Posts Tagged ‘dimensions of mind’

Martial Art of the Mind

Surviving Tomorrow

Part Four

Tony Crisp

There are far greater dangers than being shot, losing all your money or being injured in a road accident. Statistically that is. Surviving the good, the bad and the ugly that life puts in your way needs real skills, and one of the greatest of them is not the ability to drive safely. It is a master technique hardly known in the West, but mastered by many in the East.

Statistically you and I have very little chance of being shot or being crushed by a falling building. But there is every likelihood that we are already imprisoned, even tortured or manipulated by things we do not even acknowledge as being dangerous or capable of trapping us.

A friend, who is a good driver, manages a car like a professional until she gets to a main road with traffic on it. Then she completely loses control and freezes with fear. Even passing a large truck as a passenger does the same thing, and she often cries out in emotional pain. You might believe she was tortured by her fear, but it is her imagination that is the jailer and torturer. Inside herself she sees the truck crushing her. It is so real she reacts as if it were true.

We are all victims or captives of what we believe in. Fundamentalist Christians for instance believe yoga, or anything to do with other religions, is not just different, it is evil. The son of a friend was told his mother was satanic because she taught yoga, and the same boy was thrown out of his church when he admitted being gay.

A 100 year old Zen master. Zen is martial art of the mind.

People can, of course, believe what they wish, but such beliefs not only limit ones experience, they also create enormous conflicts, as with religious or political wars. More importantly they act as filters or blocks to a fuller relationship with other people and opportunities. A woman, Barbara, writing about the relationship with her father, says:

I did things that I knew my father would be interested in because I observed that he had a very strong filter: things he wasn’t interested in (e.g. art and music) he completely ignored and didn’t try to be interested in. He had decided that these were not productive uses of time partly because of the puritan work ethic that had been instilled into him by his mother, and partly because those things had never been encouraged in him. Therefore I felt that if I didn’t do things that fell into his areas of interest I would not get his attention or interest.

The other aspect is that if I did do things differently this would question the fundamental principles on which he had based his life. I feel that part of the shutting off to things like art and music is that they involve emotional involvement. My father’s father died when he was six. Everything was done to shield him from it. My grandmother showed no emotion (although privately she was devastated) as she thought this was best. My father was therefore not allowed or helped to deal with what he felt, and his strategy was to build a wall. I feel all these emotions are still there walled off. His mother is now dying, and it is interesting to see his reaction. He is very close to her, being the only child. As she gets worse, the wall is getting stronger. He doesn’t like witnessing his family distressed and often I’ve seen that wall come into place when he does, as self protection.

So Barbara is saying that her father is not only the prisoner of his beliefs, but also is enormously restricted by his inability to meet his emotions. Later in our communications, Barbara described the traps she herself is caught in and beginning to find freedom from.

Most of my demons reside in my head; i.e. I invent the possibility of rejection and abandonment and respond to my own imagination by trying to avoid it happening. The old reflex is to attempt to do what will please those I care for to stop them abandoning me. The other complicating element has been the strategy of cutting off feeling to cope with an emotionally painful situation that I feel powerless to get out of, because that would displease the people who love me and that would mean they might reject/abandon me.

These situations of imagining things we fear, of being trapped by what we feel others will not like about us; of being frightened of dying,  of twisting the nature of who we really are in an attempt to get love or acceptance; being imprisoned by what we are convinced is true about life and the world; denying pain and our own feelings; the awful fight some of us have with our basic drives such as hunger, sex and our need for love, are more prevalent evils than gunmen, terrorism or social upheaval.

What we believe or imagine about who we are, or what we are not, is for many people an incredibly potent torturer and jailer. But many of what Barbara calls her demons are unbelievably subtle, and capture us, restrict us, shut out the possibility of a full life, or being able to respond with our own creativity. The real problem is that we often accept this as normal or barely notice them.

Later Barbara met these feelings.

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

If we look at Lisa this becomes understandable. Lisa is in her forties, was married for a few years but felt she received no love or support, so she ended the relationship. She had no children and went through a great many changes of lifestyle and employment after ending her marriage. A few years ago she had got deeply into debt to credit card companies and sold her small house to pay her debts. In trying to re-establish herself financially and in terms of personal achievement she worked very hard at what seemed to be a promising self employed opportunity. During this period she lived on the money left over from the sale of her house, and despite all the promise of what she was doing, after several years she had earned nothing, so survives on a part time job.

Lisa now lives in a state in which she is constantly tortured and put down by seeing that unlike her sisters she has never had a child, has not achieved any lasting success in her life and lives in a tiny bedsit which she might have to leave due to not being able to pay the rent. There is also an inner ghost haunting her through her feelings that she has not lived up to her father’s hopes. She longs to earn enough to own her own house, and to have a loving partner who closely shares her life. The lack of all of these pulls her down to frequent feelings of despair and hopelessness.

Prisoner in Your Mind

This is where mental martial arts can make its entry. All of what Lisa feels about her life – no child – no external achievement – no partner – no house of her own – not measuring up to her family – are all true, but only in a certain way. What is devastating is that Lisa believes she is what she feels. It is this point that is the fulcrum, the lever that can shift defeat into release. And that lever has nothing to do with repeating positive affirmations to fight the gloom. It has nothing to do with meditating light flooding her being to dispel the darkness. It has nothing to do with taking a pill or injecting a chemical to deaden the pain. It has everything to do with recognising who we really are, and emerging from the locked cell we have been a prisoner in.

Because this is so important we need to step back a little distance to come to the meaning slowly.

We must all at times have seen something or heard something that circumstances assured us shouldn’t be there or should not have happened. One that has occurred to me a few times is that I step into my house and see someone standing in the shadows who shouldn’t be there. My heart speeds up, and for moments I am frozen. Then with relief I see it is a coat hung on a door. All the fear drains away and my heart slows down again. Or it could be a sound of something or someone in the house when you are not expecting anyone, or can’t understand what the sound means. Whatever it is, until you understand the cause – recognising the coat on the door for instance – your whole body and emotions respond as if it is a reality. What you believe to be real is responded to completely as if it IS real. Thus African and Australian tribesmen would die because they believed the local witch-doctor had cursed them. The demon that killed them was not outside them, but in them. The demons that throw Lisa down are not in any of the external events but in her belief that she is a failure, unloved and unlovable.

For millennia shamans, witch-doctors, priests and witches, and now the medical fraternity, have tried to cast out these demons in one way or another. If we are to live free of them, free to really express our potential and meet change and opportunity with the best we are, we need to rid ourselves of those demons. And don’t for a moment think you are free of them. They lurk in shadows. They hide even in the positive things you believe about yourself; for they feed on beliefs as well as doubts. Their very energy is the stuff of thoughts and emotions.

Recently I sat with a woman, Beth, while she explored her usually unconscious feelings and beliefs. Our unconscious dream action often portrays such inner feelings as an object or person, and in her exploration Beth met the Devil. When we dared to face and closely look at this image of evil, what she discovered was that her ancestors had lived in times of great persecution. Being people who had questioning minds, they wondered whether the persecution was in fact justified. Maybe there was something about them that was inferior and detestable. Those self doubts, and the negative feelings that arose from them, created an open door for what has been called the Devil – destructive emotions and urges, negative comparisons, and feelings of being an outsider. Once this is understood it is easy to see other things that leave a door open for evil to enter. They are childhood trauma or abuse, the attitudes and standards we often pick up – rather like infections – from others around us, and the cultural attitudes we live amidst. When this ‘devil’ enters us it can lead to self criticism, the denial of ones own talents and ‘light’, and in bad cases, crime, murder and the infliction of child abuse and trauma.

Knowing this, we can see that much advertising attempts to call these demons into action – Are wrinkles making you look old? – Can you no longer make love like you used to? – Lacking energy, zest, confidence, take this fantastic new formula – What will happen if you die leaving your loved ones uncared for? – What is holding you back – why not completely change your life by signing on this $2000 guaranteed three day course? Defeat ageing, get rich, have fantastic sex, leave failure behind – you know the story. But what the adverts are reaching are the beliefs or feelings that you are ageing, you no longer or never did have fantastic sex, you are childless or a failure. They are grabbing hold of the imagination already working in us that tells us we are doomed, failures, unloved and lonely.

Another factor in this imprisonment is that many of us believe there is no difference between our body and who we are. If we look awful then it means we are an awful or unattractive person. Along with that it is almost impossible for most of us to gain any distance between what we feel and who we believe we are. We feel a failure – we are a failure. We feel inferior – we are inferior. Others of us have been told things as a child – you idiot, can’t you get anything right; you? – never amount to anything, etc. That stuff sticks, and if we believe it we are trapped by it and live it. It all becomes a habit. If we are to find our way out of its clutches we need a new habit, a new way of dealing with it.

In recent years I have been challenging people who are convinced you should feel grief and even great pain when someone you care for dies. I am not going to argue this point here, but when I talk to such people it is evident they are convinced they are right. As I say, I am not going to argue this, but read about the power of belief again. Or change the word belief into conviction. It seems that we live in convictions about who we are, what life means, what is a ‘normal’ response to events, and what is right and wrong. Think about it. What are your convictions? Again, read what belief and imagination can do!

Considering what was said about Lisa, the common argument says that Lisa IS in a bad place in life, and has every reason to feel a failure and depressed. And that is the argument that in fact leaves many of us in shackles, in a form of imprisonment that holds us back from giving all we’ve got to present needs and relationships. Of course she is in a bad place, but to BELIEVE she is a failure actually imprisons her in it more firmly.

Example: The mother of one man who goes to church every Sunday and labors every day cooking and sewing for charity. Her eyes are ever lowered in meekness and humility. In time of strife she dissolves into tears, and if things go too badly she has a heart attack. She is the most unfortunate, put-upon woman that ever lived—her face proclaims it. But she has driven her husband to impotence and drunkenness, and rendered her children helpless, dependent slaves to her every whim. Her whole family has literally been destroyed by the guilt she laid in its path.

Her son grew up obsessed with the idea of his own wickedness. Not until he realized that his sense of evil was a gift from his mother, not until he had ascertained that what she called evil was simply what displeased her or conflicted with her interests, did the pall of his self-hatred begin to lift. Finally, in one shattering revelation, he saw behind her mask of innocence the hidden monster, saw the transmuted fury and vengeance she had poured upon him, the cruelty of the psychic damage through which she had manipulated him. Only then did he learn to free himself.

How we move beyond killer beliefs

Now we come to the difficult bit, difficult because beliefs and convictions, our demons, may have such a hold it takes skill to undo the prison doors.

Let us start with the body. If you lost an arm or a leg would that diminish you as a person? Of course it would lessen your ability to physically deal with the events and activities as you once did, but would it take away any of your sense of existing as a unique being? Would it somehow cut out a chunk of your memories or certainty of who you are?

Moving on, if you lost your hearing would you become less a person than previously? Would losing your sight mean you would cease to exist to yourself or other people?

They would all mean you had less equipment to act and move in the physical world, but would they mean you are less equipped to imagine, to think, to know yourself or be aware of your feelings?

Well, in recent years I experienced major stroke in which a part of my brain was destroyed. At that time I lost the ability to speak and the use of the right side of my body. It was a wonderful experience in one aspect because having lost what most people think of as ‘them’, I could see that behind the brain damage I still was whole and happy. I did not identify with my speech or my body. Instead I saw something so important. I saw that the brain injury had injured the ability for me to express through my body. The brain was not ME.

Can you in fact imagine what it would be like if all your senses shut down so you didn’t even know you have a body, and no longer are aware of the external world?

Yes, this is what most people call death. But play with it for a while without brushing it aside with your beliefs or convictions. Try it out to see what you arrive at. It has been done lots of times with sensory deprivation experiments. Although it is unlikely that you will ever be in that situation, it is an important training exercise for mental martial arts.

Apart from sensory deprivation experiments in the west, explorers and philosophers of the ancient east gave enormous energy in trying to understand what it is to be human, and what the possibilities are. They explored what was left when all the sensation and experience of the external world was taken away, and they wrote about it at great length and with great clarity. It was what I met after my stroke. A wonderful essence of this is seen in the first paragraph of the Chinese classic The Tao Te Ching:

The Dao that is defined ceases to be the Dao.

The name that you can speak is not the actual name.

The nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth.

Naming is the matrix of ten thousand different things.

Those who live desireless know the mystery at its heart.

Those who live desiring know the separate, surface parts.

Both nameless and named (heart and surface), though named differently, are one. i

In those few words are volumes of information, and they give the whole secrets and practice of martial art of the mind. The word Dao indicates what you are behind the flood of impressions and noise arising from you senses, your thoughts and feelings, and behind all the words and concepts you explain life with. At the same time it is the foundation of the universe and life.

Again we must stand back a little way and come back to it slowly. So, returning to our experiment in dropping away the body and all its sensory experience, we do this every day when we sleep. Legs, arms, head, sight, hearing and touch are all left behind, switched off. Our sense of self diminishes almost to zero, but returns in dreams in a very special way. What we can learn from this is that in deep sleep all the beliefs, the convictions, the waking personality melt, leaving what might be called imageless, emotionless, existence. This is the Dao. This ‘nameless’ and formless you, existing beyond body and senses, is the origin of all you experience, yet lies beyond it at the same time.

Then in dreams we experience a half way house between what I call ‘naked awareness’ and waking awareness. In the half way house of dreams we clothe ourselves with a body similar to that we use in waking. We meet the hopes, fears, longings and ideas we stimulated or took on in waking life. Most importantly, we take into this dream world much of what is only real and true in waking.

And here we approach the martial art – in waking, if you are shot you could die. In dreams you can get shot a thousand times and still live to be shot again. All that happens – and these next words should be in flashing fluorescent lights – you feel over and over the fear or feelings and thoughts relevant to waking life. In this virtual reality of dreams you die a thousand unnecessary deaths. No matter what nightmare you meet in sleep, you still wake, and all that you carry with you are the emotions and fears that are only applicable to waking life. You carry with you what you believe is true. Yet buildings can fall on you and crush you, monsters can ravage and tear your flesh, demons can carry to hell, or angels lift you to heaven, and you survive to dream it all again if you so wish. Underwater there is no need to hold your breath in a dream, for no harm comes to you. But the convictions you carry inwards from physical life torture you, and you may wake struggling for breath, or fighting demons or monsters who threaten to devour your or posses your soul. But all you are dealing with are images and emotions – or perhaps in some extraordinary dreams when you pass beyond the struggle with images and fears, you might move on to wonderful creative ideas and insights.

The martial art of the mind and soul is to recognise that you do not have to live a thousands deaths and fears INSIDE YOURSELF. They are all groundless. Of course you need to respond to external needs and threats. But it is not helpful to do so out of imagined fear, terror, self criticism, negative comparisons, rigid beliefs or by deadening what you experience with drink and drugs.

Most of such fears are about threats of death or loss of self. The strange thing is, every night we go to sleep, we lose this self we are so terrified of losing through death or possession by some monstrous creature. Then the next morning on waking we have the self back again. What is so frightening about that?

As for being possessed, we are already possessed by the fear of death, injury, being unloved, lonely, failure, poverty, depression, terrible or distorted urges, we may be haunted by meaninglessness and being lost in life. Honestly, what else is there to possess us?

As for death, our present popular myths, stated by our modern wizards the scientists, tell us when our body dies that is the end of us. The contradictory nature of this statement stands out though. Scientists do not yet know what consciousness is. Whether

we survive physical death is not about the body but about consciousness. As scientists presently do not know what that is, how can they say it doesn’t survive?

Remember – ALL such ideas and statements are theories. None of us know what the ultimate truth is. So why torture or imprison ourselves, binding our arms and legs, our love, with half truths?

Moving on from that, here is a dream I had after learning how to live more fully in imageless consciousness:

Before waking this morning I had an extraordinary lucid experience that involved me in what felt like a real place. The clearest part of this was of being in a maze. The walls of the maze were made of hedges, as the whole thing was outdoors. But I realised, because I was lucid, that I had purposely created the dream image of the maze as an experiment. The point of the experiment was that the maze was complicated enough to make it difficult for me to find my way out. So, confronted by the difficulty of finding my way out, because of the lucidity, I could understand that this was a self created image, and in doing so I simply realised I was only trapped in ideas and feelings created by images and my imagination, and not actually in a maze. Realising this I was thereby free of the maze. Recognising the feeling as being things I felt rather than reality, I could escape the trap.

I then experimented again and again with this, moving to exist beyond the images and beliefs I had been, or could be, lost in. This was such an extraordinary experience and realisation it is difficult to put into words with enough impact to communicate what I felt. What it led me to see was that all dreams, all thinking and beliefs, involve us in an environment or situation of one sort or another. Usually we feel them to be so real, and the feelings we experience because we are immersed in them, to also be real, that in a very genuine way we are trapped. But we are trapped in the feelings and ideas. So if we were in a prison cell in a dream, or if we trap ourselves in beliefs or thoughts, then there would be no way out of that cell without a key. However, realising oneself as being the awareness behind the feelings, thoughts and images means there is no prison; there is no entrapment; there are no walls to hold you.

The apparent reality of the dream, the thoughts or the beliefs are then seen as simply pictures and feelings – stuff of the mind that we have conjured and become identified with and lost or trapped in. Even imagery with positive feelings is a form of trap if we identify with it.

The more I looked at the experience the more I realised that virtually everybody on our planet is trapped in a prison of their own emotions, thoughts and ideas. To recognise this in any reasonable degree leads to an extraordinary sense of freedom. To see that we live our life trapped in the world of thoughts, of emotions, of sexual drives, of fears or beliefs, is astonishing.

“The name that you can speak is not the actual name. The nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth.” My dream explains something of that astonishing statement. The things we can give a name to are not who and what we are. The beliefs and convictions we are often possessed by are things we experience, but they are not ourselves. As I saw so clearly, I am the awareness of the scenes and images of my mind and my dreams, not the scenes themselves. As soon as I believe I am the maze, the belief or the idea I am trapped.

This realisation is life changing. Living as we do, trapped in beliefs, emotions, conditioned responses, we are not really capable of responding adequately to changing environments or present needs. Obviously there are real traps and dangers in our external world, but many of us are trapped in the dungeons created by our own inner fear, by past pains, beliefs and thoughts. Recognising and experiencing the nameless and formless nature of our real identity frees us. In the East this is called Liberation or Enlightenment.

Me – my brain – and consciousness

The great key to all this is RECOGNITION. Recognising the situation is the great power that sets us free, that liberates us from the prison cell of our own creation.

Research into how the brain works, and how this relates to what we see and know of the world around us, has shown that we really do not know what reality is. The eyes for instance receive wavelength of light – vibrations – that then pass along the optic nerve as nerve impulses – not light – which the brain then translates into what we believe is the external world. That is all fine, as this virtual reality the brain creates enables us to deal reasonably well with the external world – but it is not reality. It is not the external world. There might not even be an ‘external’.

In a way it is almost the same as what happens in a dream. Impulses are translated into a virtual reality we call a dream. Perhaps the only difference is that in the dream our eyes are closed and we are not receiving impressions from an apparently external world. Yet when we see something, we really believe we are seeing it, we believe we are aware of actual light, not a virtual reality the brain has created from nerve impulses.

Then we have another impression that we call self, me, or I. This impression of personal existence is made up of many factors; partly cultural and parental programming, partly the language we learn, and partly the way our body and its systems respond to signals such as sight and sound. But like the virtual reality the brain creates, this sense of self isn’t real in the widest way of measuring what actually exists.

Born into a different historical period, with a different language and social training, our sense of self would have been very different. What we call self can be very variable. Also, given certain drugs our sense of who we are can either be forgotten entirely, or radically changed. So who are we?

What I have named martial art of the mind is a way we can free ourselves from the traps of our sense impressions, beliefs and thoughts. In learning the steps of mental martial art – a way of relating to the world and events that does not trap us, defeat us, or cause more pain than necessary – it must be remembered I am not suggesting denial or repression. Some disciplines of the mind and emotions, such as some religious or ‘spiritual’ practices, promote denial of sex and physical experience. Martial art of the mind is not about any form of denial. It is about recognition. Recognising sexual impulses as arising from instinctive and sometimes socially conditioned responses, does not mean we should then repress or deny them. What happens is that we can in fact enjoy sex more fully, without the heartaches and misery often associated with relationships arising out of it.

The steps to learning the Martial Art of the Mind are:

1. Recognise that as much as you have learned about yourself, the world and universe, when you weigh that against what you do not know it amounts to ignorance.
2. Within ourselves we create a world out of beliefs, feelings, and what we have learned or been told is true. This limited understanding can act as a cocoon in which we get trapped if we cling to ideas and information as if they are concrete and absolute truths. Label them within yourself for what they are – beliefs, assumptions, theories and partial information. As ‘true’ as a piece of information may be, it is only a tiny fragment of truth – truth being the actual universe, all in it, and its constantly shifting interactions. This must become a constant part of the way you understand and respond to things.

3. The way you respond to events and relationships is largely from conditioned reflexes or habits. Or if not that then the behavioural patterns gained from your parents, social behaviours or racial forebears. The conditioning firstly arises out of evolutionary responses such as the flight or fight instinct, and there are also many patterns set by early childhood experiences and cultural and peer group inputs. To think that these responses, responses that occur naturally and spontaneously, are you, and represent who you are, is a mistake. They are what you have learned or been programmed to do, and although such responses are programming set in place in connection with survival, they are usually not your best survival guides, being based on past events or situations. Many of them are infantile or connected with long past physical or social environments. To survive the needs of the moment you need to recognise and gain reasonable freedom from the old programming so you can act freely.

It is also important to avoid being passive or a victim of your dream images. Dreams are virtual realities like a computer game in which you can experience being killed or attacked but in fact you are not hurt. You are dealing with holographic images, and you may be terrified of the images you create within you, but it is simply you running away from your own emotions – it has nothing in common with the waking world.  So you need to learn to fight and attack whatever threatens you – even lions, monsters, spirit and the devil; they are all images you create from what you feel or fear.

Example: I turned away from the man and saw just to my right a short distance from the bus an animal that was the ‘haunter’. It was a mammal of no particular type – a bit like a mixture of dog, rat and guinea pig. It seemed very ordinary and tame, and stood looking at me. I walked toward it and stretched out my hand. It was a tan colour with short fur and gave a feeling of being okay to approach, so I touched it to stroke. This was okay and I was thinking there was no problem when the creature leapt at my throat in a flash of movement and ripped my throat out. Then it dived into my body. I simply formed a new dream body, knowing that in dreams the creature was only attacking an image of myself, not me .

Example: When I arrived at the attic I put the dog down. But now the attic was empty and dark. I could feel my hair stand on end and my skin ‘crawling’. Actually I feel it all again as I write this. The feeling arose because there was an unformed dark shape creeping around at the far end of the room. The dog was really afraid and came into my arms.

Then the dark creature leapt at me, transforming into a massive mouth with huge fangs and awful demonic face. Immediately I leapt at it in the same way and smashed against its face with my own huge fangs. This utterly disarmed it because it had felt, in its primitive way, to terrify me. It surprised me too that I could so immediately transform into a monster when necessary.

4. Our body/mind constantly tries to reprogram itself through the process of dreaming, or by painful or by meeting neurotic responses to events and relationships. If we can see dreams, nightmares and painful/neurotic responses to events as signalling problems to deal with, we can then work with the process of reprogramming. If we sedate the signals, see them as natural and normal, or name them as the real person we are, then they remain undealt with and will recur. Although the reprogramming is inbuilt and natural, we may need help from those practised in working with the process.ii

5. Identification with the changing aspects of our experience, such as our body and its appearance, external events, organisations, beliefs, thoughts or emotions, means we have no real stability. Those things are always changing. What does not change is your ability to be conscious of those changes. The ability or quest to know who you are behind the changing world of your senses, your body, thoughts and emotions is what brings stability.

6. Words, thoughts and emotions are never what they appear to be about. Just as a map is never the territory it depicts, so words and thoughts are never who or what they suggest. To take our thoughts or descriptions to be adequate reflections of a person or thing is to live in a world of illusion. Of course, words and thoughts are part of the world we live in and are useful in dealing with everyday needs, but they are hugely limiting if we take them as real indicators and reflections of life.

7. We may believe we are male, female, heterosexual or homosexual. We may hold on to the identity of being well known, loved, famous or a villain. We may be devastated by the conviction we are doomed to die, that our life is meaningless, that we have never managed love or creativity. Yet when we are in deep sleep we are none of those things. All of them are beliefs or convictions that can act as chains holding us back from the freedom of our own nakedness.

Those steps are a beginner’s course in the martial art of the mind. If they are applied the freedom they lead to unlocks the wonder of our own creative genius. You will find a new relationship with opportunity, with people and with yourself. Latent or unconscious abilities emerge. Talents that had been buried by past convictions or relationships come to life. A widening awareness of your existence in the midst of an astonishing universe grows, and senses beyond the physical show you a world, often called spiritual, which you are completely part of. In all, an old outdated personality you have believed yourself to be may die and fall away as a new self emerges.

Now take your time to work through these other exercises in the same way.

1.  You take off from the ground and fly by willing yourself to fly. At first some people need to run and jump gliding along. But gradually you will be able to take off and soar. Then try floating in mid-air, doing acrobatics while flying etc.
2. Choose a scary animal or thing such as a zombie or the devil, and see it coming for you. If it attacks you remember it is a dream image and so no harm can come to you. If you can allow it to come into you observing what you feel. If you can, actually completely identify with it. This needs to be practiced as most people feel the dream/imagined person or thing is something other than themselves and are often hesitant to become it. When you do this it usually changes the way your body or feelings are experienced. 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 or thing. Ask question of this dream character or thing until you feel you have realised what it is of you that is being revealed.
3. Next imagine you are standing on the edge of a massive hole or lip of a volcano, and when ready jump into it. Feel whatever you feel and remember that dreams, and such inner world images are all virtual.
4. You meet a wonderful partner and without any shyness you make friends with them and express yourself fully with them.
5. A wild animal comes toward you and without flinching you welcome it and it becomes your friend and companion – or at least that is your aim. So try for it.
6. A strange alien creature or creature from another level of existence stand before and want to approach you. Can you become a friend of even a pupil and as with number 2 identify with it?
7. A woman or man who appears like a ghostly figure and is slightly see through wants to merge with you. Can you allow it to do so with feelings and not either a frightened or a rigid and unfeeling human?
8. The abyss is the same as a void, suggesting the formless spirit of life lying within and at the core of all physical formed life. Therefore, it might link with the transcendental or the spiritual life of death. Can you surrender and lose yourself in the void or abyss? At some point in your journey beyond dreams and death you will confront it and practice makes perfect. If you are not used to it you may feel it is like dying, but you are dying to your limited self and becoming everything.
9. When we approach the enormity of what we are, we are often ‘naked’ and unprepared. Genesis explains this wonderfully well, but I have changed the word God which in many people’s mind means a father figure watching over us to the enormity – within us. And to make it understandable in terms of what has already been said I have altered some other pieces. For Genesis is about the genesis (birth of – creation of) of the human self-consciousness, the ego, which was very different to the animal instinctive consciousness it developed from.

Some other things that also might be useful to read: Habits – Dream Yoga – Life’s Little Secrets – Avoid Being Victims – Killing Parents

Translated by Quentin S. Crisp.

This is a reference to psychotherapy and the many techniques that deal with transforming human nature. But reprogramming usually needs much more than talk therapy. It needs a deep remembering of our history; not just thinking and talking, but also Living it, feeling and knowing. Human beings reprogrammed from tree dwellers to walking upright in open landscape. They reprogrammed from hunter gatherers to town dwellers. That was done slowly by exposure to outer environment and needs, but these show it is part of our skills. With self awareness we can speed such changes enormously.

Dreams Death and Dying – Eastern cultures describe death and dying.

In most of the great faiths and traditions of the world, there are similar teachings about the relationship with the dead. The Egyptian Book of The Dead, one of the oldest books in the world, explains how the soul of the dead person is brought before the gods and has to answer their queries. The Tibetan Book of The Dead gives detailed instructions for a living person to read to the dead. The text explains how the soul of the person will face his or her own deeds, thoughts and fears in a new way, and will come face to face with the gods. It explains how each of these can be best dealt with. Even the recent investigation into near-death-experiences echoes this theme of the person facing their deeds when they have died.

Although The Tibetan Book of the Dead arises from a very different cultural standpoint than that of the West, it is more than simply a strange or superstitious document. It encompasses a profound attempt to look at the subtle side of the human mind and speculate on what we face in death. See Levels of Awareness

In ancient China, the tradition of ancestor worship was of tremendous importance. Here again we see the personal value of relating to the dead. Most aboriginal races have a similar strong feeling of connection with, and remembrance for, their dead. In Catholic Christianity, there are a whole series of sacraments linking one with death or the dead. From the very first, baptism aims at bringing one into a new relationship with God, and making one ready for direct and conscious entrance into Heaven at death. The sacrament of the Mass applies not only to the living but also to the dead: Mass by the living being given for the dead.

This question of what fate human consciousness faces at death is in fact explored by most past races. Looking at these ideas from the standpoint of what we now know about sleeping and dreaming, perhaps some light can be thrown on these ancient ideas.

Two possibilities may exist in sleep, and therefore perhaps in death also. One is that we may penetrate sleep with self-awareness, as happens occasionally in lucid dreams. The other is that we may be carried along by images and emotions, influences and drives, whether we like it or not, as occurs in nightmares. Some of the images and experiences may be beautiful, and some may be terrible. In using this approach to understand ancient texts about death, it is helpful to clarify exactly what it is we experience in a dream. Whether what we experience is beautiful or terrible, are they anything more than tremendous experiences of virtual reality? If they are not, then any horror or beauty we meet are self-created. If this can be accepted, that the apparently real people we meet in dreams are not more real than the experience of colour we have when we look at a rose – considering that we are not seeing the colour, but nerve impulses sent by the eyes to an area of the brain where it is translated into what we apparently see – then we are dealing with our own unconscious creations. But this still leaves us with the question of what is the difference between that and our so called waking experience. Possibly the only big difference is that our waking experience is less prone to change than the dream state. See You Are a Dual Being; Dreams are a reflection of your inner world; Inner World

The Eastern texts mentioned state that if we lack the ability to stand back from involvement in these swirling impressions and fail to see them for what they are, we will be carried wherever the seeds of thought, emotion and fear move us. This much is not speculation. We need very little examination of our own experience to see how time and again our ability to coolly respond to situations is swept away by unbidden emotional or physical responses. If we can see these powerful feeling reactions, or subtle influences for what they are – our own swirling thoughts, emotions and sense impressions – we enter another level of experience entirely. In this sense our identity is like a small boat swept along in a rushing river. The river in this case is our sense impressions, our emotional responses triggered by glandular secretions such as the adrenals, and our imagination or anxieties. See Avoid Being Victims

If you can accept for a moment that when you are totally involved in a dream, you are immersed in experiencing your own largely unconscious attitudes, fears, longings and ideas are external realities, then it gives a starting point to explore these ideas about death. We can begin to understand from our own observable experience rather than from subtle oriental philosophy.

The example of a nightmare you have experienced at some time will be helpful in this. During the nightmare you were almost certainly convinced that it was real. All your actions and feelings also arose directly out of feeling that the nightmare was an external reality, and not a play of internal emotions and fears. Most likely only waking was able to begin dispersing the fear you felt. But supposing you had become aware in your nightmare that what you were facing was not an illusion, but a projection of internal memories, past experience and attitudes. What would that be like?

It is not necessary to speculate too much on this, as many people have been able to become lucid in this way. (See: Buddhism and Dreams for some examples.) What people meet who have done this is a breaking through the apparently real images and events of the dream into direct personal insight. In other words the images of the nightmare give way to direct memoirs of past events that lay the foundation of feelings out of which the nightmare arose. For instance Robert Van de Castle writes that when he has helped people explore nightmares about a ghost, it has always led back to the childhood memory of a parent coming to the bedroom and lifting them or moving them to prevent bed wetting. See Our Dreaming Mind by Robert Van de Castle.

Such direct experiences also help us understand what happens when we fail to face the images of a nightmare, or in fact any other troubling fears and anxieties. We know from personal experience that they remain to haunt us. They continue to influence the way we deal with life, with opportunity, with relationships. It is this influence in the present arising out of the past that Eastern peoples call karma.

 

interaction of past and present

If we create a scheme of the levels of the mind in meeting a nightmare, first of all we meet the dreams images. In most cases this is as far as we go. Our experience of the dream people or creatures is that they are as real as any object or person we meet while awake. Because of this we react to them as if they are real, and can harm us.

So at this first level of interaction we are victims of the virtual reality of the nightmare. Our actions and reactions arise out of acceptance of the reality of the dream characters and situation.

Moving to the next level, from the experience of people who become lucid in their dream, the characters, drama and objects of the dream are experienced as a projection from our own past, from our own fears or imaginations. So the nightmare can be equated with life events. Using the Eastern term of karma, we can say that in the nightmare we are experiencing our karma – outflow of past experience and events.

The doctrine of Karma in Eastern cultures states that our experience of life and its events depends upon the actions, thoughts, desires, longings, that have become built into ourselves from the past – this life and others. When we break through the images or surface life events, we come to the realm of Karmic influences. That is, we discover the pattern of past habits, attitudes, fears, pains, plans and aspirations that have projected into our conscious life and its events.

Therefore this second level of experience is one of penetrating what is at first an apparently external virtual reality, and in penetrating it discovering the influences, the processes or energies that create it. I have summed this up by using the word karma. So we begin to see the karmic influences out of which our life is woven.

Imagine what it would be like to penetrate deeply into your own mind in this way. Again, many people have done it, so it is not a ‘What if’? When it happens the events and directions we have taken in life are seen to be the outworking of deeply etched patterns of behaviour; of passionately made decisions, perhaps from the experience of betrayal; out of lessons learned sometimes over generations of our family. Our conscious biases, opinions, abilities, fears, failings and illnesses, are seen to emerge from this matrix of past experience.

If we think of our past deeds as a colour transparency in a projector, and our conscious self as the screen, we gain an idea of this. Hatred, love, fear, built into us in the past, act as images on the transparency, influencing, colouring, the life-giving energies of our being. If we experienced something that has hurt us sexually or emotionally, and we thus deadened parts of ourselves rather than face our pain, then our present sexuality and emotions will be lacking the full outflow to that degree. These blockages are dense areas on the transparency of our Karmic nature, blocking the light. The light itself is all the range of our experience, sensual, sexual, emotion, mental and spiritual. This is not altogether a good analogy, because our Karmic matrix may contain frozen lumps of our life energy.

If we could consciously meet our fears or pains, our passionately felt decisions of the past, we might arrive back to awareness of the ‘transparency’ or matrix. In the Catholic sense, we would have now ‘admitted’ to consciousness – to ourselves – our past ‘sin’ or error. Becoming conscious of such patterns often wipes them away. In modern psychological terms, awareness transforms. If we see some of the ancient teachings in this light they are less esoteric, and more easily understood as amazing expressions of past psychological insight.

 

healing force

Coming back to the experience of a nightmare, or in fact any dream, while we are alive we can wake up. But what ancient cultures say is that when we die we cannot wake from this world of dreaming, or perhaps of nightmare. This is precisely why masses are said, or why teachings of the East expound ways of helping the dead find their way out of the apparent reality of a strange and perhaps disturbing environment.

In the ‘Bardo Thodol’ (Tibetan Book of The Dead) the dying or dead person is told to hold himself or herself in the Clear Light, without letting anything such as thoughts or karmic influences claim them. What this means in today’s terms is that a living person reads to the dead, telling them not to get lost in their own thoughts and feelings. They are told that underlying the apparent reality of the ‘dream’ or mental landscapes and environment they find themselves in, is the clear consciousness without form. All the mental images and emotions, terrors and wonders experienced, are things the mind creates. But it is all a moving torrent of experience that is not ultimately satisfying. Only the clear consciousness gives the person an experience of their fundamental nature.

In Christianity this clear light is called Christ the Redeemer.

If we gain some concept or feeling of the power that has grown us from conception onwards; that has unified the millions of body cells; that organises all the functions and organs of our body and mind, we have an understanding of this unifying power. Modern psychology has also shown us how hate, fear, shock, jealousy, interfere with this activity as it attempts to keep us whole and healthy.

If we think of the totality of our past experience as the karmic matrix mentioned, we might see even more clearly how hate, fear, shock, jealousy interferes with the principle behind our own growth and stable existence. The Catholic sacraments look upon the negative influence of this karmic matrix as our ‘state of sin’ and tell us Christ can redeem us.

When we experience the power of this internal life principle in the way healing or ‘redemption’ takes place in us during and after illness, our awareness of its power and reality becomes very great. It is the energy that upholds our existence, and which we can either, co-operate with or work against.

The ‘Bardo Thodol’ calls this the Secondary Clear Light. In experiencing it we are aware of the effect of the Clear Light and its power on and in us. But we are not conscious of the Light itself. The ‘Bardo’ says that very few people can actually remain fixed in the Clear Light itself. The reason being that it is formless, impersonal, and transcendental.

Again, in the ‘Bardo’ it says, ‘The common people call this the state wherein the consciousness principle (object knowing principle) hath fainted away.’ These teachings declare that if we cannot hold onto this condition, we drop into the next level, which is experiencing the effect of the Clear Light. If this is not possible to maintain, we drop into our karmic matrix. If this is not maintained, we become lost in images and ‘dreams’ arising from the karma we have gathered, i.e. our loves, hates, fears, and aspirations. This means we are back in the nightmare situation. 

four levels

Looking at the previous statements, we can see that four levels of experience are defined. These four levels are not difficult to understand if we look at our own experience of waking and sleeping. If we once more look at sleep, we will perhaps understand what the ‘Bardo Thodol’ is saying. For instance, experiments in sleep laboratories have shown that when we sleep, at first we drop into a deep dreamless state. Then we gradually move to a condition nearing waking consciousness in which we dream.

In dreamless sleep our ‘object knowing’ self disappears. There is only ‘being’, pure consciousness, without images, emotions or sense of self. We experience it every night when we sleep. So it is not anything strange or unknown. But because we usually lose any sense of our ego in this ‘dreamless sleep’ state, we usually say we were unconscious or asleep. Nevertheless, we went into the void of dreamless sleep, and we emerged from it again. Some people even mange to maintain a level of awareness, as in lucid dreaming, and so carry back a memory of the void.

Those people, who have melted into the void and carried back awareness of it, describe it as the basic level of existence, universal, imageless consciousness. Another way of attempting a description is to say it is unchanging and self-existent, as opposed to the ever-changing experience of our senses, emotions and thoughts, all of which are linked with other phenomena, and so not self-existent.

Because few of us can even begin to grasp that this daily experience of dreamless sleep, this seeming absence of being, as a reality – The Reality – we cannot, do not wish to, are frightened of, maintaining it. As the Bardo explains, most of us cannot maintain the Clear Light, so we enter again into the acceptance of the world of sensory experience, of dreams.

Working from outside in, if we break through the experience of our senses and dream images to the karmic matrix, and dare to meet the passions and pains out of which our life is woven, we have now woken up at the dream level. At this point we are no longer completely dominated by, and at the mercy of, the passions and pains that previously moved us unconsciously. See Steiner Life after death

From here we can begin to see why the sacred teachings of many races have said the living can help the dead. In their book ‘Dream Telepathy’, Krippner and UlIman tell of their years of scientific research into the sensitivity of sleeping persons to the thoughts of others. Their research at the Dream Laboratory of Maimonides Medical Centre in New York has now become world famous.

Many people who were not a part of Krippner and Ullman’s research have also noted how the thoughts or prayers of others frequently alter the pattern of their dreams.

 

We can understand this further if we think of it in the terms used generally in these articles. The state of hell can be thought of as being personally submerged in the images and experiences of one’s own violence, hate, terrors and incohesiveness.

Purgatory is the same as this, but with one main-difference, the personality before death had, through baptism and confirmation (i.e. opening consciousness to and fixing it in a transforming influence) contacted the unifying principle. The expressed power of the Clear Light, God, has the effect of integrating and redeeming the images and energies we would otherwise become lost in or possessed by, in the sleep or death state.

Free will, for nearly all of us, is missing at that level, as is the ability to stand apart from the images. Nevertheless, those who have contacted and opened consciousness to the unifying power causing their existence, find the nature of their dreams changing. The integrating power is actually opened to even in dreams, and relates us differently to the images and events being faced. This psychological fact seems to explain a great deal about he theological catholic statements in regard to the power of baptism and the laying on of hands to give a different ‘quality’ to the soul, and making the difference between being lost in hell, or being capable of direct or indirect entrance into heaven. If we equate baptism and confirmation with the opening of consciousness to the unifying principle, these statements can be understood.

consciously work on a dream

The question of helping the dead is one of the clear will of the living, being used to pierce through the confusing images of the dream state, to aid the central ego of the person to open to the influence of God. We can achieve a very clear impression of what this means when we ourselves consciously work on a dream, or directly face images we ran from during sleep. Consciousness can decide to do things that are not possible during sleep.

It has been said above that if the unifying power has been a conscious experience, the quality of dreams is changed. It is also true that when our conscious understanding of dreams is clarified, another type of change occurs.

A different approach results, which leads to seeing beyond dreams to their causes. This relationship between our own conscious understanding and our sleep experiences also appears to exist between the living and the dead. They complement each other in a very real sense. For waking consciousness limits, defines and decides. In this way it can direct energies through understanding them.

This rational defined and separate consciousness is generally better developed in occidental peoples, and has been the basis of our technological culture. The interior sleep awareness is unlimited, ranging through space and time, possible and impossible, fact and fancy. It is not defined.

Almost any dream one attempts to analyse has a great power of avoiding final analysis. One can only arrive at general understanding. This is more the tone in which the oriental peoples are masters. Then one cannot easily go beyond the visible or obvious; the other tends not to be tied down to defining in external abilities or creations their interior life.

help of prayer

If we therefore pray for the dead, in the sense of opening ourselves and them to the unifying principle, this releases a power into the condition they may find themselves in. Such prayer will aid in releasing them from images and psychological difficulties being experienced. Also, if we have a clear View of the after death state, and talk to our dead as the Tibetans and others do, this brings to them the clarity of our consciousness to aid them. We, in return, through this subtle contact, receive impressions of wider awareness and understanding. If the experiments of non-physical communication between the living were practised and remembered, some idea of how this communion is experienced will be yours.

In Spiritualist ‘rescue circles’, someone with this type of sensitivity acts as the connecting link between the living and dead. The group then throws the light of their waking consciousness, argument and explanation, into the experience of the dead person being helped. Thus, those trapped by suicidal urges, ignorance of their situation, uncontrollable desires or fears, are aided to find release.

Subud members also practise what they call a ‘latihan’ (spiritual surrender to the unifying power) for the dead. They say that the dead have very intimate contacts with their living family. If one of their family opens to the unifying principle, or life force, and thus becomes themselves more integrated, this influences the condition of the dead. If this surrender to God is done in the name of the dead person, family or not, it has, they say, a tremendous power to help, and ‘wake them up’ in death.

Although all these methods are very different in outer form, we can see a thread of similar aims and ideas passing through each. Something to be dealt with later on, but not out of place here, is to say that the dead have a similar relationship to us as our own sleep consciousness. This is only an extension of what has already been said, but may easily be overlooked. To put it into a few words: the dead are now parts of our own interior, and often unconscious, being. They are aspects of our own total psyche. The insight, love, prayer, release of healing power, or attempt at understanding we bring to them, influences them in precisely the same way it influences ourselves.

The ‘cult of the dead,’ as it is sometimes called, if persisted in long enough in an attempt to aid a soul through the miasma of unconscious truth and error to the Clear Light, is also a legal spiritual path. The soul we help to the clear light is a part of our greater being, and its attainment is for us also a consciousness of the highest. If there is a criticism, it is only that most such attempts give up at the level of communicating chit chat and proof of survival.

‘When through illusion,’ says the Bardo, ‘I and others are wandering in the false images, Along the bright light-path of undistracted listening, reflection and meditation, May the Gurus of the Inspired Line lead us:

May the etherical elements not rise up as enemies; May the watery elements not rise up as enemies; May the earthy elements not rise up as enemies; May the fiery elements not rise up as enemies; May the airy elements not rise up as enemies; May the elements of the rainbow colours not rise up as enemies;

May it come that all the sounds in the death state be known as one’s own sounds;

May it come that all the Radiances will be known as one’s own radiances;

May it come that the Clear Light will be realised in the state of death.’

See: Near Death Experiences Journal; Near Death Experience; Levels of Awareness; Journeying Beyond Dreams and Death

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.

Dream Books – Bibliography

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fromm, Erich, The Art of Loving’

Fromm, Erich, The Art of Being

Fromm, Erich, The Fear of Freedom

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mattoon, Mary Ann. Understanding Dreams.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Taylor, Jeremy. Dreamwork. Paulist Press 1983.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

West, Katherine L. Crystallising Children’s Dreams.

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

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

Wiseman, Ann Sayre. Nightmare Help.

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

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

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

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