Diagnostic and Healing Dreams
The following is an account from the book by Jeremy Taylor, Where People Fly, And Water Runs Uphill (1992), about a dream that saved the life of the dreamer. The woman continually had dreams about something wrong in her uterus, despite the reassurance of doctors who said that they found nothing wrong. “In the face of her firm, continued insistence, her doctors resorted to a sonogram. This test detected a curious overall thickening of the lining of her uterus, a condition clearly calling for a biopsy. The biopsy detected a malignant and quickly metastasizing cancer. She had immediate surgery, which apparently caught the cancer in the nick of time. As of this writing, she has been in full remission for more than three years. In her own view, this ‘nasty’ nightmare and her subsequent work with it, supported by her ongoing dream group saved her life. When she later asked the doctors what would have happened if she had postponed a checkup until after her European trip, the doctors cautiously said that a month or so later would probably have been ‘too late.’”
It is not uncommon to have dreams before sickness appears in the body or during its development. It is believed that illnesses act as somatic influences on dreams, much the way a spray of water or tickling of the nose with a feather would influence a dream. Dating all the way back to early Greek medicine, dreams were a typical way to diagnose and find treatment for a mysterious illness. Dreams of illness can also reflect associations with the illness whereas the dreamer dreams of scenes and situations associated with that particular illness, rather than dreaming that the illness is within the self. An example of this would be that a person dreams he or she is in a cancer survivor’s group, but doesn’t dream that the cancer is within the body.
Dreams could be thought of as X-rays that the intelligent dreamer can interpret as warnings about coming physical problems. If such fleeting stimuli as a spray of water or the tickle of a feather could be incorporated into a dream, why not a physical illness or discomfort?
It is also not uncommon to have dreams about recovery or being given a second chance in life. This happens especially around chronic illnesses that stump physicians when they are mysteriously cured. Sometimes the prescription for healing is offered in the dream as well, and if the dreamer takes action on it in waking life, he or she becomes cured. Spontaneous healing has long bewildered doctors. These are powerful healing dreams.
It is believed that the oldest medical book in existence is The Yellow Emperor’s Classic Of Internal Medicine, written sometime between 1000-200 B.C. A large section is dedicated to the connection between dreams and illnesses. It is a conversation between the emperor’s sage and his minister discussing dreams, health and the treatments that were prescribed by the dreams. Then followed the Greek accounts on dreams and healing made famous by Galen, Aesculapius, and Artemidorus. There were many who realized that the dream world could be a source of alerting one to an illness, and also prescribing the medicine needed for recovery.
In a 1987 study by Dr. Robert Smith of Michigan State University, it was revealed that “cardiac patients who dreamed of destruction, mutilation, and death had worse heart disease that those who did not. The dreams worsened as did the condition, despite the fact that the patients did not know the severity of their disease.” This report comes from the book by James Matlock, Harper’s Encyclopedia Of Mystical And Paranormal Experience (1991). This shows how dreams can continue to alert one to the worsening of a condition. This book also reports that terminally ill patients have transitional dreams, “such as entering beautiful gardens, crossing bridges, or walking through doorways, which occur shortly before death and which often bring peace of mind.”
Some believe that a healing vision can enable the mind to transform an illness into a healthy body.