Posts Tagged ‘virtual reality’

Dreams – What Are They?

Experts discussing any subject will disagree, and expert opinions on dreams and what they are differ considerably. A neurologist might describe them as random firings of the brain; a biologist would consider them in the light of their evolutionary emergence and advantage and say they are a way of practising life skills. Psychologists such as Freud and Jung also disagreed, but both saw them as doorways to deeper self understanding; while in his book Dreams and Nightmares, the psychiatrist J. A. Hadfield says dreams reproduce difficult or unsolved life situations or experiences. They thereby aid the dreamer toward solving or resolving problems.

But for myself I believe that if you really investigate dreams, first you will meet yourself. You will walk again the long road of your growth with the etched-in experiences that shaped you into the person you are. You will however, if you persist, see that there is a vaster self than this present personality, one that can reshape who you are, if you so dare.

Example: When someone falls asleep, he takes the stuff of the entire world, and he himself takes it apart, and he himself builds it up, and by his own bright light he dreams. … There are no chariots there, no harnessings, no roads; but he emits chariots, harnessings, and roads. There are no joys, happinesses, or delights there; but he emits joys, happiness, and delights. There are no ponds, lotus pools, and flowing streams, but he emits ponds, lotus pools, and flowing streams. For he is the Maker.

Finding your way through these different theories may be difficult. However, if you remember that there countless ways you could examine or relate to a house, some of the difficulty drops away. You could see it from the perspective of a builder, a buyer, a sociologist, a historian, a chemist, or even a psychologist, as the place and environment of where we live greatly influences us. We can’t say any of these approaches is wrong. They all have value. But none of them by themselves cover every aspect of the house and what it is or can be.

The same applies to dreams. The neurologist who from that particular study might refute the possibility of precognitive dreams, or their psychological meaning and benefit is telling the truth – from that perspective and discipline. And the biologist and psychologist are giving their truths from their perspectives, disciplines and experience.

So if you are actually serious about understanding your dreams or their relevance in your life, there are bits of information you can take from the various disciplines that can clarify and help, remembering of course that all theories are constantly being revised.

At one time one argument was as good as another about what dreams were, how often they occurred, and what length of time a dream took to experience, but in 1953 Eugene Aserinsky stumbled upon a way to begin a science of sleep and dreams. This occurred while working under the direction of Nathaniel Kleitman in a sleep study laboratory, and Aserinsky was the first to observe the Rapid Eye Movements – REM – now known to occur during dreaming. As Aserinsky had seen this in the sleep of babies, it was first assumed only to occur with infants. Later investigation proved it occurred with all people observed. This finding started a period of intense research into the psycho-physical functioning of dreams. See: Aserinsky.

To sum up what such science found, we now know that –

1 – When we dream the brain produces full sensory and muscular impulses to express what is done and experienced in the dream. But the impulses to move the body are suppressed by a small area of the brain called the pons, otherwise we would perform all the movements dreamt. It is only the eyes that are allowed full movement.

2  – While dreaming our voluntary muscles are thus paralysed making it difficult or impossible to move. This is probably what gives rise to such dreams as feeling your limbs are like lead and hard to move. Also it is behind the experience of sleep paralysis in which the dreamer struggles to wake from a dream, often with great fear, and is unable to move. See: Sleep Paralysis.

3 – Waking a person each time they dream quickly leads to psychological breakdown. Animals died when this was continued. We can therefore say that dreaming is not simply random firing of the brain. It is in some way vital to physical and psychological health. See: Dream Deprivation.

4 – Almost without exception, we all dream every night, on average about five times in regular periods of dreaming. The longest of these periods is just prior to waking.

5 – The most ancient creature to show signs of dreaming is the duck billed platypus. As this creature has existed for 250 million years, dreaming has been around for a long time before human emergence.

6 – Some neurological research has shown that a learning process is observable during dreaming.

These scientific insights have done much to dispel older speculations about what dreaming is and what it does, but it has not done much to help us understand and relate to our own very personal dreams and nightmares. As an aid in doing this we are often directed to the writings of experts on how to interpret or analyse our dreams. Unfortunately these are intellectual activities, and as the platypus connection suggests, dreaming existed long before the rational mind. A dream is an ancient and primeval process, and to actually experience it you might need to strip off your civilised veneer of thinking and enter into the jungle of the deeper parts of your nature – the unconscious – the unknown parts of yourself that lie beneath your usual awareness, the parts that actually do all the work of your existence, like heartbeat and cellular integration.

Having trod those ancient pathways of dreams for the past forty years, I believe that thinking about a dream is like attempting to know what swimming is without getting into the water. Swimming is a total physical, emotional and sensory experience. As with swimming, the surface of a dream – the dream imagery – often holds beneath it a vast depth. Beneath the image lies enormous data, emotional response and created patterns of behaviour. So when you actually plunge into a dream you are in a full surround databank of fantastic information. Even the trees and animals in your dreams are enormous reservoirs of information, linking back perhaps infinitely with your potential, your memories and experience, and your biological past through the millennia.

This need to dive beneath the rational mind exists because it is your ancient self, your platypus self, the process of life in you, that is creating the dream imagery as a primeval form of problem solving or ‘thinking’.

But, and this is a key to such dream swimming, all the data held in the dream imagery and drama is unconscious. Most of it has never ever been brought anywhere near language, and language is what we use to think and analyse with. The dream is imagery and drama expressive of issues and processes that are still without words, without a voice. Thinking about a dream is, as already said, like thinking about swimming without getting into the water. You can only really understand after directly experiencing immersion. Words will come later.

Nevertheless, the thinking questioning mind is vital in bringing this massive and ancient unconscious life experience into awareness. Dogs and cats dream, but they cannot take the lantern of personal awareness back into the usually unconscious process of their being to investigate it. That is what you do when you truly know a dream.

As for how you can directly experience your dream beyond thinking, it is a learning process. You have to discover how to be something of an animal that experiences life without words or thinking. You need to learn how to be aware of your feeling response to what is around you and the imagery and drama of your dreams. You must learn to enter into things with your feelings wide open. So instead of thinking about a friend who sits beside you, imagine yourself in their body, with their movements and their expression, and observe what happens, what you feel. Then do the same with your dream characters, animals and places. Eventually you will arrive at very positive felt responses that give you recognisable insight into yourself and others. You will touch passions so deep, so felt, that your whole body will experience excitation and depths of things that only great adventurers, mystics and lovers usually know.

As for what you will find if you do that – well anything and everything. The ancient world of the unconscious is not, as Freud suggested, full of dark repressed infantile urges, though of course it has its share of those. Like an ocean it stretches away gradually from the shores of personal, limited awareness – limited to sensory impressions and what has been learned and experienced. From the reasonably stable and concrete world of the physical it moves to the more plastic world of what has been called the psychic – the world of dream imagery that can be shifted by a thought or change in attitude. But it moves far beyond that into realms only suggested by quantum physics in the last century – where everything is at the same time past, present and future, where here and there are the same yet separable, where life and death do not have fixed boundaries.

But first you will meet yourself. You will walk again the long road of your growth with the etched-in experiences that shaped you into the person you are. You will however, if you persist, see that there is a vaster self than this present personality, one that can reshape who you are, if you so dare. See Techniques for Exploring your Dreams

Dreams and Your Ancient Past

Through the Eye of Dreams

There has been a conjuring trick performed in regard to our view of who we are. It is almost as if we have stepped into a photo booth, and instead of a realistic image of ourselves being produced we are given one with most of our features missing. The strange thing is we usually accept this distorted image of ourselves as real, though most of us feel odd about it, and some of us actually get around to searching for a different image.

What I mean is that we have the notion from the current popular mythology of reality that we are produced by the combination of our parent’s sperm and ovum. The genetic combination is, we believe, the print of who we are.

I know this is a massive simplification, and I am not saying it as a criticism, simply a statement of popular belief. Nevertheless it is a belief that shapes the concepts people have of themselves. But the sperm and ovum, the genes, do not provide language, they do not give us culture, books, music or religion, despite any connections there might be. Children raised by animals do not develop any of these culturally given enhancements. They are not innate. See Animal Children.

The myths of our times also suggest that our personality is either God given; or it is formed out of the whims and neurosis of our parents and events during our infancy; or perhaps it is just made that way like a piece of equipment stamped out in a factory or by the position of the stars at our birth, and there’s not much one can do about it. This modern myth goes on to suggest that the only eternal life any of us can hope for is that arising through procreation. It is only our genes, we are assured, that will live on if we successfully procreate and our children survive and prosper. Because of this, it is further explained, our sexual urge drives us all forward into the convoluted avenues of sexual relationships. And these are factors influencing how the image we have of ourselves comes out strangely distorted.

I sometimes think there is an odd quirk in human nature that makes us want only one answer to any riddle in life. It is as if there can only ever be one right thing, one truth about anything, and everything else is thereby false. This is a, ‘if religion is correct, then science is wrong’ type of reasoning, as if they are both looking at the same piece of the cosmos from the same direction. It is like the Indian story of the blind men describing the elephant. One has his hands on a leg, another on the trunk, and so on. None of them are able to see the whole animal and therefore have a distorted impression of it.

Therefore one must beware of the urge to avoid insecurity by hanging on to the tail of the elephant and feeling one is safe because at least we know what the beast is. It is in fact dubious whether we can ever know ‘the beast’, though it might be possible to have an intuition or sense of it. The universe and the mystery of life and consciousness are so vast that none of us can possibly hold all the factors involved in mind at any one time. Therefore we cannot possibly arrive at any inclusive understanding of the big questions – why am I here? What is life about? How did life come about?

Coming back to the distorted image we can arrive at of ourselves, if we take time to consider our origins, it can bring us a bit more toward a feeling of wholeness and sense of reality. For instance it is obvious and wonderful how the bodies of our parents, through the gift of their own genetic material, have shaped our own body and its inclinations. This much is now demonstrable, but where I want to go from here is to look at common human experience in an uncommon way, through the eye of a dream.

The Voice of My Dead Forebears

The dream is that of a man in his mid forties.

“I am walking along a cobbled road going slightly down–hill. I know as I dream that I am in Italy. I do not feel a stranger in this land, and am learning the language.” Ron.

Ron describes his exploration and insights into the dream by saying:

This was a very short dream and I didn’t think it had any real significance, but I was regularly exploring my dreams, and it interested me because I couldn’t understand what it referred to in showing me learning the language. I had never learned Italian and was not doing so.

When I relaxed and allowed the free flow of my associations and feelings, the first part of the dream was easy. My father was born in England of two Italian parents. So being in Italy, a country I had never visited myself, I could immediately feel and understand as referring to my family on my father’s side and the influences that has left in the way I think and live.

But I felt myself falling deeper into the dream. It was something I had learned to do. I not only kept the question ticking over quietly of what does the dream indicate, but at the same time I relaxed control of my thoughts, my body and emotions. This is like being half asleep in a state where the body can twitch spontaneously, and perhaps I can even hear myself making slight vocal sounds, and yet I am wide–awake watching what arises. Because of this state a flow of memories began to arise about my father, and I realised something I had only been partially aware of before.

My father had taken over the family shop when his father had died. The shop was in London, just over a mile away from the old Covent Garden fruit and vegetable market. Most days my father walked, pushing a barrow, and in later years drove to the market to buy produce for the shop. I often went with him, helping carry and load, and perhaps push the barrow. In my youth I wasn’t aware of it, but now in my flowing memories I realised that my father was very distant or cautious in his dealings with the market salesmen and porters. A distinct and overall realisation arose out of the many memories and impressions; it was that my father was expressing a particular type of caution in all his dealings with other people. I saw this as keeping who he was secret – keeping his head down.

As I saw this in my father it hit me with great power that this attitude had passed to me, and although I expressed it in a different way, I had inherited it with equal strength. Why? And, how?

The perception that was taking place was not like my normal thinking. It comprehensively gathered memories and put them together in a way that made patterns and themes stand out. So as the process of insight was taking place I saw just how the urge to keep my head down, not stand out in the crowd, not get involved with people, had influenced my actions. For a start I had never voted in my life. This was because I could never identify with groups pushing for power. I had avoided everyday social activity, although relationships with individuals were not threatening.

Now I started seeing how this attitude had passed to me so strongly. My thought, as I witnessed the flow of memories, was that perhaps such information was genetic, because my father had never talked to me much at all. He had certainly never urged me to keep out of the limelight – to keep my head down, and until now I hadn’t been aware that he had been doing it himself, so it wasn’t simply conscious emulation. I can only say that I ‘saw’ how it had happened. What I mean is that through the still flowing memory and feelings it was as if I could actually look into the heart of things and see how they worked. The insight I achieved was that we as humans, like other mammals, in our earliest years particularly, still learn like most mammals do, and that is not verbal at all. A massive amount of information is absorbed from our parents without any effort or awareness.

What Ron realised is that just as a fox cub ‘learns’ how to hunt from its parents, so we absorb the deeply etched survival strategies of our parents simply by being around them. If genes come into it anywhere, they perhaps create the reflex response that instinctively draws in the survival tactics that perhaps even our parents themselves have never really been aware they live by. In doing this the higher animals learn what cannot be passed on as instinct, what is not ‘hard wired’ into them. This holds in it a tremendous advantage because ‘hard wiring’ takes a long time. Through this faster method we learn what to be afraid of, what to eat, how to hunt, because the lessons learned by pain through many generations are exhibited in our parents behaviour in dealing with events. The experiments with apes in Japan, where Imo the macaque ape learned the ability to wash sweet potatoes to remove sand grains, show how this was passed on from this one female to the whole group, and then to subsequent young macaques, and illustrates how survival information is passed on non verbally for generations. An important aspect of this is that whatever of such information is held in the present generation, it is an accumulation of skills and responses learned over many generations, and is the fundamental survival strategies of that particular family or group line. Ron goes on to say:

The degree of this was staggering to me. It led me to wonder just where my father had got the information from, and although this was obvious from my own perception of where I had received the messages from, the resulting experience profoundly moved and impressed me. It taught me things about myself I don’t think I could have learned in any other way. A floodgate of impressions rushed into my awareness at such a pace I can only record the main ones.

Suddenly my mind let the power of the messages my father had carried and passed to me speak, as if they were alive. I experienced what appeared to be a direct connection with my far ancestors. This may sound strange, but my father had, as it were, handed me a recording. He and I had been impressed with the cover and it had led us to live in a particular way. But now I had put the recording on the player and the ancient originators expressed their own message.

Obviously this is only an analogy to convey the experience, but in some way the message played out in me from centuries back. From it I learned that my forebears had lived in Italy during a period of great religious and political tension. The pressures to conform had been enormous. Not only were my ancestors told to believe in a particular sort of God, but also to accept leadership from people they had no respect for. If they did not live this belief and submit to it they were killed or rejected by the community they had been born into. In their own words I heard them saying to me something like ‘The worst was they did not kill us, but they cut our vine at the roots. They burnt our land and they killed our children. If you want your sons to live, teach them not to hold their head up, but to keep their eyes on the ground.’

And out of that trauma the message had been passed to me many generations later. It was survival. I was still living it, but perhaps it was time to reappraise.

I Am an Ancient Thing

Ron’s description helps us look at what is a common experience, and in a different way, an established observation in biology. It is common knowledge that animals learn through example. It is common knowledge that traits pass on through generations. What is added here is the powerful way such behaviour can pass on in humans. It shows how we communicate behaviour to our children without any conscious intention. Looking through the eye of dreams we see here a psychological or psychic [ii] realm that extends beyond the mere transmission of behaviour. It includes or leads to meaning, to understanding ones roots. This may seem mysterious or unfeasible if one has not actually experienced the way the dream process puts apparently abstract experience into imagery leading to insight. [iii] If one has witnessed this process at work, what Ron speaks of does not seem remarkable.

Looking through the eye of Ron’s dream there is a suggestion that aspects of Ron’s personality did not begin with his birth. Parts of his personality preceded his birth, being carried and passed on by his father. This module or facet of Ron’s character had been formed hundreds of years previously. It had been part of the lives of his forebears, and had been carried forward into his life. It did not pass on to Ron through any genetic material. It entered him through absorption of the behaviour of his parent. So it is saying that just as the genes we receive are ancient and passed to us, this survival information is also ancient and passed on. It influences who we are as profoundly as any genes.

Of course, Ron is only seeing his connection with his father. There would also be packages of behaviour and information handed to him by his mother. [iv] So not only can one have a ‘gene pool’ from which our being is formed, there is also a ‘behavioural pool’ acting as a similar resource. This does not so much shape the body, but certainly gives form to the character and responses. In fact unlike the genetic passage where a set of genes in the mother is united with a set from the father, the behavioural pool may have several ‘sets’ or packages which can be triggered by different environmental circumstances. My experience suggests that the behavioural packages from the mother and father certainly do not splice as do the genes.

The behaviour Ron observed in himself, in his father and grandfather, although according to Ron’s insight it arose at a particular period in history, it obviously rested upon traits already existing in the family from an even more ancient past. So the trauma of persecution may have modified existing traits rather than set in place entirely new ones.

Because of pre–existing traits, another family might have responded quite differently to being subjugated. They might have pushed for dominance rather than anonymity. They may have aggressively opposed, sought opportunity to join the ranks of power, or actively supported as a subordinate.

This is supposition based on insufficient evidence; but if the basic idea of the passage of behaviour is correct, it shows human nature as having several dimensions to what forms who they know themselves to be. These are almost like different streams from the past meeting in the person, and in some way passing on into the future, perhaps separated again. For instance we have the stream arising from the body and its genetic material; we have the stream arising from cultural language with all its massive inbuilt data; we have the behavioural pool that we inherit, again with massive innate information. When we begin to look at what it is to be human from this perspective we see we are multi dimensional creatures, existing in the flow of huge streams of influence. And these streams themselves mingle in different ways creating a variety of experiences and further dimensions.

Coming back to Ron though, there is certainly a transitory and short lived aspect to him, in that his unique body and many of his personality traits will only exist during his physical life. But facets of Ron have existed for millions of years – in the genetic stream for instance. And even in his highly ephemeral personality itself, there are parts that have had a long life before Ron woke to his personal existence. For instance the language he was brought into existence by and the behavioural influences he absorbed.

This makes nonsense of the myth that we only have eternal life through procreation. It also suggests that if Ron identifies with the aspects of himself that are short lived, such as the transitory aspects of his body, his less permanent personality traits, his changing likes and dislikes, then he faces death. All that he thinks of as himself will perish. In this sense he cannot survive bodily death.

In fact it seems as if Western society faces the issue of death in a much more catastrophic way than other cultures. The reason for this is that many older cultures see the personality as transitory anyway, and identify more fully with the family ancestors and the longer lasting aspects of life.

It might be argued that as the behavioural traits passed on to Ron preceded him, he cannot really identify with them as himself, so cannot see them as an aspect of himself that has a long life. The problem here is that hardly anything in the personality is unique except perhaps the exact mixture of traits and responses, memories and dreams that make up that particular person. Everything is taken from somewhere else, or is a mixture or development of what already existed. We all identify with the contents of our mind, our language and our traits, yet these are not new with our own personal awakening as a person. So we cannot separate Ron from what he has inherited. It is still him. If it has a long life, then we must say aspects of Ron have a long life.

Once we grasp this idea of the passage of behavioural traits from generation to generation, I believe it can be observed fairly easily in everyday life. Much of folk beliefs suggest it without filling in the details. Such sayings as ‘like father like son’ – ‘like mother like daughter’ have the belief implicit in them. The generally held view that each nation has a different cultural identity also suggests it. In fact we often use the word culture to describe the behavioural traits peculiar to a particular group of people, in reference to their observable behaviour traits which are passed on from generation to generation throughout the group or nation. We are therefore talking about a behavioural pool with particular characteristics.

I have frequently observed family groups out shopping and seen the intense mimicry of a child for its father or mother, even to certain positions of the hands, or posture of the body. Such passage of very particular behavioural traits is especially noticeable in the learning of language. The unique sounds of certain words, even within one language such as English, are mimicked in an extraordinary way by children, creating a local dialect in which sounds are made that are often quite difficult for people outside of the area to make.

It is innate in us to soak in and mimic the behaviour of those close to us. That is obvious. All I am adding to that is the suggestion that deeply seated personality traits, and the shape of our psyche, are also radically influenced in the same way. Not only do we soak in actual behaviour, but we are capable of transforming the messages coded in behaviour into personal psychological experience such as described by Ron.

I Speak Therefore I Am

That our often closely guarded personality is made up of pieces of behaviour that existed long before we did, may be a strange idea to many people. The way we present our film stars and pop idols as special, or particularly talented; the way we often think of ourselves, is as hermetically sealed units that have been influenced from outside by environment and people, but on the whole we are unique. Sometimes people even adopt a superior attitude, as if to say ‘I am vastly different to the rest of humanity’. This makes it difficult for us to actually observe our origins.

If we think of an acorn, it is easy enough to believe that if we planted it, a tree would grow from it that would be very much the same as the trees from which its genetic material arose. In its particular growth however, factors of soil, weather and events would shape it to its own uniqueness. With human beings we think similarly, except we commonly leave out factors of great importance, factors which contribute to our personal existence in such a major way that to forget them is to be like the blind men with the elephant once more. For example a tree doesn’t learn speech, or the customs of its cultural group.

Particularly in past centuries, when there was a much closer relationship between humans and wild animals, it was noticed that if a baby was lost and raised by a creature of the wild, such as a she–wolf or bear, the child never became properly human. Being human is not innate. Something rubs off from functioning mature humans onto their babies to make them into human beings. The major differences are that the baby raised by an animal lacks self awareness; it cannot speak any language other than that of the animal it was raised by, and it lacks a sense of time; and in many cases there is a deep sense of connection with animals and the natural environment. Its reactions to surroundings are those of the animal it was raised by. Thus the behaviour traits it learned were not those of the human animal, but of the mammal that mothered it.

A headline in the Daily Star on April 17 1991, at the time the film Dances With Wolves was popular reads: “TRAGIC BOY’S DANCE IN WOLF’S LAIR.” It goes on to say:

A tragic orphan brought up by a pack of wild wolves will never be able to live like a normal man, say doctors. The boy who REALLY danced with the wolves was aged about seven when he was found 29 years ago in the wastes of Southern Russia by a team of oil explorers. He howled like a wolf and savagely bit one of the oil men who christened him Djuma – the Wolf Boy.

Professor Rufat Kazirbayev said doctors had battled to re–educate him to act like a normal human being – but failed. They are now giving up the fight.

“His mind is with the wolves. He will howl at the moon for the rest of his life,” he said.

Djuma, now about 36, is still in hospital. He still crawls on all fours, eats raw meat and bites when frightened. He can speak only disjointed phrases – “Mother dead. Father dead. Brother dead. Sister dead. Mother nice. Father bad.”

Dr. Anna Ticheenskaya said: “presumably his family were killed in a purge. He has shown us in sign language how his mother saved him by throwing herself over his body.”

Djuma has learned to brush his hair, clean his teeth and use the toilet “Like a trained animal.” But when taken to the zoo he howls as if he was urging the animals to take him to freedom. Sadly that will never happen. Djuma will probably spend the rest of his life in the clinic where, doctors say, he spends his days like a dog – half asleep and dreaming.

The autobiography of Helen Keller helps in understanding what may be the difference between an animal, or an animal man like Djuma and a human being with self awareness. Helen, made blind and deaf through illness prior to learning to speak, described how she lived in a dark unconscious world lacking any sense of self until the age of seven when she was taught the deaf and dumb language. At first her teacher’s fingers touching hers were simply a tactile but meaningless experience. Then, perhaps because she had learned one word prior to her illness, meaning flooded her darkness. She tells us that “Nothingness was blotted out.” Through language she became a person and developed a sense of self, whereas before there had been – nothing.

This ‘nothingness’ described by Helen Keller is difficult for most of us to imagine, having all our life been exposed to other human beings through behaviour and speech. Helen describes it as having no awareness of personal pain or events. She says that perhaps things happened to her, perhaps they were painful, but as she had no personal self to appreciate this, they were merely passing tactile sensations. She was not personally disturbed by them because she had no ‘person’ to be disturbed.

The learning of language was the pivot around which Helen’s self awareness evolved, with its attendant ability to think, to have a sense of ‘I’ or ‘me’ and all the personal relationships with others and the world arising from that. Without the learning of a complex language which holds in it the concept of ‘selfhood’ there is apparently no possibility of self awareness. Without the passage of the ‘behavioural pool’ from a human being to a human infant, there is no possibility of a self aware human maturing from the baby.

The information gathered from the many cases of ‘animal children’ suggests that not only do the behavioural traits of the fostering animal pass to the child, but also the state of soul can be thought of as a form of behavioural response which is also learned. In other words, self awareness, which is so taken for granted in our own life, is passed to us as a learned response by the humans who are our role models and mentors. Selfhood is not genetically given, it is a behavioural response.

The story of Imo the macaque mentioned earlier helps us imagine a possible first scene for the emergence of self awareness in the human species.

There must have been a gradual development of the complexity of language bringing the pre–human to the point where self awareness was ready to emerge, but hadn’t quite been realised. Then, perhaps an event or a particular situation in the life of the pre–human triggered the new awareness. Suddenly the pre–human was self aware and stepped into human experience.

This must have been a momentous experience for the individual or individuals it occurred to. If compared with the descriptions of people in our present times who achieve a new state of awareness such as Maurice Bucke describes in his book Cosmic Consciousness, it was probably a ‘religious’ experience – something appearing to have been visited upon the individual from a power exterior to them. In such cases the experience, the new state of awareness, usually only lasts a short time, but may become more prolonged as the individual is further exposed to it. One might even speculate that just as animals will repeat an action that provides food or pleasure, so the experience of self awareness in early pre–humans may have led to ritual performance of actions, or the re–creation of circumstances, that were part of the first experience. These I imagine as the roots of religious ritual. I believe such achievement of a new type of awareness by certain individuals is also behind traditions such as yoga and Sufism. This can be observed in particular in Subud in which one individual experienced what he was certain was a new experience and passed it on to others through contact.  In his book The Origin of Consciousness in the Bicameral Mind, Julian Jaynes gives a detailed historical perspective of these beginnings in the not so distant past.

The following dream of Joan C. illustrates and further describes the collective life of early humans, and the experience of developing from it to self awareness. Joan’s work on the dream provides us with another example of the information possible to gain through the eye of dreams.

In my dream I was in the garden of a large house. To the right of the house, my right that is, I saw the garden had been changed. I realised that I knew the garden from childhood, and there used to be a large pool by the house in which we all bathed when young. The ground sloped up from the house and was rough, but part of it had been dug over. The care and skill with which this had been done deeply impressed me.

There were no direct associations I could make with the house or the pond, so I started allowing spontaneous material to enter into the dream, allowing my mind to roam freely and show me out of what images and feelings the dream had been fashioned.

I started with the pond, and had the most unexpected set of fantasies and feelings bubble up from within. The garden when we were children referred to a condition of mind, which I now experienced, in which a group shared a common awareness, and felt at one with their environment. In other words there was no separate identity. No one in the group knew themselves as an individual. I knew as I experienced this that it was about the early condition of human beings, and was represented in the Bible as the Garden of Eden. It was about the history of our development as human beings. It showed me that in the early stages of evolution all human beings lived in a state of awareness in which they had no sense of separation from nature itself. They had no sense of individual existence either, but lived in a sort of paradise where there was no idea of birth or death or right or wrong. They felt at one with each other in their small groups and with the forces of nature.

When I experienced this I understood at last what the story of Genesis meant. It was about stages of psychological development, not physical or mythical history. Humans had come out of the pool though, out of the collective awareness, and at that point I experienced a mass of impressions and images I still cannot completely understand. The images suggested that at first, maybe one or two humans climbed out of that pool, and they left a mark. They climbed out and put one stone on top of another. The images developed further into suggesting that many ancient monuments were an expression of this enormous sense of the newly found identity – of personal existence.

I understood this to mean that one or two humans had achieved personal identity. In that state they realised something about themselves – they could say ‘I am’. They could ask ‘Who am I?’ That had never been possible before.

I need to say what arose in me were not those words or memory or vision of definite events, but a sense of touching or experiencing an overall memory, a vast overall process. So I am trying to put into words what I sensed. It was such a wonderful thing, so full of experience, to see this that I want to try to describe it. At the same time, it was an immense process and difficult to capture.

What I felt was that the pool was a collective consciousness such as Jung speaks of, and that it still exists now in our unconscious. At the early stages of human development though, it was the everyday experience, but the individuals who attained self awareness began to build a new type of life. They left stone monuments, carvings, paintings in caves, stone circles, pyramids; each person, each group realising deep down that this new level of awareness was a thing to be given and built. The Sphinx is an image of this half way state of human and animal.

This is where words are difficult, but the dug ground in the dream depicts it. If the son of a farmer takes over the farm, his work and achievement are built upon what his father did with the land. The father’s work is built upon by the son, and is a continuation, of what his father did. Even if one was to take a piece of land which had never been farmed before, one would farm it with tools, experience and attitudes developed gradually through thousands of years of human effort. I saw that I, although I am not usually aware of it, am formed out of the ideas, words, attitudes, pleasure and pain left to me as a heritage by millions of people. If I had not been raised by modern humans I would, in fact, not have developed an identity. My identity is a gift to me from the great river of human beings who left a mark, one stone on top of another, a concept enshrined in art, a struggle or love immortalised in stone, a realisation and transcendence depicted in a religious ritual or in a new word.

The garden, the dug plot was myself, my personality. But my personality, the attitudes and reactions of its very foundations and structure, the words with which my mind realises its existence, are the living remains of countless other lives and their endeavour, their love, their ignoble failure, their genius and their prayers. I AM my ancestors. That I have also dug that plot by my work on my dreams, by trying to transform the unwieldy loam of myself into finer stuff, gives me a place in the river of life, in the eternal process of continuity.

Most important of all, perhaps, in such simple acts as writing out this dream, I leave a mark. I etch upon the world the sign of my own realisation, the changed lines of transformation. For self consciousness is a sort of collective consciousness which forever depends upon giving, and upon physical records of living beings to enshrine its existence. Without living beings who carry the words and responses gradually developed by myriad ancestors; without books, paintings, music, science and architecture, we have no existence as people. In one generation we could be swallowed up by that pool, that sea of self–forgetting symbolised by the waters that swallowed Noah’s contemporaries. Even now, without the love of giving, that sea can swallow us. That was my dream.

Joan’s description further illustrates how our mind, approached in the right way, can pour out realisations and insights that are deeply educational. It is a form of outpouring and mental function that few of us are ever taught to look to or use in our schooling. But it IS a common experience in the sense of it being described in all the cultures throughout history. It IS accessible.

Joan and Ron’s descriptions taken together also say that there is a function in the human mind that takes external information, such as language, behaviour and architecture, and treats it like a code. Perhaps if the example of the printed word is used this makes it easier to understand. A book might be a couple of hundred years old. A baby who grows and is taught the language of the book can eventually read it. As it is being read, what was a physical object unfolds in the child huge amounts of information and imagery. Perhaps it moves the child emotionally also. It may even explain aspects of their own existence they knew nothing about before.

That is not an exact analogy, but Ron and Joan suggest that the external objects of culture we see around us and take for granted, actually produce in us the release of a massive amount of information and deeply felt experience. Most often however, we fail to appreciate this as it is covered, or obscured by the dominant sensory impressions and taught responses, as already described.

When it is appreciated and released, the result is probably due to a complex interaction between genetically produced inclinations, the environment, and culturally provided education, plus an up–welling of unconscious material from the ocean of information we all live within. This fuller understanding of our cultural environment is probably necessary for optimum survival, but is not necessary to become a conscious individual stumbling along through life.

The View So Far

Looking through the eye of dreams and human experience, such as Ron and Joan’s dream–work and the account of Helen Keller, a situation is described stating that our personal identity rests on –

• The passage of behavioural traits from adults to the new born.
• The learning of language.
• The interaction between people affirming personal identity.
• A collective consciousness. This is created physically by the written and spoken word, but also by all other works of humanity such as music, art, architecture, and of course social structure. Its fundamental base is living human beings who have learned language and carry ancestral behavioural traits. In a sense, the enormity of who we are is external to us and our body and brain are decoding instruments.
• The collective consciousness is a code that can come to life in the individual. Only the cultural environment plus the personal response to it make a whole.
• A collective unconscious is the source of our personal existence.

See House of the Ancestors.

Dream Magic

There is a strange and wonderful world in which your most secret wishes can be fully lived. In this world the things you fear take on physical form and do battle with you – yet remain ultimately harmless unless you believe them to be real. It is a world in which magic is everyday occurrence, for you can experience death and yet live on. Here the possibilities of your future are an open door for you to explore. You have many lifetimes in this domain, and are capable of living each one with vigour. Here too, with a thought or desire, you can create a living environment in which you move and play – to act out love, anger, success or failure until you grasp their essence and master them. See Dreams are Like a Computer Game

This living laboratory enables thoughts and emotions to take on their own physical reality as people, objects or places outside of you. Meeting them you live in a universe, a community of beings with which you have an ongoing relationship. Yet it is an apparently exterior world that is but a reflection of your own inner life. Because of this, if you are wise, you may discover in it the sources of your own obstacles in life, and transform them into opportunities. The magical variety of the things met in this world reveal your own impressive creativity. For you are the Grand Creator of all that exists in this special universe of experience. Yet – and here is the jewel of this – you are not imprisoned by all you have made in this world, whether noble or evil, cherished or feared. Not trapped that is, unless you choose to be.

Dreams Express The Full Spectrum Of Human Experience

It is of course the world of your sleep and dreams. A world which encompasses the total range of human experience from the egoless void of dreamless sleep, to the sharply felt pangs of personal fear and identity.

Although dreams and sleep have always fascinated human beings, it is only toward the middle of this century that real scientific breakthroughs were made in understanding them. More recently still, with the development of greatly increased sensitivity in scientific measuring of the brain and cells, dreams have been shown to be an essential part of our learning and creative process. Also, the tremendous area of experiment undertaken by individuals in the Human Growth Movement, not only defined non clinical ways of exploring dreams, but also showed them to be a wealth of information and creative experience. Freud described dreams as being more than the supernatural events or random imagery previously supposed. But his presentation left them as expressions of unconscious repression and symbolism. Today dreams are seen to represent the whole spectrum of human experience.

Dream Consciousness Transforms Your Life

If you drive a car you cannot afford to lack skill. Your life and other people’s life depend on it. However, even if you do not drive a car you are nevertheless the driver or operator of one of the most complex vehicles ever created. It is a vehicle with many functions. It can be one of the most destructive or creative implements, and so needs enormous skill to understand and handle well. The vehicle is your own body and mind.

The essential you – the naked, decision making, responsive spark of consciousness – stands in the middle of myriad flows of energy and influence. Everything from internal urges to eat, mate, be angry, to external influences such as social pressure, music or opportunity, call you to decide or respond. To respond or decide in ways which actually satisfy you takes great skill – the lack of which leads to internal tensions, ill health, frustration, social rejection or lack of recognition, depression and so on.

Because dreams portray the various aspects of your life as external objects, and play out your relationship with them as the dream drama, they are excellent maps to guide decision making. See Drama

The following dream, told by Mo, is an example of this.

She says, “I gave birth to a little girl – Charlotte. I had mixed feelings about this. There was both uncertainty and excitement. I had a strong desire to tell someone about the birth, so telephoned my friend in Australia. She listened to my excitement in silence. I felt uneasy at this, then she said to me “I’ve lost Luke” (her son). He had died a week before. Then I woke with muddled feelings.”

On considering her dream Mo felt the baby didn’t have any obvious connection with a male figure. It was beautiful, healthy and sure of being loved and cherished by Mo. When asked who or what she had lost and mourned for she immediately felt strong emotions because she had ended a ten year long relationship with a male friend and lover. It was then clear the dream depicted what was happening in regard to this. Her love life and sexuality – the baby – were alive and born anew, even without her ex-lover. But her pleasure in this was dulled because a part of herself – the female friend – was still mourning the death of the relationship. This lessened her enjoyment and excitement about the new things emerging in her life. Nevertheless, having such a clear picture of herself helped her steer a more decisive course through her feelings of loss toward her sense of new birth. See A Woman’s Creative Power

Mo arrived at her understanding of the dream by taking each figure or part of the dream and looking at what feelings, memories or information it held for her. Her new baby was obviously an expression of her pleasure and sense of well being.

The friend depicted a sense of loss. When she asked herself where pleasure and a sense of loss could be found in her life, the dream was clear. Therefore, asking yourself straightforward questions about your dream will uncover much of its information.

Not Imprisoned By All The World You Made

We are all born victims of circumstance. But we need not remain a victim.

Your natural response to your environment is to be influenced by it. A disturbing event would stimulate you to feel fear, a calming event to feel pleasure. Your moods are usually influenced by what happens to you. So being in prison would be more depressing than being free. Being rejected would cause more pain than being admired or loved.

Our emotions and feelings about ourselves are like a keyboard that is played upon by people and events. If we are praised or rewarded our self confidence and therefore performance will usually be enhanced. That is fine except it means we will usually depend upon the world to create our moods and our sense of our own value. This makes us victims. We may not be dependent on a drug, but on praise, success, being admired or wanted. Without them we may experience the lows the drug user does on withdrawal. See Avoid Being Victims

As a human being though, you have an extraordinary possibility. This dream of Ed’s explains it.

I was in a prison with several others – all in one cell. It felt as if I had been in the prison for years. I was standing near the bars angry and shouting about the injustice of my incarceration.

As I stood raging I suddenly realised that all my anger was having no affect on the world. I was the only one suffering it. I saw that the peace and freedom I wanted from release I could have now by letting go of my anger. I would then be in peace, and would be free of my own negative emotions. I forgave my judges and gaolers, and a change came over me. In the following years I learnt to drop the other ideas and emotions I tortured myself with. I was filled with joy until my bliss filled the cell. In this way all had a changed relationship. In a strange way I was now utterly free.

The greatest prison of all, the greatest of torturers, is our own emotions and our concepts or ideas – our thoughts. While Ed felt angry and held the idea he had been wrongly accused, he was tormented and trapped – imprisoned in his own thoughts and emotions. To have received a public apology and released would have changed his feelings, but he would still have remained a passive victim of events. Instead he found in his dream the greatest freedom of all – a blissful freedom – the release from his mind and emotions.

Almost every dream you have shows you what world of experience you are creating out of your memories, your habitual attitudes, your fears and hopes. Because of this, each dream can be another step toward blissful freedom. The following dream shows clearly how Emma is imprisoned in difficult feelings.

I’ve had this dream for years. I’m trapped in a long passageway or corridor. I can’t get out. I’m feeling my way along the wall – there is a small light at the end of the tunnel, I can’t get to it. I’m very frightened. I wake up before I get to the end. Then I feel afraid to go back to sleep.

Emma cannot escape by struggling. Her trap is one of the emotions and mind. No matter what helped her create the trap, she can be free by standing out of the particular web of ideas and feelings which weave together to create her trap.

You can gather from each dream how you weave a view of the world which creates either suffering or pleasure. See Secrets of Power Dreaming

Dream Mystery Explored

It can be summed up as remembering the dream; recording of dream; listing of symbols; and association of ideas. It was also seen that symbols must be understood in their right context, or can even be understood because of that context; which is rather like arriving at the meaning of an unknown word because of the way it is used in a sentence. Several other things are mentioned or hinted at while the dreams were being analysed. Some of these are so important or helpful, that they will now be further explained. See –   Techniques for Exploring your Dreams

Main Phases of The Dream

If we look at the structure of the next dream, we see that it can be split into four phases. But not all dreams are as easily broken into the different parts. Some dreams cannot be segmented in this way, while others have far less phases. The next dream is an example of the latter.

‘I had gone to Sheila’s and Uncle Frank’s house at Spearing Road. They had promised I could have a room there, but I found all the rooms occupied and people were sleeping on the floor instead of in beds. Seeing there was no room I turned away and the next thing I knew I was in a train; it had rather luxurious blue leather seats but again was almost full. It contained, as far as I could see, all ladies, and I explained to them that I had been promised sleeping accommodation. Even while I was explaining this and expecting to occupy a length of three seats, I could see they had as much right there as I, and I took the single seat offered still protesting that we were promised sleeping room.

This dream can only be broken into two, or at the most, three parts. That is, the house, the train and possibly, accepting the seat. If this is set out we have a clearer idea what the dream is about.

The House – Searching for living space in a childhood setting. Found ‘no room’ – What have I been looking for in childhood attitudes? Was the ‘promise’ of childhood unfulfilled?

The Train – Exorbitant expectations, annoyance at the fact that these high expectations cannot be fulfilled. This in a setting of getting somewhere – train. Have my expectations in getting somewhere not been as great as hoped for?

The Single Seat – Grudging acceptance of practical offer. Can I see anything of this in real life?

The whole idea of using this method is to take the general events, implications and settings of a dream, and use these as a reference for asking oneself questions.

The Dream Sequence

One of the things that is often overlooked in dreams is what we might call the ‘because’ factor. This factor is fairly noticeable when once pointed out, but difficult to see until much dream interpretation has been done. The because factor also applies in our everyday life, and can be seen when we say, ‘I was waiting for a bus and began to talk to a stranger who was also waiting. Our conversation became so interesting, that after a few minutes we went and sat in a restaurant, letting the bus go, because we had so much in common. Before he went he gave me his card because he wanted me to contact him again. I could see from what we had spoken about, that he was thinking of offering me a job in his firm. But I never followed it up because I didn’t think I could fill the post.’

If we look into this, we see that important events occur, directions followed, decisions taken, all because. The word ‘because’ in fact hides all our background, our feelings, our predisposing urges and thoughts. The word ‘disposition’ can in fact be used to sum up what lurks behind the because factor. A little thought will show that history is made up of this ‘disposition’, acting through the because factor.

I hope this doesn’t sound mysterious or complicated. This is such an important thing to understand. Our whole life, the events and outcome of it, rest upon it. Our life is what it is because of what we are – our disposition. We take an offer or reject it because of this. We succeed or fail in life because of the same factor – ourselves. ‘The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in the stars/But in ourselves, that we be underlings.’ When understood, we can see that every move we make in life is conditioned by subtle feelings of fear or pleasure, pride or love. At every decision we are directed by intangible hopes, despairs, conflicts and ideals. So, dreams also, arise out of the because factor.

Two dreams illustrate this. ‘I was waiting for a visitor. Suddenly the man I had been expecting came round to the back window and peeped in. I didn’t see him clearly, but took an immediate aversion to him and refused to let him in.’

Here we see that something ‘waited’ for by the dreamer, when it actually arrives, is not admitted due to feelings of aversion. It is not admitted because of aversion.

A clearer example is this. ‘I was surrounded by a thick wall of briars, beyond which were wild animals. I was trapped and couldn’t get out. I wondered what to do. Suddenly I noticed a hole in the ground. I looked in and saw it was a tunnel. I was just about to explore it as a way of escape, when I saw a dirty animal-like man looking up at me. I drew back from the tunnel in disgust and woke up’.

Here we see that the dreamer is trapped by his own tangle of problems, and destructive instinctive urges. A possible way out is shown in the tunnel of unconscious exploration (i.e. discovering one’s hidden contents), but the dreamer, on looking within, sees an undeveloped and repulsive part of himself which disgusts him. It is because of this disgust that he cannot get out through the tunnel. The whole dream revolves around that point. It is also because of this inability to explore further due to disgust, that the dream ends. The dream is showing that it is the feelings of disgust that are keeping him trapped in his unpromising situation. In real life, he is stuck in the middle of painful experiences because of his own feelings of disgust about a part of his nature. Thus, the because factor in dreams is very important, and is the central point in numerous dreams.

Dream Series

If we fail to understand an individual dream, light can often be thrown upon its meaning by looking at the dreams that precede and follow it. In this way one sees that the symbols are used in a gradually evolving manner. A dream series of evolving symbols is also one of the most striking proofs that dreams are not mere nonsense. The dreams that follow were all dreamt within about a month.

(1)   ‘Visit to M. Very nice house, high on the cliffs overlooking the sea. M. and others their usual welcoming selves. Met other pleasant friendly people, but we had to go down the hill to meet them and then some of them pointed out another way up the hill to another beautiful view, and came along to show us the way, which M. actually knew, but didn’t want to spoil their pleasure in showing me. A few of those in M.’s house were not quite as nice as I had believed from M.’s description, but I liked them anyway.

Here we start off with a house overlooking the sea – a state of looking over one’s hidden contents, one’s unconscious. Or we might – say the dreamer is ‘overlooking’ certain things about herself. These things she has overlooked begin to become known in the people, parts of herself, that were not quite as nice as she had believed.

(2)   ‘Met uncle George. Then he and I and a few relatives and friends went on to a small boat and began a journey. I didn’t know where we were going but others did, and it was such a new and pleasant experience for me that I didn’t bother to ask. As it grew dusk a strange but pleasant and friendly woman, who was obviously familiar with the boat, came and closed the curtains and put the light on, so that we could be comfortable during the night.’

Just previous to dream number one, the dreamer had begun, with the help of a friend who knew a little about interpretation, to analyse her own dreams. So we see that from ‘overlooking’ the sea she has quickly gone on a sea voyage. The dream sums up her situation wonderfully, ‘I didn’t know where we were going, but – others did.’ She didn’t at the time realise where the interpretations and dreams would lead her. Also, the sea is now much closer, and night is coming. That is, darkness and the unconscious are already making themselves felt, for the night sea journey is a classical dream of the exploration of one’s unconscious contents, as with Jonah and the whale. See archetype of the night sea journey

(3) ‘Found myself in a place where I could go swimming every morning.’

Already she is beginning to enter the water, or her inner life.

(4)   ‘Went into a church with someone who pointed out that I was facing the wrong way. I turned round and saw a bigger and lighter altar at the other end.’

Having begun to contact her inner life via swimming, immersing in it, she sees that her attitude to religion or her own

(5) ‘I was involved in a revolution. Everything around was collapsing, but I don’t remember being frightened.’

All her old ideas are being either revolutionised, or are collapsing.

(6) ‘I found myself being led in a particular direction by friendly pleasant people, who yet knew that on arrival I was to be executed. I had an immature woman of about twenty-five with me, and the same fate awaited her. I took her hand and tried to convey love and courage and to protect her from all her fears by behaving in a light-hearted manner.

As her old ideas collapse, her old self is to die. Also the immature twenty-five year-old part that still lives on in her is to die.

(7) ‘I found myself entering a tunnel where I encountered a rather frightening little animal, but we passed each other as he went out and I went in. Then I met a larger animal with the same results. Later I met a third, a real monster, rather like a 60ft caterpillar with a lion’s head and fore feet. I did not like the encounter as I continued to walk on the left side of the tunnel, into ever deepening darkness, and he passed me on the way out. Somehow I felt that Doctor (a friend and adviser) would not have been in the least afraid, and I borrowed his courage, and woke about half-way along this monster.’

Having been ready to die to her old way of life, she can begin the descent into her unconscious contents in earnest. The two frightening animals are two fears that came up and out. The third one is too big a fear to completely pass by at this time; and its shape shows its possible sexual nature.

Here, in just seven dreams, with very inadequate comments, can be seen how the symbols evolve as the dreamer discovers her real inner nature. The ‘overlooked’ sea becomes travelled upon. The coming darkness on the boat develops into the ‘deepening darkness’ of the tunnel; while each dream shows a development on the inward journey the dreamer was undertaking. Such a series need not be about the inward journey, however, but about commercial undertakings, health, ambitions, or even answers to intellectual queries.

These seven dreams were taken from about twice that many, dreamed during the period. The selection being based on how one can understand past dreams by seeing them in context with others occurring. The important point being that one might dream of looking at the sea for years, but never enter it. Then, with a change of ‘disposition’, a series of swimming and diving dreams take place. In interpreting our dreams in this way, we have to watch for similar symbols in changed conditions. The sea and darkness are obvious in the series. Also the crowd of people leading her, representative of her own desires to understand herself. The interpretation is arrived at by analysing the situations the dreamer finds herself in, and how the symbols change. Thus a seed seen in one dream, and a plant just growing in another suggest growth and development. A person scorned in one dream, and loved in another, would be a change of attitude and relationship.

These three methods, the Main Phase – the Because Factor, and the Series method, all help us to see the underlying meaning of the dream through looking at the dream as a whole. Particular symbols are not worked on in the same way as in the associated ideas method. It is the relationships the dream suggests that arouse questions. In turn, these questions themselves clarify the dream for us, and help us analyse our experience to see if the dream explains or explores it. As we advance in ability to deal with our dreams, these various methods are called upon and used as required. See – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams

Dream Books – Bibliography

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fromm, Erich, The Art of Loving’

Fromm, Erich, The Art of Being

Fromm, Erich, The Fear of Freedom

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mattoon, Mary Ann. Understanding Dreams.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Taylor, Jeremy. Dreamwork. Paulist Press 1983.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

West, Katherine L. Crystallising Children’s Dreams.

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

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

Wiseman, Ann Sayre. Nightmare Help.

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

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

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

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