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Our Dreams are the Bridge Between The Seen and Unseen, and the Known and Unknown!

In general, we spend one third of our lives in a state commonly referred to as sleep, and we’ll experience approximately one hundred thousand dreams during that time. It seems highly unlikely that the expenditure of all that time and energy is just to help us clear the cobwebs out of our brains. If dreams are, as has been formerly posited, meaningless physiological functions, or only psychological upkeep, then there would be absolutely no need for humans to remember their dreams (even occasionally) but we do. Nor should there be any evidence of precognition, telepathic communication or clairvoyance in dreams. But there is!

It is widely agreed upon nowadays that dreams arise from the unconscious, that vast part or level of our mind that remains otherwise inaccessible to consciousness.

The unconscious mind is a profound reservoir of knowledge that influences our personalities, our actions and our responses, and even our conceptions of reality. By developing our powers of dream recall, interpretation and control, we gain access to a tool that can change our lives.

I believe, as did Jung (Carl Gustav Jung, a Swiss Psychoanalyst and contemporary of Sigmund Freud), that if we pay attention to our dreams they’ll reveal practical and important information about where the unconscious is leading us. I extend this idea further by suggesting that not only do dreams reveal practical and important information that is beneficial to the individual dreamer, but also to those close to the dreamer, to the society in which the dreamer lives, and even to the world.

Dreams have had a dramatic influence on almost every important aspect of our culture and history. Dream images have expanded our artistic, musical and literary horizons, dream messages have spurred generals to conquer empires and the intense nocturnal pictures have led to inventions and industrial products that have revolutionized science and society. Dreams have also given us a basis for believing that there is a non-material component to our existence, as well as a continuity of existence which is not interrupted by physical death.

When frustrated by a problem in our waking lives, we may find ourselves in a rut, going back and forth across the same familiar but unproductive ground. In dreams, it seems we can look at the situation from a new or unusual perspective, move back and forth, up and down, or sideways, in order to see the problem that’s vexing us.

Frederick Banting, a Canadian physician from the University of Toronto, was carrying out research on the causes of diabetes. He was unable to find an effective method for extracting pancreatic secretions, which he was the key to his discovery. One night, however, he awakened from his sleep and wrote down these sentences:

“Tie up the duct of the pancreas of a dog. Wait for a few weeks until the  glands shrivel up. Then cut it out, wash it out, and filter the precipitation.”

This new approach resulted in his successfully isolating the hormone now known as insulin, which is secreted in insufficient amounts, or not at all, in diabetics. The discovery, by Banting and his colleagues, of a means of extracting this substance from nonhuman pancreases has since saved the lives of untold millions of diabetics.

Dreams have not only led to scientific, cultural and artistic development, but have also served as channels for spiritual inspiration. Some form of dream imagery is embedded in the beginnings of most of the world’s major religions.

Muhammad received his divine mission in a dream. Much of the Koran, the scared book of the Muslims, was revealed to Muhammad in his dreams over a period of several years. The establishment of the Church of Latter Day Saints has been attributed to dream revelations received by Joseph Smith in upstate New York. And most of the events surround the birth and early years of Christ were announced in dreams. Joseph was told the source of Mary’s pregnancy in a dream, and instructed to name the child Jesus (Mathew 1).

Aside from their role in the development of specific religions, dreams have suggested answers to many enveloping and eternal questions: Who are we? Where did we come from? Why are we here? Of what are we made? Where are we going? What is death? Etc? People of all times have asked these same questions. What is seldom recognized is that dreams have helped to provide some answers.

Long before the advent of sacred texts, our ancestors’ dreams gave them inklings of a realm beyond the physical and inspired their first spiritual strivings. Belief in the afterlife also probably arose from dreams, since dreamers often encounter deceased individuals who exhibit their same behaviours.

If our beliefs about the existence of a soul originated in dreams, then dreams should be recognized as having contributed a fundamental premise about the nature of human existence that’s been a subject of debate and reflection of all civilizations and all ages.

The concept of a close correspondence between physical and mental illness and dream content has long been understood. Hippocrates, the father of Greek (and some say modern) medicine proposed that some dreams had the potential to indicate diseases, humoral imbalances, or other physical conditions, such as overeating. The 2nd century physician also stressed the ability of dreams to predict impending illnesses.

Several diagnostic dreams preceding illness have been reported from as far back as the Middle Ages. Dreams which herald the onset of a physical illness were classified by M. Macario around the middle of the nineteenth century as “prodromic,” a term which is still used today. He used the term “symptomatic” to describe dreams which occurred during the course of a disease after it had been detected. Many examples of dreams preceding the onset of cancer have been published. One author traces a link between dreams, disturbing emotions, lowered functioning of the immune system, and increased susceptibility to cancer.

Dreams which correctly predict unlikely future events is called a precognitive dream. A telepathic dream is one in which the dreamer becomes aware of someone else’s current mental state. In a clairvoyant dream, the dreamer obtains information about the location or physical properties of some object.

On October 21, 1966, a massive coal-tip slid down a mountainside and engulfed the Welsh mining village of Aberfan, killing 144 people, mostly school children. A young girl, Eryl Mai Jones, often tried to tell her mother about her dreams, but her mother tended to dismiss them. One morning, however, Eryl Mai managed to get her mother to listen to one of her dreams. In her dream, “We go to school but there’s no school there; something black has come down all over it.” She told her mother, “I’m not afraid to die, Mommy. I’ll be with Peter and June.” When the huge slag deposit slid down on the school two days later, Eryl Mai, Peter, and June were among the 118 children crushed or buried alive.

A well known American assassination dream was one in which the victim himself dreamed of his assassination. About two weeks before John Booth’s bullet struck Abraham Lincoln in Ford’s Theatre, Lincoln dreamed that he heard subdued sobs, as if a number of people were weeping. Curious about the origin of these sobs, he left his bed and wandered downstairs from room to room, continuing to hear the same mournful sounds along the way. When he arrived at the East Room, he saw a coffin lying on a platform. The corpse was wrapped in funeral vestments. Soldiers, acting as guards, were stationed around it and there was a throng of people. Some gazed mournfully upon the corpse, whose face was covered. When Lincoln demanded of one of the soldiers, “Who is dead in the White House?” the soldier replied, “The President. He was killed by an assassin.” The loud bursts of grief from the crowd, when they heard this, woke Lincoln from his dream. After Lincoln’s assassination, his casket was placed on a platform in the East Room of the White House where it was guarded by soldiers.

That dreams have had a profound effect upon our history (and possibly our evolution) seems inescapable. Dreams have enriched our culture through the arts, stoked the fires of freedom, led to the invention of labour-saving devices and life-saving cures and treatments, changed philosophical premises, and served as a source of spiritual illumination and an expanded vision of our very nature and essence.

By developing our powers of dream recall, interpretation and control we can take advantage of the one hundred thousand opportunities available to us to understand and improve upon ourselves, our society and our world, to explore our relationship with each other, with nature and with the universe, to heal, to create and to invent. But most of all, we need to appreciate our dreams and learn to understand the messages the send us; for they hold the key to our future; to where we’re going, what we’re to face, and who we’re to become.

 

 

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