Posts Tagged ‘Dream Encyclopedia’

Lucidity – Awake In Sleep

Lucidity Part 4

Sometimes in the practice of deep relaxation, meditation or sensory deprivation, our being enters into a state akin to sleep, yet we maintain personal waking awareness. This is like a journey into a deeply interior world of mind and body where our senses no longer function in their waking manner, where the brain works in a different way, and where awareness is introverted in a degree we do not usually experience. It can sometimes be a frightening world simply because we are not accustomed to it.

In a similar way a measure of waking awareness can arise while dreaming. This is called lucid dreaming. During it we can change or wilfully direct what is happening in the dream in a way not usual to the dream state.

“Only a handful of psychical researchers studied lucid dreams and many people associated such work with the paranormal or occult. Orthodox scientists who studied sleep were not interested. They argued that lucid dreams could not possibly be real dreams at all; that the very idea of awareness during a dream was a contradiction in terms. So their theory went, lucid dreams must be occurring in brief moments of wakefulness or in the transition between waking and sleeping – but not in the kind of deep sleep during which rapid eye movements (REMs) and ordinary dreams usually take place. In other words, lucid dreams were not really dreams at all.

How could the dreamers of lucid dreams convince them otherwise? After all, when you are in a deep sleep and dreaming you cannot shout, ‘Hey! Listen to me. I’m dreaming right now.’ The muscles of the body are paralysed. You cannot even move a finger.

The breakthrough came when sleep researcher Keith Hearne, at the University of Hull, realised that, of course, not all your muscles are paralysed. In REM sleep, the eyes move. So perhaps a lucid dreamer could signal with eye movements. It was just over 10 years ago that Alan Worsley, a lucid dreamer, first managed this crucial trick. He decided to move his eyes left and right eight times in succession whenever he realised he was dreaming. In the sleep laboratory, Hearne had him connected to a polygraph and could see the string of extreme eye movements clearly recorded in the middle of REM sleep. So the doubters were wrong. Lucid dreams are real dreams and do occur during REM sleep.” Quoted from New Scientist vol 178 issue 2397 – 31 May 2003, page 26

 Example: ‘I had backed my car into a big yard, a commercial area. My wife, two of my sons and I got out of the car. As we stood in the yard talking I realised there was a motorbike where my car should be. I said to everyone, ‘There was a car here a moment ago, now it’s a motorbike. Do you know what that means? It means we are dreaming.’ Mark my son was now with us, and my ex wife. I asked them if they realised they were dreaming. They got very vague and didn’t reply. I asked them again and felt very clearly awake.’ William V.

William’s is a fairly typical lucid dream, but there are features which it does not illustrate. During the days or weeks prior to a lucid dream, many people experience an increase in flying dreams. The next example shows another common feature.

 Example: ‘In many of my dreams I become aware that I am dreaming. Also, if anything unpleasant threatens me in the dream I get away from it by waking myself.’ Alan LBC.

Lucidity often has this feature of enabling the dreamer to avoid apparently unpleasant elements of the dream. The decision to avoid any unpleasant internal emotions is a common feature of a person’s conscious life, so this aspect of lucidity is simply a way of taking such a decision into the dream. Some writers even suggest it as a way of dealing with frightening dreams. Avoidance does not solve the problem, it simply pushes the emotion deeper into the unconscious where it can do damage more surreptitiously. Recent findings regarding suppressed grief and stress emotions, which connects them with higher incidence of cancer, suggests that suppression is not a healthy way of dealing with feelings. See The Healing Experience

Another approach to lucidity is that it can be a sort of playground where one can walk through walls, jump from high buildings and fly; change the sofa into an attractive lover, leave ones body, and so on. True, the realisation that our dream life is a different world and that it does have completely different principles at work than our waking world is important. Often people introvert into their dream life the morals and fears which are only relevant to being awake in physical life. To avoid a charging bull is certainly valid for waking life. In our dream life though, to meet its charge is to integrate the enormous energy which the bull represents, an energy which is our own, but which we may have been avoiding or ‘running away’ from previously. Realising such simple differences revolutionises the way we relate to our own internal events and possibilities. To treat lucid dreams as if they offered no other attainable experience than manipulating the dream environment, or avoidance of difficult emotions or encounters, is to miss an amazing feature of human potential.

 Example: ‘In my dream I was watching a fern grow. It was small but opened out very rapidly. As I watched I became aware that the fern was simply an image representing a process occurring within myself which I grew increasingly aware of as I watched. Then I was fully awake in my dream and realised that my dream, perhaps any dream, was an expression of actual and real events occurring in my body and mind. I felt enormous excitement, as if I were witnessing something of great importance.’ Francis P.

It is now acceptable through the work of Freud, Jung and many others, to consider that within the images of the dream lies valuable information about what is occurring within the dreamer, perhaps unconsciously. Strangely though, it is almost never considered that one can have direct perception into this level of internal ‘events’ without the dream or without dream interpretation. What Francis describes is an experience of being on the cusp of symbols and direct perception. Considering the enormous advantage of such direct information gathering, it is surprising it is seldom mentioned except in the writings of Corriere and Hart – The Dream Makers.

 Example: ‘After defining why I had not woken in sleep recently, i.e. loss of belief, I had the following experience. I awoke in my sleep and began to see, without any symbols, that my attitudes and sleep movements expressed a feeling of restrained antagonism or irritation to my wife. I could also observe the feelings were arising from my discipline of sexuality. Realising I did not want those feelings I altered them and woke enough to turn toward my wife.’ Francis P.

After the first of his direct perception dreams, Francis attempted to use this function again, resulting in the above, and other, such dreams. Just as classic dream interpretation says that the dream symbols represent psychobiological logical processes which might be uncovered by processing dreams, what we see in Francis’ lucidity is a direct route to self insight, and through it a rapid personal growth to improved life experience. Such dreams provide not only psychological insight, but very frequently, a direct perception of processes occurring in the body, as the following examples illustrates.

 Example: ‘Although deeply asleep I was wide awake without any shape or form. I had direct experience, without any pictures, of the action of the energies in my body. I had no awareness of body shape, only of the flow of activities in the organs. I checked over what I could observe, and noticed a tension in my neck was interfering with the flow and exchange of energies between the head and trunk. It was also obvious from what I could see that the tension was due to an attitude I had to authority, and if the tension remained it could lead to physical ill health.’ C.

Example: Taken from CompuServe files – contributed by Oliver W. Markley. First appeared in Whole Earth Review, Fall 1991:

 It was as though the dream I had been watching was a movie, and instead of looking at the screen on which it was being projected, I somehow began looking into the lens of the movie projector. As I did so, the energy of my gaze ‘melted’ the movie that was passing through, which in turn allowed my gaze to penetrate deeper into the movie process, seeing where the movie came from. I knew that I was about to get an answer to some of my deepest questions about dreaming: What is the true nature of dreams? Where do they come from? What function do they play?

I was somehow able to see first the more superficial levels of dream process within myself, and then deeper levels, until the depth of my gaze revealed processes so alien that I was no longer able to understand them. At this point I returned my attention to the need to record the dream, and woke up. There were five categories of dreams in all. The function of the first type of dream process I saw was pure entertainment.

The second reviewed current concerns and unfinished business, and the attempt to find solutions to problems therein.

The third process involved the reception of guidance from higher wisdom sources within the mind. At a superficial level, this guidance dealt with the concerns of the second type of process; but at a deeper level, it dealt with topics that came along with the guidance process. These topics seemed to concern the future, and the evolution of the mind and soul both individual and collective.

The fourth type answered a question about the familiar assertion that ‘most of us use but a small part of our mental capacities’ (some ‘experts’ say we use only about 10 percent, others that it is as small as 2 percent). I had often wondered about this, thinking that in nature, if things don’t get used, they atrophy. If we have all this excess mental capacity that we aren’t using, why doesn’t it atrophy?

The fourth mode seemed to be some sort of gymnasium, with a range of mental, psychic, and spiritual exercises to keep the brain/mind fit.

The final type of dream content was totally surprising. As I penetrated deeply into my internal dream process, what I found can perhaps be best described as being visited by aliens.’ The ‘foreground’ resembled a resort hotel, a place for sightseeing and recreation. It was benign and human-feeling, although the visitors were anything but human! As I explored more deeply, however, things got so alien that I couldn’t understand them in the lucid-dream state.

As I reluctantly turned back from this journey, I realised that I had an answer to yet another question about dreams that had long puzzled me: ‘Why are our dreams so highly symbolised? ‘

I now understood why the deeper reaches of dream life must be camouflaged by symbols: the self-protective belief systems which dominate waking life are simply unable to accept the alienness of deep dreaming process; symbolic camouflage artfully bridges the gap.

This last category of dream represents what I call ‘the L-Squared dream,’ a lucid dream in which the dreamer is lucid about the process of being lucid. To become lucid in this way, it is helpful to imagine having a miner’s lamp on one’s forehead, a metaphoric ‘truth beam’ that reveals the underlying truth of whatever is involved.

An effective way to develop lucidity is to frequently consider the events of waking life as if they were a dream. Try to see events as one might see dream symbols – what do they mean in terms of ones motivations, fears, personal growth? What do they suggest about oneself? For instance a person who works in a photographic darkroom developing films and prints might see they were trying to bring to consciousness the latent – unconscious – side of themselves. A banker might feel they were working at how best to deal with their sexual and personal resources. A person working with children who are in some way injured or deficient might be trying to heal their own inner child. In this way one might actually apply what is said in this dream dictionary to ones outer circumstances.

The second instruction is, on waking, at a convenient moment, imagine oneself standing within ones recent dream. As you get a sense of the dream environment, realise that you are taking waking awareness into the dream. From the standpoint of being fully aware of the dream action and events, what will you now do in and with the dream? Re-dream it with consciousness. For example the things you run from in your normal dreaming you could now face. See: Techniques for Exploring your Dreams; The Waking Lucid Dream; for further suggestions Dream Yoga and Lucid Dreaming

 See also: processing dreams; Lucidity- The New Frontier; Creativity: The Lucidity Institute.

Link to List of Chapters – Link to Part 5

Key Words Keywords

The most immediate way to gain insight into your dream is to take the keywords and fill in the gaps.

To illustrate this we can use the following dream:

I meet an acquaintance who tells me she is sick. I suggest ways that might help her. As I speak I become aware that others are listening and coming nearer. I apologise and say that I appear to be preaching, but they say, ‘Please go on we want to listen.’ As I continue I find that a rostrum has formed and lifted me two steps higher.

To use the technique of ‘keywords’ on this dream you would need to write down the most important words in the dream. Doing this you might arrive at the words – meet – acquaintance – sick – help – speak – listening – apologise – preaching – rostrum.

For the next step you ask yourself what you have recently met with in yourself or in life? It is something you are acquainted with, and that has to do with not feeling well, whole or satisfied with your life. So you would ask yourself what you are acquainted with to do with not feeling at your best?

The word ‘help’ suggests you have information that will be useful. What is it?

You apologise for yourself, suggesting degrading what you know. How are you doing that in your life?

Preaching comes next. Have you been giving advice? If so, what is it, and is it relevant to you too?

And lastly, can you listen to your own advice given from a rostrum – higher level of viewpoint?

Having arrived at some associations with the major words in the dream, you next put them together in a way that explains some of the insights or ideas you arrived at. Filling in the gaps between the words you might therefore arrive at something like this:

I have lately become aware of the feeling that I am ill at ease with myself. This connects with my lack of confidence about how I feel when talking with other people. The strange thing is that I know how to help myself with this. I was talking with a friend the other day, and the advice I gave them about something similar really applies to me. What I need to do is to stop apologising for myself and positively use what I know will help. I can see from the dream that I have a lot to share with other people, so I don’t need to feel I am preaching.

What you arrive at using this keyword method will give you an excellent overview of your dream. It will take some practice, but persist and you will get very useful results.

 

Language And Dreams

People who are not acquainted with looking at their dreams often feel they are beyond understanding. This seems strange because foreign languages are equally beyond understanding, yet we can accept they can be understood or translated if we know what to associate with the presently meaningless sounds or symbols.

The language of dreams is couched in imagery, allegory, drama, suggestion, word play and innuendo. This doesn’t mean it is beyond understanding. After all we understand mime and drama; we understand the wordless play and movements of animals. If we take time to put into words the dramatic scenes and themes dreams present us with, we can arrive at a translation that not only satisfies our intellect, but also, if we acknowledge the feeling side of dreams, our emotions. But particularly dreams are about what we unconsciously associate with the images and drama we dream.

Associations are the real way to understand the language of dreams. Everything we see during the day we form associations with – even the association of disinterest. When I was working on the new site design, the designer said to me, “What’s the point of dreams – they don’t mean anything do they”. I noticed he had a T-shirt on that looked as if had been used quite a lot. So I said to him, “What about that T-shirt? If you dreamt of it what would you think it meant?”

He said it wouldn’t mean anything. So then I asked he where he had got it and what memories were attached to it. He said he had got it in America, but when pressed to explain his memories he refused to answer, looking embarrassed.

That is one way of finding the associations, but you can also use Talking As or Being the Person or Thing

Another aspect of language and dreams is that if we take a word such as ‘allegory’ it is meaningless until we take time to learn its commonly accepted definition. In this case the Oxford dictionary defines the word as – ‘A story, play, poem, picture, etc., in which the meaning or message is represented symbolically. The use of such symbols. A symbol.’

By considering the imagery and drama in a dream, we can give them definitions. For instance if a person dreamt of digging in the ground with a spade, and uncovering something old, a definition of the drama could be ‘digging up the past’. The spade might be defined as the tools, mental or emotional, we use to remember the past. If the dream is of the person digging up treasure however, the definitions must shift slightly because the ‘spade’ is now in context with ‘treasure’.

Therefore, not only can we define the symbols and drama in dreams just as we can the words of language, but context of dream imagery is as import as context of words. The word blue for instance changes its meaning enormously – I feel blue. The sky is blue. The blue film. The air was blue with swear words. See Context/Theme

In considering our dreams, the definition and context must be considered just as we consider language, as in the sentences using blue.

However, there is an easier way to understand your dreams. Usually we look at the dream and wonder what it means, but if we turn this around we can immediately see how we create our dreams and begin to gain insight.

To do this write a short list of common things you use or deal with each day. If I write such a list it might look like this:

• Car

• House

• Margaret

• Cell phone/mobile phone

• Jacket

Having written the list take a little time with each thing or person on it. For instance I was recently asked by a man who had given no thought to dreams how on earth you could extract any meaning from them. He was wearing a fairly old T-shirt, so I said, “OK, lets imagine you dreamt of your T-shirt, what would you make of that?”

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

My response was to say, “Right, but now tell me where you bought the T-shirt, and what memories it has for you.” Whereupon he told me very full memories of being abroad, and that the shirt was part of those memories.

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

So, write down what you feel about or how you see the thing or the person in your dream. Take time with this and you will gradually have keys to your own dream language. This feeling or response you uncover might only be indifference. But that is a response and a definite one.

Instead of words to make sentences, dreams take these usually unconscious feeling responses to the things around us and put them together to express something we intuitively feel or know deep inside us, but have never made conscious before. So if I worked with my list of words given above, it will look like this:

• Car – I have two main feelings about my car. The first is that although having done an enormous number of miles it is still sound and functioning. So I see it as something with great survival. Also I feel it is old and keep thinking about another car.

• House – I am delighted by the house I live in, although it is slightly too small for me.

• Margaret – I see Margaret as an intelligent and capable woman, but someone who misses her father’s love and sometimes puts me in that role.

• Cell phone – It is not something I use as I see many others doing, as a constant means of calling others. I hardly ever make outgoing calls on it. But it is a vital link with people I love who live far distant. So I see it as a connection with them and a means of being in contact, mostly through texts.

• Jacket – This is something I bought especially to wear when I visited someone I love abroad. Therefore it has associations with her. But recently I caught the sleeve on a protruding piece of furniture and there is a slight tear in the sleeve. Although this is barely noticeable it has left me with a feeling that the jacket is no longer pristine. I might be aware of this when trying to look smart.

We could go on like this with everything and everybody we are involved in, and what we realise in this way is the building material of dreams. So If I had a dream of wearing the jacket, it would suggest I am feeling slightly lacking in confidence, and something that was so positive has now been marred in some way.

After writing down your list see if you can connect what you have defined to issues or situations in your life. This takes a little practice, but with some work the results are often of enormous importance.

Obviously, some dreams use people and objects that do not appear in our waking life. Nevertheless we can still put down our basic feelings about a jacket – I use it to keep me warm or to appear smart – and about the particular dream jacket. The following dream describes a very particular jacket for instance.

I found a coat/jacket washed up on the beach. It looked very bedraggled. Then I looked inside and it was in better condition. With astonishment and pleasure I saw that the inside pocket was full of personal, interesting things. First to see was a pair of gloves.

In this dream the jacket – a means of keeping warm and giving social signals – is rough on the outside, but with great interest once you look inside. That suggests the dreamer is considering how he appears to other people. It recognises his lack of formality but inner richness.

Try looking at your dreams in this way.  See: Processing Dreams; interpretation of dreams – influence of; Techniques for Exploring your Dreams.

Lsd – Hypnosis – Meditation – The Dream

LSD psychotherapy was one of the most successful forms of therapy, yet it was shut down because in many ways it offended the safety of many in the establishment. It also tore the lid of all the intellectual attempts to understand dreams, the unconscious and the ‘talking approach’ to therapy. For whatever else LSD succeeded or failed at, it unleashed a flood of psychological material that astounded subjects and doctors alike. And this deluge of raging emotions was a far cry from Freud’s careful analytic formulas. The drug tore off the protective layers of the ego, exposing to light subconscious emotions and thoughts that the subjects had never even dreamed of. They stammered in disbelief, “Is this really me?”—and many blamed the wild manifestations on the drug, ignoring the uncomfortable fact that it had not put these things into their brains, but merely let them out.

There has always been a great deal of criticism aimed at dream interpretation. It has been called many things. Those who have not investigated it have denied any truth in it. Others have said that most dream interpretation was in the head of the analyst, and dreams were meaningless. This has been due to the various interpretations one can give to a dream, and the difficulty of arriving at any interpretation in the case of some dreams. Like an ink blot one can see all sorts of faces in it. But the ink blot is really just a blot, and depicts no face at all, or if it does it is pure coincidence.

When one begins to attempt an interpretation of one’s dreams, especially if doing it alone, these criticisms become important. To start with, dreams present a shifting phantasmagorical world in which one is a stranger, and cannot find the way. It is a world of changing shapes and shadows, a land of hinted meanings, where nothing holds still long enough to determine its real character, and a snake can slip into the form of a frog as easily as a man can become a stone, or learn to fly. It would be unusual then, in this land for which there can never be a fixed map, due to its changing contours, if one did not suffer serious doubts about finding one’s way, or arriving at meaning. This is because different values apply in this dream world than those of the outer world. To get somewhere in the dream world, we cannot simply follow a road as in the outer world, for the road may quickly become a trackless bog or change into a seashore covered with ferocious lettuce leaves which threaten to eat all the hair off one’s body. It is the world of Alice in Wonderland, of Hercules and the Heroes, it is Fairyland, where one gets somewhere ‘because’, and not by walking at all. Therefore, if we judge this land with our old ideas based on outer, conscious life, or if we try to analyse our inner life and dreams using intellectual analysis we shall certainly be dismayed. If we persist in the face of such difficulties, however, then gradually we shall develop new senses, new values, and the ability to move around in this strange world. We will then be able to converse with the natives of this land, and understand what they are saying. For the natives are symbols and allegory, and their language is not usually in words. See Clicking On

It is fortunate, therefore, that to help our doubting mind in its persistence to understand, evidence does point to the feasibility of dream interpretation. What has already been said about symbols and imagery being an early type of thinking is a part of this evidence. We can test it for ourselves. In the same way, our experiments in active imagination also demonstrate to us personally, that dream images do arise from our psychic values. They can, therefore, through understanding, be traced to these underlying emotions, and thus be understood. When we arrive at an interpretation of our own dreams that thoroughly explains us to ourselves, this too constitutes personal evidence. There are other sources of evidence, however, and because these throw light on another method of interpretation, they will be mentioned. See Being the Person or Thing

During the early part of this century, investigators set out to test some of Freud’s conclusions regarding dream symbols. Three men, Gaston Roffenstein, Karl Schroetter, and M. Nachmansohn, used hypnosis for this aim. They hoped in this way to throw light on three dream factors, the dream censor, the symbol making process, and whether dreams help us to stay asleep.

For one experiment, Schroetter used a 24 year old female pharmacist he calls ‘Miss E’. Having put the subject into a ‘deep hypnotic sleep’, he then told her she would dream of having homosexual intercourse with her female friend L. Schroetter comments that Miss E is Aryan, while L is Jewish. The dream that followed during the night was of Miss E sitting in a small dingy cafe’ holding a huge French newspaper. Talking with a strong Yiddish accent, a woman twice asks her, ‘Don’t you need anything?’ Miss E doesn’t answer, but the woman comes a third time, and is recognised as her friend L. She is holding a worn suitcase with a label that reads, ‘For ladies only!’ Miss E goes out of the cafe? With her, and walks along an unfamiliar street, while L hangs on to her. She doesn’t like this, but does not like to be rude by telling her to stop. They arrive at L’s house, where she pulls out a huge bunch of keys from a rag. She chooses a key and gives it to Miss E, saying, ‘I trust only you with it, it is the key to this case. You might like to use it. Just watch that my husband doesn’t get hold of it.’ L then leaves her with the key.

As, according to Freud’s symbology, a case is a woman’s vagina, a key the male organ, and walking up a strange street, new sexual conquest, this dream is very interesting. It can be seen how a forbidden idea is hidden within the symbols, and how the symbols express the hidden idea. As Miss E had no knowledge of Freudian concepts these symbols are spontaneous products of her own dream state.

Roffenstein, because he wished to be quite certain of the subject’s ignorance of formulated dream symbols, chose a 28 year old nursemaid. She is described as of sub-average intelligence, totally uneducated, and quite innocent of his proposed experiment. She was likewise hypnotised and told to dream, amongst other things, of having sexual intercourse with her father. The dream was of her father. He gave her a large bag, and with it a big key. It was a very big key, like the key to a house. She felt sad, but opened the bag. Then a snake jumped out of it against her mouth, when she screamed and awoke.

Once more, the bag and the key, and one other classic sex symbol, the snake as male penis. If there were not other evidence but this, we still have to admit that they do not suggest dreams being meaningless. Unfortunately, because Freud’s ideas were being tested, which reduce most symbols to male or female, we cannot see how the dream expresses religious feelings, concepts of life, or ambitious drives, but we can see this for ourselves in our own dreams.

Although the two dreams mentioned are full of information and evidence they were nevertheless induced. Another source of evidence helps us to see dreams from a different direction. In the hypnotically induced dreams, the dreamer does not interpret them. But there are cases where dreams are interpreted spontaneously without conscious attempts or intervention by an analyst to inject their opinions. The most evidential of the ways in which this spontaneous interpretation or understanding takes place, is during the dream itself. While one may not have a lot of dreams where the understanding takes place during the dream, it is by no means uncommon. Most people have such a dream at one time or another and some people have a whole batch of dreams that are understood while they are taking place. Below is a description of a dream, and the spontaneous interpretation that arose with it.

Example: ‘A young girl kept coming up to me and placing my hand on her breasts. She was just developing her breasts, and they felt so very beautiful. Then, while still dreaming, I asked myself what it meant, and an answer came without any effort. The girl represented my desire for sexual satisfaction. That is, not just physical, but also the mating of emotions, mind and soul. I caress her breasts due to the fact that my sexuality is still developing. This means that the other levels of union, such as mental and spiritual, develop out of the physical. So I have to allow this stage to go on being experienced so that the other levels can unfold from it. The girl also represents the female principle in all nature, or the female, unconscious counterpart of my outer, male nature. She herself develops as my feelings mature, and this suddenly threw a new light on all my sexual dreams in the past.’

Not only can we see how the interpretation beautifully fits each aspect of the dream, but it is also interesting to see how much longer the interpretation is than the dream. This shows just how much information a small dream can contain. The example gives us the ideal of interpretation as well. It should arise out of the dreamer as understanding, and fit each part of the dream.

Another way in which dreams can be interpreted spontaneously is during hypnosis. The hypnotic state is similar to sleep in some respects, the most obvious being that critical sense, full reasoning powers and conscious judgement are to some extent less active. This is possibly why one can solve the riddle of dreams more easily, and also why they are so fully understood. As we have seen with memory, or active imagination, preconceived ideas, or moral judgements, prevent ideas or inner contents from surfacing. We can see exactly the same process at work in our conversations with others. Certain events in our life we may easily be able to talk about to one friend, but find it impossible even to mention to another. This is very often because one friend is sympathetic, interested, broad minded, does not ridicule, judge or criticise; while the one we cannot tell misunderstands such things, thinks less of us for them, ridicules or criticises. We do exactly the same to ourselves. Because of our attitude to parts of ourselves, they can never ‘talk’ to us or tell us about themselves. In sleep or hypnosis, many of these attitudes are put aside, and a more direct contact made with these parts of us. Also, because, with an ultra conscious attempt to understand dreams we may hold the wrong idea in mind, the right one cannot come through. Or else our doubt may press back what we need to know. In hypnosis, the association of ideas to symbols and dream structure are also easier and more certain. This is because there is less interference from our reasoning faculties. Even a light hypnotic state, or deeply relaxed condition aids this process.

In the book Three Faces of Eve by Thigpen and Cleckley an example is given of this. The patient, Eve White, has told of a dream which she cannot relate to any of the events or details of her life. The dream is of being in a huge room, in the middle of which is a pool of stagnant green water. Eve is in the pool with her baby, Bonnie. Her husband and uncle stand on the edge of the pool. She tries to get the baby out, because they both seem to be drowning, but tries to avoid putting the baby girl near her husband. Despite this she eventually puts her in her husband’s hands. Then her uncle, whom she loves, pushes Eve’s head under the water. The psychiatrist treating her suggested trying hypnosis as a means of interpreting the dream.

During the hypnotic condition it was suggested she would be able to explain the dream on being wakened and this in fact she did. Then she saw as if living it, that the room was her existence, the pool was the religious associations of her husband, who was Roman Catholic. She was trying to escape from being drowned in this Church, and to prevent her baby from being educated as a RC. As in life, her husband refused to help her in this struggle. Her uncle had in life suggested she fulfil her promise and have the child brought up as a Catholic, and this is seen as a pushing under.

Further proof of this type of interpretation is shown in recent use of LSD for therapeutic purposes. C. Newland, in her book Myself and I which describes in detail the course of her analysis under LSD, experienced spontaneous interpretation under the drug several times. The LSD analysis was not concerning itself with her dreams. It simply occurred that she knew her dream meanings several times while using LSD. This happened despite the fact that during normal consciousness she had not the vaguest idea what the dreams meant. One of the dreams she mentions is as follows:

In this dream a primitive, powerful country had invaded the United States and I had found refuge, together with friends and relatives, in an underground shelter so well provisioned and camouflaged that we could survive the duration of the war there comfortably. Unexpectedly, enemy shock troops attacked the shelter. My friends and relatives scattered but I was captured and forced above ground, where I was ordered to round up those who had escaped. As soon as I did, I realized, these barbarian shock troops would destroy us all.

Her spontaneous understanding of this is as follows:

About fifteen minutes after having taken the drug, this dream which had been incomprehensible spontaneously revealed its meaning – The underground shelter was obviously meant to be a symbol for my unconscious mind which existed below the surface and had been so well camouflaged that it could survive indefinitely without being discovered. My friends and relatives in the shelter were symbols too – of my symptoms and neuroses which could have survived the duration comfortably had not those barbarian shock troops discovered the underground hiding place. Those barbarian shock troops, I quickly realized, were symbols again – and very apt symbols – for Doctors E and M who were using the barbarian (experimental) shock therapy of LSD. They had already forced my unconscious above ground, and were now asking me to round up those friends and relatives (symptoms and neuroses) that had escaped. As soon as I did round them up, we were to be destroyed. As this interpretation unfolded, the nightmare lost its terror and became instead an encouragement: unconsciously I might be frightened at losing my neuroses but consciously I was delighted.

The more we consider these dreams, and how understanding of them was arrived at, the more it is seen how necessary it is to have the right state of mind. This method of interpretation (the open state of mind) may not be possible for many people, but some people on trying it, will find it comes naturally to them. It will be as if they have a ‘gift’ for it. Others will be able to develop it with some practice. For what can be induced by sleep, hypnosis or drug, can also be arrived at through discipline. This brings us to the other method capable of giving spontaneous understanding. This is the intuitive method, or meditation. With this method, one consciously tries to take up exactly the same state of mind described in the chapter on remembering dreams.

If one analyses carefully the state of mind necessary for one to fall asleep, then that is it. There is no effort to go to sleep. One waits without worrying when sleep will overtake you, without trying to control the thoughts. It is an open, relaxed state of being. If we introduce the dream into this, ask ourselves what it means, and simply wait without trying to dig out the answer, ideas may begin to naturally collect around the question. It can be likened to fishing. The conscious mind is rod and line. The dream is the bait, the question the hook. These are lowered into the waters of the unconscious by becoming quiet and passive, letting the question and dream sink into lower levels of consciousness by stilling the upper levels. Then, like the fisherman, one has to be patient. One waits for the line to pull. It is no use thinking. See The Keyboard Condition; Peer Dream Work Techniques for Exploring your Dreams 

The following dream and interpretation is an example of this. ‘I dreamt I was courting an Indian girl. We were on a beach, and I was making love to her. All her family knew this. Then we wanted to get married, but now tremendous formalities began, and a banquet was prepared, and my question of worthiness brought up.

Example: In trying to find an answer to this dream I sat and just wondered about it. I didn’t try to find answers for it. Then suddenly it all fell into place. The day before, I had gone for a walk, and had thought about an experience I had the year before. I had seen deeply into myself at that time, and found it very beautiful, often wishing I could reach the same level again. Now I saw that the dream showed me on the beach, representing the borderline of consciousness between unconscious and conscious. It was because I had found a way to this borderline state that the previous experience had happened. As the dream shows, I merged, or made love to, this dark part of myself at the time, but now I wished to reach that level of experience frequently. I wanted to own it, marry it, but this requires the formalities of enquiring into my worthiness. Can I “maintain” the girl by my life? Can I deliberately produce the state of mind that made our former liaison possible?’

While this type of interpretation may be difficult for us, it is at least worth trying when other methods fail. One may even find one has an aptitude for it.

Example: Do we really need researchers to tell us about the effects of these substances – (LSD)? Surely many tribes/civilisations throughout the world have told us of these things for centuries. How clever these scientists have been to report other people’s findings and claim that they have “discovered” these properties. People have used these substances since well before any documented evidence and in the past they have been derided as being dangerous and unpredictable. Now, we have suddenly discovered that they could be useful. One word – Leary. Another word – imprisonment. Are we going to arrest these researchers and treat them in the way Leary was? Nothing new, just another example of standing on the shoulders of giants. In the year 2006 isn’t it a bit embarrassing that we’re still paying no attention to wisdom that has been handed down to us for many, many years?

Here is a woman’s description of her first ‘drug’ experience.

Example: I am so grateful to you for giving me the opportunity to experience that state of being. The interesting thing is that I expected the experience to feel alien but actually it all felt like a very familiar world for me – I felt immediately at home, in a world that I could navigate and comprehend. The imagery, the language, and the being seemed “first nature”. Much, much more so than everyday “reality”.

I felt that I was able to appreciate the whole of my issue all at once (unlike our everyday awareness that can only focus on certain aspects at any one time) and that the component parts were “activated”. Since then these activations have been growing and joining up.  See Life’s Little Secrets

Interpretation Passion and Core Experiences

My experience of exploring dreams has extended over nearly 60 years. My approach to dreams was not simply that of a professional therapist working with clients. It has also been, at times, that of a troubled human being seeking healing, and looking for answers. Because I started my dream exploration as a means of self-help, and because I was the sole breadwinner for my five children and could not afford professional help or tuition, I had to find my own way. Fortunately I did not have fixed ideas about how to approach dreams. I was a great reader at that time — my early 20s — and haunted the London bookshops looking for new bits to fit in the jigsaw puzzle I was gradually putting together.

My main drive was to find something that I could use, and would be of practical help in the physical pain and hopelessness I felt, and I wasn’t particularly concentrating on the subject of dreams at the time. Fortunately I came across two books in the early days that gave actual examples of ordinary people such as myself, exploring their dreams and finding real transformation. One of these was The Way Within by Wyatt Rawson, published by Vincent Stuart in 1965. This gave detailed accounts of a group of lay people working together using an approach developed by P. W. Martin explained in his book Experiment in Depth. The second book, by Leslie Weatherhead, was called Psychology in Service of the Soul. It was published by Epworth Press in 1929.

Some of the books I searched for dealing with my pain

So my start was as a raw beginner searching through bookshops and absorbing everything I could. I went on to develop individual and group dream work: to establish one of the first human potential growth centres in the UK; to write a number of books on dreams; to become a media dream therapist; to teach dream and creative movement work in different parts of the world. (See biography).

I mention these things to give an idea of the various approaches and stages I have lived through. I hope this will qualify the things I am going to describe here.

Mostly, when people talk about understanding a dream, they often use the word interpretation. Perhaps it was Sigmund Freud who made this word popular in connection with understanding a person’s dreams. It was certainly Freud who, in recent times, set in motion the view that trained professional men and women could “interpret” your dream. A great deal of Freudian analysis, and also some Jungian analysis, uses a great deal of interpretation by the therapist. In other words, the person who is seeking help and telling their dream is told by the therapist what their dream might mean.

Of course, this is not true of all dream therapists, but before we proceed, we need to understand what analysis and interpretation might achieve.

If we start with basics, the word analysis means a detailed examination of something which is explained in words; and interpretation suggests the explanation of something that may be obscure to us, such as a foreign language. In the case of dreams, and in connection with therapists, it usually means the professional considers the dream of the client and explains it in terms of their particular psychological theory using words. So for instance, if it were a Freudian therapist or psychoanalyst, the dream may be said to refer to infantile sexual needs, or some stage of growth defined by the theory, such as oral, anal, or genital. The dreamer may have no feeling of connection with this information at all. They may not be able to connect it with what they observe of themselves in their everyday life. Nevertheless, the unconscious is a huge and often dark land, and one needs some sort of map to traverse it.

I use the terms words in the above for particular reason. For example, what is a word? We are so often taken in by them and furious arguments or even wars are started by them. But a word is simply a sound or image that we have learnt to associate meaning or other words with. Obviously people have very different associations with the same word, often because of personal experiences or cultural differences. When we put words into sentences the confusion can magnify. Words are photocopies of reality. If you think of a person do you honestly believe that is a real representation of that person? Surely it is simply you own beliefs, prejudices, memories and ideas about them – never them.

The best sort of interpretation occurs when we look at our own dream in a particular way. For instance, recently I told one of my dreams to a friend via e-mail, and he wrote back saying what he thought the dream was about. A similar sort of interpretation can occur when a person tells their dream to a group, and the whole group comment on the dream, obviously the word equation again.

Now, in this short article, I cannot hope to define and cover the multitude of ways the Freudian, Jungian, and the non-professional approaches to interpretation can succeed or fail. But to give some sort of idea of the range, I will use a rather black and white, or polar opposite, type of image to explore the subject. Therefore, let us say that at one end of the polar opposites there exists somebody telling you what your dream means without allowing you any real response or exploration of your own feelings and associations. At the other end of the polarity there is someone who acts as a sort of question mark, encouraging you to express your feelings and associations connecting with the dream, and letting you explore its depths.

As can be seen, there is room between those opposites to include all manner of approaches. But these opposites help to define something of importance. This is whether or not the dreamer has any opportunity to express their own feelings, their own ideas, and to discover their own internal power of healing. If there is no environment in which this can happen, then the dreamer is pushed into a relationship with the interpreter as a powerful authority figure — perhaps even a sort of shamanistic healer.

I remember meeting a professional Jungian psychoanalyst while she was taking part in a peer dream group. That is, a group that supported the dreamer in exploring his or her own dream. After several sessions of working with the group, she said to me, “I am going home, and I am going to start a group like this. I am fed up with my dreams being torn to shreds by my professional associates.” See Peer Dream Work

At the very start of Peer Work I wrote:

“The way of working known as the Peer Dream Group came about from our experience that dreams are largely self explanatory if approached in the right way. An exterior expert or authority is not necessary for a profound experience of and insight into dreams if certain rules are respected and used. The dreamer is the ultimate expert on their own dream, and when treated as such, and supported in their exploration of their dream drama, they can powerfully explore and manifest the resources of their inner life.

The foundations of this practice rest on an understanding, or a standpoint accepted or taken by the listener and perhaps the dreamer. It is that the person before you is an expression of life. Let’s forget anything about dream theory, because the very first step is to form an attitude to what is in front of you. Here is a being, a little chunk of life, and at the core of this living being, this living process, a process that has developed a sense of self, is the stuff of life. It is the stuff that makes heroes and saints, mothers, fathers, friends and foes. It is the essence from which arises the whole thrust of life. It is the living core of creative possibilities. If you look around you at what life does, you can see it can be a multitude of things. It can manifest as a lion or a flea, a giraffe or a tree. It is, at the same time, both a galaxy and an amoeba. And here it is in front of you as a living being.”

Obviously, that is again one of the extremes. And we must remember, that within any approach, the practitioners, the quality, maturity and love they bring to the situation, can transform a poor format into a healing process.

However, the negative side of interpretation can be, as my Jungian friend suggested, a destructive process. If not that, we may simply be given ideas that might be quite interesting, even fascinating. Perhaps we are told things that dismay us, or massage our ego. But if you have ever really touched the core of a dream, you will know that those things are inconsequential. When you touch your core self, some degree of transformation always follows. That core is the fount of life. You cannot touch it without becoming wiser, and in some way healed or grown.

I will give some examples to illustrate what has been said. To start with here is a man’s dream, Greg, experienced near the beginning of his interest in dreams.

 I was walking down a hill, through the woods. When I came to the fields, they were so deeply flooded, that my dog and I could only walk on the path. I looked around for a stone to throw into the water for my dog to swim after, but could only find a tiny piece of bark. I threw it in, wondering in fact, whether he would follow — he leapt into the water. When the bark hit the water, it looked as if a bomb had hit the water. The exploded impact area then turned into a whirlpool. My dog was dragged beneath the surface by the current.

Looking at his dream Greg described it in the following way:

My dog represents the ability to see in the dark, and roam far and wide in the night. He is unleashed instincts, sexual attraction, doubts, cynicism, animal certainty, but not intellect. The dream is possibly a response to the starting of my dream journal, and an explanation of the likely results. I throw what seems to be a harmless thing into the dream layer, and it explodes, causing a whirlpool. The ego is not threatened, but the instincts certainly are, and this is difficult to understand.

Greg ends by saying that it “it is difficult to understand”. He is admitting that his interpretation doesn’t really unfold the drama of the dream. It hasn’t led him to feel the explosive and life-threatening forces the dream depicts. Maybe he is looking at them, but they are still at a remove. Remember that the dream is fashioned out of his own core emotions and passions. Therefore his admittance that he doesn’t understand tells us he still has not met those passions.

Most attempts at dream interpretation are like that. Perhaps they are something like reading a book. We are involved, we are interested, we may even be educated, but we are not living the story. There is a difference between thinking about something and experiencing it. As I have said elsewhere, reading about swimming in the ocean, or talking about it, or thinking about it, are completely different to the experience of actually doing it. Getting to core feelings in a dream are the same as swimming in the ocean.

What Greg did however, is near to being one of the extremes of the polarities. And, as already said, there are many degrees of interpretation. This next example shows us what can happen as we get nearer to touching the core. This dream comes from another man, Alan.

 Example: I was with my wife who was sunbathing nude sitting in a deck chair. She wanted me to have sex with her but I declined. Instead I stuck my thumb in her vagina, but she said this didn’t satisfy her.

Alan did not attempt to interpret his dream as Greg did. He was working with a dream group and said he would like to explore his dream. He started to describe his dream to the group, but as soon as he did so he began to feel uncomfortable, embarrassed, and suddenly knew what the dream expressed. In a stumbling way, he told what he felt to the group, saying, “As I am telling this to you, I know what it says, and I feel embarrassed. It is saying that I am not really a man, and don’t know how to have a proper sexual relationship. This because, sex for me is a sort of thumb suck, a comforter, rather than a shared meeting and merging.”

Every dream we have is a very personal thing, and Alan, in talking about his dream, met very personal feelings. He was courageous enough to tell these to his group, and in doing so confronted what he felt about himself when seen in that light. This is very different to what happened with Greg. After a few days, Greg could only vaguely remember his interpretation. It had not touched him deeply. It had not etched itself into his life. Alan met something quite different. What he experienced was never forgotten. Also it was very new for him to recognise that aspect of his relationship with sex. I say recognise, rather than think about. Alan did not “think about” if he had an infantile relationship with sex. He was not told this by a therapist in a way that left him wondering. Alan experienced his own infantile sexual feelings, and knew.

This form or working can best be explored by using the following links: Techniques for Working your Dreams – Associations Working With – Summing Up

 See Explored Dream for a detailed description of experiencing core feelings in a dream.

Iroquoian Dream Cult

The Iroquois Huron and Seneca American Indians, as early as the first European contact in the 17th century, had developed a deeper psychological understanding than the white races of the time. They had no divinity but the dream – wrote Father Fremin who studied their customs. They clearly described the conscious and unconscious, and said that through dreams the hidden or unconscious area of the psyche makes its desires known. If it does not receive these desires it becomes angry. The Iroquois therefore developed a system of allowing the dreamer to act out their dreams socially. Although a moral and disciplined group, during such acting-out the dreamer was allowed to go beyond usual social boundaries. This included receiving valuable objects or making love to another persons spouse. This was to allow unconscious desires to be expressed, thus avoiding sickness of body or mind. Such hidden desires were seen as the basis of social as well as individual problems. See Native American Dream Beliefs

Islamic Dream Traditions

Few Western dream researchers have any familiarity with the rich dream traditions of Islam. The Muslim faith first emerged in seventh century B.C.E. Arabia as a profound revisioning of early Jewish and Christian beliefs and practices. One theme the Prophet Muhammed (pbuh) drew from the scriptures of those two religions was a reverence for dreaming. In the Qur’an, as in the Jewish Torah and the Christian New Testament, dreams serve as a vital medium by which God communicates with humans. Dreams offer divine guidance and comfort, warn people of impending danger, and offer prophetic glimpses of the future. Although the three religions drastically differ on many other topics, they find substantial agreement on this particular point: dreaming is a valuable source of wisdom, understanding, and inspiration. Indeed, as I will propose in this brief essay, Islam has historically shown greater interest in dreams than either of the other two traditions, and has done more to weave dreaming into the daily lives of its members. From the first revelatory visions of Muhammed to the myriad dream practices of present-day Muslims, Islam has developed and sustained a complex, multifaceted tradition of active engagement with the dreaming imagination. Quoted from OVERVIEW Reflections on the Dream Traditions of Islam

Mohammed’s sacred book, the Koran, essentially embodies the same beliefs about dreams. There is the same effort to make a distinction between true, or divine, dreams, and false dreams; the same dependence on certain rituals to induce good dreams or to defend oneself against the dangers of bad ones; the same reliance upon holy interpreters and suspicions of false and misleading prophets; the same recourse to sanctioned dream books, usually the Koran, or texts based closely upon it. There was, too, the decline in the therapeutic use of dreams begun by the Jews (the healing aspects of oneiromancy survived more strongly among the Greeks and Romans). And there was the growing awareness, which we noted in Isaiah, that some dreams at least might have a physiological cause. Four types of dream, at least, were considered false, but not inspired by demons: those of persons of evil disposition; of wine drinkers; of eaters of depressing foods such as lentils and salt meat; and of children.

The prophet Mohammed himself attached great significance to dreams. Each morning he would ask his disciples what they had dreamed during the night, interpret the dreams he thought of value, and tell them his own dreams. And from the Koran and the numerous Mohammedan dream books it is plain that the principles of dream interpretation that the prophet used were those already familiar to us from other Near Eastern religions. His followers attached much importance both to truthful telling of the dream and believed, incidentally, that it was best told immediately on waking and to the quality of the interpreter.

To aid his task, they thought he should take into account the name of the dreamer, his age and place of origin, and his occupation, religion, rank, and condition in life. This emphasis on the personal characteristics of the dreamer represents an advance over the mechanical interpretation of dreams, in which the dreamer or interpreter simply turns to the dream book to find the meaning of a symbol (a crude technique on which many modern dream books rely), and it is much closer to contemporary psychological practice, where the dream is examined for the insight its symbols give into the whole personality of the dreamer.

Certainly this stress on individual circumstances gave much greater sophistication to the process of interpretation. Not only did it permit the same symbol to mean different things to different dreamers; it also opened the way to a more elaborate symbolic system. The interpreter was no longer confined to the use of similarities or contraries; the distinction between good but self evident dreams, and enigmatic but false dreams, became less significant; and more subtle interpretations were possible. Quite apart from a hierarchy of importance, which gave great prestige to the dreams of rulers and little authority to those of poor people (“they are constantly in grief and anxiety . . . and if they have good predicted, its fulfilment is distant”), Mohammedan dream codes gave priority to the dreams of men, and among women to the dreams of married women who were chaste and dignified. The matter was taken so seriously that interpreters were held in high favour and magnificently rewarded for beneficial interpretations. And where the interpreters differed, the consequences could be grave. A religion based on the Koran (the first part of which had been revealed to Mohammed in a dream), a movement whose possession of the holy city of Mecca had been promised in a dream, and a people to whom dream interpretation was an everyday affair, were likely to express any schism of faith in the same manner. The division of Islam into conflicting factions a split that threatened the whole Mohammedan empire was actually based on the dream of Mohammed, which the Sunnis used to justify the rights of his successors.

The ways in which Arabic dream theories worked are clearly seen in the writings of Gabdorrachaman, which became known in Europe through a French translation in 1664. If an egg appeared in a dream, it concerned women, for the Koran says: “Women are like an egg hidden in the nest.”

Because Mohammed once called a shrew “a little adulteress,” all dreams about shrews relate to faithless wives. If a word appears in a dream, it will be realised literally, or in precisely the contrary sense. If a man of probity dreams that his hands are tied, this merely indicates his aversion from evil, but in a wicked man such a dream prognosticates his final damnation. Later Mohammedan dream theory also introduced astrological ideas, relating dreams to the phases of the moon and planets, to the day of the week or the month. These concepts as they spread eastward through Asia fused with rather different oriental attitudes to dreams.

 

Islam has a foundation in dreams because of the Lailatal-Miraj or Night Journey of Mohammed’s dream. In it he was initiated into the mysteries of the cosmos.

After this original dream initiation, Mohammed found further instruction in his dreams over many years. Mohammed would daily ask his disciples about their dreams, tell them his interpretations, and then share his own dreams with them. It was after hearing the dream of one of his disciples that Mohammed started the daily call to prayers – adhan. Dream interpretation is greatly revered among the Muslims. The interpretation of dreams was considered to be a noble science, taught to Adam by God himself and passed by Adam to Seth, by Seth to Noah, and then on down to Mohammed. It was seen as a vital way Allah communicates with humans.

This positive statement gives dreams a much greater standing than in Christianity and Judaism.

The Holy Qur’an on Dreams

To turn to dreams, the true ones inspired by God to a person’s soul cannot be explained except with reference to religion which deals with things spiritual. Unfortunately religions, other than Islam, due mainly to the loss or to corruption of their Divine Books, do not throw light on the mystery of true dreams. Fortunately, we have in our hands the Divine Book of Islam, the Holy Qur’an, which is admitted by friend and foe to be free from human interference and corruption, and which is available to us today exactly in the words in which it was revealed. So let us turn to that Sublime Book for guidance on the subject of true dreams.

The relevant verse of the Holy Qur’an on the subject of true dreams is:  

“And it is not vouchsafed to a mortal that Allah should speak to him except by revelation or from behind a veil, or by sending a messenger and revealing by His permission what He pleases. Surely He is High, Wise (42:51).”

An explanation of these three forms of Divine communication with man will be found in footnote 2235 to the above verse in the world-renowned English translation and commentary of the Holy Qur’an by the late Maulana Muhammad Ali, and on page 203 of the masterly book by the same author entitled, The Religion of Islam. I quote from the latter book as follows:

“The second mode of God’s speaking to man is said to be from behind a veil and this includes dreams….”

Discussing this form of Divine communication with a human being, the learned Maulana, after quoting the Holy Qur’an, goes on to say: “This shows that, according to the Holy Qur’an, revelation in its lower form (including true dreams) is the common experience of all mankind, of the unbeliever as well as of the believer, of the sinner as well as of the saint.

The words within brackets in the above quotation are mine. They have been inserted to make the quotation clear to a person who does not get an opportunity to read the whole explanation given in the learned book quoted from.

True dreams are the greatest honour done to man by his Beneficent Creator. They relate mainly to the future. And when they are proved to be true by later events, they help man to understand that there is a Supreme Being Who possesses knowledge of the future, of the unseen, which man does not. They also help man to understand, when the true dreams come in reply to his prayers, that they did not go unheard by the Merciful Providence to Whom he prayed. Thus true dreams create a living faith in a Living God.

The Holy Qur’an tells us that the gift of interpreting true dreams is given by God to those who deserve it because of their moral and spiritual purity, and because of their leading a pious life of devotion and prayer to God. But if such a gifted person is not known to the readers of this article, they should themselves turn in prayer and devotion to God Who sent the true dream, to seek an understanding of the dream.

One must remember that man is answerable to his Creator only in respect of his deeds and faith, the complete guidance of which is contained in clear terms in the Holy Qur’an. Man is not answerable if he fails to understand the real significance of a true dream. So he should live his life according to the clear directions by his Creator, Who alone knows why He has created man and the way by which man can attain to the object of his creation. True dreams are only incidental evidence of the existence of God and His knowledge of the future. That knowledge is not possessed by anyone else unless it is given to him by God.

(Taken from Dreams: by the Naseer Ahmad Faruqui Sahib The Light (July 1999))

Mohammed quoted parts of the bible in the Koran. The story of Joseph interpreting dreams is used to show how God is the source of such interpretation. To quote, “you shall be chosen by your Lord. He will teach you to interpret visions.” (Sura 16). Such dreams were seen as ways God directed the life of the person they were given to.

Mohammed also describes some of his own dreams and how they helped direct his decisions and actions.

In the Hadith (sayings of Mohammed) methods of working with dreams are given, along with statements about their importance. For instance Mohammed is quoted as saying, “A dream rests on the feathers of a bird and will not take effect unless it is related to someone.” So the importance of telling someone else is stressed, and this suggests working in pairs or in a group that reverence dreams as important. He goes on to say, “tell your dreams only to knowledgeable persons and loved ones,” and beware those who will use your dreams against you. Also, a dream in which Mohammed appears is said to be a true dream, and one to be taken particular notice of.

Ibn Arabi, drawing upon Greek theology, says there are three basic types of dream. The first is an “ordinary” dream. This comes about by our imagination, fears and desires creating the imagery and drama of this type of dream.

The second and more important type of dream originates from “Universal Soul.” This is probably much the same as what Carl Jung calls the ‘collective unconscious’, except that the Universal Soul is seen as having a more spiritual quality. Such dreams move beyond the personal and reveal truths that are more universal. But these dreams are still expressing in symbols so still need to be explored to discover the treasures of insight they contain.

The third type of dreams are direct revelations showing the subtle reality behind the forms of everyday life. See Techniques for Working your Dreams

In some Indonesian Muslim teachings, human consciousness is often seen to be dominated by forces of the animal and vegetable kingdoms, and forces resident in material objects. This means humans fail to recognise their true nature, and forever feel desirous of material goods, or are led by animal urges. The spiritual force behind dreaming is a means of being delivered from unconscious dominance by these forces. So dreams would show how our will has been weakened or taken over by such forces acting upon us.

In early Islamic teachings, no distinction was made between sleeping dreams and waking visions. The world of imagery existent in dreams and visions was seen as having reality. This world, the alam al-mithral, exists halfway between the material world and the intellect. In today’s language we might call this the world of the psyche, with its imagery. The Islamic teachings say this should not be seen as fantasy. The world ofalam al-mithral can be entered by trained imagination and perception. Its imagery expresses truths of its nature. The reality of its landscape can be verified by others who explore its subtle territory – the territory of dreams and visions. See Hallucinations

This sounds very much like an early description of lucidity, and the levels of awareness within that experience. See Waking Lucid Dream

Kelly Bulkeley says, “Valerie J. Hoffman’s work on the role of visions in contemporary Egypt indicates that for present-day Muslims religious revelatory dreams are a surprisingly widespread phenomenon. Hoffman argues that the experience of such dreams does not indicate a pre-modern or naively superstitious mentality; on the contrary, the people she describes are well-educated, technologically proficient, and psychologically healthy. Although many Westerners assume modern civilization and religious faith are mutually antithetical, the Egyptians Hoffman studies are living proof that this is not universally true.

See Lucidity – Awake in Sleep and Lucidity – The New Frontier; also Levels of awareness in Sleeping and Waking

 (From Dream Encyclopeadia  According to tradition, Mohammed, the Prophet of Islam, was born in A.D. 570, the same year Mecca was attacked by the army of Abraham, ruler of Yemen. At the age of forty, during the holy month of Ramadan while he was sleeping in a mountain top cave between the hills of Safa and Meeva, near Mecca, he received the first revelation of the Koran, By that time, he had already experienced visions of isolated luminous and sonorous impressions that he described as “the breaking of the light of dawn.” He himself was never able to translate some of those images, which appear as isolated letters placed at the beginning of several parts of the Koran.

In the Lailatal-Miraj or (Night Journey), the dream in which Mohammed’s religious mission as well as portions of the Koran were revealed, the angel Gabriel appeared to him, leading Elboraq, a half-human silver mare. Riding Elboraq, and led by Gabriel, Mohammed travelled to Jerusalem in an instant, and there he conversed and prayed with Abraham, Moses, and Jesus. Continuing on his journey, he traversed the seven celestial spheres. Each sphere is infused with its own colour, the esoteric meanings of which relate to the seven levels of existence: material, vegetable, animal, human, and three more beyond ordinary human nature. Then he reached across the ocean of white light, and, finally, he approached God. According to some versions of the story, Mohammed also descended to the depths of the earth.

Belief in the inspiration given to Mohammed by the angel Gabriel during this dream is a fundamental element of Islam. According to Mohammed, he is the last prophet placed at the end of a long line of precursors, who had been inspired in the same way. Their inspiration, to which Islamic theology gives the name revelation, was destined to be made public, and such inspiration ceased after Mohammed’s death.

Mohammed interpreted the most significant dreams, and reported his own. By doing this, he believed he could glean from the dreams any messages from God.  )

 (Ibn al-Arabi   The visionary mystic Ibn al-‘Arabi, Muhyi ad-Din (1165-1240), born in Murcia, Spain, is considered the greatest Sufi theorist and expounder of metaphysical doctrine. He studied at Seville and Ceuta, and, after visiting Mecca and Baghdad, he settled in Damascus.

Ibn El-Arabi provided a remarkable theory of imaginative cognition and claimed to have considerable visionary experiences and a remarkably lucid imagination. He stated that “this power of the active imagination developed in me visually in a bodily, objective, extra-mental figure just as the angel Gabriel appeared bodily to the eyes of the Prophet.” This apparition left him in an astonished state for many days, to such a degree that he could not even take nourishment. He continued to contemplate the figure for a long time without tasting a bit of food, experiencing neither hunger nor thirst.

This visionary event was the source of Ibn al-‘ Arabi’s work The Spiritual Conquests of Mecca, which was the product of a long spiritual maturation. During a visit to the Black Stone in Mecca, he met the figure that had appeared to him in his vision, which he recognised and described as a young man who was neither living nor dead. He suddenly perceived the temple as a living being and asked his visitor to accept him as his disciple and to teach him all of his secrets. He was so overwhelmed that he lost consciousness.

An explorer of altered states of consciousness, Ibn El-Arabi also advocated the practice of what we today would call lucid dreaming: “A person must control his thoughts in a dream. The training of this alertness… will produce great benefits for the individual. Everyone should apply himself to the attainment of this ability of such great value” (Arabi, cited in Van de Castle, p. 441 Our Dreaming Mind by Robert Van de Castle).

Islam has a foundation in dreams because of the Lailatal-Miraj or Night Journey of Mohammed’s dream. In it he was initiated into the mysteries of the cosmos.

After this original dream initiation, Mohammed found further instruction in his dreams over many years. Dream interpretation was greatly revered among the Muslims.

See Secrets of Power Dreaming – Dreaming of Death – Creation – Prayer and Dream Interpretation – Peer Dream Group – Peer Dream Group  

 

Karma And Past Lives

Mark Twain wrote in his Autobiography, “I have been born more times than anybody except Krishna.”

In brief, karma is the situation of ones birth, its working out in the present, and the streaming influences from the past that flows into what you are and the events you meet in the present. It is the outworking and action of cause and effect. And although if we look around we can see that every observable object, such as a tree, has a cause, and is the result of events in the past, but we seldom apply that to our own birth and life. 

Most of us can see that cause comes before effect, yet me consistently refuse to see that any problems in our life arise from often a long past event.

One morning my wife Brenda woke and told me she had dreamt about the baby of two of our friends. The friends, who I will call Jane and Bob, were living about 200 miles from us. We knew Jane was pregnant, and about a week or so before the dream we had received a short letter saying their baby, a boy, had been born. We didn’t have a telephone at the time, so the letter was our only means of communication.

In the dream Brenda saw the baby and a voice from behind her told her the child was ill. Its illness, she was given to understand, was serious, and would need to be treated with a drug taken every day of the child’s life. The reason for this illness and the drug use, she was told, was because in a past life the being now born as the baby had committed suicide using a drug.

I didn’t take the dream seriously, thinking it was some sort of personally symbolic dream. But we couldn’t seem to extract any personal meaning for Brenda, so just in case I sent an account of the dream to Jane and Bob. About a week later we had a letter from them saying that the letter and dream had crystallised their already existing anxiety about the baby. It had not been feeding well and was fretful. On taking it to the doctor nothing definite could be found but special tests were made in hospital. From these it was discovered the baby was dying. It lacked an enzyme that was needed to digest calcium. To compensate it was given a drug, which it has had to take every day of its life to make up for the lacking enzyme.

It didn’t happen to somebody else who reported it to me. I witnessed every step of it. Recently I met the baby of that dream again. He is now a man of 35, and still needing the daily drug.

In today’s thinking we tend to believe that our DNA is the regulating influence in our life. But that only deals with our physical potential and does not deal with the whole flow of what is covered by the term karma. See Programmed – The Nature versus Nurture Debate – Archetype of the Paradigm

Remember that no plant or creature grows from a dead seed, and each living seed carries within it all the past gathered from all its forebears. So, the seed in your mother’s womb is as old as and even older than human kind, and you carry that wisdom or memories in you. But in this life you developed a new brain, and the memories you gathered this time are what you built your personality from, but beneath that is a very ancient self. To explore it see Opening to Life

Karma is a Sanskrit word and Wikipedia defines it as: “Karma is not about retribution, vengeance, punishment or reward. Karma simply deals with what is. The effects of all deeds actively create past, present and future experiences, thus making one responsible for one’s own life, and the pain and joy it brings to oneself and others. In religions that incorporate reincarnation, karma extends through one’s present life and all past and future lives as well.”

A single cell, which is a seed from which all life forms evolved from, doesn’t become old or die because it is immortal, for it keeps dividing and doesn’t die. In dividing it constantly creates copies of itself, but as it does  so it gathers new experience, it changes what is copied, so becomes the ‘seed’ for multi-cellular organism. We all started from the original one cell, and we, you and I,  are the result of gathered experience.

No plant or creature grows from a dead seed, and each living seed carries within it all the past gathered from all its forebears. So, the seed in your mother’s womb is as old as and even older than human kind, and you carry that wisdom or memories in you. But in this life you developed a new brain, and the memories, education and programming you gathered this time are what you built your personality from, but beneath that is a very ancient self. To explore it see Opening to Life

That spirit, of which you and I only reflect a small part, when we die will absorb the lessons of this life. At some other period that spirit will dip into human life again. But at a practical level people often ask why they cannot remember past lives. The answer is very obvious from many points of view. Firstly our present personality has been formed a great deal by the influences of parents and culture, but also the memories of today’s person are held in the brain, so a great gulf exists between the present and what is held in the unconscious unless one has learnt to transcend such limitations. See Programmed  

For all of us, the past influences the present, whether that be in society or personally. So there are aspects of people who lived in the past that influence this life. But there is a way of thinking about this that I believe makes it reasonably straightforward. It doesn’t seem to be a mysterious thing, and I don’t know why people make of it such a mystery.

If you look at a tree, you can see it incorporates many, many past trees. It didn’t suddenly emerge out of a vacuum, out of nothing. It has its present existence out of what existed in the past. Of course, because in our culture we are still labouring under the world view that the atom is the fundamental particle or material in the universe, we still see ourselves and the tree as simply a physical process.

The picture of the tree is of an oak tree. It has the DNA allowing it to grow into a massive tree, but because it grew on the edge of a cliff where powerful winds hit it, it has adapted to its environment.

All our calculations about this leave out the factor of consciousness. Even trees have a form of sentience. They respond to light, to weather conditions, to their environment. Did you suddenly gain the type of awareness, perceptions, concepts you have suddenly in the here and now? Of course you didn’t. Thousands of people pre-existed you who gave words, concepts skills that have together formed who you are. There are ideas, longings, weaknesses and blindness of which you are a very particular mixture. As you gain insight into yourself you begin to see these influences form the past more clearly. You are part of a stream of influence flowing through history. See The Conjuring Trick – 

 Your Body is a Work of Art

In your life, the stream of Life has bubbled up from under the surface again. It carries particular influences, minerals, qualities, from the past. Therefore I don’t believe you are a reincarnation of a particular being. But you are the working out, the continuation of things from the past.

If we look at a painting, we see certain colours on it. That particular painting exists because of the texture, the minerals, the earth and chemicals that go into the paint or ink used. It is also a result of the movements, the skill the artist has put into it. It is an incorporation of all those things and many other things not mentioned. It is also an expression of the light that falls on it. Without the light it is not apparent. In different lighting conditions it will change its character in some way.

So the painting is partly an expression of a human being and their qualities and skills; it is partly an expression of the chemicals and minerals and surfaces involved. As such it is an extraordinary thing. When we look at it we are witnessing all that goes into it. Maybe we don’t realise it; perhaps we don’t see everything that composes it. Maybe we don’t realise that in its present form it has substances from when the earth was young, that its atoms are from the beginning of time, or that the canvas it is on was formed by the effort t of several people not even consciously known by the artist. And of course, the painting is unique. There will never be a painting exactly like that. A copy might appear on the surface as the same, but there will never be quite the same mixture of minerals, chemicals, movements, human qualities, that entered into the painting. All of this applies to a human person.

Our body is just such a work of art. It is an extraordinary blending of an enormous number of processes, age old elements, past influences and people. The influence is not just from our parents, but our forebears going back into prehistory. There is also the powerful influence of the time and period in history in which we are born and the periods prior to it that formed the culture we are born into. The culture we live in weaves itself into who and what we become. A child born in today’s world will be influenced by the extraordinary number of chemicals and additives, medicines and drugs, alcohol and nicotine, that are part and parcel of life today. They are all factors that go into the make up of who the person is and becomes. They are the chemicals in the ‘paint’ of personality. And remember that the light falls on a particular surface/painting/you. The personality that shines out if your whole life has been given to drinking alchol and taking pain killers, or eating machine made foods, would be different to someone who has cared for their body – the painting and all it includes in its materials will be different.

Then there are the unique events and circumstances of that individuals life. The people met, the relationships encountered, the opportunities and traumas that events bring. All of those factors are like the paint, the surface, the artistry and skill that go into producing a painting. The uniqueness of those factors reflects very particular colours in the light that is our life. The art is partly your reaction to events and whether you meet them well, for in that is your creation of your karma.

Of course this is an analogy but I think it is a useful one. Light has in it every conceivable colour. It is the surface that the light falls on that brings out qualities. So it is the uniqueness of our body and mind that bring qualities out of the infinite possibilities of life. Innate in the forms of life are all the lessons and experiences it has gathered through unimaginable number of lives and creatures. The surface our body provides draws out of that infinite potential very particular qualities. We are the person we become because of the blending of all those unique factors.

How can anything in the present avoid being influence and formed out of factors from the past?

Everything in the present, whether it relates to agriculture, politics, religion or art, has arisen out of past influences and things learned. People see that and of course recognise their present life and feelings are connected with their immediate family and culture. What they often fail to see is that there are influences existing in them from the far past. So we can say that the present is an incarnation of the past in a new form. How is it we can’t say that I am an incarnation of the past in a new form? We are not an incarnation of a tiny bit of the past, but a whole spectrum of it.

So the wonder of this is not that you or I are a reincarnation of a particular past personality, but that we are an expression of something that has always existed, and carries past experience and possibly wisdom.

Example: It began after a father-son bonding trip to the CavanaughFlightMuseum outside of Dallas. Bruce picked up a video of the Blue Angels navy flight exhibition team for his 2-year-old son, James, who had become instantly enamoured with the jet fighters in high speed formation.

However, soon afterwards James began to smash his toy airplanes repeatedly into the coffee table screaming that the aircraft was on fire. It was then that the nightmares began. His mother Andrea would find her son thrashing around on the bed letting out blood curdling screams, shouting, ‘Airplane crash on fire! Little man can’t get out!’

The disturbing nightmares were physical too, with James kicking upwards on his bed as if trying to kick open the canopy from inside an aircraft.

It was over a bedtime story that James suddenly began talking to his parents about the nightmares, turning them from night terrors to lucid details and conversations.

James told his staunchly Christian parents, that he was flying a Corsair during the Second World War and that the Japanese shot him down. ‘Mama, before I was born, I was a pilot, and my airplane got shot in the engine and it crashed in the water and that’s how I died.’

He told his parents he flew off a carrier called the USS Natoma Bay and his name was James and that he had died during in a horrific plane crash. The growing implications of what their son was telling them began to trouble the religious beliefs of Bruce and Andrea. When James was two-and-a-half he was sitting on his father’s knee going through a book on the Battle for Iwo Jima.

Opening the book to a picture of Mount Suribachi, James exclaimed, ‘That’s where my plane was shot down. My airplane got shot down there daddy.’ James began to draw disturbing pictures of fiery plane crashes – Dr Tucker believes this kind of compulsive repetition had all the hallmarks of how children deal with PTSD.

Bruce in particular wanted to get to the bottom of his son’s insistence that he was indeed describing the past lives of a downed pilot named James. He attended a reunion for USS Natoma Bay veterans under the ruse of writing a book and was stunned to discover the only pilot killed during the Iwo Jima operation was a 21-year-old from Pennsylvania named James Huston.

Further unnerving research revealed that Huston’s plane had been hit in the nose and lost its propeller – exactly where James had intentionally damaged all his toy planes.

	As their belief in their son’s extraordinary claims grew, Bruce and Andrea began to take what he said seriously. One night Andrea said that she was told by James that his past-life father was an alcoholic and when James Huston was 13, they put their drunken dad in hospital for six weeks.
James Leininger with his parents Andrea and Bruce

By now they had tracked down Huston’s sister Anne, who was in her 80s by now and asked her if these claims were true – which she confirmed. More staggering coincidences began to occur. James knew details that no four-year-old or even 40-year-old would know about the operational details of a Second World War fighter.

He knew that Corsairs were notorious for getting flat tires and when handed a model of the FM-2 planes he would fly aboard the USS Natoma Bay he noted that a small antenna was missing from the side, which research by his father noted to be true.

The most incredible moment though was when James attended his first USS Natoma Bay reunion. There he was stopped in the hallway of the hotel by Bob Greenwalt, a NatomaBay veteran. When he asked ‘do you know who I am?’ James replied, ‘You are Bob Greenwalt.’ Asked how he knew that by his father, James replied that he simply remembered the man’s voice.

Indeed, after that, back at home in Dallas, James was sweeping the front lawn with his dad when Bruce bent down to hug his son and tell him that he loved him. James replied that when he saw Bruce and Andrea eating dinner in Hawaii on WaikikiBeach he knew that these were the right parents for him.

Bruce still has no idea how his son knew about the romantic trip he and his wife went on to start their family – before James was born. After this he was invited to Japan where he was shot down and was honoured by the Japanese officials who said he was obviously a reincarnation because he knew so much about them.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2509769/New-book-reveals-children-believe-reincarnated.html#ixzz2uWJkLKb1

See: Opening to Life – Life’s Little Secrets – reincarnation and dreams.

 

Identity And Dreams

To have a sense of personal existence distinct from others may be unique to human beings, and in large measure due to the learning of language. Jung and Neumann’s studies of the historical development of identity suggest that having an ‘I’ is still a very newly acquired function in an evolutionary sense. This makes it vulnerable. It is also noticeably something which develops during childhood and reaches different levels of maturity during adulthood. Although it is our central experience, it remains an enigma – a will o’ the wisp which loses itself in dreams and sleep, yet may be dominant and sure in waking. See Animal Children; Identification and Identity

In dreams, our sense of self – our ego, our personality or identity – is depicted by our own body, or sometimes simply by the sense of our own existence as an observer. In most dreams our ‘I’ goes through a series of experiences just as we do in waking life, seeing things through our physical eyes, touching with our hands, and so on. But occasionally we watch our own body and other people as if from a detached point of bodiless awareness. If we accept that dreams portray in images our conception of self, then dreams suggest that our identity largely depends upon having a body, its gender, health, quality, skin colour, the social position we are born into, and our relationship with others.

In fact we know that if a person loses their legs, becomes paralysed, loses childbearing ability, becomes blind or is made redundant, they face an identity crisis. Yet despite all of that they still exist as a person, and if we realise that early we can avoid all the pain and distress caused by a complete identification with our body. But the bodiless experience of self shows the human possibility of sensing self as having separate existence from the biological processes, from ones body, ones state of health, and social standing.

In its most naked form, the ‘I’ may be simply a sense of its own existence, without body awareness. It is the I AM alone and not the I am worried, I am feeling cold, I am in love, I am alone – they are all things that the I AM can experience, and are all passing impressions, not the stable existence. I see that the dream image is like a holographic presentation of what the dreamer feels, thinks, desires or fears about the person whose image it is.

This holographic image usually contains massive memories linking with the person whose image it is. The dreamer manipulates this image for a variety of reasons. But the image is in no way the person it appears to be. In fact the memories and feelings involved may be from years past. Meanwhile the person whose image it is may have changed enormously. They are getting on with their life going through change, perhaps have even died. But the image is like a magical thing that can present us with past pains, gratify our needs, unable us to explore further reaches of the relationship.

Dreams also show our sense of self, either in the body or naked of it, as surrounded by a community of beings and objects separate from the dreamer, and frequently with a will of their own. If we place the dreamer in the centre of a circle and put all their dream characters, animals and objects around them, and if we transformed these objects and beings into the things they depicted, such as sexuality, thinking, will, emotions, intuition, social pressure, etc., we would see what a diverse mass of influences the person stands in the middle of. It also becomes obvious that our ‘I’ sees these things as outside itself in nearly all dreams. Even our own internal urges to love or make love may be shown as external creatures, we have a multitude of ways of relating to these aspects of self. Therefore the depiction of self in dreams is not simple.

If we take the word psyche to mean our sense of self, then in our dreams we often see our psyche at war with the sources of its own existence, and trying to find its way through a most extraordinary adventure – the adventure of consciousness. In this adventure – very like the Odyssey – the psyche meets all manner of creatures, people, demons, temptations. It travels into dark places, climbs to the heights of wondrous experience, discovers magical powers. One of the functions of dreams can therefore be thought to be that of aiding the survival of the psyche in facing the multitude of influences in life – and even in death. see The Adventure of Consciousness

Another aspect of self that is depicted so vividly in dreams is the way we create our own Heaven or Hell in life. When we realise each aspect of the dream, each emotion, each landscape and environment are materialisations of our own feeling states, we begin to see how we live in the midst of a world – thoughts, feelings, values, judgements, fears – largely of our own making. Whatever we think or feel, even in the depths of our being, becomes a material fact of experience in our dream. In the world of the psyche we are the creator, for we shape with the magical powers of the mind, with the streaming energy of sexuality, and with the colours of our emotions, whole worlds, and multitudes to fill them. From this experience we might say that our life is a dream.

This is not saying our life is an illusion or unreal, but that the great loves we feel, along with their jealousy and passion, the sense of our own success or failure, the struggle and pain we strive to survive, all emerge out of our feeling states. The feeling and mental states are our own private universe like a dream. They are our own private ‘dreams’ we colour our life with, weave an intense story about ourselves with, and live within and feel have enormous reality – and yet are as insubstantial as a thought. It is almost certainly this inner universe religion speaks of as heaven or hell. Finding some degree of direction, mastery or harmony within this world of our own being, is the great work of individuation or maturity. See: Inner World; avoid being a victim; individuation; the dreamer.

Illness and Dreams

In considering your own dreams to look for signs of illness, it must be remembered that most people at some time experience awful dreams in which they are stabbed or bitten or are near to fire or war. Many of us dream of a part of our body being deformed or sick. In most cases these refer in some way to your own emotions, fears, personal growth or social life. Only when there is a very persistent and pervading quality about such dreams should they be taken to indicate the possibility of illness. At such time seek medical help to confirm or deny the message of the dreams.

Sometimes however frequent dreams about illness show the early signs of breakdown in your body. If you are having worrying dreams, have a check-up with your doctor. Tests have shown that men with serious illness have often dreamt about death, and women with such illnesses have dreamt about breakup and separation.

Vasily Kasatkin developed a view of dreams that rejected the psychoanalytical view developed by Freud. He saw dreams as reflecting the person’s internal physiological processes, and their sensory and social experiences and situation. His book Theory of Dreams, was published in 1967, and summarised his findings.

Because animal dreams are so much an expression of our uncoscniious life, it is wise to consdider any horse or dog dreams showing illness as possible indicators of phsyical illness.

 Example: I was in a hospital. Doctors and nurses were about. I was led to realise my lungs were filling up with mucous or phlegm. The doctor said to me it wouldn’t affect me in a short term, but if I kept on smoking I would feel the effect badly in later life. The dream was so vivid I decided then and there to give up smoking.  Bunky.

The deeply unconscious physiological process, such as cell generation and digestion are shown in dreams. Problems which cannot move more fully into consciousness and so are held at this level become psychosomatic pains or illness. This becomes clearer if we consider human life in relationship with other life forms. A plant for instance might have some sort of bacterial illness, but would not be able to bring that to awareness. In a sense many things which occur to us, although they are very real and definite, never become a part of our conscious life, but always remain in the ‘plant’ level. If they are to move from ‘deeply unconscious physiological process’ to becoming known consciously, there are stages such events go through. The dream is one such level in which our cellular processes give a communication that is still non verbal and so needs one to dive into its form of communication. See Techniques for Exploring your Dreams

In the early nineties a friend, Ken S., came to consult me in my capacity as a dream therapist. He had experienced a dream that troubled him and wanted to understand it. In the dream Ken was walking along the upstairs passageway of a large old house. He was in his dressing gown on the way to the bathroom. About halfway along the passage he felt a fine spray of water on his body. This drew his attention to a small leak in a large water pipe running along the passageway. At that very moment the pipe burst and a torrent of water poured out. Ken was then rushing around trying to deal with the burst pipe, but fire also started elsewhere in the house.

Ken and I approached the dream using a traditional psychotherapeutic approach in which each aspect of the dream represents an emotion or psychological state in Ken. We didn’t get any satisfaction with this and so ended with the view that we hadn’t discovered the associations and powerful feelings that would uncover the hidden parts of Ken’s psyche. Three days later Ken was rushed into hospital with a burst colon. Ken was near to death, but with surgical and medical help recovered. When I next saw him, still in hospital, our eyes met and we both said at the same moment, “The dream” – meaning the dream had been a warning of the burst colon. Despite having been involved in dreamwork with groups and individuals, and having read about how some dreams express physical conditions, I had never previously been so directly confronted by such a dream. Now I am much more alerted to this possibility. Dream dictionaries may have their limitations, but if this dream had been looked at in the basic way such dictionaries define, Ken would have sought medical attention sooner. For instance House can represent yourself or your body – Water-Pipe can depict your intestines or arteries – Fire means consuming passions, an emergency or illness. Because of the context of the different dream images, Ken’s dream points to physical breakdown.

Although Ken’s body dream is about illness, such dreams are not limited to showing what is going wrong inside us. They often show positive health changes, or may be about what foods best suit us or cause us harm.