Posts Tagged ‘dimensions of sleep’

The Magical Dream Machine

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

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

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

 Seeing Is Not Believing

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

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

But what is the REAL world?

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

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

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

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

 You Are the Creator

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

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

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

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

Amazing Storehouse of the Mind

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

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

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

 Mind Watching

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

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

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

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

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

The Path To Take

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Hidden Buttons in the Machine

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Creativity – Doorway to the Wonderful Fire

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Baby Dreams

What do babies dream about?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Archetype of the Void

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Useful Questions and Hints:

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

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

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

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