show a different depth. He pondered on this, and one day found the thrilling answer. There is Someone, or Something, at the bottom of the pool, moving the stick up and down. The boy realises he is not alone!

Working along similar lines, Professor James Bonner of the California Institute of Technology tried to analyse scientific creativeness. He questioned a number of researchers and scientists about intuitive knowledge gained in their work. He then set down his findings as follows:

(1) Define the question. This may itself be a creative act, since to recognise a question that has not been asked before may take great creativity.

(2) Stuff with facts. Once the question has been defined the potential scientific creator must have all the information he can get. He may have to do some experiments; he reads the literature, he gets together all the information that he can imagine bears upon the subject.

(3) Wait. The scientist may mull the facts over; he may worry; but in principle what he has to do now is wait.

(4) A solution pops out. Perhaps many solutions pop out. Often solutions emerge when one is half asleep, or perhaps during a day dream.

(5) Assess the solution. The scientist must now ask himself whether his new creative idea is a useful one or not. Is it good or bad? Does it unify everything that is present to be unified?

Getting down to methods, these should now be reasonably clear to understand. Having worked and worried over the problem, having looked to see what other people have said about it, or what other people have done along similar lines, we now approach the bed, but before actually climbing in, it is best to sit awhile, and consciously go over what you have thought, what you plan, what you hope, concerning the question. Cover the doubts, ideas, difficulties. Try to pierce the veil that hides the answer. If it is a personal problem ask ‘What shall I do? What is the best course of action? Or, how should it be approached ?’ If the question relates to work we plan to do, such as starting a business, investing in a venture, or beginning some undertaking; run through the plans, and ask, ‘Have I missed anything? Are there factors I have not considered? Is this for my best interests? Any suggestions?’ Then drop thought of the subject, get into bed, and go to sleep. When you wake, whatever the time if you remember a dream whether it seems like an answer or not, set it down lest it be forgotten. If you wake and cannot remember any dreams, lie quietly for a while, trying to remember as explained earlier, and ‘Good Luck!’

Characters or People in Dreams

Harry Bosma, who produces the best selling Alchera dream interpretation software, says of the characters in your dreams:

“There must have been some dreams that made you wonder why a known person appeared in them. This is especially puzzling if you haven’t seen that person for years. I experience this all the time. Everyone I ever met in my life keeps showing up in my dreams. I can’t blame day residue for it. If somebody appears in my dream, there has to be a special reason for it.

“I’ve been entering characters in my symbol book for a long time. Let me introduce you to a few. There’s Peter, one of my strongest helpers. He showed up riding on a horse in my ‘Cracking The Ice’ dream. Riding the horse he managed to crack the ice on a small lake, something I was unable to do on my own. I had to think for a while before I understood exactly why he appeared in my dream. Peter went to the same elementary school as I. One thing I eventually remembered about him was his inventiveness. This led me to realise that I use the appearance of Peter in a dream as a clue to consider whether I need to think of a more ingenious approach to an issue I am confronting.

There’s Frits, whose role I only recently got to understand. I could never see any pattern in the dreams he appeared in. Frits is a high school acquaintance, somebody who was often around, even though we weren’t really friends. I never fully understood it at the time. But it recently hit me that he was especially around when I was rebelling against the boredom of high school. He was having fun whenever I broke the rules, or did something else exciting. With that insight, looking back at the dreams, there is a pattern. Whenever my behaviour in a dream is more active than usual, he is around. He is the part of me that is having fun, because I’m not aware that I’m having fun myself.” 

Inner Characters: An important thing to remember to understand your dream characters/people is that usually we are not dreaming about that actual person but a living image of them formed by your memories, impressions, events lived with them and even your intuitions about them. Such memories are living parts of us and influence us inwardly, so we put them in our dreams.

Apart from defining how you see one of your dream characters, and what relationship you have had to them in the past, as Harry suggests, it helps to simply consider how you feel about them, what of their characteristics are most important or noticeable to you? But occasionally it isn’t what you see in their character, but what you feel about them that is important. For instance a person who has frequently appeared in my dreams is a woman called Ann. I felt a lot of sexual attraction to Ann – although she may have felt nothing for me – and she appears in my dreams whenever loving feelings or closeness are being dealt with.

So, if we really examine ourselves, we have a really wonderful ability to express as a huge range of different types, as shown in our dreams, the master/mistress of drama and expression.

A man I used to work for, Leo, has appeared in dreams where a problem regarding outer activity was concerned. So Leo represents for me ways of dealing with difficulties I face in the world. He is the confidence and courage I have innately to meet things constructively.

But many characters in dreams are not people you have ever met or known, not even characters from films, plays or books. So you can’t look back on them and ask yourself what you observed or felt about them. In such cases it is most helpful to imagine yourself as that character and describe who you are, exactly as you are and how you act in the dream – as the dream character. As an example of this, one character in a dream, an old man, was dying. He was nobody I knew. When I imagined myself as him and described what I felt, and what was happening to me as him, it was clear he represented the experience I was facing at the time. I was letting my old life, a phase of my life, my old self, die. This was difficult but it was happening, and the dream helped me clarify what I was facing. See Being the Person or Thing

One of the most helpful ways to find the qualities of a dream character is to give them a name. For instance you might basically feel that a man you have seen or know slightly seems a practical outwardly capable person. So you could give him the name of Mr. Practical. Mr Practical therefore is your ability in dealing with everyday life, or outward activities. There could also be Mr Sexy, Miss How Do I Look, and so on. Naming characters gets easier if you stand in their role imaginatively as described above.

But remember that a word in a sentence changes meaning, even subtly, as it is placed in a different context. The word light, for instance, can be used by saying, “I switched on the light.” Or we can say, “I felt very light-hearted.” Or even, “There was no light.”

Each of these brings about a different sense of surroundings or events. Similarly, the context of a character in your dream may change what you have defined of his or her qualities. So you must look to the context to get the final understanding as to what you dream character indicates in that particular dream. See Context/Theme

A person who appeared in many of my dreams was a woman named Su. My relationship with Su was one in which I had been trying to learn to love her without being possessive or grasping. So in my dreams she always depicted my attempts to love in that way, or my attempts to learn a fuller love.

In one dream Su is shown paddling an inflatable dingy to a local town, where I am going to meet her. But there were difficulties about this. At the time of the dream I was dealing with a lot of people in very direct relationships, and Su in this dream shows that I still haven’t ‘met’ or integrated the ability to love without grasping or wanting to posses. The difficulty in the dream suggests that I find it difficult to express this more open love.

In a later dream, experienced just after I had led a weekend activity, I dreamt Su was visiting or with us. But she didn’t look like Su at all, being dark, indecisive and a weaker personality. I was talking with her, or just with her, when I realised that Mike (a close friend) was upstairs with my wife. He had arrived back from America. I wanted him to meet Su. I wanted to hug him, but I also wanted Su to see me do this. So although I hug him with love, there was also something of the purposely done thing about it.

Here Su is actually with me, in my house, so this is an entirely different context than with the previous dream. This shows a fuller integration with unconditional love. But the part at the end where I hope Su will see me ‘loving’ Mike points out that I am still moved by desires for acclaim and public attention.

So to summarise, consider each character and discover what qualities, faults, weaknesses or strength they depict for you. Give them a name, as this helps you remember their quality. But look to the context of the dream to find the detailed and changing expression of what the character depicts. See Autonomous Complex; Sub Personalities

Example: Then I slowly became aware of a deeper sense of the discomfort. It was a feeling of being stuck in one place and not being able to move. It wasn’t anything to do with moving physically but was as an awareness. It felt awful and I tried to move but couldn’t. The only way of describing it was as if we are all made out of the same stuff – as an example concrete – and as such we filled all space. So the little space I filled could not move because all around was filled by others. I felt really stuck and wondered what I could do, but there seemed no way out of it. Yet I could not believe this was really how things were.

Most of this was spontaneous thoughts and movement through the experience, so that was how I was led to thinking about my cousin Sid again, and his situation of being constantly linked with his mother even after he died. Then I realised that I was linked with Rita in a similar way, and in feeling that I realised that I could move in at least two positions – me and Rita – because of the loving connection I felt.

Then came a flood of realisation, every person I had loved or experienced was another position I could be in; and then I knew all the animals I had loved and even people I had a casual relationship with. But there was even more because in dreams and sessions I had become or encountered amazing things, people, creatures, the alien beings and others. I knew then that I was FREE to go anywhere and be almost anything, because their life pattern was now part of me. Then with a rush of wonder, I realised that the more people and creatures I loved or had experience of, the bigger I became.

 Couple: Depending on the context of the couple in the dream, they can represent the dreamers parents and the family situation and environment at the age of the couple portrayed; if the dreamer has been married, can depict the dreamer’s marriage situation at the age of the couple; hopes for a relationship; possible outcomes of a relationship; friendship; partnership; some sort of relationship.

Dead people: The influence those people still have in your life – i.e. you are still influenced by them, or your relationship with them, even though they are dead. Feelings about death. Many people are often unaware of the massive experience they take in during a relationship and how it interacts with them when we love someone. In other words the memories and experience we gather unconsciously change us and are not lost. It is part of you and is symbolised in dreams as a person or event. So this needs to be recognised in understanding Dreams about Dead People and also Dreaming about a person I have left

Group of people: A group of people, as in Ivor’s dream below, can depict how one meets the pressure of social norms; public opinion. See: crowd.

Large crowds: Enormous involvement of self in an issue; ones relationship or feelings about the social environment one lives in; in groups we have a feeling of being looked at or on view – how we relate to that may be depicted by what we are doing in the dream group. See: party; roles.

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 in terms of fears. Therefore dreaming often of people we knew in the past would suggest the 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.

Because you have taken in millions of bit of memory, lessons learnt, life experiences along with all the feelings or problems met by loving and living with someone and they are what makes you the person you are. The memories and experience we gather unconsciously change us and are not lost. It is part of you and is symbolised in dreams as a person or event.

Several people in a dream suggest: Not feeling lonely; involvement of many aspects of oneself in what is being dreamt about; social ability.

As social relationship is one of the most important factors outside of personal survival – and survival depends upon it – such dreams help us to clarify our individual contact with society. Human beings have an unconscious but highly developed sense of the psychological social environment. Ivor’s dream shows something we are all involved in – how we are relating to humans collectively. Are we in conflict with group behaviour and direction; do we conform, but perhaps have conflict with our individual drives; do we find a way between the opposites? Much of our response is laid down in childhood and remains unconscious unless we review it.

 Example: ‘Walking alone through a small town. I was heading for a place that a group of people, in a street parallel to mine, were also heading for. A person from the group tried to persuade me that the RIGHT way to get to the place was along the street the group was walking. I knew the street did not matter, only the general direction. The person was quite disturbed by my independence. It made him or her feel uncertain to have their leader apparently questioned. I felt uncertain too for a moment.’ Ivor S.

In some dreams, a group of people represent what is meant by the word God. This may sound unlikely, but the unconscious, because it is highly capable of synthesis, often looks at humanity as a whole. Collectively humanity has vast creative and destructive powers that intimately affect us as individuals. Collectively it has performed miracles that looked at as an individual, appear impossible. How could a little human being build the great pyramid, or a space shuttle? The Bible echoes this concept in such phrases as ‘Whatever you do to the least of one of these, you do to me.’

 Example: ‘I was outdoors with a group of people acting as leader. We were in the middle of a war situation with bullets playing around us. Maybe aeroplanes were also attacking. I was leading the group from cover to cover, avoiding the bullets. Paul W.

Despite feeling attacked, either by external events, or from inner conflicts, Paul is using leadership skills to deal with his own fears and tendencies. If a friend told us he had just had an argument with his wife and was going to leave her, we might sit down and counsel them by listening and helping them to sort out the hurt feelings from their long term wishes. We might point out they had felt this way before but it passed – in other words give feedback they had missed. In a similar way, our various emotions and drives often need this sort of skill employed by ourselves. This unifies us, leading to coping skills as in Paul’s dream.

 

Useful Questions and Hints:

If they are people I know do I understand what I associate with them?

Do I recognise what I feel about society?

What have my parents left in me?

See – Being the Person or Thing –  The Conjuring Trick – Working with associations – Releasing Your Inner Genius

Artists and Dreams

We are constantly giving meaning to a torrent of impressions that we meet through our senses and from within us. We give form to raw experience. We scan our enormous wealth of words, phrases, context, to arrive at an understanding of what is communicated verbally or in writing. If we could watch this process taking place, we would observe a constant searching and rejection of non-hits, a lining up of possibilities, and a bringing to the forefront of what we sense are highest probabilities.

Our mind/brain is a flashing loom of connections, a constantly moving wonderful network of links between billions of cells. This flashing creative network that constitutes the miraculous background to our responses, our feelings, our thoughts and spontaneous fantasies and dreams, is constantly forming patterns from the multitude of experiences we have. It constantly tries to match these patterns against what is already known or learnt. It draws out from the chaos of memory and incoming experience whatever it can liken to what was met in the past. What it can’t match it tries to put into some sort of order or to give a form to. And within all this constant activity the search for personal meaning goes on – Who or what am I? How can I survive? Is there a way ….?

Out of such a profoundly integral search for meaning, as artist, writer, musician, we may project the subtle forms of our inner meanings into the art form we use. We may create shapes, places, people, and feelings. Out of the flashing web of our own sentience we create life – our life – with its own conceptions of what it is to exist, what it is to love or hate, to strive or fail.

Even the most modern of dream theories agree that it is out of the fathomless depths of our drive to give meaning to impressions, that we create dreams. It is out of the barely formed impressions and understanding of the dreaming impulse that we create and live. In fact many artists of every discipline – and I now use the word to include musicians, painters, writers and architects – have directly drawn from their dream life.

What we cannot quite grasp – what is too vast and many sided for us to hold entirely in our thoughts, we give form to in paintings, in carvings, in sound, in piling rocks one upon another to form a monument. We may then venerate or hold as of immense value such art forms. They hold in them for us the vast dimension of the ungraspable, of the infinity of our own within. They stand before us as represent a journey of lives of the alien in our midst, in ourselves. They remind us of what we are not masters of, and what may take hold of our life. See

In past times tribal people stood in awe of their own existence. They recognised, even if it were unconsciously, the incredible journey they had made from being an unconscious animal, to the attainment of personal awareness and human society. They represented this awe-full experience in rituals, and symbolic paintings and sculptures such as the totem. They also recognised in their art the immense journey ahead, of claiming the possibilities of human life, and put this into their art. How do we deal with the powers that overwhelm us and drag us into mass murder in war and social upheaval? How do we create a personal and social world that we can be proud of?

 

In writing about Symbolism In The Visual Arts, (Page 255 in Man And His Symbols, Jung)

Aniela Jaffe mentions the drawing of Klee, interestingly called The Limits of Understanding, which expresses this attempt to put into form what cannot be thought. Jung said that a true symbol appears only when there is a need to express what thought cannot think or what is only divined or felt.

The great artists of any culture give to us what we may have failed to see ourselves. They portray to us the spirit of our times, and our predicament, and perhaps even a passage through the dilemmas we face. Sometimes they manage to break through the cultural plethora and froth of everyday life and display an insight into the fundamental forces of life, renewing our own connection. To do this they face a personal death into the unconscious. They experience darkness and light that many of us may not dare to face. They live within the great forces of their dreams more intensely, more fully than those of us whose awareness is centred on the everyday surface produced by the concepts of life generally agreed upon.

When an artist manages to meet and give birth to one of the spirits of our age, whether it is a terrible demon of our times, or a healing angel, it speaks to us beyond our reasoning. It draws crowds, it holds attention. In the early part of this century the artist Kandinsky wrote that ‘The art of today embodies the spiritual matured to the point of revelation.

Something that we must recognise as an enormous shift in human awareness that has taken place in our own times, and which must influence art from here forwards, is the attainment of self-awareness we have been helped toward by the findings of modern psychotherapeutic schools. This form of self examination has enabled us to explore the wealth of pain and wonder usually forgotten in the mists of childhood. But it also lays bare the struggle, the enormity of the evolutionary movement toward consciousness, toward being human. And there is tremendous art here when it is discovered; art expressing the meeting between the social individual we try to be, and the animal we are still largely immersed in within the depths of our mind and body. In fact we are the whole spectrum of things from sub-atomic particles, through molecular survival and interactions, on into the basic living organisms and creatures up through the lizard, the mammal and the human. All these things are active in us, in harmony, in conflict, in process of becoming. Out of this weaving loom of life all art and music arise; all life experiences an expression of it.

As an example, Thomas De Quincey’s Confessions of an English Opium Eater describes his fantastic dream life over a period of years. De Quincey started to take opium as a sedative. It led to a heightened awareness of how the mind can produce powerful images and memories. He writes that ‘In the middle of 1817, this faculty became increasingly distressing to me.’ Not only did his inner visions present ‘… nightly spectacles of more than earthly splendour.’ But also ‘…. vast processions moved along continually in mournful pomp. Concurrently with this, a corresponding change took place in my dreams; a theatre seemed suddenly opened and lighted within my brain.’ Such experiences led De Quincey to feel ‘deep-seated anxiety and funereal melancholy.’ At times he might recall the ‘minutest incidents of childhood, or forgotten scenes of later years, were often revived.’ ‘I could not be said to recollect them; for, if I had been told of them waking, I should not have been able to acknowledge them as parts of my past experience.’ In his visionary state however, he says ‘I recognised them instantaneously . . . I feel assured that there is no such thing as an ultimate forgetting.’

De Quincey’s deep seated anxiety and melancholy, in our present times, would be signs of an underlying neurosis which could have been dealt with by exploring his fantasies to their roots in his personal history – already being touched on spontaneously by him. Whether we take the example of De Quincey’s opium aided fantasies, or the visions of Christian mystics such as the temptations of St. Antony, art and religion has at least a facet of being a symbolic way of meeting a neurosis. It is only when we reach through the symbol into what it depicts about us personally, that we move from this historical symbolic form of healing and representation.

One cannot of course limit the definition of art and dreams to that of dealing with hidden neurosis, or even of the move toward wholeness. Therefore it is interesting to remember some of the artists who directly used dreams as part of their work. William Blake for instance purposefully made use of dreams not only as sources for his art, but also for invention – his method of printing for instance. He particularly tells of the man who taught him painting in his dreams. Blake actually drew the face of this character.

In the 1950’s the painter Jasper Johns was working as a window dresser in New York. In a dream he saw himself painting an American flag. In waking he painted the flag from his vision of it in the dream. The painting became a powerful force in an American revolution in art.

Salvador Dali consistently used dreams as a basis for his paintings. He tried to preserve his dream imagery in his art, and particularly to portray the subtleties of time and space. He referred to his paintings as ‘hand painted dream photographs.’

A number of film directors also used their dreams in the art. Ingmar Bergman tried to portray episodes from his dreams as accurately as possible. He felt that dreams have the ability to help people find points of connection, to link people. Carlos Saura used fragments from his dreams to capture atmosphere and environment.

For each of us, our dreams are our own studio in which we nightly create beyond our waking talent to produce the new, the novel, the unexpected and the deeply true. We are each visionaries, artists of the night and live in another dimension than that of the body.  See: archetype of the artist; compensation theory; creativity and problem solving; hallucinations and hallucinogens; hallucinations and visions.