Dreams & Dreaming
Written by Christine Breese, D.D., Ph.D.
Introduction
Dreams have long been a source of intrigue and mystery to humankind since the beginning of time. When was the first dream? It is speculated by scientists that dreams began 130 million years ago. This theory was explored by observing animals with varying levels of nervous system development. Observation was done by means of brainwave recordings and REM observations. It has been concluded that amphibians, like bullfrogs, do not sleep or dream at all. Reptiles might sleep, and birds have only two different stages of sleep. The chimpanzee is the closest to early mankind’s type of nervous system. The first human dream was probably fairly simple, as Robert L. Van De Castle says in his book Our Dreaming Mind (1994) “…when a hairy creature re-experienced briefly during sleep a strong smell that had caused its nostrils to twitch during the preceding day, or the taste of some earlier feast.” Human dreams most likely evolved into more complex imagery as humans evolved in the nervous system and gained more experience as a species.
The idea that sleep is a “little death” is a common notion in cultures all over the world. Almost every primitive religious tradition has some reference to dreams as being a small version of what occurs at actual physical departure from the Earth. A traditional saying among American Indians is that “to die is to walk the path of the dream without returning.” Having a relationship like this with dreaming changes the very nature of our relationship with death.
The world of dreams is getting more and more mysterious, and we are no closer to mapping the dream worlds than we are of knowing the secrets of the universe. Elsie Sechrist says in her book Dreams: Your Magic Mirror (1968), “The more the unknown continent of sleep is explored, the more it discloses wider and vaster territories to be explored. And the findings discovered tend not only to outdate but to contradict the early work by the first explorers in the field. It is as if one compared the charts of Columbus’ day with the modern maps of America’s Eastern seaboard—the subject is the same but no other similarity exists.” In this field, there is still an infinite amount of exploration to be done.
So how, then, do dreams affect us, and can they improve our waking lives? Dreams are highly underestimated by our society and could be put to better use than they currently are. Dreams can be used more effectively for growth, fulfillment and identifying the self, or the many selves within one self than they presently are. If an individual uses the dream world to enhance conscious understanding of the self, perhaps the waking life will be lived more effectively and with more joy. This applies to all the shades of dreaming, from simple dream recall to full lucidity in dreams. (Full lucidity means that one has woken up in the dream and realizes it is a dream, yet goes onward in the surroundings of the dream without waking up physically). Full lucidity is the ideal “sound-stage” for working out our decisions, gaining skills, and exploring Self, God and the universe. Simple recall is limited to one story, but full lucidity is limitless in its uses, outcomes, trials and errors, and capacity for solving problems. Stephen LaBerge and Howard Rheingold state in their book Exploring the World Of Lucid Dreaming (1990), “The world of lucid dreams provides a vaster stage than ordinary life…almost anything imaginable, from the frivolous to the sublime…lucid dreams can help you find your deepest identity—who you really are.”
The dream world, especially the lucid dream world, is our own built in virtual reality machine. The attempts of computer engineers, who are trying to invent virtual reality programs for the computer, are falling far short of what we already have built into our consciousness right now. If we could learn to tap into this inner resource of wisdom, experience, and exploration, we could avoid many of the mistakes or problems we encounter in everyday life. In ordinary life there is only one chance to play out an event—and only one conclusion. In the dream world, different versions of an event and its outcomes can be experienced without lasting consequences.
For instance, an individual who has a difficult time speaking publicly could practice dealing with stage fright and the mechanics of delivering a speech in front of thousands of dream characters. If the person first fails this speaking engagement, the stage could be reset and one could try again with a different approach. A person who has to communicate something to another, whom he or she is having a conflict with and is unsure about how it will go, can use trial and error attempts in the dream world to find just the right way to communicate without negative outcomes. Another person who is having difficulty with some area of study or creativity could use the dream world to gain access to knowledge or skills that are otherwise unavailable in the waking life.
There are billions of ways that one could use this built in virtual reality machine that we all have inside us. Our imagination is the limit. Stephen LaBerge and Howard Rheingold state in their book Exploring the World Of Lucid Dreaming (1990), “Research on how to cultivate peak performance suggests that lucid dreaming may prove to be an ideal training ground, not only for athletics, but also for any area in which skill can be developed… Dreams are the most vivid type of mental imagery most people are likely to experience…Waking mental images are weak sensory impressions that resemble actual experience, but are generally not as vivid. Dreams, however, are mental images of completely convincing vividness... The more the mental rehearsal of a skill feels like the real thing, the greater the effect it is likely to have on waking performance. Because of this, lucid dreaming, in which we can make conscious use of dream imagery, is likely to be even more useful than waking mental imagery as a tool for learning and practicing skills.” Imagine what a person could do with all that extra time in life to gather skills and abilities, even while the physical body sleeps!
The book Dreams & Dreaming (1990), by George Constable, Editor In Chief, states that, “Sleep learning was first the stuff of science fiction… However, it is now scientifically documented that sleep learning is a reality. Experiments have shown that sleep learning cannot replace daytime learning, but the two can sometimes be used in concert together. Snoozing students can absorb facts…mathematical formulas, historical dates…but more complex learning requiring abstraction, analysis and reasoning seems to be beyond the powers of the slumbering mind. Nevertheless, hypnopedia could be a real boon for students, adding hours of painless instruction that could speed their educational progress. Soviet researchers assert that months of hypnopedia produces no fatigue or other unwanted side effects.” Hmmm… I have always been bored to death with having to memorize dates, lists and all the presidents of the United States in order, a common list that students in the U.S. are required to regurgitate sooner or later in the educational process. If I could have memorized such things in a soft doze during the hypnagogic state, a state that is related to dreaming but on a lighter level, I could have saved myself immense amounts of time. Could I have averted my painstaking journey through Algebra and Calculus with hypnopedia? How many lists, facts and formulas could a human brain hold if as children we are taught early in our education to take advantage of such a skill?
Perhaps the dream world is the root of our waking life, a place where some deeper consciousness is figuring out how to play the game of life. Perhaps it is the wire mesh that the physical reality is laid upon. No one really knows. Jane Roberts says in her book The Unknown Reality, Volume One (1977), “The ways in which dream material becomes real, the processes involved, are the same ones by which the universe itself becomes objectified… The universe is the result of a certain kind of focus of consciousness…the matter rises out of inner wonderworks, of which the private wonderworks of each of us is a part. If we really understand how dreams worked and allowed ourselves to explore dream levels, we’d see how the universe is formed… it is the …creative product, en masse, of our individual and joint dreams.” She also says in the same book, “from the ‘chaotic’ bed of your dreams springs your ordered daily organized action… Your present universe is a mass-shared dream, quite valid…based not upon chaos but upon spontaneous order.”
I feel it is important to find out what this dream world is really for, since dreams have been with us since the earliest memories of mankind. This is undiscovered territory for us as a species. Perhaps it is even the final frontier! Robert H. Hopcke says in his book There Are No Accidents (1997), “If you presume that dreams have a meaning…you will undoubtedly find out more about your inner life than you ever thought possible.” I agree! We are missing a very useful tool for enlightenment and self-understanding. The sacred books of India, composed between 1000-600 B.C., explain in great detail how to use dreams as a tool for gaining enlightenment. So do Tibetan texts and oral teachings. Using dreams for self-understanding is an ancient art form, one that could serve us just as well today in our search for who we are and our purpose for being alive.
Dreams could lead to higher consciousness if one constantly applies what is revealed in dreams. The Tibetan Rinpoche Tarthang Tulku, quoted in Stephen LaBerge and Howard Rheingold’s book Exploring the World Of Lucid Dreaming (1990), instructs us to “maintain unbroken continuity of consciousness between the two states of sleep and waking.” He then went around the room, pointing to various people, and laughing he said, “This dream!” indicating that the body itself, the personality, all of it, is a dream. The two authors also said in their book on lucid dreaming, “By cultivating awareness in your dreams, and learning to use them, you can add more consciousness, more life, to your life. In the process you will…deepen your understanding of yourself.” Examining dreams, according to the Tibetans, inevitably causes us to learn more about the self and also about the dream we are inhabiting in waking life as well.
Jeremy Taylor says in his book Where People Fly And Water Runs Uphill (1992), “…Not only is dreaming significant from an evolutionary point of view, dreaming itself is the workshop of evolution…Clearly, we are still dreaming. Evolution is not done with us. We are not finished or completed, either as individuals or as a species… The Divine…is not yet as consciously developed and self-aware within us as it longs to be.”
Yes, there have been multitudes of workshops, books and studies done on dreams, but up to now, these endeavors have been considered frivolous and unimportant by society, and have even been called the junk of the mind. Most people feel that dream recall, dream interpretation, and exploring the meaning of dreams are for those who have too much free time on their hands. People who investigate their dreams are often considered hobbyists, rather than what they really are—brave explorers of an unmapped and misunderstood world that may have just as much reality as this physical one. Exploration of dreams is considered by most in society as frivolous play at best. However, according to Jeremy Taylor in his book Dream Work (1983), “In non-technological societies where people use fewer tools and are virtually without machines, dream life tends to have much more importance and prominence than it does in industrial/technological cultures.” Perhaps we would do well to observe the more primitive societies in existence today, for they are more proficient at dreaming than we in our highly technological societies. We could learn from these primitive societies, for they excel in their understanding and uses of dreams.
John Layard says in his book The Lady Of The Hare (1988), “All primitive peoples recognize [that dreams are messages from God], and accordingly pay great attention to them…all knowledge of the other side of life came to mankind through [dreams], later canalized into dogma, which is its static representation, true but lacking in redemptive efficacy so long as it is divorced from its organic source.” This points to the fact that all religious doctrine, rituals and beliefs are based on information originally received via channels of other worldly nature, like dreams. It is well documented in the Bible that many of the most important messages came to mankind through dreams, but why are dreams not used in such a way now? We are left with only the static conclusions that others made in their own dream analysis early in history, yet is not spirituality a constantly evolving thing? Perhaps we should look at our dreams in the present day as messages from God, universe, Self, whatever the source might be called by any given individual. These may be the changes that are needed as human spirituality evolves. Spiritual messages through dreams did not end upon the point of crystallization of the Bible.
Many of the visions and divine realizations in the Bible are products of dreams. John A. Sanford quotes the Bible, Numbers 12:6, in his book Dreams: God’s Forgotten Language (1968), “And he said, ‘Hear my words: If there is a prophet among you, I the Lord make myself known to him in a vision, I speak with him in a dream.’ Thus equating clearly the common origin and significance of dreams and visions [in the Bible].” Elsie Sechrist states in her book Dreams: Your Magic Mirror (1968), “In the Bible there are constant references to communication between man and God, between man and the angels, and between man and his higher self through the medium of dreams.” She also addresses meditation, as in metaphysical methods: “In Meditation, man opens himself to those benign powers which are the strongest forces in the universe, as well as to all time, all space, and all levels of consciousness. It is his attempt to communicate with his source, with God. Whereas prayer is ‘man talking to God,’ meditation is ‘man listening for God’s voice.’” So could dreams be likened to meditation at our deepest level where we clearly receive messages from some higher source or power? Are dreams actually the “ultimate meditation?”
Unfortunately, modern day religious leaders do not acknowledge our continuing ability to receive messages from God, our divine source, or our own personal connection with the powers-that-be. John Layard states in his book, The Lady Of The Hare (1988), “Though God spoke to the prophets in dreams and visions, the Church is now apt to frown on them, considering them to be vain fancies, a view that has now percolated to the common man, or else, if they are clearly important, to be, except in rare instances, of the Devil. The truth is that they may…point the way to spiritual growth, but equally as being of the Devil if we fail to see below their manifest content which so often darkens and distorts the spiritual meaning that lies beneath.”
Bob Larson, the most famous Doubting Thomas in the literary world when it comes to metaphysical concepts, says in his book Straight Answers On the New Age (1989), “It is true that in the Old Testament God sometimes revealed His will through dreams. But we observe no continuing occurrence of this practice. When God did use dreams it was under His discretion and at His prerogative…” Is this to say that God no longer communicates at all with mankind? Is religion now just an unmoving, non-evolving entity? Has God died, or something, and we are now left to fend for ourselves without any further direction or intention for our evolution from a higher source? Are dreams truly dead ends for spiritual messages and understandings? I highly doubt it, myself.
Why is the dream world a possibility for a healthier human psychology? It is because the mind and personality has unlimited freedom. It is a place to express and address everything that the human psychology gives attention to. It is a place where trial and error can happen without consequences on the Earth plane. It is a place where true therapy can take place at the deepest levels. I have experienced many such healings as a result of my dream activities. They have changed my life for the better—permanently. I believe this is possible for everyone.
It is absolutely certain that we must dream or we will have terrible problems psychologically. In Dreams & Dreaming (1990), George Constable, Editor In Chief, describes an experiment done at New York City’s Mount Sinai Hospital by a psychiatrist named William C. Dement. In this experiment, subjects were woken up as soon as they began to have REM periods (Rapid Eye Movements are indicative that dreaming is happening). He did this for five nights in a row until he was awakening the subjects at least twenty times. Then he allowed them a night, finally, of undisturbed sleep. “As if hungry for dreams, the volunteers spent more time on the recovery night than normal in the REM stage. By contrast, a control group of volunteers who had been awakened just as frequently but only during non-REM sleep did not increase their dream time during the recovery night. The tendency to make up for lost REM sleep suggests that dreaming is important for both psychological and physical health.” The book continues to describe that the subjects became increasingly agitated, unclear, and irritable as the experiment went on until they were allowed to dream normally on the recovery night. This is an obvious indication that dreaming is absolutely necessary to human psychological and mental health. I would not like to imagine an experiment of this sort that deprived a person of dream time for, say, three or four months. Would we then have a monster on our hands?
Great inventions have come about through dreams, including the singer sewing machine, the discovery of the benzene molecule, and the creative works of many literary, visual and musical artists. In the book Where People Fly And Water Runs Uphill (1992) by Jeremy Taylor, he says, “Dreams have been and continue to be a source of genuinely innovative thinking, invention, and discovery in fields ranging from philosophy to physics, from architecture to agriculture, and electronics to zoology.” I wonder, personally, if we would have ever invented anything at all if it were not for our capacity to dream. These people who invented such things were called dreamers, but it is these very same dreamers who have catapulted us into our ever evolving future.
Much of the visionary art in the world is the product of dreams. It is stated in this same book by Jeremy Taylor that, “dreaming holds great promise for the future of humankind: dreams are reflections of our inborn creativity. Creativity is our universal human birthright. All creativity has its source deep in the unconscious. Dreams have always been one of the major vehicles for the appearance of the creative impulse in waking imagination and awareness.” Jane Roberts says about creativity in her book The Unknown Reality (1977), “Some inventors, writers, scientists, artists, who are used to dealing with creative material directly, are quite aware of the fact that many of their productive ideas came from the dream condition. They see the results of dream activity in practical physical life. Many others, though untrained, can clearly trace certain decisions made in waking life to dreams.”
This brings us to the fact that millions of people from the ancient to the modern have solved personal problems with dreams, which might not be reported much throughout history, but we can assume that it has been done since the beginning of humankind. In the book Creative Dream Analysis (1988), Gary K. Yamamoto says that dreams, “all have one thing in common. All our dreams can help us solve our problems. Every problem we have is a candidate for our dreams to solve.” He also says, “our inner intelligence knows what we have to do… Each moment requires a new decision that forms the foundation for all future decisions. Fortunately, our dreams are adaptable, moving, and changing in step with anything we choose to do… Every decision we make, every action we take is recorded by our inner intelligence. Based on this ever-changing input, our inner intelligence creates new dreams. The dreams identify any new pitfalls, provide possible solutions, and may reveal the outcomes of the paths being followed.”
I think that without dreams, we would have great difficulty knowing what to do, for dreams are our exploration of probable futures and probable outcomes. Dreams are the testing ground for actions and decisions. Jane Roberts says in her book The Unknown Reality (1977), “The future of the species is being worked out in the private and mass dreams of its members… Few understand, however, that private reality is like a finished product, rising out of the immense productivity that occurs in the dreaming condition.”
Dreams had by great leaders often directed their path to victory. For example, the great victory of Constantine when he had a “vision” was most likely a dream. He was instructed in his “vision” to embed the symbol of the cross on the shields of his warriors, and then he was assured victory. After this victory, he made Constantinople the central city of Christian beliefs. Among all the books I use as references for this material, there are hundreds of reports where dreams have made life better for the dreamer or the masses that the dreamer affected in his or her life. Dreams influence physical reality in very real ways. Dreams are part of the equation in mankind’s evolution, perhaps a bigger part of the equation than we know.
Not only that, but dreams are our most definite and tangible proof that we live eternally, independent of the physical body. Dreams give us proof that there is more to us than meets the eye. Robert L. Van De Castle says it best when he says in his book, Our Dreaming Mind (1994), that dreams have “also given us a basis for believing that there is a nonmaterial component to our existence, as well as a continuity of existence which is not interrupted by physical death.” We literally spend at least 90 minutes a night in an entirely different world of experience—independent of the physical body. The implications of this are important in our search for proof of life after death. In the book Dreams & Dreaming (1990), George Constable, Editor In Chief, says, “The importance of dreams in causing primitive man to conceive of himself as possessing a soul, a non-material self that moved and acted in the dream world,” was emphasized. It is further stated in this book, “Dream experience made men aware that they were constantly in contact with a mysterious supernatural world, from which much might be learned about their own destiny in this world and the next.”
And what of the dreams of animals? It is a fact that most animals dream. It could be speculated that even plants might dream. I’d like to take it a step further and ask if rocks dream, or oceans, or dirt or perhaps the very molecules and atoms inside us. Do they dream in some way or another? Jane Roberts verifies that they do in her book The Unknown Reality, Volume One (1977), “All consciousnesses dream. We have said that to some degree even atoms and molecules have consciousness, and each one of those minute consciousnesses forms its own dreams, even as on the other hand each one forms its own physical image. Now, as the field of individual atoms combine for their own benefit into more complicated structure gestalts, so do they also combine to form such gestalts…in the dream world.” She goes on to say, “Because it is connected to you through chemical reactions, this leaves open the entryway of interactions, in animals as well as men. Since dreams are a by-product of any consciousness involved within matter, this leads us to the correct conclusion—that trees have their dreams, that all physical matter…also participates in the involuntary construction of the dream universe.” She goes further to say that even cells, molecules and atoms have their version of dreaming, although “Atoms do not dream of cats chasing dogs, yet, there are indeed ‘lapses’ from physical focus that are analogous to your dreaming state.” Just because something is small or insignificant in our opinion does not mean that it does not perceive life and the other worlds in some way. This is noted in the book Where People Fly And Water Runs Uphill (1992), by Jeremy Taylor, in his following statement: “There are those organized collections of atoms with relative speedy metabolisms that are obviously and observably alive, and then there are those organized collections of atoms that seem to have slower metabolic rates that up till now we have mistaken for ‘inanimate,’ when actually their life is simply too slow and subtle to be observed with our short attention span.” This, I would think, includes such things as rocks, tables, chairs, crystals and other objects that seem quite inanimate to us.
On a larger scale, dreams have created, shaped and changed the world throughout history. Jane Roberts states in her book Dreams, Evolution, and Value Fulfillment (1986), “All of your grandest civilizations have existed first in the world of dreams. You might say that the universe dreamed itself into being.” This is truly a profound thought, in my opinion. Is it possible that all we know of the physical universe has only been created because some great intelligence dreamed it into being, and is still dreaming about it? This could throw all our ideas about this thing called physical reality into confusion. Is it actually but a thought, a dream, in the mind of God, and when God stops dreaming and wakes up, will it all simply disappear the way our dreams do when we wake up from our sleep each night? This is a mind shattering concept to wrap ourselves around, is it not?
What is this sleeping and dreaming thing anyway and why is it so necessary for most living beings? Neale Donald Walsh, in his book Conversations With God, Book III (1998), states that dreams may simply be in existence because, “The soul literally drops the body…when it is tired of the limits, tired of the heaviness and lack of freedom of being with the body. It will just leave the body when it seeks ‘refueling.’” In her book The Unknown Reality, Volume One (1977), Jane Roberts states, “Dreams provide a steady give-and-take between conscious and so-called unconscious activity.”
Why do we go insane without dreams? How do they keep us psychologically functional in waking life and why are dreams so important to emotional health? Is it possible that we interact with each other in our dreams, or are dreams just a static place containing only material from only our own minds as individuals? These are some of the questions I have wondered, and some of this will be explored and answered in this report, but most of these questions only serve to spur more questions that simply cannot be answered at this time in human evolution.