Posts Tagged ‘dimensions of dreaming’

A Dream Points the Way

Enlightenment Part 12

Tony Crisp

In my dream I was in a prison cell with two other men. We ate, slept and defecated in the cell. I was standing at the bars of the cell, and had the impression of having been in the prison for years. I was shouting and cursing the people who had put me in the prison, full of hate and self-pity. I had done this day after day while in the prison. Suddenly I realised that my years of shouting had availed nothing. The only person who was upset by it was myself. I was the victim of my own anger and turmoil. So I dropped the attitudes behind the anger and shouting and was free of them. Years went by, and one by one I dropped other habits of emotion and thought with which I had trapped and tortured myself. I realised I could be totally free within myself. One morning I woke and sat up on the mattress on the floor that was my bed. The last ghost of inner entrapment fell away. A fountain of joy opened in my body, pouring upwards through me. So intense was it I cried out. The cellmates called a warden. They stood looking at me as I experienced a radiance so strong I felt as if I must be shining. I was aware my joy poured into them, although they thought I was mad. Nothing would ever be the same again.

Commentary

We are all prisoners of our emotions, of our thoughts, and of our sense impressions. Mostly we live in these as if they are reality. This is a form of confusion, but also of imprisonment. The bars of this prison are often invisible to the person they enslave. Or else the person calls them ‘Me’. We say, ‘That is how I feel. I don’t like this. I am afraid. I am in love.’ Or else we depend entirely upon events and others to stimulate pleasure or pain in us.

The identification between the thoughts, the emotions, and the sense of self is so immense, that no life outside this imprisoning identification is even suspected. Yet here is the source of most human misery.

Drop the identification, as the dream suggests, and immediately a degree of liberation arises. Drop the multitude of other identifications and gradually the bliss of liberation opens.

Link Back to Chapter Headings – Link to Chapter 13

A Dream Sampler

Do You Dream

Tony Crisp

Chapter Twelve

Although a number of different types of dream have already been dealt with, we have by no means seen examples of all the major types. One of the things that makes dream interpretation easier is to be able to recognise what type of dream we are dealing with. In the last chapter, various descriptions or definitions of human dream have been given. It was said that dreams may arise from any of the different parts of ourselves. It has been left to this chapter to show just how different these dreams can be. Also, certain typical characteristics can usually be found in dreams arising from the different parts of our us. Despite having only a certain number of dreams to choose from, I have tried to select those that do express these typical characteristics. Therefore, this chapter can be used as a source of reference in helping us to determine the character of our own dreams. But quite apart from that, they are, due to the very nature of the dreams dealt with, full of information about life in general.

In this ‘Dream Sampler’ I am sticking to the general theme of ‘Body, Soul and Spirit’ as defined in the previous chapter. It will also be seen that the title of this chapter includes the words ‘and Sleep Experiences’. This is because some of the examples given are not recognised as dreams by some writers. As they occur during sleep, however, I feel it necessary to include them in order to make this chapter more complete.

THE BODY 

Science, religion and philosophy have often been at disagreement with each other, or themselves, as to exactly what part the body plays in the making of a human being. Religion has generally agreed that the body is temporal and of less importance than the Soul and Spirit. On the other hand, science has often remarked that consciousness and mind are developments of matter, while philosophy has attempted to understand and reconcile these two extremes.

 ‘Dreams about the body do not usually deal with it in quite the same way as science or religion. Like philosophy they tend to reconcile the extremes. With Blake they agree that ‘Man has no body distinct from his Soul; for that called Body is a portion of Soul discern’d by the five Senses, the chief inlets of Soul in this age. Energy is the only life, and is from the Body, and Reason is the bound or outward circumference of Energy.’

Getting down to the dreams themselves, we have the obvious ‘Body’ dreams like these of a mother to be. Her two dreams are short but to the point.

‘Dreamt I should take more calcium and certain minerals.’

‘Dreamt that I should be doing exercises to help with my pregnancy.

It is interesting that prior to these dreams the woman had felt very low in health. She followed up the advice of the dreams and gradually regained her energy and well-being. She discovered then that she had been very anaemic, but had now overcome this blood condition.

In the book Dreams and Dream Stories, by Anna Kingsford, a footnote to one of the dreams says she ‘beheld a hand holding out towards her a glass of foaming ale, the action being accompanied by the words, spoken with strong emphasis, “You must not drink this.” It was not her usual beverage, but she occasionally yielded to pressure (from her husband) when at home.’

Generally, such dreams concerning what we should or should not partake of are reasonably clear. But where the dream attempts to depict the results of wrong eating, it may become more symbolical.

Dealing with the body in a different sense, we have the following dream of a man. He had been trying to understand how his conscious self related to the unconscious workings of his body. He dreamt:

 Example: I had been asked to run a sort of mission hall. It was a bare tin hall, wood on the inside. It seemed to be mostly black or coloured people I had to speak to. At first I simply stood at one end of the hall and spoke to them about God and life. I felt it was hardly worth the effort, believing that they would not understand or be interested. I believe I suggested they work as a team and produce a book. This was to be about their own life and work, and to help them understand and express themselves, and aid me to know them better. Again I felt it was not worth the effort.

‘When I spoke again the following week great changes had already been made in the hall. An orderly notice board was on the right of the hall. It was generally brighter and more purposefully united, and a rostrum and microphone were there for my use. Apparently Bob Miller had made these.

‘As I was looking at all this, a coloured woman came to me at the rostrum table. She was Afro-Indian and middle aged. She had with her two books produced by the team. I opened the books and looked at them, astounded. They consisted mostly of pictures, with explanatory captions. They were absolutely beautiful pictures showing their place in industry and society. There were coloured men stripped to the waist working in the steel works at furnaces; women busy at production lines, and so on. So wonderful were they, and I could see in every page the effort and loving care, the team work and deep appreciation, love and respect for myself and what I was trying to do with them, that I was overcome by humility and love for them. So much so that I took the woman in my arms and held her close while I wept. It was an ecstatic moment of communion and understanding between us. Then she felt slightly embarrassed and turned away.

This is a beautiful and unusual dream. So much so that when the dreamer understood its meaning he cried again. It is therefore worth explaining in a little detail, and I will let the dreamer explain it in his own words.

‘The meaning of this dream came to me partly through understanding the symbols, and partly through intuition. The Mission Hall is my own body. It represents also my search for understanding and self-knowledge. But it shows that what I discover consciously about life or God, is sought eagerly by the coloured people of the congregation. This congregation is in fact the unconscious forces and activities of my own body. I had felt at one time that my body was something to be conquered. This dream shows how foolish and proud this was. The congregation not only need me, but I also depend upon them. I am their ability to think, to analyse, to try to understand life. While they are all the congregation of my inner forces and energies, that keep my body, and thus my physical consciousness, functioning. They work at the “industries” of construction, digestion, circulation, etc. The notice board represents dreams, which tell me what is going on in the congregation. The rostrum and loudspeaker represent my greater ability to communicate with myself. The rest now explains itself. The Afro-Indian woman shows that both instinctive and spiritual drives are expressed in the unconscious, and my humility is a necessary adjustment to my previous attitude. Then, how can I help but love these parts of myself seeing we are co-partners in the business of living?’

This dream covers so many aspects of our relationship with our body, that further examples are unnecessary. Also, those dealing with representations of sickness have already been mentioned in the dreams of the dog biting the dreamer’s body. But one more dream must be mentioned, as a further example of the dream as a guide to caring for the body. It is quoted from Dreams, The Language of the Unconscious by Hugh Lynn Cayce.

‘I dreamed my brother and I with our wives were out on a party with B.B. I fell asleep at the table. We got home very late. My brother left the car and walked home. He and I stopped to look at a bottle of milk that was marked “undistilled milk!”‘ An intuitive analysis of this dream by Edgar Cayce suggested that it represented the man as having too many late nights. This is portrayed by his falling asleep at the table. It also is said to suggest a need for more physical exercise in the part where his brother walks instead of using the car. And lastly, Cayce says, ‘Change from the present supply (of milk) for this shows adulteration in same. 

THE SOUL

Turning from dreams dealing directly with the body and its functioning, we now approach those dealing with our emotions, thoughts, drives, relationships, opinions, and the host of things covered by the word Soul. Because so many dreams fall within this category, they will have to be subdivided into further sections. Let us start then with typical worrying dreams and nightmares.

WORRIES AND NIGHTMARES

 Dreams that depict worries and terrors are fairly easy to recognise. Their very emotional and fearful content, quite apart from the symbols, is enough to tell of their serious subject. Here are three worry dreams’, all from the same woman dreamer.

‘Not a very nice dream. I was in a boat, there seemed to be a lot of people in it to start with, and we were fishing. Then it wasn’t very light and I was by myself, and between me and the shore was a continuous row of lobster nets, and I couldn’t find a way through to get to the shore. It was dark and I was so panicky and I couldn’t try to get through the nets for fear of fouling the motor.’

Here we find the dreamer ‘at sea’. The darkness and nets represent her feelings and fears of being tangled up in life’s problems. The motor is her drive or energy, which is not capable of expressing itself due to fear of failure, fear of entanglement.

 ‘We were preparing for a party and I was trying to make up a plate of strawberries. At one moment they seemed to be strawberries and the next they were flowers, but half of them were bad and I was sorting through what seemed to be a mountain of wilted flowers to find one or two to make a dish. As fast as I found some nice one’s, the next time I looked at them they had wilted and the pile got higher and higher until I was almost covered in a dark brown pile.’

In this dream all the nice things in life appear to wilt and go bad, giving the feeling of being buried under brownness or decay.

‘I was going to go across the street and along a lane to collect seven bottles of milk which were in a box behind a house. The mud got thicker and deeper and as I waded I was being sucked down. Then I got to the milk and turned around to go back but the mud was moving like the waves and I was trying to hold the box of milk higher to get it above the waves and it was so heavy. Then, fortunately I woke up and I’d got a splitting headache.’

Again, we do not have to find a specific interpretation to see in this dream the feelings of being held back, pulled down, and carried away. Most worry dreams follow similar patterns, distinguishable by the emotions or fears portrayed. But many people fail to understand these dreams simply because they are unable to look at the symbolism of the dream, and see it as an expression of their own feelings. Yet even without the symbols, these dreams are clear because of the emotions involved.

This also applies to nightmares. To understand in detail we have to look closely at the symbols and their arrangement. But a general understanding can be found just from the feelings themselves. Here is a typical nightmare.

 ‘I dreamt that I woke up in bed. A noise downstairs had disturbed me. It sounded like somebody moving about, and I thought about burglars. I could distinctly hear the noise now, and was annoyed because I would have to do something about it. But just as I decided to get out of bed, it sounded as if the person or thing making the noise began to come up the stairs to the bedroom. I realised now that I was terrified. I tried to move but was rigid with fear. I tried to call out to my wife in bed beside me, but could not move my mouth because I was so terrified. But it became even more horrifying because the footsteps seemed to keep coming forever, and thus deepen and deepen my paralysis. It was like an eternity of fear. Then at last the bedroom door began to creep open, and my fear burst the bounds of my paralysis, and I screamed to my wife to switch the light on. Then we both really awoke, and I switched the light on because the room seemed filled with my own fear, disturbing even my wife.’

The difference between worrying dreams and nightmares is really only one of degree. As the pitch of emotion deepens, one usually wakes in fear or terror. If it is just a mild worrying dream, one may remain asleep, but struggling with the situation. In the above dream, the symbols at their face value suggest some upsetting factor downstairs in the unconscious that is beginning to stir about and disturb the conscious life of the dreamer. The dream is saying that he has just awoken to this situation, and is paralysed by it in his outer life. In fact, the dreamer had just begun to discover fears and desires he had previously not known existed in himself. See Our Reaction to meeting the Huge that we Are

 

CHILDREN’S DREAMS

 Children’s dreams are very similar to those of an adult. It is only that a child is facing slightly different problems that changes the themes. Or at least they are probably the same problems but at a different level and from a different degree of experience. For the following dreams I am indebted to Liz Hayes, a schoolteacher, who collected them for me from a class of schoolchildren. All the dreams are from girls about the age of twelve.

 ‘I am going to tell you about my dream I had last night. It started when 1 went for a walk in a park near my home. Well, I was happy that day, then all of a sudden a man came out of a bush and got me by my hand. I hit him that hard he let me go and I ran as fast as I could. He came running after me. I ran to the Park keeper but he wasn’t there and I got scared. I could have cried. Then I saw an old lady and I ran up to her but she was death. Then I ran to a telephone box and phoned the police. They came and got the man and took him to prison and I got a reward.’

This is either a fear of assault, or what is more likely a representation of her own sexual desires. As yet they are too big to deal with or handle on a relationship level. Several methods are tried, and in the end, moral conscience locks the man up safely.

 ‘One night I dreamt that I was drowning on a boat and there were strong winds blowing against the ship. I was the only one on the boat and the ship was nearly touching the sea and the waves were over the boat and suddenly the boat went over and I fell out of the boat and the waves came right over my head, then I was screaming and shouting for help and then I found myself awake.’

Obviously things are a bit rough going for this young girl. A boat usually represents the frail craft of our personality structure, with which we set sail on the sea of life.

‘One night I had a strange dream that I was walking down a dark road on my way home from my friend’s when a car drew near me. I began to run up an entry and when I reached the bottom of the entry I saw two men with stockings over their faces. I ran back but the man in the car was behind me and I bumped into him. I dreamed that he stabbed me with his knife and dragged me in his car. Then I woke up very scared.’

The girls all face tremendous fears without any tools to aid them.

 ‘I had a dream and this is what it was about. There were some men who threw me down an attic window. The attic was only about one and a half yards wide, but it was very high. I landed on the floor and there was my aunt with her little baby in her arms sitting on a chair. There was no other furniture and the attic was painted all white. There was a very big fierce lion there. I screamed and yelped as the lion came at me. The lion sprang on me and I died. As it was a funny dream I came alive again. The lion sprang at me again. I started shouting and screaming. There was blood bleeding all over. Then I woke up. In the morning my Mom said, “I heard you screaming and shouting for help.” I told her about the nightmare.’

This dream by a young Indian girl possibly represents jealousy over the affection given to a baby. The other dreams in the 31 sent to me deal almost entirely with violence, drowning, assault or chasing.

 

SELF

The large majority of dreams deal with general aspects of ourselves. Most of those already quoted in the book are examples of this, and one could go on forever with them. So, just a few dealing with common themes will be given.

A house is one of the commonest symbols in a dream. It was seen in the very first dream in the book, and in several others. Here is another house dream.

‘This house belonged to me, and I let some of the rooms to other girls. The furniture, apart from University stuff in some of the rooms, was mine too. I came in one evening and was sticking posters on the walls in my room when I realised that the chest of drawers only in the dream it was a bookcase was only about half its normal size. I couldn’t think why and then someone said one of the girls who lived here had stolen half of it. I was absolutely furious, and went on about letting my house and furniture, and how I couldn’t put a lock on my door because it looked bad when friends came. It was the middle of the night but I rushed downstairs trying to find the girl. A girl sleeping on the landing said she was Out with her boyfriend. I went to her room and burst in – her room-mate woke up and said she and the bookcase were out at Mearweed.

I kept trying to remember the address but couldn’t eventually wrote it down. The housekeeper or caretaker or someone came down to the kitchen with us and made coffee – she handed me one before I had a chance to refuse (I don’t like coffee). There was a big tin of gingerbread which I thought would take the taste away but someone covered it with biscuits. I kept saying “Dammit, it’s all my furniture,” and, “But it’s my house !” The housekeeper said, “All right, we know, but it all froze up last winter.” I said, “I know, but if people are willing to put up with that sort of thing I am willing to put up with them living here – it’s a reciprocal arrangement.” Someone had left the gas on. I turned it off and said, “Try to remember not to leave it on.” One of the girls apologised in a mocking sort of way, calling me “Ma’am”.’

This was dreamt by a young University student, which explains why some of the furniture was the University’s. In other words, some of her inner ideas and opinions are not hers yet, but have come from her studies. Without attempting a detailed analysis, which is not the aim of this chapter, the dream is a good example of a house dream. The different girls and rooms represent different attitudes of her own, and the dream revolves around the conflict between her outgoing self, represented by the girl, with boyfriend, who relates well with the opposite sex, and doesn’t mind sharing things, shown by the girl in her room; and the dreamer’s other attitude of not liking her personal belongings, i.e. her feelings, ideas, etc., shared with others. The caretaker is probably what we might call her common sense, and the freeze up an emotional withdrawal or coldness.

 

DESTRUCTION

Many dreams deal with the subject of destruction, or even cataclysm. These usually occur when the dreamer is going through great doubts, cynicisms and soul searching. Events may question religious or moral beliefs; break down self-confidence, destroy the concepts one has of the world and life.

Here is the dream of a girl educated as a Roman Catholic, but finding many of her beliefs threatened by the materialism of society, and the experiences of her life.

 ‘There was a group of people (none of whom I knew) in a room with metal walls, reached by a trapdoor in the floor, with a ladder down to the ground. There had been a nuclear explosion or some sort of world shattering disaster, and these were the only people left, and they read aloud to keep themselves amused.

‘They went outside – the air was heavy and foul with poisonous gases. They walked through fields of dead, brittle plants, through barbed wire fences, past a pylon, and came to a small patch of land which they’d reclaimed and were trying to grow things on a few small shoots were starting to appear. They walked over the brow of a hill and suddenly came upon the ruins of a cathedral. All that remained was the tower and a rectangle formed by the nave arches and the wall above, which formed a sort of lacy pattern. It was just an empty shell but was very beautiful – they hadn’t realised before that it was there. They went back to their room and watched a film of Leeds as it was before the disaster – it was very colourful and nostalgic. The camera followed a road through Leeds – quite a complicated route, and the final shot was of the underside of the trapdoor of their room.

The whole inner disaster that many of us face is portrayed here so well. Our intellectual schooling, and social influences in their commercial and political leanings, leave us in a difficult state of mind, leading nowhere, surrounded as we are by material and harsh values, unfeeling and unsatisfying. The outer life seems no better, one’s spirit is poisoned by the social scene, there is little if any natural growth, only that induced by particular effort on oneself, none induced by our society. Painful restrictions, destruction and seeming hopelessness. Yet although the dreamer’s religious beliefs have been shattered and much destroyed, the dream suggests that what does remain are the foundations of her own spiritual life, and these are beautiful. Then the dream looks back on the way things used to be before this inner destruction took place, and portrays the meandering complicated series of experiences leading to the present situation. Nostalgia for the past is felt; but what now? Will a living faith be built, and new growth arise from the debris of the old world? Such is the path dreams often take.

 

DEAD BODY

Another common theme is to discover a dead body and realise that one is somehow implicated with its death. A dream I do not have a written record of, but which was told me, runs approximately as follows. ‘I discovered a blood-stained cloth, and realised I was somehow involved in a murder. I hid the cloth behind a bush.’

Another such dream is, ‘I and some other people were burying a corpse, we weren’t concerned about the murder that had been committed, only that we might be found out – and I seemed particularly involved because a piece of paper with my address on it had been left by the grave. There was a part in this dream where I definitely became involved in it. I was watching the digging but taking no part in it. It was proceeding very slowly, so I got down and began to scrape at the earth with my hands. The moment I touched it I thought, “I’m involved in this. I can now be done as an accessory after the fact.”’

In these dreams the dead body often represents some part of our feelings or capacities that we have killed off, but do not wish to admit. For instance, through our marriage vows, we may kill off through guilt our feelings of warmth towards other people. But this may also ‘kill’ our warmth towards our children and partner, and so be represented as a dead body in dreams.

Of course it can be other parts of self we have killed, and we must look to the symbols for details. A point to make particular note of in death or murder dreams is whether it is oneself who is to die or is dead, or whether it is some other person. If it is oneself, this means that one directly associates oneself with the feelings or ideas involved in the death. We see this in the dream of the ‘holiday bed’. But if we do not choose to feel connected with such parts of our being (i.e. evil feelings within people were at one time projected upon the Devil! This made them easier to deal with in that the person did not feel directly connected with them. But it is only a temporary help, because the feelings represented by the Devil remain within to haunt us), then we see them in a dream as some other figure than ourselves.

 

WASHING

Bathing or washing is another symbol often experienced. Here are two dreams from the same person. They occurred in the order given, within a week.

‘I was amongst a lot of people, some known to me but I forget who they were, and everything in the building was getting into a greater and greater muddle. Things wanted tidying up and generally cleaning, but instead, everything got quite chaotic. I decided to have a bath, but found it impossible.’

‘I decided I wanted a bath. I went to a woman who was somewhere in the building in her own flat and she said that she had just had something done to improve the plumbing and that since then the water was always dark brown, muddy or rusty. We ran two baths full but it was no good, we could not get through to the clean water.’

The meaning of washing is here made quite plain. The muddle of the house needs cleaning. Bathing is a rite of purification and cleansing. Therefore the bath is a cleansing of her inner muddle.

 

MARRIAGE

Marriage in its various aspects is another frequent symbol. The following dream, by a married woman, is both beautiful and instructive. In it we can see how one can feel ‘on top of the world’ in early marriage; then drift apart emotionally and physically, the pain of which can sometimes stimulate the partners to discover a deeper relationship than ever.

 ‘Dreamt that there was a green and beautiful place on top of the world. It had crags and cliffs and vales and hills, and all was covered with bright green grass and moss. In a deep dell, more green and beautiful than the rest of the place, a young girl met a young man, and married him; for what reason I cannot tell, except perhaps that the place was beautiful. Now the young man was an alien from another planet, but he did not tell the young girl in case she would not marry him.

‘As time passed the young girl and man drifted apart and slept in separate rooms, still on top of the world, and the young girl grew to hate the young man, although he seemed unaware of it and quite content.

‘This then was their state when I arrived. I immediately leapt and skipped over the hills to the place where they had met, but found it no different in appearance to the rest of the hills: no more beautiful, no less. I then went to see the young man and talked to him. I explained to him the feelings of the young girl, and that it was because she did not understand him that she felt the way she did. Whereupon he immediately went to her and confessed to being an alien, and she accepted him as he was. Then they grew together again and slept in beds side by side and peace filled their nights and beautiful children one after the other were born to the young girl. And the young man was surprised and amazed beyond his comprehension.’

Marriage can often be about uniting with one’s inner male or female, which is a tremendous move to wholeness. This recognition that we all are basically female and male, but are polarised by our body to sense ourselves as just one gender, has been recognised for many ages, as shown by the illustration.

This form of marriage often takes years of preparation, because unlike ordinary marriage where two people who may not be suited can marry, this marriage of oneself with oneself is very particular, as shown by the examples:

 I felt we had a lot of love for each other. I was trying to explain the reason for waiting – about the cricketer having to wait for exactly the right moment swing his bat, otherwise his stroke fails. She had other ideas which I forget. We all went into the foyer of Friends House. She handed in tickets. I noticed that some really special event was going on. Heavy drapes were up, and there was an atmosphere of a special occasion, as with royalty. We got to the door to the meeting room. Two powerful men acted as receptionists. They took the tickets but said that there was only a ticket for one person. Marie went to the left into the meeting. I asked the man to allow me to exit out of the revolving door to Euston Road. I did this and found a battle going on, bullets flying, and people dead in the street. I lay beside a dead body pretending to be dead in case I got shot.

The dreamer obviously didn’t have the ticket’ and was not ready to meet the battle that life often is.

He dreamt he had intercourse with an Indian girl on a beach and afterwards he wanted to marry her. But although nothing seemed to stand in the way of illicit relationships with her, to legally marry her presented enormous difficulties and he had to prove himself worthy. In fact, he had taken LSD twice prior to this, and longed to further investigate the inner world it exposed. He knew the Indian girl was this inner life, and his illicit, easy intercourse, the LSD. But he wanted to be personally capable of experiencing the inner world, not have to depend on a chemical, and the dream showed him the difficulties he would have to meet. Nevertheless, he decided to do this rather than use an artificial method.

In this dream the man is getting nearer to his inner female, show by the oriental Indian girl.

 The oriental girl gasped and begged me not to touch or handle, the sword, as it was sacred, or only to be used by a special person. Then she suddenly saw, by my movements, that I was fulfilling the full ritual or ceremony of the sword. It was as if her people had a prophecy about the use of the sword, and whoever handled it in the right way was a leader for the people. Through the inner direction, I had used the sword correctly, and was this leader.

Now she knelt before me, head bowed, in Oriental fashion. The inner movements led me to bring the sword down on her neck – and touch it lightly. This was the last proof of the ritual being fulfilled. Quite without knowing it consciously I had fulfilled the ritual. Also, this last act was a rite of marriage. We were now man and wife. Our relationship was now different, and our depth of feeling for each other made whole. See Archetype of the Anima and Archetype of the Animus

 

GOING UP HILL

Going uphill means that things are difficult, but leading to higher things. Here is a typical ‘hill’ dream.

 ‘My husband, children and I were going up a terrifically steep hill, almost vertical, in our car. It was so steep I did not know if we would make it and I knew that once we started rolling back it would be difficult to stop. Nevertheless, although we had to put the brake on and stopped a few times, I felt very strongly that we would make it all right especially as we were almost at the top.’

The fear in the dream can clearly be seen. At first the doubt about being able to overcome the difficulties one is facing is in control. As the dream develops, however, the doubt is replaced by feelings of certainty. If they had not been replaced, this would have been a ‘worry’ dream. Or, if the car had begun to roll backwards, then it would have been a nightmare. If this dream, and the underlying emotions, is thought about, the inner workings of a human being become much clearer, for it can be seen how our confidence can banish worries that would otherwise have caused us to slip into despair and hopelessness.

 

SEX

Dreams that often occur, but are seldom mentioned, are those involving our sexual feelings. Our society has such strong guilt and filth feelings about sex that it is difficult to talk openly about the subject without being misunderstood. But because they are as much a part of our life as our worries, ambitions and strivings, they have to be mentioned here.

Many, if not most, sexual dreams, are just plain methods of relieving the pressure of our feelings. When one has gone without food for some time, and the biological hunger grows, we dream about eating. Similarly, a pressure of sexual energy and hunger for a sense of completeness in the male-female union, also gives rise to dreams. But whereas dreams of eating do not fulfil one’s hunger, dreams of sexual union can, if one’s feelings of guilt and dirtiness do not interfere at this level of consciousness, release the sometimes agonising tension and loneliness. Here is a reasonably straightforward dream of this type.

 ‘My aunt, whom I have often thought physically attractive, came to me in the garden. It was dusk, and we were quite alone in the quiet of the warm summer evening. She looked at me searchingly and came close taking my hand. “Do you not like me?” she asked; and as she spoke she passed my hand beneath her blouse on to the softness of her breast. As I felt her nipple between my fingers it was as if a charge of energy flowed into me and my breathing quickened. She spoke again, saying “Maybe you don’t love me, but have you felt no passion for me?” I explained that I had, and that my coldness had not been disinterest, but that “I did not wish to rush things.” Then we were undressed upon the ground, and beautifully and leisurely I expressed in her waiting body all my withheld desire for her.’

Kinsey found that such dreams occur in most age groups, and in both sexes. The next dream is that of a married woman, struggling with her own sexual feelings in the face of her husband’s disinterest.

 ‘Dreamt that I ought to let myself go and practise active imagination to get rid of the weight of depression that I felt. As I did this my hands moved of their own volition to my husband’s bed, and I knew that the answer to my problem was to get in with him. I shook him and told him I was cold and asked if I could get in with him. He was irritable and surly and told me to leave him alone, which was just the reaction I had expected as I knew him to be tired and worn himself. I did not, under the circumstances, like to persist and yet I knew it was the only answer. I got back into my own bed still knowing it was the only way to lose my burden.’

Sometimes our sexual dreams may hide problems we do not consciously realise. One man, reading about Freud’s views on a boy’s desire for his mother, felt that he could not honestly see any such desires in his own life. That night he dreamt:

 ‘I was in a very dark and strange street. The police were after me, and the street was a cul-de-sac. Fortunately it was so black they could not see me. I groped to a door at the end of the cul-de-sac, and knocked on it. It was opened by an elderly woman. Without saying a word I grabbed her and had intercourse with her. Her flesh was cold and smooth, and she moaned and cried with fear and pleasure. This awoke her passions, and she took me upstairs, as she had not had sex for twenty years. Her husband knocked at the door but somehow she got rid of him for good.’

What could be clearer? The ‘old woman’ is frequently used in dreams as a symbol for the mother – or ‘old man’ or King for the father. As with Oedipus, the father is ‘got rid’ of so that the mother can be possessed by her son.

The reason we have such dreams is because the feelings and desires of early childhood (when such desires are natural) have not fully developed into the different relationships of adulthood. The dreams mentioned earlier under the section of hypnosis, will serve to illustrate those symbolising homosexuality.

Having said that the early desires change as we mature, let us look at an amazing dream that expresses the whole struggle an individual faces in developing towards sexual maturity. The earliest phases of sexual development are represented by the baby loving its mother during breast feeding or cuddling. This gradually develops into a sort of self love (Narcissus) in adolescence which may be expressed as masturbation. It is at this point that the following dream takes up the struggle, but does not quite solve it.

‘A couple of nights ago I had a strange experience that summed up my sexual situation perfectly. It was all in a sort of dream, yet not in pictures but in thoughts and realisations. First I was masturbating in my sleep without knowing it. In some peculiar way the act has always been hidden or camouflaged by a host of confusing images and pictures. For instance, I might dream that I was pumping a bicycle pump, but in fact was masturbating. So there was always a sort of excuse or cover up for the real action because I felt guilty about it. But I had recently tried to drop this guilt, and now I gradually began to see through this screen of confusing images to what I was doing.

When I awoke to the fact that I was masturbating, a question flashed into my mind: or at least, it was like a terrific type of realisation that posed a question. The realisation was that a man’s upright penis was more than just a “sex organ”. It was a sort of symbol for his whole manliness, his whole masculinity. Whatever way he chose to express this wonderful power of manhood, that was the direction the whole current of his life would flow, and I saw that masturbation was a type of selfishness. Hidden in it was a wonderful feeling, and this feeling should be shared – nay – given to others. So the question was, “Is this the way you really choose to express your manhood – all on self?”

‘I realised that deep down this was not what I wanted. Then an amazing thing happened. It was as if my decision had thrown a switch, and there was a complete change of scene and mood. The pressure of desire for fulfilment was still very strong; but instead of masturbation, images of various women arose before me as an alternative. First of all, I realised that they were phantoms, but the idea was presented that I could save the pressure of my desire for the real women behind the images.

‘This seemed a likely solution, but I was married, besides which, an intuitive realisation of the results of such relationships came to me. I saw that to find or discover the deepest secrets of my manhood, I had to give my manhood to others. Not necessarily sexually, but through affection, protection, encouragement and so on, but one had to give this manhood in a particular way. The deeps of it could only develop through constancy and courage, the very two things not expressed in relationships with a variety of women. And the courage here is not that of a soldier in battle but of the human soul facing the tedium and emptiness of daily contact with the same person for years on end, and discovering wonder in it. It is the courage of putting aside promises and rumours of greater things, so that you can concentrate on discovering the secret beauty of the little thing you have.

‘All this I saw, and to the question as to whether I wished to spend my manhood on these other women I answered “No”. Again a sudden scene shift, and all the images disappeared. This time just the awareness of the awful tension that sought relief devoid of any images. Wondering where to turn for help I prayed. “Dear God, what can I do with this part of myself?” Immediately another scene change this time directing me to my wife. But, dear God, I couldn’t find the love, I couldn’t find the ability to overlook her human failings, that would allow me to fly to her with tenderness and give my manhood to her.’

If you are puzzled that a man finds it difficult to sleep with his own wife, perhaps you are either lucky, or do not understand the problems of marriage. The reason lies in the dreamer’s own statements. Marriage where it provides a deepening experience of each other and oneself, also confronts one with deepening demands and sacrifices. If we cannot meet these demands and sacrifices, then we may attempt to break free of the union or revert to earlier forms of sexuality or affection. The dreamer here finds himself as yet unable to give as much of himself as his particular level of marriage demands. Also inherent in the above dream lies the idea that one discovers deeper possibilities of self as one matures sexually in marriage.

The next dream in this series helps to show how greater self-awareness, higher consciousness, or the ‘third eye’ as some people call it, is also bound up in the development of what the last dreamer called his ‘manhood’. As he explained, this means the whole current of life, not only sexual urges. Just as we saw in earlier chapters how the snake can represent male sexuality, in the next dream the creature represents this also, but is probably better described as the underlying energy that can express as sex, and also as love, affection, understanding, ambition, aggression, speech, etc. We can therefore call it Libido, Kundalini, or Spirit.

‘I was with a group of people going to a meeting place, or house. We were passing through rolling hills. On our left, a rounded hill had a hole in its centre, surrounded by brushwood I understood that a great fish or creature lived in the hole, and it was dangerous. On getting to the house we gathered together and we were there to call up the great fish. It appeared slowly and gracefully through a trap door in the floor. It was very beautiful and symmetrical in every line, silver in colour; but as it appeared I saw that it was not so much a fish as a great creature, a mixture between a black panther and seal, with a smooth legless body. It reared its head, and I saw it had an emerald at its brow, just above its eyes. Our reason for calling it up was to get the jewel. Then somebody – the man who had called it up – said that the next thing was the most difficult. The beast then came out of the hole and changed into an enormous eight foot tall woman who was tremendously obese and cruel. She had huge water filled breasts hanging to her waist. Everybody scattered in fear.’

The rounded hill with a hole in surrounded by brushwood is an obvious link with the vagina with hair above it. The great and powerful creature is the tremendous life energy that is often held back by fear or attitudes. See Energy Sex and Dreams

The centre of this dream is to get the jewel, which represents consciousness which includes more than the narrow vision of the average person, and wider awareness, but this cannot be done without dealing with the creature from the unconscious, the earth, the physical energy, the rapacious huge mother who could swallow you up in a gobble – in other words we may be directed all the time simply by our lower instincts, without any personal insights. See Reptilian Brain

In some dreams, we find the ancient gods appearing, even though consciously we may know little about them, their powers, functions or symbolism. The following dream was dreamt by a young man torn between love for his wife, and the imaginary (not actualised) pleasures he could find with other women. He is also struggling to understand what are merely his ideas and beliefs, and what is reality in life. He says of his dream:

I was at a party in a very large house set in its own grounds. I found the party frivolous, surface talk only, and unsatisfying to my inner feelings. It was dusk outside, but I stepped out of the French window on to the sloping lawns around the house. A large wood rose at the edge of the lawn and I entered it, eventually coming to a lodge house. The gatekeeper, the man who lived at the lodge house, told me I ought to be careful in the wood, as many strange creatures lived in it. I told him I thought I would be all right, and walked on. There were wolves in the wood, I saw them, and a strange serpent jabberwocky type of creature that was forever moving through the trees, but they did not harm me. I walked on and suddenly came to a clearing deep in the wood. It was still quite light and in the clearing stood the most beautiful girl I have ever seen. She was naked, yet somehow this was natural, as she was brown, and like a creature of the woods. We stood and looked at each other, people from two different worlds, and I knew that if I left my ordinary life, and went into the woods with her, I would find a love such as I had never believed possible. But I also knew that I would be lost to the world; that I too would become a creature of the woods. I was in doubt what to do.

Then, to my amazement, out of the shadows at the edge of the wood, where he had been standing all the time watching me, the god Pan walked to the girl and looked at me. Around him walked tiny creatures of the forest, rabbits, mice, deer and others. Without words, he offered the girl to me and tried to persuade me to come with them to unearthly delights. Then a voice spoke to me, telling me to save myself, to resist or I would be lost. I felt a tremendous power of attraction from the girl, as if I longed for her beyond all else, as if she were the answer to all my longings and dreams; but the voice kept on at me, telling me to think of a woman I loved in the outer life, any woman, and thus save myself. I did, for I knew I would be lost otherwise, but there were tears in my eyes as I did so; and the scene faded, and I was back in the wood again, a wood without magic, or fairy love, or unearthly delights or the strange presence and power of the gods. It was just a wood, and I turned away.

The wood here represents all inner ideas and opinions and also the inner self beneath consciousness, the strange unearthly world of the unconscious that can make the drab world magical and full of meaning, turn women into goddesses through projecting strange powers and emotions on to them. Yet it is dire to lose oneself thus, for one may lose one’s sense of identity, be possessed by the gods, or powers of nature active in oneself, and lose contact with the outer life, and family and friends. This is why the dreamer had to think of someone in the Outer conscious life he loved, to re-establish ties with them, to re-stimulate his awareness at that level.

The message that the dreamer was not ready for, because he could have been lost in the magical inner world of the unconscious, is to unite the inner and the outer to find balance and wholeness. This wholeness is stated in The Gnostic Apostle Thomas: Chapter 2, where it says, “When you make the two into one, and when you make the inner as the outer, and the upper as the lower, and when you make male and female into a single one, so that the male shall not be male, and the female shall not be female: . . . then you will enter the kingdom.”

See Gods and Humans 

The next dream is not directly sexual, but is included simply to show how some dreams explain the source of this energy in us, and how it can be blocked by fears or ideas.

‘I was in the basement of what I assumed to be work. Les came in, and we said we would start the machine. I somehow knew that this was a contraption that had a windmill on the roof, and a driving belt that came through the floors above straight down into the basement. Here it ran a machine that drove all the equipment in the building. We slipped the belt on to a flange and it began to move, but then jammed with some noise. Les shouted something like, “It’s stuck !” and he looked up through the hole in the ceiling where the driving band went. Looking up myself I could see that some rags and paper had torn away from the ceiling of the room above and jammed the belt. Somehow this was causing an electrical shorting in the machinery in the basement, so I threw the switches to off.’

As a quick interpretation of this dream, perhaps we can say that the biological energy that is the force behind our physical existence, which I often refer to as the life energy, needs to inputs. The one if the windmill – referring to the sun power which creates our weather – and the basement which is the receptive power of the Earth shown as the basement, so is shown as the unconscious or basement processes of our body, which generates energy for the functions throughout our being. See The Unconscious

 

INITIATION

 In looking at the sexually orientated dreams, it becomes easy to think of sexual experience as an experience of energy. Or if we think of the energy that lies behind sexual pressures, possibly we can define it as vast potential lying hidden within a human being.

We see that ‘manhood’ can be discovered, or the ‘jewel’ won from the creature of the depths, while in the basement dream it depicts a release of the energy or force from the blockages. In each case it shows the possibility of finding something MORE in our life or in ourselves. It symbolises growth, discovery of new faculties, emotions, energy or riches, and when a human being discovers a way of realising a further part of this ‘potential’, and releases it into their life, it is called Initiation.

Initiation is the conferring of some new and expanded wisdom, or power, or capacity for love. In such organisations or Orders as the Freemasons or Rosicrucians, initiations are conferred upon the candidate by means of ritual and its impact. But it is acknowledged that initiation in its most vital aspect comes from within the person. In fact we can gain an understanding of this in thinking upon Paul’s experience on the road to Damascus, or Jesus’ baptism, both of which illustrate initiation.

Needless to say, dream experiences are the commonest type of initiation open to each individual. Some examples were mentioned earlier in dealing with dreams in early societies, where individuals sought initiation during fasting and solitude; but even in our own hectic society, the process continues, for initiation is a vital aspect of life and growth. A few examples of dream initiation are given here.

 ‘Dreamt that J.A.’s Guru was coming to see me. I was waiting in some kind of reception hall. Suddenly he came with his followers. He gave the impression of being Eastern. He wore a long white gown and his arms were full of harvest produce, fruit and vegetables. He explained that he ate once a day and ate everything at the one meal. He then put down the food and took both my hands, palms upwards. He examined them for a minute and then pointing to a place on each hand told me I was capable of being very efficient; also something else I can’t remember.

He then looked at me and told me there was something I should have done but didn’t, but again I cannot remember. He then told me to look at his forehead and see what was written there. I looked and saw the lines on his forehead were placed so that they spelt out a word explaining what he was. It was something like MEEK. He then told me to look again and I would see my own self written there. Again I looked, and this time saw the word BITTER. The other people there could not see the writing, and he told me everyone had what they were written on their forehead. He then pointed into the audience and said, “But you will do the thing you came to do. You will do it!” He pointed beyond me, but I felt the words were for me.’

This particular dream is really more of a prelude to initiation, but it does explain many things. First of all, what we have called the ‘potential’ is often symbolised in dreams as a holy man, guru, yogi, master, saint; or as Jesus, Mohammed, Krishna, or some great person. His arms are full of harvest because this part of our being holds all the fruits of our experience, as well as the future possibilities of self. It is therefore very important what this being tells us in our dreams.

In this case, the woman found that after the dream repressed bitterness poured out of her for some months. In the next dream by another person, initiation is taken a step further.

 ‘I was walking along a street in London, and my wife came hurrying up to me. She looked very excited and said, “I have found a Master” (a saint or holy man). I was very sceptical and told her so. Nevertheless she insisted, and asked me to come and see for myself. We walked to a printing firm nearby, where a few people were already waiting for the master. I reviewed my scepticism, thinking that this was probably a man who was very clever and spoke much occult nonsense, and so everybody thought he was godlike; or at least, all those who desperately wanted to find a god-like man. Just then a man walked down some stairs from the building and said quietly to those waiting outside, “He’s coming.” Outside the building was a loading bay a few feet high. On to this walked a slim man of middle height, in his thirties. He seemed very ordinary and was bald except for the sides of his head, where his hair was a sandy ginger colour. He appeared a very passive man, and began to talk quietly, with little emphasis, his gaze above our heads, as if looking beyond us.

As he talked I thought to myself that I had heard all this before. I had read it in the Bible and a number of other books, but it hadn’t done me any good. Neither could I see myself even beginning to live up to it. In fact I dismissed the man as a dreamer. He didn’t talk for long, however, but soon finished and came down from the bay. We all walked slowly along the street, some of the people asking him questions.

When we neared the end of the street he stopped. We also stopped, and were facing him in a small irregular semi-circle, there being about six of us. He didn’t speak, but looked at the person on the extreme left for a few moments. Nobody said anything, and he then looked at the next person. I watched him but had no idea what he was doing until his gaze turned to me. Suddenly it was as if a bolt had struck me and pierced me to my inmost being. I knew this man understood every fragment of my life – more than that – he loved me as I have never been loved before. A floodgate opened in me and a torrent of emotion and love swept over me. I stumbled forward impelled by the current of my feelings, and embraced this stranger with a fervent love. As he held me the turbidity smoothed and became a calm love, and I stepped back. His gaze turned to my wife and I saw her expression change under the impact of his eyes. Now I had no doubt – he was a master.’

In the East, one of the ways a master confers his grace, or initiation, on his pupil is by ‘look’. Here we see this dramatically experienced in the dream. The dreamer is suddenly ‘opened’. His attitude to inner power is changed, and the spiritual power of the Bible is seen as a living reality in the master. Also, his love, once held at bay by reason and scepticism, is released and received.

Sometimes the initiation is not given through the symbol of a holy man, but some other thing as seen here.

‘I was walking across open moorland, followed by a crowd of people. I was their leader, and was supposed to be leading them to “Salvation”. The only thing was, I had no idea in which direction salvation lay. We came to a barbed-wire fence and stopped. I was considering the best place to cross, when I noticed a rabbit beyond the fence. My dog was with me, and leapt on the rabbit to kill it, as in previous dreams, but this time the rabbit fought back and bit his foot, and he stood back respectfully, as he would if a cat clawed him. I now saw that the rabbit had turned into a huge and powerful hare, with four pink furry babies. Then the hare spoke to me, saying, “Where are you going?”

‘I told him we were looking for salvation. He listened, then quietly said “Turn back. Go back to whence you came.” At this I became irritable and said, who was he to tell us what to do. There were so many so called authorities telling people how to discover truth, and yet most of them either disagreed or hadn’t found it themselves.

‘The hare looked at me and suddenly disappeared. Then, in a few moments it reappeared. This impressed me tremendously. I felt it was a sign of complete self-mastery, and knew the hare was the master. He then said again, “Go back, and carry on with your accustomed tasks. Do not seek wildly the Kingdom of Heaven, for you already have what you seek within you. Your seeking only hides it.” Then we all turned around and went back to our village, and carried on our usual tasks, knowing that in time, we would realise our heaven.

This is an initiation of instruction and wisdom; it is a re-direction of the activities or energies of the dreamer. The dreamer interpreted the hare as depicting his intuition which speaks of the inner wisdom. He was amazed to later find that the hare has been used as just such a symbol in many countries and cultures of the world.

The dream and instruction were potently important in his life. He had been desperately trying to force his growth by extreme practices. In fact his practices bordered on the fanatical or compulsive. The words of the hare helped him to start the process of taking a very different approach to his inner unfoldment.

The next dream is also initiatory, but once more uses a different symbol.

 ‘I was in a large room – very sparsely furnished – rather like a warehouse. The walls were of brick with a light coat of whitewash over, but you could see the brickwork underneath and that it had been meticulously done. I was told that this building had to come down and whilst feeling a little sorry that such good craftsmanship was to be demolished, I quite accepted it. It seems I had prepared some kind of a stew – chicken, I think – and it was in a large (oval) cauldron ready for cooking. There was a square table in the room with a sort of flat plate (made of metal) in the centre. I put the cauldron on this thinking that it would then be ready for cooking when required. … Then I must have gone away because when I returned, to my surprise, the stew was boiling furiously and steam was puffing out of the lid. I couldn’t think where the heat to cook it was coming from, and then saw that the flat plate was connected by a thick dark cable to a huge battery – like contraption under the table.’

The main initiatory factor in this dream is the realisation of the hidden power. We sometimes speak of being in ‘a stew’. But a stew is also broken down pieces, and can therefore relate to various aspects of self. That these aspects were troublesome can be transformed by the use of the unknown power heating the stew, making it into nourishment.  The square table is at once the material ‘surface’ of our life upon which we work – a working surface – and also an altar upon which we can sacrifice self to the unknown power underlying matter, or the square table. For we can thus sacrifice self in our material affairs. Then the unseen power behind life can be seen, for it transmutes the elements of our life into an integrated whole. But only when we sacrifice or surrender self in this way does the hidden power have a chance to manifest in our lives. See Life’s Little Secrets – Opening to Life

 

Prophetic Dreams

 In the dream where the guru looks at the dreamer’s hands, he tells her that she will do what she has come to do. This is a prophetic statement, but in this dream it is ambiguous since it is not clearly defined exactly what the woman had ‘come to do’. Many dreams are much clearer, and so their statements can be tested against the reality of later events. We have to realise, however, that dream prophecy is often nothing more than a knowledgeable deduction.

Not that I am belittling knowledgeable deductions, it would be helpful to make them more consciously. But really, a person’s actions can be almost pinpointed due to their latent and expressed tendencies. For instance, if a detailed and careful analysis were made of ten men, and they were then taken to a holiday town and set loose, one could prophesy with a fair amount of accuracy what they would do. Their very make-up acts as a sort of filter keeping them away from some places, attracting them to others.

In the same way it decides the sort of people with whom they will associate, and so on. Obviously many factors have to be taken into account, and one cannot be dogmatic, but one man is almost certainly likely to go to the pub frequently: another may seek out the quiet places: yet another associate with as many women as are willing to accommodate him.

If we think about ourselves, we can easily make such prophetic statements about our own future movements. Many dream prophecies fall into this category, but a large number are quite different and portray events it would be difficult to have deducted from past experience. The dream of the winning race-horse is in this category. Sometimes this can be explained by telepathic contact with others – sometimes only by conjecturing a higher consciousness that synthesises the experience of all things everywhere, and prognosticates from this. People have said that God is the great mathematician or geometrician; but we might also coin a phrase and say that God is the great Prognosticator.

The next dream given here is one of my wife’s. It falls possibly within the classification of self-knowledge prophecy.

‘I dreamt that I was in prison and I wanted to escape. There were no locks on the doors and the evenings when the officers went off duty presented the best opportunity. The first time I tried I was caught almost immediately, before getting clear of the grounds. The second time I got right away and went home to the flat where Tony was living. We sat talking and I was planning how we could leave the country and start a new life together. I knew that if I did not finish my sentence I could never return here. As I sat talking, a hand fell on my shoulder. I knew it was a policeman come to take me back to prison. I also knew in that moment that there was no escape, as I would probably have to serve a little longer now. My sentence was for three years, and I had about eighteen months left to do, and Tony and I would have to wait until that time was completed before starting a new life. But I knew that he would not start without me, that I was somehow necessary to him in the new life.’

This dream occurred at a time when my wife felt imprisoned and shut in by the circumstances of our life. It has a great deal of philosophy in it such as open prison doors, but the central fact is, that although at the time we had no conscious plans, eighteen months later we suddenly moved house, changed occupations, and literally started a new life. The decision to move took place sixteen months after the dream; the house purchase began at eighteen months, and the move occurred at twenty-two months. So the ‘about eighteen months’ was very clear. One could easily explain this dream as a coincidence, but with some people such dreams occur far too often to be explained away so simply. As I have mentioned the sale of our house, I can illustrate this with dreams that occurred at that time to my wife.

Dream One: Dreamt that if we placed a notice in our window, the first person seeing it would buy the house

Dream Two: ‘Dreamt the surveyor would come that evening.’

Dream Three: ‘Dreamt the young couple had got their mortgage, and would call that night’

Dream Four: ‘Dreamt that we had won £100.’

With the first dream, I placed a for sale notice in the window, desperate because we had spent a lot money advertising in newspapers. That evening a young couple came and said they had seen the notice as they walked past that morning.

Second dream – The couple decided to buy and so a surveyor had to look at the property, and had sent a card saying he would call sometime that week, and would let us know beforehand. As it happened, no prior notice arrived, but after the dream my wife had all the house looking shipshape. The surveyor did turn up, and looked very surprised when my wife said she had been expecting him.

Third dream – The young couple who wished to buy our house were dubious about getting a mortgage, and had no idea when they would know. Because of the dream we sat up late waiting for them. However there was no sign of them and we decided to go to bed. At that moment they rang our bell, and once inside announced that their mortgage was through.

The fourth dream is not as well defined as the first ones. We waited and waited for our premium bonds to present a win of a £100 and nothing happened. But shortly afterwards I was offered a contract to write a book, the down payment of which was a round £100.

There are a great many people who have this faculty for dreaming prophetically. Velta Wilson, who through her own hard work has made herself an expert on dreams, and is, as far as I know, the only person in the UK teaching dream analysis in a Further Education evening class (this was in the 1960’s), has sent me some of her own experiences. She says, ‘I am walking along and as I look up I see the splendid sight of three golden rainbows stretching across the sky. I am thrilled, amazed and delighted. Various people to whom I told the dream, gave interpretations of good luck. Sometime later, while turning over the pages of an illustrated book on astronomy, lo and behold my three golden rainbows! It is a speculative drawing of the view one would have if one were standing on the planet Saturn.’

This is reminiscent of some of the experiences mentioned by Dunne in his book An Experiment With Time, where he was investigating prophetic dreams. But Velta goes on to describe two further dreams of an even more interesting nature. ‘A friend and I were sharing an hotel room. I had a long and involved dream which ended with my intention of buying books by Edgar Wallace in order to solve a problem. I woke up and lay in bed thinking about the dream. Suddenly my friend spoke; “Don’t buy the books by Edgar Wallace. I will take you to the library where you can get them.” Amazed, I asked her whether she had had the same dream. She did not answer, she was asleep. In the morning she had no idea what she had dreamt.’

 ‘I dreamt that the fiancé of a girl I hardly knew was trapped in a submarine at the bottom of the sea. All hope was lost but finally the submarine managed to surface. When I met the girl I told her the dream. She went very pale. “That is exactly what happened to him – we never speak about it – who told you ?”’

These are prophetic in the sense that the dream informs us of something we have no means of knowing through outer information. Thus they prophesy what can be later known via the senses. A further example of prophetic dreaming was sent to me by Bernadette Fallon. She says, ‘A strange thing happened recently. Before Christmas I had a dream in which a man (no one I knew) showed me his room, which was a very distinctive shape, and decorated in dingy brown wallpaper. At the beginning of this term (after Christmas), a close friend of mine moved into a new flat. On going into his room I was amazed to find it was the room I’d seen in my dream – only the walls were white. I described the paper in the dream-room to him and he said that’s exactly how it was before it was decorated.’

Recent scientific findings say that, “I want to tell you how the future creates the past which then creates the future.”

Yes it is a wild idea, and I came across it while exploring my dreams and wandering in the unconscious. So I was startled to find it is the latest scientific theory of the universe we live in. I was startled because the idea that dreams and the unconscious had been pummelled into me by scientists and intellectuals that believing in dreams and ones voices from the unconscious are a lot of twaddle.

In December 1974, I had a dream which I recorded in my Journal that resulted in this statement, “Your present life will release much that arises from the future. You are a gateway for the future to pour into the present. Past and future are from the one source.”

So take time to watch this – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0ztlIAYTCU

PROPHECY OR WHAT? 

 Some dreams, or sleep experiences are difficult to categorise. Sometimes they are not directly symbolic, or dealing with memories of one’s past, nor do they seem to be about a logically possible future in one’s own lifetime. The following is a dream experience during unconsciousness produced by fainting. The faint lasted ten or fifteen seconds, yet the dream is but one of the many experienced during those few seconds.

 ‘I was in a room filled with people, but not crowded. It was a circular room with windows all the way round, and there were about thirty or forty people in the room sitting casually at tables. People came and went, and there was the impression that everyone knew each other. Neither did anybody appear old. Mature, yes, but there was no age as we see it.

There was something different about the colours too. The room itself glowed bright with colour, not artificially applied, but as if its very materials were colourful and brilliantly lit. The people’s clothes were also of attractive hues, none of them appeared formally dressed. Neither did any of their garments seem to be quite the same style as any other person’s in the room.

It was obviously a place where one could eat and drink, but many came just to meet others. Yet in no way could it compare with a meeting place such as we usually know; for the informality went far deeper than the clothes. Possibly, in our terms one could call it naturalness. These people were natural in a way that was true. There was no effort to be a particular type. Nor, as has happened so often in society where groups of people decide not to conform to type, which had the effect of producing another type. These people were themselves, in a way beyond any effort. Each face was frank and open, yet completely individual. Their meetings and partings happened spontaneously, and as relaxed as themselves.

I realised also that there was no marriage here, although children were conceived and born as usual. But it is not easy to adequately describe their equivalent of marriage. For here there was no insecurity, no sense of possession, no personal self-seeking for satisfaction or grasping for methods to prove oneself. These people were free. Their marriage reflected their freedom and their ability to love freely, which is not the same as so called free love. Here a couple came together because of deep links of common purpose, understanding, and sympathetic relationship. They might or might not live together, it did not matter to them. For how could it matter when there was no attempt to own each other?

In our society we cover up our real feelings by social codes and fears of inferiority; or else destroy ourselves through doubt, worry and insecurity. Neither was physical sex the aim of the relationship. It was an event that occurred if and when all their feelings were right and matched. Their sensitivity to the demands of circumstance, relationship of mind, emotions and body ruled out promiscuity. Although again, there were no rules of marriage, written or unwritten, spoken or unspoken, to keep two people together or sexually faithful. For these people were indeed not faithful to one another as our vows would have us be, nor yet were they adulterous as we are. For they were not moved by the same fears or passions, grasping or self-centeredness.

‘In our world there are opposing schools of thought suggesting that either children should be reared by one single mother, or else collectively by the state. These people would smile upon all such rules, for they had no rules at all. To take their place, they had a deep awareness of relationship, of the demands of each given situation, an awareness of how each action would influence the society as a whole, and thus, how it would influence their own lives. Therefore a child could stay with its mother or it could live with others. The father might part from the mother, but never in anger or not to see her again.

It must be added that there was, of course, no fear of being not being provided for, because money did not exist. Neither was there a government, a police force or armies. People worked, or did not work, as they pleased, and each in this way did what best expressed their energy and interest at any time. On Earth this would be called chaos, but for these people it worked because of their inherent understanding and lack of personal avarice. Nor was there any forced education. A child inherited culture through widening experience of life. There were those who enjoyed teaching, and all their energy was devoted to its study and practice. So there was plenty of opportunity to learn, not only in youth, but at any time in life. It was not a rigid system, however. Their culture was a blend of the technical, the artistic and philosophical or religious. It was a blend that had not been imposed by outer rules, or commercial powers, but developed naturally as a flowering of their own inner traits.

 

THE SEARCH FOR GOD

In using the term ‘Search for God’, I do so without referring directly to organised religion. It is used to cover a wide variety of experiences. The search for self-understanding, for new insight into life; the attempt to discover deeper relationships with others, or in what mysterious ways we are connected with others, can all be put under this heading. If we take the word ‘God’ to mean the hidden and revealed of our own life, the general and particular in the universe, the personal and the transcendental, then dreams are definite contacts with God -but God is not a He but everything. But generally, dreams relate us to God personally. That is, while they do not usually detract from any value of meaning we find in belonging to a religious body or church, they show that our direct connection with God is through ourselves.

We might also call this section of dreams the Upper Reaches of the Soul. This is because a distinctive feature is often noticeable in these dreams. It is that they are much less symbolical, far more a direct experience. They either express a reasonably clear understanding of something, or else are as logically presented as any waking thought or experience might be. This is not always true, but is certainly a feature much in evidence. This can be seen in another of Bernadette Fallon’s dreams. Here, obviously, the ideas are no longer presented in symbols, but directly in words. She says. ‘On the subject of interpretation of dreams I dreamt the following sentence some time ago: “The purpose of symbols in dreams is to fix permanently the subsequent significance of subconscious elements, which are not always clearly understood, in the conscious mind.”

Bernadette goes on to say, ‘I don’t really understand it, so I don’t know whether it is just a truism or contains anything of any significance.’ But possibly we can rephrase it and get at its significance as follows: ‘Symbols in dreams act as a record and focus of ideas, gropings, half-felt meanings, that we have not yet consciously understood or defined. In this way the elements that are collected but not quite unified into a new conscious realisation, are nevertheless fixed or held in the symbol; which is still vague or undefined, but can later be worked on further.’

Bernadette’s difficulty in understanding is experienced by all of us who meet an experience in these Upper Reaches of the Soul. This is because they are often super-logical. They contain information not yet found in our memory or reasoning. In other words, if we take numbers to represent ideas or facts, we cannot add three and two making five, while we still only have three. We have to discover two before we can add it to make five. In the same way. we cannot reach certain conclusions logically or with reason, if bits of information are missing. But the dream does not always work logically, and so can present higher ideas without their supporting reason. It is often only much later, having rushed around and discovered supporting evidence, that we can understand the statement logically. 

Anna Kingsford is certainly one of the most amazing dreamers of the last hundred years. She is also one of the few who explored the possibilities of ‘dreaming’ information. Her experiences in URS (Upper Reaches of Soul) are superbly clear and astonishing in detail and revelation. Her Dreams and Dream Stories has already been mentioned, but her greatest works are undoubtedly Clothed With The Sun and The Perfect Way. From Clothed With The Sun I quote a dream experience to show how clear it can be. In her sleep it is as if someone is telling her the meaning of the prophecy of the vision of Nebuchadnezzar. Here is what is said:

‘The King Nebuchadnezzar is mystically identical with King Ahasuerus, in that each alike denotes the spirit of the latter age, that, namely, of mere intellectualism, as distinguished and opposed to Intuition. And both narratives, as well as that of the Deluge and of the Book of Esther, are prophecies which are now beginning to have their accomplishment on a scale greater than ever before.

For the image shown to the king in his dream represents the various systems of thought and belief which find favour with the world. Of these, the intellectual philosophy which rests upon the basis of a science merely physical is the head, and is symbolised by the gold. And this rightly, so far as concerns the intellect, for it is indeed king of kings, and all the children of men, the beasts of the field, and the birds of the air, are given into its hands. That is to say, all the activities of society, its learning, industry and art, are made subordinate to the intellect.

The breasts and arms of the image are silver. This is the domain of morality and sentiment, which under the reign of the mere intellect hold a subordinate place. Belonging to the region of the heart, it is feminine; implying the intuition, which is of the woman (i.e. the feminine receptive principle in male or female), and her assigned inferiority, it is silver.

The thighs and the belly are of brass, and this kingdom is said to rule over the whole world. By this is meant a universality under a regime wholly animal and non-moral, where falsehood, cruelty, impurity, blasphemy, and all those deprivations of true humanity, characterise an age of materialism.

The iron, of which the legs are made, represents force, and denotes the negation of love, the consequent prevalence of might over right, and the universal rule of selfishness. By the mingling of iron and clay in the feet is implied the weakness and instability of the whole structure, the clay representing matter, which is made the foundation of the system instead of spirit, which alone is stable and enduring.

‘The Stone cut out with hands, which destroys this image, and becomes a great mountain filling the whole earth, is that “Stone of the Philosophers”, a perfected spirit, and the true gospel of the inner knowledge which appertains thereto. This it is which smites the age upon its feet, or fundamental basis, its materialistic hypothesis. And with the demonstration of the falseness of its doctrine, now being made to the world, shall fall the whole fabric of society with its empire of force, its exaltation of the masculine mode of mind, its subjection of women, its torture of animals, and its oppression of the poor. With its clay, its iron, its brass, its silver, and its gold, all swept away as chaff before the wind, the true knowledge and spirit of understanding, which are of the intuition, shall usher in the kingdom of God, and the “stone” become a mountain. shall fill the whole earth.’

This tremendous outpouring, which as an interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream is clarity itself, is an expression of the intuitive function in dreams. Here we see it as intuition instructing the intellect, information being given to the intellect that has not understood these things.

I have also said that the URS dream can be more directly one of experience. Below I give the experience of a friend who died for a short time, but then revived. I have to quote this from memory, so I hope she will forgive any slight errors.

‘I was critically ill and in terrible pain. My husband had been called and was sitting near me. Gradually the pain began to lessen, and slowly disappeared altogether. I was then floating above my body and looked down on the whole scene. As I did so I began to hear beautiful music in the distance. I felt that something beautiful and wonderful was waiting to be explored, and felt an urge to go to find it. But I could see my husband and somehow knew all his thoughts and feelings. He was in terrible despair because he could see I had died, and felt he could not go on alone, and care for our child. Despite the promise of beauty away in the distance, I knew I had to go back and stay with him. As soon as I had made this decision, I began to sink into the body again. The pain and heaviness returned, and for ages I could not even move. Later the nurses told me they thought I had gone for good, and were amazed that I had recovered.’

We ‘might be tempted to take this as a symbolical dream instead of a direct experience, if it were not for several important factors. One is that her experience coincided with physical events in her body. Secondly, her husband later admitted that her description of his thoughts and emotions truly described his own. Thirdly, her description exactly tallies with that of other people who through electrocution, heart failure, illness, drowning, have died and been revived. All who can remember, describe the separation from the body, the beautiful call, sometimes waiting friends, and then the return.

 I turn now to an experience of my own which further illustrates the possibilities of dreaming. It occurred while I was doing my national service in the RAF in Germany. After duty I had remained in the billet reading. Then, feeling rather homesick I decided to have an early night, and lay in bed thinking of home. I wondered whether one’s consciousness could reach out across space, and visualised home as clearly as I could. But realising that it was only my imagination I gave up and went to sleep.

The next thing I knew was that I felt as if I were being carried upwards in a fast lift. Everything was black and rushing and I felt confused, but like a cork coming out of a bottle. Then suddenly I could see. It was still light, and I was looking down from above the bed, and could clearly see my body asleep below me. I became very frightened, but this passed as I realised my consciousness was now observing my sleeping body.

The next thing I knew I was flying through the air, knees curled up to my chest, arms clenched around them. I looked down and saw fields and villages below. I noticed something very strange, rising from the ground. It was like ripples or bands rising from particular points on the earth; like rainbows, only with many, many bands going right down to the ground. I couldn’t really understand it, but wondered whether it was people praying.

I was then over the sea, travelling very fast. I could see ships below. Next, suddenly I was in our sitting room at home in London, standing behind the settee. I noticed that I was dressed in my civilian clothes instead of uniform or pyjamas. I also saw that my mother was sitting looking at the television knitting. She was alone except for our Alsatian dog Vince, who was asleep in front of the gas fire. I called out to my mother feeling sure she could see me. She paused in her knitting for a moment, as if she were listening, but then carried on. 

I called again, this time shouting in an effort to make myself heard. She carried on with her knitting, but a strange thing happened. It was as if some deep part of her responded to me and knew I was there, yet her conscious self still carried on unaware; and I suddenly knew why we could not see the dead. But then Vince raised his head as if he had heard me shout. He saw me and came bounding to me behind the settee, which was in the middle of the room. He hadn’t seen me for months and barked and yelped with delight and love.

 next thing I knew, it was as though I were being put into a lead suit – I was re-experiencing the body. Out of it I had felt more conscious, more energetic, lighter, with deep receptiveness. Now I felt the weight of the body, and the dimness of waking consciousness, like moon compared with the sun.

Later, writing to ask my mother if anything strange had happened that night, she replied that she had experienced a tingling feeling up the spine, and thought of me. Then Vince had leapt up from his sleep in front of the fire, and run behind the settee barking. She had also been alone, knitting watching the television, as my father had gone out.

This experience is typical of those had by many people and is often called astral projection, bilocation, or astral travel. The main feature is that the consciousness is able to apprehend events happening even thousands of miles away. Sometimes the physical environment is not seen, however, and one is opened to tremendous intuitive information about questions asked (as seen in Anna Kingsford’s description). Some people claim to meet and converse with the dead, which seems entirely logical if the consciousness can feel separated from the sleeping body. Another feature is that. as seen in my experience, the body one uses is completely plastic. In bed I had pyjamas, while in projection I wore civilian clothes. It seems that whichever way one unconsciously thinks of oneself, this is the form one will take, as the body is formed of one’s own desires and thoughts. (The physical body is likewise changed by one’s desires, thoughts and attitudes, but not as quickly.)

Here is one that definitely shows the divine in action, and also a view of organised religion.

 I was with several other people searching the rubble of what had been a great church. The building, ruined by some disaster such as an earthquake, or perhaps internal weakness, was now no more than a ruin of stone’s. Amongst the rubble we searched for anything that might be salvaged. Suddenly, among the stone’s that at one time made up a wall near the door, I found a most wonderful chalice. Its wonder was not because of any precious metal it was made of, or from artistry. It was because the stemmed cup shone with its own light, a light that never diminished. Just seeing it, being near it, produced an experience of awe and wonder.

As we took up the cup we understood that it was the emanation of this light around which the church had been built. Yet out of some fear, the chalice had been hidden in the wall of the church, and stranger yet, completely forgotten. With feelings moved by this tragedy we realised that for perhaps hundreds of years’ people had continued to attend the church, performing empty rituals, singing hymns, going through all the motions of worship without any direct relationship with the wonderful manifestation of the divine the cup gave. But now we could once more place the chalice in a place where anyone could stand in its light. For it shone on all without exception, and each of us, as we were permeated by that divine light, were transformed in some way by it.

Link To Chapters – Link to Deam Dictionary

The Magical Dream Machine

We all dream every night, so we each have what could be called a Magical Dream Machine.

To gain a feeling of this, imagine yourself entering one of those game machine areas where youngsters can ride a motorbike, or ski down a slope. But instead of a simulation of a car, you discover a large machine that you can climb into and become completely enclosed. When you close the door, contacts link onto your body and head in the complete darkness. It is quiet as all the external sounds disappear, and you relax your hold on your body and senses. Your whole experience of yourself shifts as the external world melts away, along with your awareness of your body. That is sleep.

But now – in the darkness a light glimmers. Gradually it takes shape. The shape of a person is suggested. In the time that follows he or she evolves form, moves, and you have full sensory experience. You are totally involved, with all your emotions and sexual responses. Changes occur and you love, fight, fear, murder or bring to life again the person, who can become an animal, a devil, God or a bodiless voice lost in a sombre countryside. Your experiences are totally real, and you move through heaven and hell, despair and joy, darkness and light. Scenes from your past can be revisited – or totally new experiences can be felt so clearly, you are enriched. That is a dream.

 Seeing Is Not Believing

If you had been in such a machine, and on coming out of the total involvement of these moving experiences, you were told you had created it all yourself – that on the black screen you had, out of your fears, habits, secret longings and passion; out of your immense store of memories; with your unbelievable range of feelings and creativity – you had given form to urges and processes in your body and made this rich world of experience, what would you feel? Would you disclaim responsibility? Would you consider it meaningless? Would you realise what amazing creativity and potential you have?

In your dreams you create such a world and such experiences. But perhaps you have not taken time to consider the wonder of your creative process in dreams. Every night you create a new drama. You conjure out of your own being the people, the creatures, the surroundings of your dream. Then you give life to what you create – not only life but purpose and drama. You are a supreme dramatist, playwright, actor and actress. You are the great Creator – in your dreams. Considering this, have you ever wondered why that enormous creativity does not flow into your waking life? You can see that some people have that creativity and are enriched by it personally and financially. Why not you?

But what is the REAL world?

In considering how you reply to this, remember a few well-known facts about how you encounter the so-called ‘real’ world of waking life. Firstly, when you look at an object such as an orange or apple, remember that although you have the sense of seeing what colour and texture the fruit has, in fact all you are seeing is reflected light. You never see the actual colour of the object.

Also, as far as texture is concerned, this is a mystery to you. Texture depends entirely on what you approach the fruit with. If it is an electron microscope, then the texture is one of shifting swirling atoms and subatomic particles. If you were tiny the apple would have a very different appearance than it does to you at your present size. Also, remember that you never actually know what the apple feels like or looks like directly. Your eye takes in streams of light that are translated into nervous impulses transmitted along the optic nerve. In the brain these nerve impulses are again translated into an image that enables you to have some relationship with an apparently external world. In the same way the nerve endings on your fingers transmit signals that are translated into sensation.

Similarly the television picture you watch on a screen is translated from signals the TV set is sensitive to and changes into pictures, colour and sound. The signals are not in themselves images, colour or sound. So, like the TV, the world you feel so sure you are seeing and experiencing, is one your brain has created in order to enable you to deal with survival. Even so it is a translation of ‘the world’ that has been shaped by evolution and its limited needs. You only respond to very narrow wavebands of light and sound for instance. So you do not know much of what is actually going on in the world anyway. Your eye, as a lens produces an upside down image of your surroundings, and this is ‘corrected’ to help you move around more easily.

Considering that you only experience a virtual reality of the external world created by your brain – and that is itself limited to a tiny fraction of what is actually surrounding you – you cannot take seriously your perceptions of the world or people. There are so many radiations, energies, and depth upon depth of texture in the cosmos and objects around us, that in effect we are blind and deaf. See Inner World

 You Are the Creator

So it is true to say that you live in a world, in conceptions of yourself and your surroundings that are a self-created virtual reality. You could just as correctly be asked the question of whether you accept that you create all you experience in regard to the objective world, as you could of the magical dream machine.

However, we are discussing dreams, but remember that what is said could equally as well refer to your waking life.

So, your dreams are a magical place in that you have the ability in them to create a totally real world. Do you discount them? Do you see that you create your own world of experience in them? If you do, have you wondered why you may have a propensity for creating what you do? Or why, with such creative potential, you might still lack self-confidence? Just as you create your surroundings in dreams, you also create the psychological and sensory world you live in. Understanding your dreams can help you to clarify why you at times create what does not satisfy you, and how to generate a whole new world of experience. You can take charge of your creativity and ride with it instead of being at its mercy. Such power, after all, can as easily produce misery and ill health as pleasure and ability – unless you learn to direct it. Such creativity can lead you into hell, or create a heaven.

A few magic words to remember to say to yourself – “I have the magical power of creation. So I can create a hell for myself or a heaven. I have immense ranges of ability and problem solving. So here I go in believing in myself!”

Amazing Storehouse of the Mind

Although you constantly use the huge storehouse of memory and developed skills in your everyday life, you may usually fail to recognise what you are doing, and what a miracle it is. As an example, you now hold in store millions of bits of information. By asking you a simple question such as ‘What is your present home address?’ I can call to conscious awareness a minute part of the information lying unconscious. If I were to present you with a bicycle, or you were dropped in deep water, the skill of cycling or swimming could also emerge from latency if you had previously learned those skills.

Apart from these aspects of your immense storage of information, there is also the possibility that by the right series of questions or experience, you could arrive at a creative synthesis of information already held. In other words something not previously held in memory could arise by putting together old ideas or experiences. With the right stimulus, in the same way you could bring to expression potential within you that is at the moment lying dormant.

While we dream we have a very full access to the storehouse of our experience. If we learn to use the dream process we can more capably use the riches of what usually lies unconscious like treasures at the bottom of the ocean. There is a natural process of putting together the separate pieces of your experience into creative new combinations. All of this can be accessed by exploring the treasures held in your dreams and the dream process. See Using Your Intuition; Clicking On

 Mind Watching

Because of the many nature films shown on television we are now used to the idea of mature and intelligent adults spending days or years watching the behaviour of animals such as hyenas or chimpanzees. In her book In The Shadow of Man, Jane Von Lawick Goodall explains how, by watching chimpanzees and taking note of her observations, radical new insight into the behaviour of chimpanzees arose. She didn’t think beforehand what she expected to find, but simply observed and put together the information that arose. For instance on several occasions she saw the chimpanzees kill another animal and eat its flesh. The knowledge that chimpanzees were meat eaters was entirely new.

In a similar way, by observing dreams and laying bare the emotions and associated ideas and memories you have with your dream imagery, you gradually define your personality, its strengths and weaknesses, in a depth you had never managed previously. I have called this mind watching, but it covers every aspect of human nature, not simply the intellect or thinking.  See Self Help

This mind watching through observation of your dreams first presents information about your personal experiences and memories and how they influenced your growth and influence present responses. Gradually the information arising from such watching leads beyond your present boundaries of self. It shows in many cases how your unique self has arisen from, and has indissoluble links with your forebears, with your culture, with the past as a whole, and with the cosmos itself. It leads from yourself to the edge of the known, and perhaps helps you take a few steps beyond that edge into the unknown, to create new understanding, and enter new dimensions of experience.

Remember that you are probably one of the millions of humans suffering amnesia. If you doubt this ask yourself why you do not remember your childhood. No doubt you have also forgotten your life as a baby. You fail to remember your life in the womb. Perhaps, more importantly, you have also forgotten your link with the rest of the cosmos. In fact you are an amnesiac, and by ‘dream watching’ your memory can gradually be restored. It takes time and perseverance, but gradually the time line of your existence will be filled with detail.

This mind watching also gradually reveals to you the many aspects of your mind’s working, and with such insight may come the growing ability to use these facets of yourself. Not only may you discover great vistas of personal memory, but also the roots of your creativity, the subtle senses of your emotions and unconscious, and the treasures of experience you have gathered.

The Path To Take

There are many methods you can use to discover the enormous content within your dreams. For instance look at the following features and explore them to discover what works best for you:  Introduction to DreamWatching; The AmplificationMethod – PeerDream Group – Active Imagination.

Another method that can be used with great benefit if you are a person who meditates, is as follows:

The meditation method of dream understanding rests on the function of memory. The aim is to hold the dream in mind, and at the same time hold the question of what are the activities, passions, memories or pains in you that have formed the dream?

You hold this question in the same way that you hold any question – such as the one asked above about your address. Do not strive, and do not struggle to arrive at an answer. Simply sit and WATCH the dark space of your mind and feelings. Take note of whatever memories, feelings and fantasies arise.

It helps to think of your being as a keyboard that your unconscious knowledge and intuitions can play upon. Holding your self stiffly, in mind or body blocks this mobility. See the passage on using the body in dream work for further information.

This may not be a quick method. So be patient, even when nothing seems to be happening. The mind is a wonderfully responsive thing, and will attempt to present what you are seeking. But at first perhaps only stray memories or feelings will arise. Also, the insight might require you to feel something deeply, so be ready for that and let it happen if you can.

Over a period of days gradually more and more will arise, and it is worth the time spent in the exploration. But do not be content with airy-fairy insight. Do not make the dream a platitude or a cliché. Dreams are powerful expressions of your down to earth, here and now self. You will know if you have arrived at insight because it will be deeply moving and clarify areas of your life that were previously obscure.

It is important to consider what you have received and weigh it against practical observation. See if there is something you can learn from it and apply. Test it wherever practical. Do not be afraid to doubt it and try it against the world. If you are not accessing the best in yourself you need to know it. This avoids the trap of wanting your intuitions about your dream to be true at any cost. The intuitions arising from the meditation method are a valid way of gaining information, just as your senses are, or your ability to read. But your senses and your ability to read can also be ways in which false information is taken in. So your discrimination is needed when using your intuition, as it is in everyday life. The more you use it the more sharp your faculty will become. But discrimination must not act as a source of doubt that blocks your ability to receive spontaneous information.

The Hidden Buttons in the Machine

One of the things we take for granted in our experience of the world is that there are many possibilities hidden in nature that nature itself does not express. For instance lightning is one of the few ways nature expresses electricity. But as a species we have learned there are many other possibilities for the use of electricity. By directing it in various ways we can produce heat, light, sound, power to move things, and pictures as we see on the television, PC monitor or in the cinema.

This applies also to our own body and personality. The example we can use here is the drive towards sex. This has developed in us through millions of years of evolution in the process of reproduction. This gradual development has formed organs and traits, such as courting behaviour, that lead directly toward an attempt to plant the seeds or receive the seeds to reproduce.

In our own culture we largely accept this except where there is psychological trauma that may prevent a normal expression of sexual drive. We have the unconscious concept that there is no other possibility. This is rather like looking at lightning and saying, “Well, that’s how nature does it, and that is the only possible way it can be experienced.” But some other cultures have looked upon the sexual drive in a similar way that we have looked upon electricity. They have explored its possibilities.

To explain what they found, and its relevance to what is being said about your personal potential, we need to remember that in nature the electricity in the lightning simply earths itself. All that tremendous energy flows into the earth. What we have learned to do is to put something in between the flow, such as an electric fire or a television set. In this way the flow back to earth produces many different phenomena. New potentials of the electricity are manifest.

Although this is an analogy, we could say the same thing about human sexuality. The discharge of feelings and body fluids in sexual orgasm and ejaculation are like the flowing back to earth. Nature does its thing and the energy is gone. In most human sexuality today there is not even the possibility of reproduction. What other cultures have developed is the concept of this as energy. They say that this energy is potentially many other things than physical reproduction. So they divert the energy into the body toward the brain, rather than out of the body to be earthed. The results of this when successful are extended functions of the brain and senses.

The techniques and teachings lying behind yoga are fundamentally about recognising the potentials lying dormant in you and learning to use them. The eastern cultures, far more than is true in the West, have developed techniques to extend possibilities of human life. See Kundalini

Bringing this back to the “Magical Dream Machine”, once we recognise the enormous creative potential we have, and that we can see active in our dreams, we can begin to realise we are only at the foothills of the possibilities open to us. For a start, millions of tonnes of drugs are taken each year to deal with depression. Yet here we each are, capable of creating a full surround virtual reality, with extraordinary people and creatures, but we are still victims of our own feelings and fears. Isn’t that strange? Isn’t that a tragedy? See – Avoid Being Victims; Life’s Little Secrets; Archetype of the Paradigm –

Take the journey! Learn how your magical dream machine works. Find out which buttons you unconsciously press to create heaven and which buttons you press to create hell! Create your own music. Create your own life!

Exploring your dreams – Steps in Deeper Understanding

Example of understanding your dreams – Help to unravel that wonderful background of information in your dreams – Introduction to features that can guide you – Learning to explore dreams – The many things dreams are can show you

Many people see dreams as nothing more than fanciful, but dreams are more than dreams. If you think of dreams as similar to an icon on your computer desktop, you can arrive at a fuller insight. This is because each dream image holds enormous data, emotional response, and created patterns of behaviour. So in considering any dream image you need to remember you are in touch with a full surround databank of fantastic information about you, your past and your possibilities through the dimension of dreams. You can interact with this information by exploring it in the right way.

Example of understanding your dreams

As an example I was recently asked by a man who had given no thought to dreams how on earth you could extract any meaning from them. He was wearing a fairly old T-shirt, so I said, “OK, let’s imagine you dreamt of your T-shirt, what would you make of that?”

After a while he said, “I don’t know that I would make anything of it.”

My response was to say, “Right, but now tell me where you bought the T-shirt, and what memories it has for you.” Whereupon he told me very full memories of being abroad, and that the shirt was part of those memories, and he wasn’t prepared to say what they were as they were so personal.

The important point is that everything we see and deal with, every person, every imagined scene, has such a background of feelings and perhaps memories. It is exactly this background of feelings and information that the dream weaves its story from. To understand it you need to become aware of the usually unconscious feeling responses you have in connection with every thing, place, person and animal you fill your dreams with.

Help to unravel that wonderful background of information in your dreams

This is why Dream Dictionary, a revolutionary new app that is something I hope can help you unravel that wonderful background of information in your dreams. Dream Dictionary contains an entire library of searchable terms that you’ll be able to reference anywhere you have your cell phone with you.  A world where we know more about ourselves through our dreams would undoubtedly bring a better life-skills to us all

Dream Dictionary contains an entire library of searchable terms that you’ll be able to reference anywhere you have your cell/mobile phone with you.

You can find a number of ways to can gain further insight into your dreams through the following features. Firstly by typing in what you what to find in the search. Then you can search the incredible riches of the Dream Encylopedia. Some suggestions have been placed in order to give graded instruction.

Introduction to features that can guide you

Magical dream machine – Key words – Language and dreams – Emotions and moods

Learning to explore dreams

Dream Processing – Peer Dream Exploration – Talking As – Acting on Your Dream – Animals As Dream Figures – Characters and People in Your Dreams – House in Your Dreams – Power Dreaming – Your Guru the Dream – Here is an audio example of Tony exploring a dream: Conversation.

The many things dreams are can show you

Archetypes – pregnancy and dreams – Brain hemispheres – Brain levels – Dream lovers –– ESP and dreams – Healing action within dreams – Hypnosis and dreams – Incubating dreams – Intuition in dreams –– Lucidity the new frontier –The man in your dreams – Meeting in dreams – Menstruation and dreams – Movements during sleep – Myths legends and fairy tales – Near death experiences – Nightmares – Night terrors – Nutrition and dreams – Out of body experiences – Paralysis while asleep – Past lives in dreams –- People in your dreams – Philosophy of dreams – Place or environment – Plot of the dream – Possession and dreams –Precognition – Pregnancy dreams – Premenstrual tension and dreams – Reincarnation and dreams – Relationship and dreams – Rocking during sleep – Secret of the universe dreams – Secrets Learned From Dreams – Self regulation and fantasy – Sequential dreams – Serial dreams – Series of dreams – Sex and dreams – Sex while asleep – Sleep apnea – Sleep walking –– Spiritual life in dreams – Sub personalities – Sleep talking –

The Wonder of Imagination

If you are among the few people who cannot ever remember their dreams, you are missing one of the great wonders of human experience. To dream is to discover a virtual reality so authentic, that the people we meet, the sensations we experience, the dramas we are involved in, strike to our heart as deeply as the events we meet while awake. In fact sometimes the memory of dreams may stay with us for years, more potently than many everyday memories.

The realm of sleep and dreams offers us a world so vastly different from waking, that our life may be enriched by happenings and realisations totally impossible otherwise. It has been said that travel broadens the mind. Dreams expand it far more. Without them, and without the act of imagination and fantasy that arises from such powers of the mind as dreams emerge from, we would indeed be impoverished. Without the process of mind that lies behind the inventive fancy of dreams, art, music, drama, literature and architecture would have remained starkly utilitarian. Imagination, in dreams or otherwise, is a divine power which lifts us out of today and transports us to yesterday, or to the future. Consider what it would be like if you could never remember details of the past, or think about what you would like to do in the future. Consider also what it would be like if you could never reshape in your mind or feelings, an event or words you have heard. There would be no comedy, no stories, no art, no drive to build something that is different.

Imagination changes the shape of the world, penetrates its external solidity to transform its shape and its events into innumerable fresh experiences. Imagination sees the wonderful possibilities in a piece of rock, or some coloured earth, and with them creates art. Imagination discovered the submarine and the motor car long before scientific endeavour developed the technology to manufacture them. (4) Even people who appear to lack this divine power while awake, can in dreams spread wings of fancy and find ingenious dramatic creation while they sleep.

Even more than that I believe that Imagination coupled with belief can create a hell on earth, or a heaven here and now. It is what we believe as truth that creates our inner world. This is so obvious in dreams when people run in terror from the creations of their own imagination.

If you are someone who not only remembers, but soaks up the lush dimensions of dreams, then you already know that your visions of the night allow you entrance into strange worlds, new ideas, fresh and sparkling perspectives, as well as horror movies of your own creation.

So why not exercise your imagination by stepping into your dreams in a fascinating adventure.

Being the Person or Thing

One of the most important things about actually understanding your dream rather that interpreting it is to become the dream person or object – to actually completely identify with it. This needs to be practiced as most people feel the dream person or object is something other than themselves and are often hesitant to become it. For instance the Devil in a dream is simply your own emotions and fears given an exterior image. And also Christ in a dream is the same thing. In doing this you can step beyond the imagery of the dream into direct experience of yourself in all its variety and wonder. The Christ for instance become an actual experience of the highest in you.

So do do this the dreamer next choose one of the characters or images in the dream to explore. The character can be themselves as they appear in the dream, or any of the other people or things. It is important to realise that it does not matter if the character is someone known or not, or whether they are young or old. The character needs to be treated as an aspect of their dream, and not as if they were the living person exterior to the dream. So do not attempt to describe them an outside person, but the dream character.

In choosing an image to work with, such as a person, a tree, cat, place, or an environment like the street in the example dream above, it must again be treated as it appears in the dream, not as it may appear in real life. One can take any image from the dream to work with.

Stand in the Role of Character or Object

The dreamer stands in the role of the character or image they are using. So if they chose to be a person they would close their eyes, imagine themselves as stepping into the body of the dream character and describe him or herself as the person they now are.

To do this it usually changes the way your body or feelings feel. As this is done notice any changes in how you feel as that person – or object – speak as them in the first person. Do not say, “I feel as if this person is …” but say, “I feel I am and am doing ..” As this happens watch any realisations or insights that arise and explore the person. Ask question of this dream character until you feel you have realised what is is of you that is being revealed.

I know it is difficult for some people to say ‘I’ instead of talking as if the dream character is someone else. But if you start claiming the dream image as your own in this way by saying such things as, “I am a tree” you will quickly realise you are talking about yourself.

Here is an example. The dream was of a railway station that was an old castle keep/tower. In using the magic word I, this is what he described himself as. “I am an old castle keep. I used to be for defense and repelling people, but now I can let people in and out easily.” The dreamer realised this was a really excellent insight into his character and the change taking place in him.

The Reality of Imagination

Because dreams, imagination and creative thinking or intuition occur in a vastly different dimension than everyday life, we need to take time to reassess it and our use of it. We need to recognise what we are in touch with when we imagine. I honestly believe we are in touch with the future when we have a new and creative idea. For often we are moved by what we imagine and we begin to put it into our activities, in music, art, writing or engineering or technology. Then if we succeed we are now in the future we imagined, for our imagination came before the reality.

Imagination doesn’t necessarily need us to sit and try, making an effort to imagine something. It often arises spontaneously and we catch it like catching sight of a beauty, an idea, a passing feeling of love. If we manage to hold onto the glimpse, then we can craft it and make it physically real, and that is a wonder that something so ephemeral can take shape and be born. But the truth as I see it is that imagination is real and solid in its own dimension, the dimension of consciousness or mind.

But there is another aspect of it that many people fail to recognise. It is that anything we think and believe often becomes a reality. I see those women and men who believe they have no talent, no future, no love, often live a life exactly like that. I know because for a period of my life I lived in those beliefs and was suicidely depressed. And at the time I was so certain that they were true it was extremely difficult to get past them. Yet it is all imagination, for what is truth? Well it can be anything you like – a dark and threatening thing that can lead to constant feelings of despair or failure – or a creative promise that leads into an effortless state of wonder and newness.

Of course turning the corner from darkness to light – or not even that for we live in a world of duality in which there is darkness and light, a daily experience. So learning to exist in the middle of the extremes is a workable way.

A day many years ago, a spent butterfly with tattered wings was trapped inside the window of my house. What happened was a great surge if imagination as I watched it.

I begin to pass
And see a butterfly
In the lowest corner
Still – as in death.
Its wings tattered
By its own earnest
Yet fruitless quest.

I pick it carefully
And place it
Stood upon the very brink
Of that great open void
Toward the sky.
Motionless still
I nudge it toward the space,
Either to fall lifeless
Or to have what life is in it
Called upon fresh.

It falls.
Like a leaf dropping
In the air.
And then it flies
Lifting me with it
On tattered wings
Already spent.

Up, and up yet
Against the dark clouds
Lit from behind
In mighty grandeur wild.
Climbing against sea and sky,
Daring across the wind,
Bold amid the unending
Impersonal immense.

 

Dream Meetings or Sharing Dreams

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Baby Dreams

What do babies dream about?

From your baby’s perspective, birth and the experience of life outside the womb is probably like waking from a long and unbroken dream into an entirely new world.

The science of modern dream and sleep research really leapt forward when Eugene Aserinsky, working as a researcher in a sleep laboratory, noticed that his eight year old son’s eyes moved while he slept. Later it was found this was due to the eyes following activities taking place in a dream, and that these rapid eye movements (REM) were a sign of dreaming.

From this it was seen that even newborn babies dream. In fact, although adults only spend about a third of their sleep period dreaming, babies spend 50 to 80 percent of sleep in dreams. Some researchers, carrying their investigation into the womb, state that at 24-30 weeks gestational age the unborn baby dreams a 100 percent.

Because most researchers investigate dreaming from a physiological or neurological standpoint, they are not very good at telling us why babies, or we adults, spend so much time dreaming. This is because dreams are more connected with the passionate drive to survive, to relate, to learn and grow. When we see a child go into a frenzy when they are lost, we can understand just how passionate the emotional level of dreams are. It is this level of feeling that dreams deal with. But an interesting study done by Nathaniel Kleitman showed that he observed a regular breathing cycle in infants which lasted 50 minutes. He felt that this was probably to wake the baby at these intervals to see if it was in need of feeding. It would signal this by waking up and crying. The child would therefore get adequate nutrition.

Likening a dream to one of the monitors we see at the side of a patient in a hospital is perhaps the easiest way to understand what a dream is. Just as the monitor presents a visual image of the patients heartbeat, their blood pressure and temperature, a dream puts into drama and images the processes, feelings and fears that lie behind our personal awareness. In a baby, an unimaginable amount of learning, adjustment, development of responses and body skills is taking place. We usually take this for granted. But like a television show or film, it is only when we see the credits at the end of such a film that we realise just how much behind the scenes work has taken place to produce the film. And this is precisely what dreams show – the behind the scenes activities and dramas.

Understanding this, and realising that a baby and young child lives in a completely different world than we do as an adult, helps us support them toward a healthy and happy adulthood. For instance a baby and child who have not learned to speak cannot think. We think with words. So during pre-speech there are only feeling responses or instinctive urges and fears to guide the child. The development of thinking only phases in gradually, and prior to that we learn from events and relationships, not ideas. See Animal Children to understand the part speech plays in a child’s life.

For instance, a woman I met, Tina, as a child was told she was being taken to a party, but in fact she was being taken to an orphanage. She was given a bar of chocolate. She never ate it. Since then she has never been able to eat sweets, and she still has an eating problem while with other people. When she got to the orphanage she immediately went to the toilets and hid there, feeling she couldn’t speak. She still has difficulty speaking to groups of people. Tina had experienced massive feeling responses to what had been done to her. Those feelings are still active ‘behind the scenes’ of her life.

Dreams depict all the aspects of what is taking place within the child. Sometimes, just for the child to tell or draw a dream helps them integrate the underlying feelings and processes. Another thing they can do is to model their dream. In this way the awful dream event or creature can be put outside them and they can manipulate the frightening things – for instance they can put the creature in a cage where it cannot hurt them.

If you yourself can understand that whenever we dream its images are not like real life, because a dream is nothing like outer life where things could hurt you, but is an image like on a cinema screen, so that even if a gun is pointed at you and fired it can do no damage – except if you run in fear; so, all the things that scare you are simply your own fears projected onto the screen of your sleeping mind. And if you can therefore understand that dream fears are all about fears, hurts and threats that threaten the person or child’s confidence in their on coping strategies and aid them towards confidence and coping, you will do wonders.

Remember that a child’s greatest fears are to be abandoned or threatened by what they see or hear – television and films for a child are almost the same as the real world.

While small, my youngest son told me he dreamt his pet baby mice had opened their eyes. When I asked him what it means for a baby mouse to open its eyes, he told me that it showed they were ready to become independent. I then asked him what it might be like to be a pet, and he said a pet couldn’t do anything for itself, not even get its own water or food. He went on to say that because he was small, he sometimes felt like a pet. So we talked this over and he decided he could start getting his own glass of water by putting a chair near the sink. He was moving toward independence.

Although you cannot have a conversation with your baby in the same way I did with my young son, if you see your baby is having disturbing dreams you can still talk to her or him, even while they are asleep. Your baby is incredibly sensitive to the sound of your voice, and your own state of calm or agitation lying behind the way your voice sounds. Therefore you can sit with your baby and imagine a situation in which you feel calm and loving. When you feel calm and strong, gently talk to your baby telling it you are holding it close in your love, and you are with it while it meets whatever is disturbing it. Tell it your love is the strength it can use, and imagine wrapping your baby in your calm and love.

Most nightmares are an expression of a healing process. They are attempts to meet and discharge the feelings in difficult events we have faced. Because your child is so dependent upon you and is vulnerable, it is more prone to nightmares than adults are. A common nightmare for children is that a lion or some other scary creature is chasing it. There is good evidence to show that the lion might represent the child’s anger, which it has been told is wrong or bad, so the child is scared of it and tries to run away from its own feelings

Whether this theory is right or not, an easy way to help your child deal with its nightmare is to encourage him or her to draw or model the dream. In this way the child gets the frightening thing out in front of it where the scary thing can be seen and controlled. Once it has done this, ask it what it wants to do with the scary creature or thing. For instance it might wish to put it in a cage, or to make friends with it. In either case the child begins to feel more in control. Allowing your child to talk about such disturbing dreams also is very healing. It allows the child to voice its fears, and to know you will listen without criticism or judgement. But nightmares are exceptions. Most dreams are about your child’s personal growth, what it is learning, what it is feeling about the world around it, and the ways it is expressing or denying its own creative centre. So drawing, modelling and talking about these everyday dreams is tremendously creative and growth promoting for your child.

Here is an example of what a child faces and learns. True it is from an adults dream, but we carry the child in us.

I worked on the dream with my wife. The whole centre of the dream seemed to be the little girl. As I came in to land, because I had been gliding high above, she saw me and ran away very frightened. I was gliding in the same direction she was running and called out to her not be frightened. She stopped and I landed. In amazement she looked at me and said, “How did you get to be up there?”

As the young girl I had walked from the back door of my house, along the garden path, across a footpath behind the houses, into the field. As I looked through her eyes and feelings, I realised what a long journey it was for me to get into the field. Not a long journey physically in distance, but an enormous journey within myself. To be able to go from the door to the field, I had gone through the long process of learning to walk; I had learned the confidence to be alone; through language and understanding what my parents had passed to me, I had found out how to avoid stinging nettles, and how not to be overcome by my fears of them and of the huge creatures that I knew as cows. This had all taken ages, and so walking into the field was an enormous achievement, especially as I was doing it by myself. Learning to walk itself had taken an tremendous practice and perseverance. Learning to be independent of my mother was also something I had had to learn. I had made the inner journey of acquiring an immense stock of information and conditioning regarding the external environment I was facing too. I had slowly learned survival responses to nettles, walking alone, nests, birds, the sun, trees, spiders, stones, the wind, children, adults, worms, leaves on the trees, cars, etc, etc, etc, etc, and so on. See: Pregnancy; individuation.

Although it is difficult to theorise about the subject of babies dreams without their ability to report their experiences, evidence gained from the study of animal dreams probably applies to infants too. Michel Jouvet, while observing dreaming in cats, devised a way to avoid the usual paralysis of voluntary muscles during dreaming. This allowed the cat to actually make full movements while dreaming instead of the usual jerks or subdued movements. The cat would then live out its dream through the movements it made. Jouvet then noted the cats dreams were largely centred around crouching and stalking prey or play fighting. Adrian Morrison of the University of Pennsylvania noted the same behaviour in cats while investigating narcolepsy in animals. Because the area of the brain which usually stopped the dream movements from being expressed fully was injured, the cats Morrison was observing lived out their dreams in the same way Jouvet observed.

Jouvet, and later Nicholas Humphries, reasoned from this evidence that at the beginning of a mammal’s life, an enormous amount of time is spent in practising necessary survival skills in dreams. With cats the survival skill is defence and hunting. With a human infant it has more to do with socialisation, easily expressing its feeling and anger. Estimates have been made of what period of time the baby dreams in the womb, and the figures are that it dreams at 24-30 gestational age weeks a100%.

Taking this further, Christopher Evans, in his book Landscapes of The Night, says that this need to dream about social interactions and adapting to the social rules of their culture and thereby practice them, explains why children who have just started school need a lot of sleep.

The work of Stanislav Grof, which dealt a great deal with the remembrance of the birth experience in adults, and the recovery of memories and fantasies connected with it, also suggests that the dreaming baby is not only practising social skills and preparing for action in the external world, but also trying to balance and perhaps heal the internal memories it already carries from its uterine life, trauma of birth, and post-natal relationships. This type of dreaming may account for the nightmares suffered by some babies and young children. The function of such dreams or the process behind them appears to be that of attempted integration of experience, or means of finding an adaptation to its containment. See: children’s dreams; individuation.

Autonomous Complex

Many of the characters or elements of our dreams act quite contrary to what we consciously wish. This is why we often find it so difficult to believe all aspects of a dream are part of our own psyche. Some drives or areas of self act or express despite what we would want. These are named autonomous complexes. Recent research into brain activity shows that in fact the brain has different layers or strata of activity. These strata often act independently of each other or of conscious will. Sensing them, as one might in a dream, might feel like meeting an opposing will or being possessed by an alien force. Integration with these aspects of self can of course be gained. See Levels of the Brain; The Two Powers.

A modern view of the personality says that our mind is made up of many modules which are quite distinct. These modules, such as the sexual drive and the ability to speak, usually function in a way which is reasonably integrated. But many areas of dissimilarity are evident if we closely observe the workings of our own responses to life experiences. Because we each hold certain ideas about ourselves – our self image – things we do which do not express this self image may shock or even frighten us. Actions arising from a module of oneself which does not express our accepted self image, may give rise not only to fear, but also a sense of evil, or being possessed by evil.

An autonomous complex may be recognised by any one of four major signs. Firstly we may project enormous feelings of love, repulsion, hate or even fear upon another person we know or meet. The power of these feelings or convictions is so great they create a bond between oneself and the other person. Often these feelings lead us to feel there is a fault in the other person that is repulsive or immoral, and which we find very difficult to accept. For instance a man might see another man he knows committing adultery, and feel so repulsed by the act that he goes around criticising the man, only to find years later that he had been repressing the trait in himself. The very strength of the energy with which we criticise it in others may be equal to the strength with which we repress the urge or characteristic in ourselves.

Another way the autonomous complex may announce itself its to take over or invade the conscious personality. It may be an idealistic vision that possesses the person, a mission such as preaching or improving the lot of other people, or something that re-directs the life of the person in a manner that is not rational. This may lead to extraordinary deeds, done in the possessing influence of the vision or urge – or it may lead to foolishness or disillusionment. The apparent change, however, is that the person is under the influence of urges that were not natural, or the person was not capable of, before the invasion. The life of Joan of Arc is an example of being led to great deeds which were beyond the person prior to the invasion.

But of course the complex may express as something evil, the devil or something or someone possessing one. This can be very frightening to many people because they believe that an actual devil or evil is possessing them, rather than a repressed part of them, or the results of a traumatic experience showing itself in frightening images

The third relationship with an autonomous complex is where something happens to destroy or stop all expression or action of these inner characteristics. As much of our uniqueness and facility for variety arises out of the interaction with these various aspects of self, their disappearance leaves a person empty and without any creativeness – a dried husk without any spark of life.

The fourth possibility is that in which the person consciously attempts to find a working relationship with these disparate aspects of their personality and unconscious.

Example: “We spoke to our “primary selves” which were very well developed. They ran our lives or, as we liked to put it, they drove our psychological cars. They were the ones that made up our personalities; the selves that “knew all the answers” when we first met. Then we went on to learn about our “disowned selves.” For each primary self there were opposite disowned selves that were buried or repressed so that the primaries could keep control of our lives. The primary selves were familiar and we were comfortable with them. It was easy to get them to talk and to tell us how cleverly and successfully they ran our lives. The disowned selves were unfamiliar and threatening to our primary selves. Each primary self felt that the disowned self on the other side was a potential destroyer of our wellbeing. For instance: “What happens if you really let go and learned to ‘be’ instead of to ‘do?’ You might never want to work again!” would be the Pusher’s concern.”

As the autonomous complexes hold in them such varied and spontaneous responses to life, they have enormous creative potential if they can be met and expressed in a way that does not dominate or destroy the central personality. The characters we meet in dreams, their variety and difference to how we know and think of ourselves, present us very clearly with the enormous variety of talents, sensitivities, possible approaches to a situation, and personality types that we hold within us. If we can tap them they are an enormous resource. Although it can be very disorienting and even frightening to meet ones internal infant, and feel its explosive moods and deep instinctive longings, it can enlarge our perspective of life enormously, as well as our ability to relate more widely.

Apart from the infant there are many beings we touch in our dreams. Everything from the deeply animal such as the dog in our dreams, or the wolf, to the sadist, the lover, the monk and the business tycoon. If we do not meet these characters and manage them in our life, they will certainly manage us, and lead us into relationship tangles, emotional responses and actions that are not what we ourselves choose to be or feel. See: examples under compensation; sub-personalities; Integrating a Parent or an ex; Unconscious; Alien

Archetype of the Void

Fundamental to all experience are the opposites of emptiness and fullness, space and substance, sound and silence, something and nothing, female and male, light and darkness. We not only meet these polarities at every moment in such things as hearing a sound that is only apparent because it is surrounded by silence – the silence between the sounds – but also all people and objects are only individually identifiable because they exist in empty space. But more important than that in understanding the archetype of the void is that each day we cycle through the alternating experience of existing and not existing – of having focussed personal awareness and then meeting the loss of it in sleep. The midway point between these polarities is dreams.

In dropping into this experience of sleep where there is a void or loss of personal awareness, we lose any sense of self and body and so the transition from waking self awareness to the void is easy. But the archetype of the void is about meeting it with awareness. For many people this can be a difficult or frightening thing. We tend to think of the void as a huge nothingness, a vacuum in which the human personality will disappear. This can seem very frightening, that behind everything is a sort of nothingness. The amusing thing is that this is an everyday human experience. In sleep we have dropped into that void. Our personality has indeed, as far as we are concerned, melted away and disappeared. Yet the next morning we awake and all is well. We have survived.

When people think of the void they usually see it as a destruction of everything – a death of self. But the nothingness of the void is part of the paradox of existence – for the nothingness is at the same time everything. But everything is all inclusive. As such it cannot have any defined characteristics or shape, otherwise it wouldn’t be everything. This is because if you were to say what a beach is, you could not say the sea was the beach, or the sky, or the land. None of them separately is the beach. The beach is the indefinable amalgam of them all. In just that way the Nothing is the indefinable everything that underlies the particulars of life.  The Next Step.

The conscious meeting with the void is part of the gradual expanding of personal awareness. It is akin to, or the same as, going to sleep with full awareness. When we sleep our body and brain enter into a very different state; we lose awareness of sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch; our voluntary muscles are paralysed, and our experience is internalised. So, consciously entering sleep is a journey into a very strange world completely unlike our waking life. Part of that world is the full surround virtual reality of dreams, but there are dimensions beyond imagery, beyond form, beyond the opposites, beyond personal separated existence. This is the void, and to confront it consciously is a transformative experience.

Seeking the void is at the heart of the Buddhist way of life, as it is also at the heart of Christian mysticism. See Dimensions of Human Experience; Cloud of Unknowing; buddhism and dreams; void; yoga and dreams.

The void may be depicted in a dream by a shimmering haze, a transparent wall into which you can walk and become absorbed. At times it might be shown as the ocean, falling into space with just points of light, or a huge abyss’ or a massive hole. At other times it might be met as an ordinary scene or object that yet is seen as infinite space or complete liberation or a wonderful or threatening emptiness. Meeting such imagery or experiences in any degree produces powerful personal change. It produces a new sense of oneself; one no longer focussed on the ego or body personality – the self we consider ourselves to be through our body shape, gender, beauty or ugliness, or through our social position, our wealth, work or acclaim. It is, as the Buddhists name it, liberation. Meeting it is part of what Jung calls individuation. See: example under void.

Example: To my amazement a huge living and wondrous circle appeared on the wall. It was full of movement, everything dancing in time to music. At the very centre of the circle was emptiness, nothing, a void. Yet out of this nothingness all things emerged. There were plants, animals, people, hills, rivers and mountains all coming to birth. They danced out in their own individual movement, yet each unknowingly was part of the whole wonderful and intricate dance which made a great pattern and movement in the body of the circle. All danced to the periphery and there turned and moved, still in their ballet, back to the centre. At that centre they plunged into its oblivion again. But at that very moment new life sprang from it to dance once more.

When we do meet it however, the strange thing is that what appeared as an absence or denial of oneself is actually an addition. Suddenly we see that everything has been added, and nothing taken away.

The negative aspect of this archetypal experience is the loss of any personal meaning or motivation, the feeling of melting and perhaps even death. The positive side is of tremendous opportunity to live beyond previous limitations and boundaries; the realisation of ones own core existence in timelessness and infinite potential, along with the meaninglessness of prevalent views of death.

 

Useful Questions and Hints:

What do I feel about the nothingness that constantly surrounds me?

Am I scared of the idea of that at base I might not exist in the same way I usually see myself?

Can I let go of all that is involved in the little me and surrender to the vast me?

It might be helpful to read Individuation and Methods of Awakening.