Posts Tagged ‘health’
Aristotle on Dreams
Aristotle, a Greek born in the Ionian city of Stagira (384-322 B.C.) was one of the first writers to attempt a study of the mind and dreams in a systematic way. He was the son of Nicomachus the court physician to Amyntas III, king of Macydon. In 367 B.C. he went to Athens and studied at Plato’s Academy until Plato’s death in 347 B.C.. Along with Socrates and Plato, he became one of the great philosophers who were instrumental in forming the foundations of Western rational thinking.
Although in his early years Aristotle followed the Platonic belief that the soul and the body were separate entities, he later formulated the non-dualistic idea that the body and soul (soul in Greek thought was ones personal consciousness, personal memories and experiences) were polarities of one thing. In his treatise De Anima, part of his mature writings, he defines the soul as that which animates the body, that which quickens it to life. The soul is that which also directs the process of the body’s growth and survival. So the soul is the blueprint that directs the purpose of the material side of human nature. To quote from Search For The Soul (Time Life Books), ‘The oak tree is the purpose that the matter of the acorn serves.’
This concept, without of course detailed knowledge of DNA, is not unlike the present day view of the non dualistic view of body and mind, both linked not only to the blueprint from our genetic material, but also that our being is constantly a dynamic interrelationship between all parts.
Aristotle deals with the subtleties of sleep and dreams in three great treatises – De Somno et Vigilia; De Insomnis; and De Divinatione Per Somnum. (On Sleep and Dreams – On Sleeping and Waking – On Divination Through Sleep.) The views on dreaming are developed out of Aristotle’s concepts of mind and imagination, and his observation of how people deal with sleeping and waking. For instance he saw imagination as the result of sensory and subjective perception occurring after the disappearance of the sensed object. Recognising that the human mind can form powerful and realistic ‘afterimages’ of things no longer present. Aristotle carried this insight into the realm of sleep and applied it to dreaming. He added to this the observation that while awake we have the easy ability to distinguish between what is an external object and what is our imagined object. In sleep however this faculty disappears or is almost completely absent. This produces the sense of enormous reality we have in dreams, and the feeling that we are facing actual events and people. It is what Freud called the hallucinatory property of dreams. See: Freud; hallucinations and hallucinogens; hallucinations and visions.
Dreams were therefore, in Aristotle’s observations, not sent by a god – even animals could be seen to dream – but the product of experiences had while awake, and then used by our imagination during dreaming; or else arising from internal but perhaps subtle sensations such as the symptoms of illness. Because our ‘common sense’ faculty that usually distinguishes between fact and fancy is absent during sleep, we are thus prone to the amazing fantasies of dreams, beyond correction of our judgement or evaluation. However he does qualify this slightly by making one of the first historical references to the faculty of lucid dreaming, by saying, ‘often when one is asleep, there is something in consciousness which declares that what then presents itself is but a dream.’ Many authorities quote Aristotle as the first to mention lucidity in dreaming. However, this seems to be part of the mistaken Western sense of superiority. Buddhism, founded in 500 BC, had lucidity as part of its basic goals. Yoga, an even older practice, gave methods to wake up in sleep. See: Greece (ancient) dream beliefs – Buddhism and Dreams – Yoga and Dreams.
Useful Questions and Hints:
See Aristides.
Do I have a common sense attitude to dreams or am I lost in fantasy? If I have a common sense attitude to dreams, does my ‘common sense’ tend to kill out my creativeness?
Aristotle didn’t say much about altered states of consciousness – see ASC’s.
Aristides and the First Dream Diary
Aristides was a Greek who is thought to have written the first dream diary during the period of time dated 530 to 468 BC. This diary, titled The Sacred Teachings, was a huge work five volumes in length – although 27 portions of it may have been lost.
The reason for the title is that many of the dreams concerned Aesculapius the god of healing. They give accounts of how Aesculapius appeared to Aristides in his dreams and taught him various methods of healing illnesses. Many of these methods were what would be considered extreme today, consisting of bathing in icy cold streams, taking mud baths in freezing weather, and so on. Interestingly, in Japan, the teachings of Seitai, which are said by their founder Noguchi to be based on observations of the process underlying dreaming, also recommend freezing baths and other rigorous disciplines. The reason given is that much illness arises from having what might be described as a limp personality – one which constantly worries over inconsequential things, or retreats from any minor discomfort. The rigorous disciplines are said to strengthen the will and resolve of the practitioner, and thus make them more forceful in the way they meet experience. This is mentioned as the ancient practices may have had a similar aim. In some modern pain clinics, the patients are helped to gradually increase their exposure to pain, even to the point of powerfully moving painful joints and body areas. The results reported are said to increase the persons ability to meet and deal with pain and difficulties. See: Greece (ancient) dream beliefs.
Useful Questions and Hints:
Do you worry about inconsequential things? If so you could do with disciplines such as described in the slow breath.
It is also worthwhile to read and take to heart what is said in Dream Yoga.
Can you face and integrate emotional pain or do you hide it with nicotine and alcohol – or even worse heavy drugs? Use Integrating.
Animals as Dream Figures
Like any other animal, human beings have developed certain physical and behavioural traits. Some of these traits, such as a new born baby attempting to suckle the breast, and attempting to bond with its mother, are rooted in millions of years of past experience and can be thought of as instinctive. To be abandoned by ones mother, even for a short time, was a life threatening danger in the past, and is still felt as such today by an infant because of the millions of years of imprinted experience.
We can observe such instinctive traits in a dog in such behaviour as cocking of the leg in male dogs. We can see some of our own traits in such things as the human desire to elect leaders. Many of these habits are psycho-biological or social. In our dreams we represent these drives or habits in the form of various animals. Our restrained sex drive or aggression may be shown in our dream as a dog on a lead. The power of drives such as the urge to parenthood via sex might be shown as a horse which we are trying to control. More than anything else though, our dream animal represents our powerful feeling reactions to situations – reactions developed through centuries of human experience in frequently terrible situations. This aspect of ourselves is rooted in the older portions of the brain. The feeling reactions indicated are those such as the fight or flight reaction; the drive to protect property or territory even to the point of killing another human being; the urge, often not accepted in its naked power, to find a mate and to have sex in order to procreate; the desire to have standing and recognition in ones social group; the drive for dominance – or the resulting depression or sickness if no recognition or place in the group is found. See: animals in our brain.
Because dreams exhibit a powerfully precise way of using symbols, there is a difference in meaning between the wild animals and the domesticated animals we dream of. In general the domesticated animal such as a cat or horse represent urges we have more conscious control over and are therefore less threatening to our conscious desire to be in charge. The wild animals in our dreams often pose a much greater threat to our ego, but nevertheless offer rich rewards if we can develop a working relationship with them. After all they are aspects of ourselves, so the relationship can release more of our usable potential.
Example: I am sitting in the hotel staff room eating lunch at a large dining table. One by one I am joined by perhaps a dozen women. The atmosphere is pleasant, easy and light hearted. I enjoy the feeling of being the only male among a dozen attractive women. Then I notice a strange thing. One by one all the girls around me turn into cats, but carry on laughing and talking as if nothing is happening. I find this interesting and not alarming. I am aware each girl turns into the sort of cat that is right for her – a vivacious redhead becomes a purring orange tabby; an aloof, slightly superior lady becomes a Siamese; the only ex-girlfriend of mine present becomes a black witches familiar.
I remember turning to my left and asking: ‘Tell me Rebecca, how did you do this?’ The Rebecca cat giggles with a human voice and says: ‘He doesn’t have a clue, does he?’ As I look at the Rebecca cat I realise she still has her human eyes. This I realise is true of all the cats, they have human eyes in feline faces. As I realise this one says: ‘I think he’s beginning to understand now’ and laughs. Paul C. Teletext.
This graphic dream so well illustrates how our human personality exists within our animal drives and urges.
The animal in our dreams has commonly been seen only as the sex drive. A careful examination of animal dreams shows this to be untrue. The animal represents all aspects of sexuality and relationship. If this wider sexuality in an individual is damaged or traumatised, the person might become a parent who has lost the natural bonding and care for their child; an individual who has no sense of social status or responsibility; is criminally violent; or someone with disturbed and misplaced sexuality, a person unable to love or care for someone else. See: what does the animal in my dream mean.
Dominating or attempting to kill the animal in us can cause tension, depression and illness. The escape into dry intellectualism that might occur if the ‘animal’ aspect of oneself is denied, can be a cause of internal conflict. Complete permissiveness is no answer either. Our higher brain functions need expression also. So one of the challenges of maturing is how to meet and relate to our ‘animals’, and perhaps bring them into expression in a satisfying way. Such drives are fundamentally a push toward LIFE. Our dreams are selective in what animal is used to portray our situation. For instance a dog or horse are creatures that have been socialised for thousands of years, whereas a dinosaur has no history of socialisation. These different animals – domesticated or wild – can therefore be used to represent the socialised or untrained elements of ourselves.
In considering what our dream animal communicates to us, consider how you feel about that animal, what view you have of it, whether it excites, disgusts or frightens you. Is it funny because it exhibits some aspect of human nature so openly, like monkeys making love in public? Is it to be envied because it is so honest, like the dog growling at someone it doesn’t like or is frightened of, and giving obvious affection to someone it has a link with? With such straightforward questions we can arrive at what our dream animals represents to us personally.
Ancient Greece – Dream Beliefs
Antiphon, a Greek living in the fourth century BC., wrote the first known descriptive book of dreams. It was designed to be used for practical, and professional interpretations. He maintained that dreams are not created by supernatural powers but natural conditions. In the second century AD. a similar book was written by Artemidorus, a Greek physician who lived in Rome. He claimed to have gathered his information from ancient sources, possible from the Egyptian dream and the dream book dating from the second millennium BC. He may have used works from the Assurbanipal library, later destroyed, which held one of the most complete collections of dream literature. Artemidorus classified dreams into dreams, visions, oracles, fantasies and apparitions. He stated two classes of dreams; the somnium, which forecast events, and the insomnium, which are concerned with present matters. For the somnium dreams Artemidorus gave a dream dictionary. He said Abyss meant an impending danger, a dream of warning. Candle: to see one being lighted forecasts a birth; to exhibit a lighted candle augers contentment and prosperity; a dimly burning candle shows sickness, sadness and delay. This latter is taken from folklore of the times, and because dreams tend to use commonly used verbal images, was probably true. He maintained that a persons name – that is their identity, and the family, national and social background from which they arose – has bearing on what their dream means.
Plato 429 – 347 BC. said that even good men dream of uncontrolled and violent actions, including sexual aggression. These actions are not committed by good men while awake, but criminals act them out without guilt. Democritus said that dreams are not products of ethereal soul, but of visual impressions which influence our imagination. Aristotle 383 – 322 stated that dreams can predict future events. Earlier Hippocrates, the ‘father of medicine’ discovered that dreams can reveal the onset of organic illness. Such dreams, he said, can be seen as being illogically representing external reality.
Hippocrates was born on the island of Kos. On the island was the famous temple dedicated to Aesculapius the god of medicine. There were about 300 such temples in Greece alone, dedicated to healing through the use of dreams. Hippocrates was an Aesculapian, and learned his form of dream interpretation from them. In such temples the patient would have to ritually cleanse themselves by washing, and abstain from sex, alcohol and even food. They would then be led into what was sometimes a subterranean room in which were harmless snakes – these were the symbol of the god, and are the probable connecting link with the present day use of snakes to represent the healing professions. Prior to sleep the participants were led in evening payers to the god, and thus creating an atmosphere in which dreams of healing were induced. In the morning the patients were asked their dream, and it was expected they would dream an answer to their illness or problem. There are many attestations to the efficacy of this technique from patients.
“But how did a small, dirty, crowded city, surrounded by enemies and swathed in olive oil, manage to change the world? Was Athenian genius simply the convergence of “a happy set of circumstances,” as the historian Peter Watson has put it, or did the Athenians make their luck? This question has stumped historians and archaeologists for centuries, but the answer may lie in what we already know about life in Athens back in the day.
The ancient Athenians enjoyed a deeply intimate relationship with their city. Civic life was not optional, and the Athenians had a word for those who refused to participate in public affairs: idiotes. There was no such thing as an aloof, apathetic Athenian. “The man who took no interest in the affairs of state was not a man who minded his own business,” wrote the ancient historian Thucydides, “but a man who had no business being in Athens at all.” When it came to public projects, the Athenians spent lavishly. (And, if they could help it, with other people’s money—they paid for the construction of the Parthenon, among other things, with funds from the Delian League, an alliance of several Greek city-states formed to fend off the Persians.)
All of ancient Athens displayed a combination of the linear and the bent, the orderly and the chaotic. The Parthenon, perhaps the most famous structure of the ancient world, looks like the epitome of linear thinking, rational thought frozen in stone, but this is an illusion: The building has not a single straight line. Each column bends slightly this way or that. Within the city walls, you’d find both a clear-cut legal code and a frenzied marketplace, ruler-straight statues and streets that follow no discernible order.
In retrospect, many aspects of Athenian life—including the layout and character of the city itself—were conducive to creative thinking. The ancient Greeks did everything outdoors. A house was less a home than a dormitory, a place where most people spent fewer than 30 waking minutes each day. The rest of the time was spent in the marketplace, or working out at the gymnasium or the wrestling grounds, or perhaps strolling along the rolling hills that surround the city. Unlike today, the Greeks didn’t differentiate between physical and mental activity; Plato’s famous Academy, the progenitor of the modern university, was as much an athletic facility as an intellectual one. The Greeks viewed body and mind as two inseparable parts of a whole: A fit mind not attached to a fit body rendered both incomplete.
And in their efforts to nourish their minds, the Athenians built the world’s first global city. Master shipbuilders and sailors, they journeyed to Egypt, Mesopotamia, and beyond, bringing back the alphabet from the Phoenicians, medicine and sculpture from the Egyptians, mathematics from the Babylonians, literature from the Sumerians. The Athenians felt no shame in their intellectual pilfering. Of course, they took those borrowed ideas and put their own stamp on them—or, as Plato put it (with more than a touch of hubris): “What the Greeks borrow from foreigners, they perfect.”
Athens also welcomed foreigners themselves. They lived in profoundly insecure times, but rather than walling themselves off from the outside world like the Spartans, the Athenians allowed outsiders to roam the city freely even during wartime, often to the city’s benefit. (Some of the best-known sophists, for example, were foreign-born.)
It was part of what made Athens Athens—openness to foreign goods, new ideas, and, perhaps most importantly, odd people and strange ideas.
The city had more than its fair share of prominent homegrown eccentrics. Hippodamus, the father of urban planning, was known for his long hair, expensive jewelry, and cheap clothing, which he never changed, winter or summer. Athenians mocked Hippodamus for his eccentricities, yet they still assigned him the vital job of building their port city, Piraeus. The writer Diogenes, who regularly ridiculed the famous and powerful, lived in a wine barrel; the philosopher Cratylus, determined never to contradict himself, communicated only through simple gestures.
While they didn’t know that their time in the sun would be so brief, the Athenians did know, as their famed historian Herodotus once noted, that “human happiness never remains long in the same place.” Neither, it seems, does genius. ”
See: Aristides and the First Dream Diary
Anaesthesia the Mind and Dreams
Although anaesthetics are often thought of only as a means of reducing pain, several drugs used as anaesthetics may also produce powerful psychological effects. Winston Churchill reported an extraordinary vision experienced during anaesthesia. During it he reached a state of mind in which he felt that his awareness encompassed all that existed and was to be known. In this exalted state he was gradually aware there was another horizon forming beyond his present knowledge. Then he broke through to this new realm, gradually reached the point of once more feeling he encompassed it all, only to find another horizon.
Modern research tends to call this experience the ‘ecstatic state’. Other terms for it are ‘cosmic consciousness’, vision or revelation. William James, when experimenting with nitrous oxide, reported a similar experience. During it he felt he knew the secret of the universe and all in it. On awakening however all he could recall in detail was the verse – ‘Higamus Hogumus women are monogamous – Hogumus Higamus, men are polygamous.’ As he was an influential thinker for many years this led to the standpoint that such experiences were of little value. See: a new look at enlightenment; secret of the universe dreams.
On going into or emerging from anaesthesia some people report the remembrance of dreams that had occurred in the past, or the recurrence of a nightmare which had been previously experienced. In the latter situation the nightmare is usually one which expresses some traumatic past experience, such as an actual battle scene or motor accident. In my own observation of such trauma being re-presented in dreams or in abreacted experience, this appearance during anaesthesia once more suggests a link with a self-regulatory process active in the psyche. See: Life’s Little Secrets; compensation theory; self-regulation dreams and fantasy.
Quite a number of people report the experience of standing apart from their body during anaesthesia. This out of body experience – OBE – is now well documented, and cases have been followed up by investigating the circumstances and the information provided by the person experiencing the OBE. In several cases for instance, the person under anaesthetic is taken into a room they have never seen before and operated on by people they have not met. They experience the separation of their awareness from their anaesthetised body and not only observe the people in the room and their actions and conversation, but also sometimes go exploring adjacent rooms. Their descriptions have frequently completely tied in with the facts of the location they were operated in, the people present, and the adjacent rooms.
See: Going Beyond – Dimensions of Human Experience; Talking with Dead; near death experiences; esp in dreams; out of body experience.
In the book Ishi – The Last of his Tribe, by Theodora Kroeber, Ishi, a Native American unspoilt by exposure to Western life styles, was allowed to witness a tonsil operation on a child. He was horrified to see the child put into a sleep state by a man who had not himself been initiated into consciously entering the inner worlds of the unconscious. He was vitally aware that without such knowledge the anaesthetist was exposing the child to many real dangers. In fact many people have been left with psychological scars from lack of awareness on the part of surgeons and anaesthetists, of what is being experienced by the person being anaesthetised. See: The Labours of Hero Cules, a straightforward description of what it was like to remember an actual tonsil operation.
A patient under anaesthesia for a short operation told of ‘a complete revelation about the ultimate truth of everything. I understood the ‘entire works.’ It was a tremendous illumination. I was filled with unspeakable joy.’
But another description of a child being anaesthetised during a nose operation:
Example: As I explored the dream it worked out as my struggled to avoid the rectal anesthesia as a child. I didn’t experience the emotions of that, only the movements and intuitions about its connection with the dream. That is, I kept saying, “I didn’t hurt anybody. I didn’t.” This was expressive of a sense that the pain inflicted to my face (nose) during the operation, must be because I had done something wrong. I could see that I associated inflicted pain with the punishment a parent gave because of some “bad” action. I could not understand why the pain had been inflicted on me.
Also, I felt that religion itself was a projection out of the unconscious, from such fundamental premises. In other words, inflicted pain equals punishment. Pain equals God’s punishment.
Because I felt I was dying during the anesthetic, the sense of death equated with pain and people hurting one. At the time of the anesthetic my conscious identity had been plunged with awareness deep into the unconscious. The loss of shape or senses was felt to be death. So a conditioned reflex had been set. During anesthesia I had fought desperately with the nurses – for my life. What I was fighting for my life and kicked and struggled so much I had kicked the bottle of anaesthetic out of the nurses grasp and it broke. Then I was held as a fresh bottle was used and the anaesthetic was poured into my rectum – it couldn’t be given by nose – and I have a memory of the nurses saying, “Don’t do that!” To me it was like a hypnotic command saying, “Don’t fight for your life. Give up!” That was kept in me till I relived it using LifeStream.
The Amplification Method
This is an approach suggested by Carl Jung. In essence it is to honour what the dream states. In the dream example below David is sleeping on a mattress, but it could have been a bed or a hammock, or even a sleeping bag. So why a mattress and why in the garden, and why not alone? Having noted the specifics of our dream, we then amplify what we know about them. We ask ourselves such questions as ‘What connections do I have with a mattress? What does sleeping on a mattress on the floor mean? Have I ever done it? When? Why? Where? In what circumstances? Does it represent some condition?’ Thus we bring out as much information as we can about each dream specific. This includes memories, associated ideas, recent events, anything relevant.
Example: ‘I am sleeping rough in a garden with a woman I do not love. I think I should try to make the best of the situation, but my feelings against it are too strong. Then I decide I don’t ever want to live like that again and tear up the mattress we slept on. As I do this I realise, as if waking from amnesia, that Pat lives just across the road. She has specially moved there because of our love. I realise with horror I had forgotten and may have lost her.’ David H.
One of Carl Jung’s favourite questions in using amplification was to get to the very basic level by asking, ‘Suppose I had no idea what the word mattress (or whatever the dream symbol) meant, describe the thing to me in such a way I cannot fail to understand what it is.’ In response to this one might say that a mattress is something used to soften or cushion the contact between our body and the floor while we rest or sleep. It’s size might indicate whether it were used by one or two people, so might suggest relationship. In continuing the amplification using the questions suggested (when? why? where? what? how? who with? etc.) ones connections, feeling and conceptions of the symbol are slowly unfolded. In the case of David, he was sleeping on a mattress on the floor in his present relationship. But he realised from the dream that he had slipped back into attitudes which damaged his prior relationship, so might very well damage the present one.
P. W. Martin emphasises it is amplification not free association which is sought. Free association may lead to other ideas and feelings not directly connected to the dream specifics. Amplification honours the precise expression of the dream and attempts to uncover out of what memories, feelings, insight or experience the dreamer has formed or created the dream. Therefore the message of the unique dream is found.
If David had used free association with the dream, starting with the word ‘mattress’, it might have gone on to – duvet, shop, money, bank, overdraft, work, boss. As such it could end in a completely different series of realisations than the mattress and its direct associations. In using amplification, after moving out from the central symbol to find its associations, one then comes back to the symbol again to check for relevance with the dream theme. If one did not do this, one could simply start from any word and explore associations. The inward inclinations of the person doing the word association would lead to issues that are on their mind or deeply felt, but it would not throw light on the specific dream.
If a professional analyst is working with the dreamer, he or she may help the dreamer amplify the dream in other ways too. For instance the dream of David’s which included a mattress and a love affair, may have been preceded by other dreams with the same objects or themes. If so what might be understood by a comparison? When a dream is honoured specifically, there are often parts of it which not only state what a life situation is, but also comment on it. David’s dream once more exemplifies this. Not only does it illustrate his attitudes in the present relationship, but points out the love displayed toward him which he had forgotten. The dream specifically points to the lapse of awareness as leading to the attitudes of living without love. In other words David has forgotten how much love his partner has displayed in actually coming to live with him. In forgetting this aspect of their relationship he lapses back into old attitudes. In this second phase of amplification, the dreamer would also be helped to see their dream in the light of its social implications. Therefore an Asian dreamer might have different cultural responses to situations than a European. David daily life, for instance, included sleeping on the floor on a mattress. If it had not the dream would have signified something different, perhaps a sense of impoverishment.
A professional analyst would also help the dreamer realise any connections existing between their dream and similar themes in mythology, fairy tales and religious practices or beliefs. Jung would often use active imagination after the amplification, to further explore the dream. See: active imagination; association of ideas with dream; assisted passage; postures movement and body language; processing dreams; word analysis of dreams; settings.