Dreams & Dreaming

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 oneself, 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 with whom he or she is having a conflict 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
Dreams & Dreaming ©2005 University Of Metaphysical Sciences 1
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 the purpose of the dream world truly is, 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 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 until 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 dreams, their recall, interpretation and meaningfulness 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 are 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 andvisions [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 seemingly
died, and are we 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 have 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 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 about which I have wondered, and some of them will be explored and answered in this
report; yet most of these questions only serve to spur more questions that simply cannot be answered at this time
in human evolution.
We will work more with the idea of lucid dreaming in the Master’s section of the curriculum. You will
receive many exercises and techniques for inducing lucid dreams at that point. For now, you will receive detailed
information about history, dreams, and exercises for recalling your dreams more vividly and interpreting your
dreams for more understanding.
Review Of Literature
(Exam questions are not drawn from the material in Review Of Literature)
It was quite a challenge to narrow my selection of literature down to only these sources. There is so much
literature on dreams and interpretation that it is mind‐boggling. Many of these sources would be redundant to
have in the bibliography, so I have chosen the most pertinent ones that don’t have so many similarities that they
are practically the same book in relation to one another. In no way does this give a portrayal of how many books
are printed on the subject of dreams.
Some of the books selected here only mention dreams in passing or only have a few paragraphs, like the
Seth books by Jane Roberts, but these books are some of the first ones to give me the idea that dream worlds
might be a key for me in my growth and self‐discovery. The Seth books are channeled material, Jane Roberts
being the channeler and her husband Robert Butts being the transcriber and questioner. I believe channeled
information can sometimes be more accurate and informative than information from the human mind alone. If
the person doing the channeling is adept at the task, information that has either been dormant in the human
collective unconscious or has yet to be discovered can be brought forth. Roberts has many books, about twenty;
but I only refer to four of them in this essay. Each book has a different focus, and the comments on dreams come
from different perspectives, depending on the focus of the book.
The first of Jane Roberts books that I have listed is The Nature Of The Psyche: Its Human Expression (1979).
This book delves into the human nature in depth, expounding on sexuality, personality problems, and includes
psychic exercises that one can do to improve on his or her intuition. Dreams are also addressed.
The second of Jane Roberts books is Dreams, Evolution, and Value Fulfillment, Volume One (1986). This is
also channeled material and as per the title, is completely focused on the nature of dreams and how they work as
another arena for consciousness to have experiences which are just as valid as waking life experience. Not only
are our nightly dreams discussed in this book, but so are the dreams of the mass consciousness of humanity,
animals, plants and other such beings on Earth. There is constantly an unconscious dreaming mass self at work
underneath the fabric of physical reality.
The next two books by Jane Roberts that I refer to are called The Unknown Reality, Volume One (1977) and
The Unknown Reality, Volume Two (1986). Both of these books are very large in scope as to the subjects addressed,
for there are many kinds of unknown realities. The future and how it is created is discussed, probable realities,
how events at the individual and mass level are created, past/present/future lives, and how idle daydreams and
unfulfilled desires shape our lives. I found exquisitely interesting material on the nature and uses of dreams in
these books, mostly in Volume I.
The Lady Of The Hare: A Study In The Healing Power Of Dreams (1988) by John Layard is a wonderful book
with a gentle and soft approach to dream work. It includes an account of his work with one woman who had a
life changing dream about the sacrifice of a hare (rabbit). This spurred an entire book about the mythology and
symbolism of the hare, like the Easter Rabbit of the Christian tradition, and an examination of the archetypes the
hare holds in many different religions and cultures. The part of the book that is useful for this essay, however, is
what Layard writes about dreams and how archetypes are an essential part of their content.
Leaving The Body: A Complete Guide to Astral Projection (1983) by D. Scott Rogo is a wonderful book that
does not address dreams as the subject for the entire book. However, there is some lengthy information about
dreams and how they can lead to an OBE, or out of body experience. If a lucid dream is achieved, an astral
projection can easily follow by instructing yourself to do so while in the dream state. This causes the
consciousness to shift into yet another dimension that is similar to the dream world, but is overlaid on the
physical world and doesn’t change as easily. The book also suggests that the dream body is just one of the many
bodies we use in order for our consciousness to have an experience. These experiences happen whether we realize
them or not.
Harper’s Encyclopedia Of Mystical And Paranormal Experience (1991) by Rosemary Ellen Guiley is a book
about many metaphysical subjects. I found her portion about dreams, approximately five pages, quite
informative and useful. The Encyclopedia Of Psychic Sciences (1966) by Nandor Fodor is another one of these books
about all things metaphysical. I found that the information about dreams in his book was informative and useful.
Sexual Dreams: Why We Have Them, What They Mean (1994) by Dr. Gayle Delaney, who has written other
books on dreams, definitely perked my attention, for I hadn’t seen many books addressing the sexual nature of
dreams except books influenced by Freud and Jung. I definitely had to take a peek into this book and it was quite
interesting what I found. It is a precise and intelligent look at the sexual material in dreams, explaining that
sexual dreams are not always about sex. This book is filled with vivid erotic dreams of both men and women and
the analysis of those dreams and their symbols. Dr. Gayle Delaney graduated from Princeton University. She is
also the Founding President of the Association For The Study Of Dreams. Her co‐founder is Jeremy Taylor, the
author of the next two books listed in this chapter. She lectures around the world in several languages, including
French, Italian, and Spanish. I must admit that I am very impressed by this woman, who was actually quite
young at the time this book was written, and has accomplished so much already in her physical life.
Where People Fly And Water Runs Uphill (1992) by Jeremy Taylor is a wonderful book about using dreams
to tap into the wisdom of the unconscious. Jeremy Taylor has studied dreams for over twenty years and has
worked with thousands of people from all walks of life, both individually and in groups. He is a Unitarian
Universalist minister and co‐founder of the Association For The Study of Dreams. In his book, he explores the
many levels of symbolism and archetypes. He also gives us exercises for dealing with dreams, from recall to
interpretation and to deriving the spiritual messages of dreams.
Another book by Jeremy Taylor, Dream Work: Techniques for Discovering the Creative Power in Dreams
(1983), is an older work of his, but very helpful in understanding how to use dreams creatively. This book is not
quite as full of techniques as the book listed in the previous paragraph, although it does offer techniques, even in
the area of lucid dreaming. He talks more about the origin of ideas, inventions, and revelations that dreams give,
and have already given, throughout history. He talks about how to apply that desire to receive creative ideas
from your dreams.
Interpreting Dreams A‐Z (1999) by Leon Nacson is a cute and colorful book with a layout that is ideal for
teaching children about dreams. It is very artfully done. I liked it because it had some very simplistic definitions
for symbols in dreams.
Understanding Your Child’s Dreams ( 1999) by Pam Spurr, Ph.D. is another very colorful book. It is also
geared toward children. I really liked the simplistic definitions for dream symbols as I did in the book listed
above. Sometimes simple really is better!
Dreams: God’s Forgotten Language (1968) by John A. Sanford is written from a Christian perspective. It is
religious in nature, and refers to many biblical experiences of dreams as found in traditional bible text. Sanford
was a priest and is now a rector in the Episcopalian tradition. He is not convinced that God has stopped speaking
to us in dreams, as many Christian traditions would have us believe.
Unlocking the Power Of Your Unconscious Mind (1999) by Lauren Lawrence is a wonderful book on
understanding how the brain registers experiences and uses these experiences in the inner worlds, one of which is
dreams. The most useful part of this book for the purposes of this dissertation is the list of common dream
symbols and their meanings.
Dreamworking: A Comprehensive Guide To Working With Dreams (1991) by Strephon Kaplan‐Williams is a
huge book with multitudes of exercises and a focus on self healing through dreamwork. “Comprehensive Guide”
is an understatement about this book! I don’t believe that there could be any other work that has as many tips and
precision guidance through exercises for dreams and interpreting those dreams. If this book isn’t famous, it
should be.
Dream Back Your Life (2000) by Joan Mazza is another book, not quite as large, but just as comprehensive
in its offerings of exercises and tips for understanding dreams and interpreting them. It is focused on do‐it‐
yourself healing. It also introduces lucid dreaming as a means for healing.
Yet another book focused on self healing is The Dreamworking Handbook (2001) by Helen McLean and
Abiye Cole. This one is also chock full of exercises and tips on dreaming and interpretation.
The Art Of Dreaming (1995) by Veronica Tonay, Ph.D. is full of charts and exercises for dreamwork.
Working With Dreams (1979) by Montague Ullman, M.D. and Nan Zimmerman uses many case histories
and facts to explain how dreams work. This book is full of techniques and ways to interpret dreams. It goes
through all kinds of scenarios and explains how to work with them, including working with recurring dreams or
nightmares.
Dreams: Your Magic Mirror (1968) by Elsie Sechrist contains dream interpretations that the late Edgar
Cayce did long ago. Elsie and her husband consulted the famous psychic about problems they hoped to solve.
This book uses hundreds of actual dream interpretations in order to demonstrate how to understand dreams and
derive vital information about business dealings, social dangers, sexual entanglements, religious beliefs and other
aspects of life—from the most spiritual to the most commonplace. Edgar Cayce’s son, Hugh Lynn Cayce, wrote
about this book:, “a summation of years of study and work in many new, thought‐provoking concepts. Good
common sense, humor, practical psychological insight, and spiritual purposes are blended here to challenge the
reader…”
Dreams & Dreaming (1990) by Time‐Life Books, George Constable, Editor In Chief, is a beautifully
arranged tribute to dreams and dreaming. It is full of beautiful color pictures and has many articles and prose
about dreams, from the history of dreams to speculation about the purpose of dreams. Also explored are symbols,
archetypes and events that happen in just about everyone’s dreams sooner or later. This book does not go into
techniques as much as some of the other books, but it is a very beautifully arranged synopsis of dreams and what
they might be for.
Our Dreaming Mind (1994) by Robert L. Van De Castle, Ph.D. is a huge volume with extensive information
about the history of mankind and dreaming. It contains early philosophers’ ideas and twentieth century ideas
about dreams. He explores the role that dreams have played in politics, art, religion, and psychology during all
eras. He also discusses the mechanics of dreams and what the different classifications are. Multitudes of dreams
are interpreted and analyzed in this wonderful book as well. It should be a textbook for colleges.
Women’s Bodies, Women’s Dreams (1988) by Patricia Garfield, Ph.D., an esteemed dream expert, shows in
her book how women dream differently than men and how those dreams reflect a woman’s passages in life. This
book is geared toward women of all ages and assists women with understanding dreams and adjusting to the
female body’s changes and emotional states. This book might not be as interesting to men, but it is quite useful
for women.
The Inner World Of Daydreaming (1975) by Jerome L. Singer isn’t about dreams per se, but about
daydreaming while awake. I found information in this book that is quite applicable to the night dreams we have,
and how the mind needs these dreaming times, both while awake and while asleep, in order to have health and
balance. As in nighttime dreams, daytime dreams are also therapeutic and useful to the human psychology.
Sigmund Freud (1971) by Richard Wollheim is a book about the famous psychoanalyst who came up with
some of the first theories and techniques known to western psychology. Included in this book are some of his
theories and writings about dreams and their meanings. He has a tendency to think that everything wrong with
people is some kind of sexual dysfunction, so I must admit that I am not necessarily a subscriber to everything he
says about the human psyche. However, since he is one of the first people to even think of examining dreams as
an official form of therapy, he should be included in this material, not to mention the fact that his name is nearly
synonymous with the concept of dream analysis. His points of view on these matters has been a cornerstone of
western psychology even though most of western psychology uses Jung’s methods more than Freud’s.
The Basic Writings of C.G. Jung (1959) edited by Violet Staub De Laszlo also should be included in the
reference material for this dissertation, for he is another founder of western psychology in the area of dreams and
their interpretations. Jung and Freud were colleagues of sorts until they realized their theories were going in
different directions and they split off from each other. Jung is an early psycho‐analyst who is famous for his
dissertations on the shadow self. In this book are his basic ideas about dreams.
My favorite book out of all these books is Exploring The World Of Lucid Dreaming (1990) by Stephen
LaBerge, Ph.D. & Howard Rheingold. This book is one of the most informative books on the subject, and there are
not many books about lucid dreaming per se. It is packed with material that has not been addressed in most
dream books except in a passing nature. I used this book like a Bible for techniques, inspiration and knowledge
about how lucid dreaming works. This book is solely about lucid dreaming, written by people who have done
laboratory testing and research in the field. It is the most information one will find about lucid dreaming all in
one place.
Stephen LaBerge is the founder of the Lucidity Institute, the leading organization and authority on the
subject of lucid dreaming. A workbook put out by this organization contains multitudes of charts for self‐teaching
and analysis of dreams. This workbook was invaluable to me in learning how to track my progress and get my
mental body in the right mode of attention for observance and noticing the irregular things that occur even in
daily life, which is a necessary state of attention for attaining the ability to dream lucidly. Not only did this book
with its charts and questions help me learn how to wake up in dreams, but it also helped me wake up in my
waking life, assisting me in becoming more observant of the subtle details that are around me all the time. The
name of this workbook is called A Course In Lucid Dreaming (1999) by Stephen LaBerge and it is an invaluable tool
for learning how to have lucid dreams. This book is published in house at the Lucidity Institute and comes
included when an individual buys the Nova Dreamer, a device that will be mentioned further in the Findings
part of this thesis. In short, it assists the dreamer in waking up in a dream.
The Universe Within (1982) by Morton Hunt is a book about many things within, dreams being one of
them. This book is a collection of information derived from scientists on the leading edge of the exploration of
humankind’s inner self. He portrays the work of researchers who are “investigating such mysteries of the mind as
memory and forgetting, concept formation, logical reasoning...” He reports on the scientific studies on how we
solve problems and get creative ideas. Artificial intelligence is also addressed. This book is mostly about the
mechanics of human psychology and how it works. Dreams are included in this book in only very small ways,
but most importantly, it discusses how a famous dream was the source of knowledge about the benzene
molecule, which had stumped early scientists for years, and was the key to greater scientific feats with chemicals
and such.
Creative Dream Analysis: A Guide To Self Development (1988) by Gary K. Yamamoto is a wonderful book
with the same intensity that the book Exploring The World Of Lucid Dreaming has for the how‐to type of person
who is exploring consciousness. It is not focused on lucid dreaming however. It is focused on the recall and
interpretation of dreams, which is important for understanding any kind of dream, including lucid dreams. It is
packed with exercises and tips for recalling dreams and interpreting them. It is a practical guide for using dreams
to increase mental and physical health.
All In The Mind (1981) by Ian Wilson addresses many subjects, like reincarnation, regression, stigmata,
multiple personalities, and other “little understood powers of the mind.” Dreams are not addressed in a huge
way in this book, for its subject matter is mostly about proving or disproving that reincarnation exists. However,
what it does say about the dreams of the fetus are quite interesting.
There Are No Accidents: Synchronicity And The Stories Of Our Lives (1997) by Robert H. Hopcke is not about
dreams per se, but dreams are included in his material. This book is more about synchronicity in our lives.
Dreams are one of the triggers for synchronicities take place. Dreams and synchronicity are explored together in
this book, including many other aspects of synchronicity and ways it shows up in our lives.
Conversations With God, Book III (1998) by Neale Donald Walsch is channeled material although it is not
called such. It is a dialogue between the author and God, and the author translates what God is saying in answer
to his questions. There is only one reference in this book on the nature of dreams but it was quite interesting to
read that the soul is the one who needs the break from human life, not necessarily the personality or the body.
Straight Answers On The New Age ( 1989) by Bob Larson is an opposing point of view to the value of dream
work. He is against the New Age movement and feels that everything metaphysical and “other worldly” is a
sham. I want to include Larson’s point of view in this dissertation so that opposing thoughts to the subject matter
are fairly observed.
The following books are all the same kind of book. They are dream dictionaries that list, from A to Z,
symbols and words that appear in dreams. They describe what each of these symbols and words might mean in
the context of the dream. They are quite basic in list form and don’t describe much in other areas about dreams,
like how to recall them, dream lucidly or seed a dream. Some of these books have short introductions to dreams
but do not have in depth material about dreaming techniques. They are directed toward giving the dreamer a
dictionary to use in interpreting events that have appeared in the dream. The following books are the dictionaries
I have used in my own dream interpretation endeavors: The Complete Dream Book (1966) by Edward Frank Allen,
The Dreamer’s Dictionary (1974) by Lady Stearn Robinson & Tom Corbett, Zolar’s Encyclopedia & Dictionary Of
Dreams (1984) by Zolar and Ten Thousand Dreams Interpreted (1999) by Gustavus Hindman Miller. The Encyclopedia
Of Dreams (1993) by Rosemary Ellen Guiley is a dream dictionary, but also has a good amount of introduction
material about dreams, techniques and recall. It is not just a dictionary like the others, but an instructional book
on dreams.
Beliefs About Dreams
The Greek god of sleep is named Hypnos. The Greek god of dreams, son of Hypnos, is called Oneiros.
The Greek word for dream is oneiron. The practice of dream interpretation is called oneiromancy. The dream
adventurer is called an oneironaut even in today’s English language.

Ancient Mesopotamian Beliefs
The first materials depicting dream content date back 5000 years to the population of Mesopotamia, the
center of civilization at that time, which is now the central region of modern Iraq. Agriculture flourished and
substantial cities were created with as many as 100,000 inhabitants. First there were the Sumerians, then the
Akkadians, the Babylonians and finally the Assyrians, among others.
The materials found were fragmented writings, approximately 25,000 clay tablets, nestled in King
Assurbanipal’s royal library, an ancient king of Assyriah. Some of these writings were about religious beliefs,
mythology, and dreams. Twelve of these tablets were recitations of a legendary hero‐king called Gilgamesh, who
still lives in folklore today. These early stories included the dream sequences of Gilgamesh and the adventures
that ensued as a result of these dreams. These dreams were had by a fictitious character, but there were also the
recorded dreams of King Gudea of Sumeria, who was led by dreams in the building of a temple to his favorite deity.
The Mesopotamian writings showed that this ancient population was familiar with the practice of dream‐
seeking, asking for messages through dreams or incubating dreams. They even had a goddess of dreams named
Makhir. They classified dreams in three categories: message dreams, mantic dreams and symbolic dreams.
Message dreams were usually had by rulers, or priests who advised the rulers. Messages were most often
delivered by a deity of some sort who appeared in the dream. The dreamer usually awoke immediately after the
dream was over. A ruler who sought a message dream went to the temple of the deity he wished to receive a
message from. He participated in ceremony and recitation of prayers for the dream, slept overnight, and if the
dream was not achieved, he would try again the next evening.
Mantic dreams were prophetic dreams, indications of what would come in the future. There were “omen‐
texts” with particular dream omina (omens, or signs) defined. Many cause and effect scenarios were translated from the
dream world to their physical world meanings and a list of these were kept and referred to by dream interpreters.
The third class, symbolic dreams, were complex, with interactions and personality dynamics of the
dreamer and other characters. These dreams were considered dangerous to one’s health, and they were never
recorded unless their interpretation served to ease the situation. They used these dreams as a warning to dissolve
some impending danger by taking action to avoid the outcome, even if it was just to dispose of unwanted
emotions that would cause the unwanted event.
The Mesopotamians had a practice of telling their symbolic dreams to a lump of clay, then throwing the
clay into water where it would dissolve the negative energy of the dreams it heard. A variation on this was telling
the dream to a reed and then burning it completely. Amulets and charms were created to protect one from the
negative effects of symbolic dreams. It was believed that evil spirits were always willing and ready to attack
people in their dreams in order to take away health and vitality. It was also believed that evil dreams could be
sent from an enemy and would deplete the vitality of the dreamer.
Dream interpreters were few, and they were mostly women who also served as necromancers
(communicators with the dead). Later they were called soothsayers, exorcists or diviners.

Egyptian Beliefs
The Egyptians believed that the Ba was the part of the soul which traveled during sleep and collected the
dream. They also believed that dreams were messages from the gods. They took these dreams seriously,
especially the ones that came to rulers. Thutmose IV (1400B.C.) was visited by the god Hormakhu who promised
him riches if he would remove the sand covering the Sphinx. Thutmose removed the sand and recorded the
dream on a stone column in front of the Sphinx, which is still in existence and can be seen today.
Bes was a joyful minor god who protected the household against bad dreams and his image was carved on the
headboards of beds. Serapis was the god of dreams and there were many temples dedicated to him. Professional dream
interpreters lived at these temples. A “shingle,” or advertising sign, of one of these interpreters was uncovered reading:
“I interpret dreams, having the gods’ mandate to do so; good luck; the interpreter present here is Cretan.” Incubation
of dreams was widely practiced. Through ceremony, fasting, donations and prayers, a dream could be procured.
Dream omina, or “omen‐texts,” were also found in Egypt. In Mesopotamia, these texts pertained to many types
of divination systems, dreams being only one of these. In Egypt, the “omen texts” pertained to dreams only. The
earliest collection of dream omina was created sometime between 2050‐1790 B.C. known as the Chester Beatty Papyrus
III, in honor of an Englishman who donated it to the British Museum. It is incomplete at both ends, meaning that it is
only a part of a larger document. This text lists 143 good and 91 bad dreams, with interpretations, the Egyptian word
for “good” was written in black ink and the word for “bad” was written in red. The omina, or symbols, appear at
different places in the interpretations, but no pattern is evident. Perhaps the missing part of the text would explain. The
portions of this text which are available list certain ways to protect oneself against the contents of a bad dream, one of
these being that the dreamer must rub his face with herbs, beer and myrrh in order to avoid the negative effects of the
dream. It would also remove the contagion that the dream depicts within the dreamer.
The second and only other “omen‐text” found in Egypt dates back to 200 A.D., a more recent
documentation of dream omina, and it is known as the Carlsburg Papyrus. There were originally 250 omina listed,
but 100 are damaged and unreadable. There are also section headings. Six of these sections are legible and one of
them deals with women’s dreams and issues.

Chinese Beliefs
The Chinese believed that the hun, the immaterial soul of man, not the physical soul of man, was
involved in dreams. It could separate from the body for nighttime communication with the spirits. It was believed
that the dreamer was vulnerable, and the soul could have trouble getting back into the body if the sleeper was
disturbed. Alarm clocks were not welcome in many areas of China when they were first available.
The T’ung Shu is a Chinese almanac of life that has a 4000 year history of collected knowledge. Its section on
dreams is called “Chou Kung’s Book of Auspicious and Inauspicious Dreams” dating back to 1020 B.C. Chou Kung
was a mathematician who may have also been involved in the compilation of the I Ching. Mr. Chou is a term attributed
to dreaming. If a student dozes in class, he will often be aroused with the question, “Have you been visiting Mr.
Chou?”
The T’ung Shu has seven categories of dreams. Many interpretations about events and symbols are listed
in the material. The categories are arranged by association, like “heaven and the weather,” “houses, gardens,
forests, etcetera,” “human body,” “animals and birds,” and “clothing and jewelry.” An example of the entries
under these categories would be that to dream of an orchard with trees heavy with fruit, or “houses, gardens,
forests, etcetera,” means that one will have many children and grandchildren. Another example under “human
body” is that to dream of one’s teeth falling out means the parents are in danger.
One of the most famous Chinese dreams is that of Chuang‐tzu who is associated with the development of
Taoism. He could not figure out, upon awakening, whether or not he was a man dreaming that he was a butterfly
or a butterfly dreaming he was a man. It seemed to him that both existences were real, depending on the
perspective from which one looks.
The Lie‐tseu is a Taoist text defining several classes of dreams. These classes are ordinary dreams (without
emotion), terror dreams, thought dreams (about what one was focused on thinking about that day), waking
dreams (what one said or did that day), and joy dreams. Explanations and definitions are put in the concept of Yin
and Yang energy and the constant balancing act between the two. It was believed that dreams “compensated” for what
was missing in ordinary life. (Yin represented darkness or negative, Yang represented light or positive.)
Incubation of dreams was widely practiced in temples and other sacred places. Once the dream was
achieved, there would be a divination done to determine if the dream was really sent by a god. Only if the dream
was sent by a god would it be analyzed by a dream interpreter. Even political figures, judges, government
officials and visiting dignitaries were required to spend their first night in a temple of the city’s god in order to
receive guidance and wisdom. Robert L. Van De Castle makes an interesting statement in his book Our Dreaming
Mind (1994), “It’s fascinating to speculate what would happen if our government encouraged its officials to spend
some nights in a dream temple, seeking and sharing guiding dreams.”

Tibetan Buddhist Beliefs
The Tibetan Buddhists believe that dreams are practice for realizing illusions after death. It is of utmost
importance for aspirants to cultivate the ability to dream lucidly. The Tibetans believe that through cultivating lucidity
in dreams while alive, it is easier to perceive the Bardo Worlds for the illusions that they are. The Bardo Worlds are
what happens after death for about forty days. At first, the Bardo Worlds are pleasant and seductive. However, toward
the end, they begin to disintegrate and become nightmarish. Demons appear, the happiness is gone, comfort is gone,
and the entity experiencing all this becomes frightened and wants to escape if he or she does not recognize the Bardo
Worlds as illusion. The entity runs back to incarnation in order to escape the Bardo Worlds, instead of attaining
nirvana, freedom and final oneness with the Source. According to the Tibetan Buddhists, nirvana, freedom from the re‐
incarnational wheel, can only be achieved by overcoming the dream illusion, fear, and the Bardo Worlds.
Dream demons appear from the discarnate soul’s own fears, regrets and sins. This karma is not handed
out by an external authority, but is created by the dreamer himself or herself by the self‐judging conscience within
each being. The discarnate soul flees the Bardo Worlds by frantically searching for a copulating couple, slips
between them, and re‐enters the world in order to escape the self‐created demons, believing that they are real. The possibility
of nirvana is lost, and the soul is once again incarnated into the world, driven by terror and the illusion of the Bardo Worlds.
The Tibetans believe that our nighttime dreams can be used to prepare us for our final challenge after
death when we must face the Bardo Worlds. They see lucid dreaming as the ultimate exercise in learning how to
deal with illusion. It is the highest order of importance in spiritual discipline. Sleep is like a “little death” and
dreams give us the chance to practice how we will handle the Bardo Worlds upon physical death. The experience
of lucid dreaming allows us to change our relationship with death itself.
Spiritual aspirants in the Tibetan traditions are taught to stay calm and unmoving when frightening
characters appear in dreams, and thus also to act the same in the Bardo Worlds after death. This is the most
important thing to learn. This also applies to waking life, in Tibetan Buddhist traditions.

Eastern Indian Beliefs
Prophetic dreams played an important role in Indian epics, adventures and stories. Of all the types of
dreams, prophetic dreams were the most important to Eastern Indians.
The Vedas were written between 1500 and 1000 B.C, and dreams were recorded and interpreted in this
text. Dreams had particular interpretations, much like the omina in the early Mesopotamian “omen‐texts.” For
instance, to ride an elephant is a lucky dream, while riding a donkey is an unlucky dream. Verses, recitations, rites of
purification, and different types of baths are suggested as medicine for dispelling the negative aspects of a bad dream.
It was believed, pertaining to the Atharva Veda, that the time of night the dream was had indicates
whether the dream will come true sooner or later. For instance, a dream early in sleep means that it will take a
year for it to come true, for it is further away from the conscious mind and thus further away from manifestation.
Dreams close to awakening were thought to already be present and half realized. Also, if several dreams followed
one another at close intervals, only the last dream was significant.
The Upanishads are philosophical material that deal with deliverance from the material world. They
were written between 900 and 500 B.C. In the Brhadaranyaka Upanishad, two theories about dreams are
proposed. One theory is that dreams are expressions of the dreamer’s desires, creating that which he or she does
not have in physical life. The other theory is that the soul leaves the body during sleep and wanders to different
locations where those same objects the dreamer desires actually exist. If a person was awakened too quickly from
this other location, the soul would not make it back and the person would die. It is also mentioned in this text that
there are different levels of sleep, one of them being dreamless sleep where the soul becomes one with the
Absolute. It was also believed that childhood dreams were visions of a former world. The elderly dream of the
world they are about to enter that they came from before incarnation.
A third text is also considered important in the understanding of dreams. It is called the Sushruta
Samhita, a collection of medical and surgical material compiled around 600 B.C. by a surgeon named Sushruta. It
contains many interpretations of dreams, mostly pertaining to illnesses and their resolution.

Greek Beliefs
The first references to dreams in the Greek culture are found in Homer’s epic poems, usually dreams had
by the heroes in the poems. The practice of oneiromancy (dream interpretation) was considered a sign of
civilization, and dream interpretation became a profession in Greece. Dreams were considered a passive
experience by the Greeks, so one “saw” a dream, one did not “have” a dream. The earliest Greek view of dreams
was that a real god made a visit by entering through the keyhole in the door, delivered a message at the bed, and
then exited through the same keyhole. Later views were most likely influenced by Eastern Indian beliefs that the
soul could travel without the body and have adventures or visit the gods. The earliest recorded dream book,
appearing in the fifth century B.C, was written by Antiphon, an Athenian statesman.
Dreams were considered a vehicle for getting information and relief from physical suffering when
sickness was involved. Prophetic dreams were sought through incubation at temples dedicated to Aesculapius.
Aesculapius was a talented healer who was later deified. He was known for successfully curing many illnesses
through the use and interpretation of dreams. Temples were created around his image for incubating and
interpreting dreams. The temples were decorated with beautiful, carved, weaving snakes. Today’s modern medical
symbol, intertwining and weaving snakes, was a symbol of Aesculapius. Snakes were thought to be a healing emblem.
When a person sought a healing or prophetic dream, the person had to refrain from sexual intercourse, adhere to
a special diet, and bathe in cold water. An animal sacrifice, usually a ram, would be made and the dreamer would sleep
on the animal’s skin. Aesculapius was then beseeched in prayer and the lighting of lamps. When it was time for sleep, the
priests would say encouraging words to those seeking a dream. Through the power of suggestion and long preparation,
the desired dream was often produced. Aesculapius would appear to the dreamer and indicate what type of medicine
should be taken or what action to pursue. Sometimes his daughters, Hygeia or Panacea, delivered the message.
Hippocrates was alive at the same time as Socrates. While Socrates was thought to be the father of
philosophy, Hippocrates was called the father of Greek medicine. The Hippocratic Oath that graduates of medical
school swear to is derived from the writings of Hippocrates (the general statement is: the doctor promises to keep
life going in the physical body in whatever way possible.) Hippocrates wrote a collection of material, and one of
these texts was titled On Dreams. His theory was that the soul is passive and the sense organs of the physical body
were predominant during the day, but during sleep, the soul then produces the images instead of receiving them.
He believed in prophetic dreams, diagnostic dreams, and psychologically revealing dreams. He maintained that
disharmonic dreams indicated somatic malfunctioning or psychological malfunctioning. He also believed that
some dreams were simply “a wish of the soul.” He used dreams to diagnose illness on many occasions.
Plato was most interested in the emotional implications of dreams, and believed that dreams were a
result of the “beast within” that appears only during sleep. Only by raising one’s ability to reason could one then
experience dreams that are morally acceptable and then be healed of illness.
Aristotle was Plato’s student and he belittled the idea of others that dreams were of divine origin or that dreams
could be interpreted astrologically. He argued that animals also dream, and the gods would never send dreams to such
creatures. He had three small books called On Dreams, On Sleep and Waking and On Prophecy in Sleep. He speculated that
dreams might be more closely related to the body’s internal sensations and awareness of external somatic disturbances,
which then resulted in dream imagery. He also pointed out that dreams, upon awakening, influence waking life behavior,
which then resulted in dreams seemingly being prophetic, whereas in truth, the dream only provided the idea and then
the dreamer acted on it. He believed that coincidence was the most likely factor in prophetic dreams.
Another Greek physician named Galen felt that dreams had diagnostic utility. He carried out complicated
operations based on the dream guidance he received. He claims to have saved many lives with dream diagnosis
and dream prescribed treatment. He was the first to dissect human corpses in order to map the inside of the human body.
The Romans were heavily influenced by the Greeks and practiced dream incubation widely, despite the
disdain of intellectuals. Cicero was a well known Roman critic of dreams and gave many contrasting
interpretations of dreams as examples. He viewed dream interpreters with disdain, reflecting some of the feelings
the public had toward necromancy. He concluded that dreams had such a huge variety of interpretations
attributable to them that no interpretation could possibly be arrived at that was all inclusive and correct. There
was no order or regularity in dream interpretation, so he proposed that the practice of divination by dreams be
abandoned, for it oppresses the intellect.
Artemidorus of Daldis was a contemporary of Galen. He wrote the most extensive material on dreams
called Oneirocritica, meaning “The Interpretation of Dreams.” He named himself Artemidorus of Daldis, instead
of Ephesus where he was actually born, in order to memorialize the birthplace of his mother. He also wrote
earlier works on augury (divination).
The Oneirocritica is an encyclopedia of dreams containing five books. The first three were intended for the
general public, and the last two were intended for the private use of his son, a budding dream interpreter.
Book 1 of Artemidorus’ work deals mainly with dreams about the human body. It is well organized. He
covers every human body part from head to toe, literally, and the dreams that one might have about them. He has
other categories about bodily transformation, activities, food and beverage consumption, and sexual acts. Book 2
deals with dreams about objects and events pertaining to the natural world. He covers animals, weather, fire,
bodies of water, the gods, the deceased, flying, numbers and clothing. Book 3 is a bit disjointed for it covers
everything else for the general public that might be of concern for interpreting dreams. These are varying subjects
and categories that did not fit into the first two books.
Book 4 contains suggestions to his son with regard to his role as a dream interpreter. It is a how‐to book
on techniques of interpretation. Given are the guidelines for the data needed about the dreamer, the necessity for
the interpreter to know about the culture and background of the person seeking interpretation, and how to collect
every detail about the dream that the dreamer can explain. Book 5 was a collection of 95 dreams that Artemidorus
recorded and verified the outcomes of himself. These were intended as practice sessions for his son and to
illustrate how the interpretation of the dream could vary only because the person who had the dream was a
particular type of individual.
Artemidorus consulted with many dream interpreters for years in order to compile the information he
had in his books. He went to many cities in Greece, Asia Minor, Italy, and the larger islands. He calls upon
experience and testimony as the guiding principles for his statements in his material. Robert L. Van De Castle
says in his book Our Dreaming Mind (1994), “The Oneirocritica can be considered the great‐grandfather of all
dream books and stands as an impressive monument to the dedication and diligence of its author.”
The Oneirocritica is the only surviving complete text from twenty‐seven more dream books mentioned by
Artemidorus that were in circulation in antiquity. We have only his comments about them to go by, but they
seemed to be very limited in their content compared to Oneirocritica.
In his book Our Dreaming Mind (1994), Robert L. Van De Castle quotes Robert White, who translated
Oneirocritica into English in 1975. In his preface, White says that dream study, “…continues to be a field with a
future. It is also a field with a past… In a sense, Freud, Jung, and others were not so much innovators as restorers,
since they were reassigning to dreams and dream‐readings the importance that they had held in antiquity, and
which they had lost in more recent centuries.”

Hebrew Beliefs
Many of the visions in the Bible were most likely dream visits from God. Jacob’s ladder is a perfect
example of God speaking in a dream. Jacob dreamed of a ladder between earth and heaven with angels at various
levels on the ladder, moving up or down. God was above the ladder and told Jacob that his offspring would
spread throughout the world, which was the answer to Jacob’s concerns at the time.
The Talmud is a Jewish scriptural text representing sixty‐three volumes of contributions from over two
thousand scholars from various countries. The Talmud connects the Old Testament of the Bible with
contemporary Judaism. There are 217 references to dreams in the Talmud. However, there are many different
viewpoints on dreams and it is not surprising because there were so many different contributors to this text.
There was the common belief that evil spirits, or demons, instigated dreams. Erotic dreams were thought
to be instigated by a hairy demon resembling a goat. Another sexual demon was called Lilith, who appeared to
men as a female and appeared to women as a male, when one was alone in a house. Lilith’s sisters called Naamah
and Igrath, also caused “wet” dreams.
Good spirits were believed to instigate dreams, like angels. Gabriel was known as the prince of dreams.
Angels were thought to be sent from different departments in heaven to deliver a message to the dreamer. If a
dream was uplifting, powerful and clear, it was believed to be a visit from the divine.
Soul travel was thought to be a source for dreams. Part of the soul supposedly could travel during sleep
and what it saw was the content of the dream.
The following statement is the most quoted Talmud statement about dreams, said by Rabbi Hisda: “An
uninterpreted dream is like an unread letter.” The Jewish took their dreams seriously and dream interpretation
was a common practice in Jerusalem. It is believed that there are several interpretations for a dream, as well. One
rabbi went to twenty‐four different dream interpreters; each gave a different interpretation, and the rabbi found
that each interpretation was in fact correct, depending on the angle from which one looked at the dream.

The Bible
In Dreams: God’s Forgotten Language (1968), by John A. Sanford, he mentions Numbers 12:6, where God
clearly announces that he speaks to prophets through visions and dreams. Sanford also addresses the first two
chapters of Matthew and says, “We further establish that every decision in this action‐packed section is based
upon a revelation made by God through a dream.” He continues to say, “Divine authorship of the dream is found
from first to last in the Bible! The Book of Genesis is filled with dream material, and the Bible closes with the Book
of Revelation, which is itself entirely a vision.” It is mentioned all over the Bible that God came to so‐and‐so
through a dream in the night. “Dreams were regarded as manifestations of divine intention, as one of God’s ways
of communicating with me.” Sanford spends nearly three chapters displaying how often dreams appeared in the
Bible. He says there are actually hundreds upon hundreds of portions in the Bible that mention or display the role
of dreams in the contents of this massive material, which spanned many authors and many time periods.
Dreams as messages from God remain a constant. This is his main point.
The very early church regarded dreams as continuing revelations from God. However, this changed
greatly as the church went on, laments Sanford. “In this, we differ greatly from the early Church Fathers, most of
whom declared the dream to be the Voice of God and the spiritual world. But our objections are rationalizations.
The truth is, as the Epistle to the Hebrews says, “‘It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.’ We much
prefer the security of our rationality to the awesome experience of dealing with a living voice.” Sanford continues by
saying that we have decided man may only find God through rational thinking, “everywhere except in his own soul,
which is in fact the fountainhead of religious experience. The result is that we Christians are afraid today of that very
soul from which our heritage springs; we want creeds, not religious experiences, and dogma, not inspiration.”
Sanford further mentions his disappointment in the fact that, “It is sometimes supposed today that to
have a dream is permissible enough, but to have a vision is a sign of insanity or mental derangement of some
kind.” Sometimes I wonder how sane some of the authors of the Bible really were, and if they were having
visions of grandeur, if they really had a vision, or if their visions were a product of some sort of religious
psychosis. Sanford answers this question by saying, “It is not the vision which is a sign of mental derangement,
but the point of view from which the ego regards the vision. In insanity the vision is accepted as literal, external
reality… In the normal ego, however, the vision is recognized for its subjective internal nature.”

Eastern (Greek) Christian Beliefs
For a time, early Greek Christians continued to observe the Greek rituals of dream incubation, but carried
out these nighttime vigils at Christian shrines rather than at the feet of Aesculapius or other Greek gods or
goddesses. James Matlock tells us in his book Harper’s Encyclopedia Of Mystical And Paranormal Experience (1991),
“Early Christianity reinforced the belief in the divinatory power of dreams, especially the significance of vivid
and repetitive dreams.”
Many pagans were converted to Christianity by way of dreams, including Constantine himself, who later
made Christianity the prominent religion in Rome, making Constantinople the central city for the Christian
church. As mentioned in the introduction, he was visited by God in a dream and was told that he would be led to
victory by using the symbol of the cross in battle, and victorious he was.
On one hand, God could be experienced in dreams, and on the other, irrational emotional responses to
experiences could be found in dreams. Most dreams were not of a divine cause in Christian beliefs, however, and
reflect the influences Plato had with his statements about dreams being the manifestation of baser desires, or
animal instincts. It was pointed out that there were no consequences for these wild fancies in dreams, and that no
harm is really done by experiencing dreams that are resulting from the baser human instincts, for mankind is
faulty to begin with. Christians believed they were forgiven for the faults inherent in mankind.
Synesius, a prominent Christian authority, did not belittle the idea of dream interpretation, for he felt that
dreams were a rich resource of information and ideas. He did, however, warn against using dream books for
interpreting dreams, for each person has such a unique imagination that one book could not contain the only
interpretations for what those symbols could mean to an individual. He was the first to suggest that people keep
dream journals and learn about their own symbology and inner language of dreams. Synesius was a leader in the early
Christian church, but his book on dreams was conspicuously omitted from a thirty‐eight volume collection called A
Select Library of the Nicene and Post‐Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church. His views on dreams were not pursued by
others in the Christian church as time wore on. A translation of his work into English did not exist until 1930.

Western Christian Beliefs & The Problems In Bible Translation
Tertullian, a lawyer from Carthage who later became a priest in Rome, wrote eight chapters in his major
work called A Treatise On The Soul. These chapters were devoted to his study of dreams, and his views were
prevalent in Christianity for over a thousand years until the views of Thomas Aquinas dominated Christian
thinking.
Tertullian thought the idea that the soul leaves the body during sleep was ridiculous and claimed that
dreaming simply proved that the soul was always active and immortal. He believed there were four sources for
dreams. One was demons, another was God, a third source was generated by the soul, and the fourth source was a
state of ecstasy. He did not believe that dreams were the result of somatic disturbances, like sounds or smells, from the
external world.
Saint Jerome was a wealthy man who was well‐read in Greek and Latin texts. He loved both the Bible and
the pagan texts and tried to find a way to reason the two opposing works. In a dream in which he was clearly
converted to Christianity, he was encouraged quite drastically to discard his books by writers of pagan faiths and
to only read the Bible. He did so and later became a great Bible scholar and interpreter. He was hired by the Pope
in 382 A.D. to translate the Bible into Latin, the language of the Roman Empire at that time. His translation served
as the authority on Biblical scripture until the 20th century.
Unfortunately, his translation had a negative effect on how dreams were viewed by western Christians
for quite a long time, even to the present day. He mistranslated the Hebrew word for witchcraft as the word for
“observing dreams.” Seven times he translated the word correctly in the Old Testament, banning the practice of
witchcraft, but three times he mistranslated it to condemn dreams, rather than witchcraft. Thus, the scripture instructed
that one should not observe dreams.
Since he translated it correctly seven times, it is speculated that he might have been forced to interpret it
differently by order of church officials. He also may have had personal reasons for his change in translation. He
did mention that he found it absurd to lie on sacrificed animal skins in order to incubate a dream. He also may
have made the translation against dreams because he was at one point accused of heresy for not keeping the oath
he made in his conversion dream to never engage in or read about pagan practices anymore.
The end result is that Saint Jerome’s mistranslations changed the course of Western Christian views
toward dreams and their content. The Eastern Christian views were still favorable toward dreams, for they were
using the Greek translation of the Bible, which had not been altered.
Macrobius was a contemporary of Jerome and he was known for his book Commentary On The Dream Of
Scipio. He reviewed the popular dream theories and created classification systems for dreams, which were similar
to Artemidorus’ work, but he included two categories that Artemidorus did not: nightmares and another
category for apparitions that appear right upon awakening. He generated much fear about this latter category.
The Commentary became an influential book in medieval Europe. His work inspired paranoia about the
connection between evil spirits and dreams.
Saint Thomas Aquinas shifted the views on dreams from Plato’s influence to Aristotle’s influence. He
believed that sense experience of the physical body and rational thought were the only things that could be
trusted. He believed that dreams were not sources of divine inspiration. They were only the result of somatic
disturbances in physical, emotional or mental facilities. He refers to Deuteronomy 18:10, “Let there not be found
among you him who observes dreams,” which was a direct mistranslation by Saint Jerome. Aquinas diminished
the value of dreams. However, ironically, he did have first hand experiences of finding new skills in dictation after
having a dream where the apostles Peter and Paul instructed him on how to deliver a difficult theological passage.

The Beliefs Of The Dark Ages
Three people were most influential in beliefs about dreams in the Dark Ages. Jerome had mistranslated
and told Christians to refrain from observing dreams; Macrobius’ Commentary warned of the incubus and
succubus (two sexual predator demons attracted to dreams); and Aquinas warned about the connection between
demons and dreams. Demons became a prominent concern for Western Christianity.
Later, Gaspar Peucer wrote theories that demons were actually the sources of most dreams, maybe even
all dreams, including the joyful dreams. He believed that joyful dreams were the result of a trickster demon. He
warned that the very investigation of dreams was dangerous and that to do so was to invite disaster. He made it
clear that dreams of true divine content were only sent to the holy leaders of the church, and that if a common
person were to have such a dream, it is a contrivance from a particularly tricky demon who could pose as God or
a messenger of God.
These concerns about demonic influences in dreams are reiterated by many more influential leaders in
the church as time went on, and it was widely believed that demons were the instigators of dreams. It was
considered a sin to believe in a dream, or even investigate a dream. Dreams were not allowed to be discussed,
under penalty of severe torture or death. Many prayed for the lack of ability to recall dreams so that it would be
easier to be free of demonic influence. Dreams were actively suppressed in order to escape the devil, especially
“wet” dreams, which were thought to be especially demonic in nature.
Dreams were banished, and many people were tortured and killed simply for having a dream. This also
had a terrible effect on the collective creativity and culture of the population. There was a very noticeable lack of
creativity in the arts, literature and other areas of a creative society during that time in history. Robert L. Van De
Castle says in his book Our Dreaming Mind (1994). “Our stature as human beings seems to shrivel whenever
dreams are banished, or whenever an effort is made to restrict the range within which they operate. We need
dreams to enlarge our individual and collective aspirations… The lesson to be learned from these tragic dream‐
dismissing periods of history seems inescapable. When we fail to honor that which is illuminated in our dreams…we
will spend more of our daylight hours dwelling in the dark cells of self‐imposed solitary confinement.”
The mistrust of dreams has remained in most Western Christian denominations, especially the Catholic
religion. Fortunately, this banishment of dreams was not enforced in recent centuries, beginning with the 1700s;
but it has not been until now that dreams are fully liberated from centuries of condemnation by the Inquisition,
religious leaders of Christianity, and scholars from ancient times. Dreams are now free to be examined by anyone
who wishes to examine them. The potential of dreams can now be re‐visited.

Freud & Jung On Dreams
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud’s assessment of dreams was a revolution in understanding the psyche of the human
mind. He made the “unconscious” the foundation of his psychoanalytic theories, and sexuality was a huge
component in his analysis of the unconscious. He was born in 1856 and had a career in the treatment of nervous
disorders. He also studied hypnosis. He is well known for his idea that sexual frustration is at the root of all
nervous disorders. He alienated himself from his contemporaries in many instances because he took the idea to
such an extreme level. His opponents called him intolerant, for he did not deviate from his ideas about
psychotherapy, and his followers considered him passionate for the truth.
Freud was met with much criticism. His relationship with Carl Jung and several other contemporaries
dissolved over differences in ideas about psychotherapy. He was quite unbending in his convictions. However, if
you ask anyone on the street who discovered the unconscious, dreams or using dreams to understand oneself,
almost everyone would reply that Freud was the father of these concepts. Of course this is not historically
accurate, for the word unconscious appeared in the English language as early as 1751 and many other writers had
speculated on such things as dreams long before Freud was alive. Freud was a bit arrogant and helped create this
image for himself by not acknowledging previous work by others who came before him or the work of his
colleagues. He claimed to be the first to truly examine dreams, discounting previous efforts by others, and this
has echoed throughout time until the present day, even though it is not true.
Freud believed dreams were of the utmost importance in understanding the nature of a patient’s mental
illness. He was a supporter of Plato’s idea in 400 B.C. that our beast nature appeared in dreams, uncontrolled and
easily expressed in dreams. His first book, The Interpretation of Dreams, was published in 1899, although the date
was depicted as 1900 by the publisher so his views did not appear to be emerging from an antiquated time
period, but instead depicting the new ideas of the 1900s.
Freud divided dreams into two levels. The first level was the manifest content, or that which one could
consciously recall. Freud thought this material was not important and had no meaning or significance. The second
level was the latent content, or that which remains unconscious, like the true reasons for the dream that are not known
to the conscious mind. These were the unconscious wishes and fantasies which have not been lived out in the physical
life. Freud believed that the manifest content was a cleaned up version of the latent content, which was raw and crude.
Freud introduced the idea of the censor, a sentinel in oneself that prevents primal and crude material from getting
into the conscious mind, and also puts unacceptable conscious material into the unconscious. This is called repression.
During sleep, the censor is not quite as alert as usual, so through dreams it is possible for the language of the latent
content of the unconscious to be translated into cleaned up language of manifest content in the conscious. This
transformation is called dream work. Freud also concluded that latent content is always more extensive than the manifest
content, therefore a process called condensation takes place. When something in the dream that is unimportant is
exaggerated, this is called displacement. Secondary revision is the term Freud gives to the process of the mind organizing the
dream into an intelligible story, or sequence of events. This creates the dream façade. He believed that secondary revision did
not always happen in every dream, and that is why some dreams ended up disjointed and unintelligible. He believed that
this process of secondary revision happens before the manifest content of the dream appears.
Freud first discussed symbolism in dreams in his fourth edition of The Interpretation of Dreams. Others in the
same field were far more knowledgeable than Freud on the topic of dream symbols, but he caught up to them later.
He believed that a symbol in a dream was a substitute for something else which came from the unconscious.
Freud’s methods of dream interpretation consisted of two main techniques. First was the symbolic
interpretation of the dream. The other was the decoding method in which dream symbols were signs that
coincided with a fixed key, like a dream dictionary. He worked backwards from the manifest content to the latent
content by asking the patient what the pieces of the dream meant to him or her by association, finding the
symbology, and eventually finding the latent content. Freud would put before the dreamer a few different
possibilities for the symbol, and the dreamer would pick one that he or she most resonated with.
Freud often had his patients report the same dream twice in order to find the differences or changes in
the manifest content. In this way he could find the weak spots in the dream’s disguise and also find the strongest
points that did not change in the first report. He wanted all the information on manifest content if more than one
dream were reported in one night, too. He believed they were complimentary and he could find similarities
between them in order to decipher what the unconscious messages were.
Freud did not believe that dreams function in a problem‐solving capacity. He did believe, however, that
by examining dreams, repressed emotional problems could be addressed. He believed that dreams were also like
safety valves to release pent‐up psychological tensions, and thus wish fulfillment dreams were the result.
Freud believed that there were four possible origins for wish fulfillment dreams: 1) consciously
remembered wishes that were aroused during the day but left unfulfilled, 2) wishes that arose during the day but,
because of their unacceptability, were repressed into the unconscious, 3) wishes arising during the night
stimulated by such bodily needs as hunger or urination, and 4) wishes originating in the unconscious that are
incapable of ever passing beyond the censorship into conscious awareness. These were often called infantile
dreams, or they represented childlike wish fulfillment for things one cannot have. Freud also coined the phrase
counter‐wish fulfillment dreams. These are the dreams where frustration is experienced because the wish is not
realized. He believed these dreams revealed a masochistic nature in the patient. He later believed that these
actually were truly wish fulfillment dreams, but the inner censor had failed to do the translation correctly.
Freud was perplexed by telepathic dreams and other sorts of very clear dreams where mental faculties
were present. He felt that these dreams were not true dreams and that they were dream fantasies, which are not
necessarily disguising latent unconscious wishes. These dreams were afterthoughts of the conscious mind and
weren’t really dreams at all. Any dream that was reasonable was not useful for analysis in Freud’s view. He
believed that true dreams were devoid of reasoning or mental reflecting.
Freud never personally had a telepathic dream, but he regularly encountered people who did. He
thought perhaps telepathic dreams were an exception to the way dreams were normally constructed and
translated. He believed that sleep provides favorable conditions for telepathy, and that is what it truly is, not
dreams. He believed these were separate functions. He believed that the occult was a viable field of study, but
refrained from engaging in psychic study because he did not want to discredit the field of psychoanalysis. The
occult always fascinated him, however, and he wished he could conduct experiments in the field. He was fascinated
by the psychic abilities displayed in some subjects, and thought that it was an entirely different field of study. He
made a comment in a letter to a colleague that if he did not have such an extensive career in a scientific field, he
would have gladly pursued the field of psychic research. It would be interesting to see what Freud would have done
in that field.
Freud is viewed with mixed feelings in the field of psychoanalysis. It is not really known whether he was
truly a genius or a self‐aggrandizing user of other people’s ideas. He did have a talent for convincing people that
he was the first to uncover the secrets of dreams and how they work. Perhaps he is somewhere in between these
two extremes. What he did do for the study of dreams was bring professionalism and scientific focus to the field.
He significantly advanced the study of dreams, even though some would say that he created unfavorable
connections between dreams, neurosis, and sexuality. He often insisted that even an innocent dream disguised
the Oedipus complex in the dreamer. (Oedipus was the character in mythology who slept with his own mother.)
Freud assumed that all dreams were disguising sexual content unless it could be proved otherwise; so in a way,
he gave dreams a bad reputation. Only late in his work did he seem to open up to other possibilities for the
motivations in dreams; but by then, most of his published work attributed dreams to sexual wish fulfillment.

Carl Jung
Carl Gustav Jung was born in 1875 in Switzerland. He was somewhat younger than Freud, but also
became one of the most well known names in the field of psychoanalysis and the study of dreams. Freud and
Jung are the two most important and well‐known forefathers of these fields, and at one point were friends. Their
friendship lasted during the years of 1907 to 1913, and was terminated in anger by Jung in 1913. Jung found
Freud to be unbending in his ideas, and not open to Jung’s or anyone else’s ideas about dreams, and therefore
found a conflict that could not be resolved. This may have had to do with Freud’s status as being older than Jung,
and seeing Jung as a student or patient rather than an equal. This was frustrating for Jung, and he later moved in
a different direction with dream analysis than Freud.
Jung’s autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, was begun through dictation to a secretary at the age
of 82. He reflected on forty‐two of his dreams in this book, but he had written extensively throughout his life. His
published works fill eighteen volumes in the Bollingen Series of Princeton University Press. Two of his books
remain unpublished, the Black Book and the Red Book. Jung was also an avid dream journal keeper. He wrote
down and drew his dreams every morning. He used himself as his most studied subject. He was very creative in
this process and some thought he even had a “creative illness.”
According to James Matlock in his book Harper’s Encyclopedia Of Mystical And Paranormal Experience (1991)
Jung considered dreams to be, “compensatory, to provide information about the self, achieve psychic equilibrium, and
offer guidance.” He also believed that, “dreams had a deeper meaning, that they were involved in bringing spiritual
direction to a person in a process of unfoldment or evolutionary growth,” according to Gary K. Yamamoto in his book
Creative Dream Analysis (1988). Jung also coined the phrase collective unconscious. Yamamoto goes on to say, “Carl
Jung thought that people were tied together through a common and vast intelligence called the ‘collective
unconscious’… which is the storehouse of the total experience and knowledge of all mankind. Though this unlimited
source of information seems to lie just beyond our ability to recognize and use it, it is actually providing constant
guidance. Messages from the universal intelligence flow in a continuous stream, guiding each of us from moment to
moment. Some people call this their conscience or say that they hear a ‘small voice’ inside their mind.”
Jung introduced the idea of archetypes as a psychic structure for the collective unconscious of humanity
that was reflected in every individual. The term archetype was coined by Saint Augustine, meaning a genetic
encoding or impression in the brain tissue. Archetypes are forms that have mass associations and certain
emotions attached to them. In volume 18 of his Collected Works, Jung wrote: “The archetype is… an inherited
tendency of the human mind to form representations of mythological motifs—representations that vary a great
deal without losing their basic pattern.” He believed that the unconscious of any given individual contains
inherited information that predated the individual’s existence and was a remnant of the species’ past. There is
evidence that our bodies contain remnants of our ancient past, for instance, a fetus has gills in early stages of
pregnancy, so Jung argued that the mind could also contain remnants of our ancient past, just as our bodies do.
He encountered many references to ancient belief systems that the patient could not have known about in
sessions.
Jung’s theory of personality development consisted of the idea that one is always moving toward
maturity and completion and that life is a series of transformations toward that goal. Crisis leads to maturation as
problems are overcome and assimilated. Archetypes appear in these crises, especially in dreams. The hero
archetype could be a triumph over a problem if it appears in a dream. The shadow archetype is associated with
the dark side of the personality, the primitive animal instincts within mankind. As children, we learn to ignore
these impulses, but Jung believes that they are often the culprit at the root of negative situations. Guilt is present
when these feelings arise, for the child has been taught to self‐regulate these urges.
This shadow side shows up in dreams unrepressed and unchecked, and much can be learned from
examination of these dreams. Jung believed that acceptance of these disowned and ignored layers of our
personality is the beginning of the move toward maturation and self‐understanding. The shadow usually shows
up as a negative or unsavory character in the dream and could appear as the drug addict, pervert, criminal, Nazi,
deformed or sinister presence that might remain unseen in the darkness.
Jung describes the archetypes of the soul as the animus and the anima. The animus is the masculine side of
a woman’s personality and the anima is the feminine side of a man’s personality. He believed that by getting in
touch with the animus or anima within oneself, relationships could be less volatile and difficult. When we
encounter strong sexual opposites in a dream, we are receiving information about our animus or anima. Fear of
our own embodiment of the opposite sex is usually at the root of these types of dream. As these animus and
anima figures transform in dreams, so do our personalities in waking life. An archetype acts like a magnet,
attracting relevant experiences. After enough of these experiences have clustered around an archetype, it breaks
through into consciousness. After this it becomes more developed and refined.
Many Jungians capitalize the word Self because Jung believed that Self is the final product of life. This is
a larger transpersonal self—God. When one is in touch with the archetype of Self, it would feel as if some sort of
divine force was present, a larger force directing everything, and some greater plan being carried out. As the
elements of the personality are discovered and worked with to gain maturation, the transcendent function is in
operation. This is the capacity to bring opposites together, thus resulting in the actualizing of the archetype Self.
Jung was an artist. He drew what he saw in his dreams, mandalas particularly. These images are associated
with the Self archetype. A mandala is a symmetrical, balanced, and centered image, often circular. Mandala is a
Sanskrit word for magic circle. Mandalas were a theme in Jung’s book Psychology and Alchemy (Collected Works,
Volume 12). He started receiving his own mandalas after working with the young man who is the main subject of
this material. The young man received hundreds of mandalas in dreams, each one successively more complicated
than the previous one. Jung was inspired by this so mandalas appeared in his dreams as well. The concept of
“fourness” was a re‐occurring theme for Jung, not only in himself but also in others. He knew that four was a sacred
number in some cultures. It appeared often in his mandalas. Jung believed that dreams were a rich source of
creative energy.
Jung believed that the psyche is in a compensation and balancing process all the time, just like our
physical bodies. Our physical bodies perspire or shiver, depending on what balance needs to be done in
temperature adjustment. Our psyche does the same. The goal of life is that all the components of the personality
must become balanced.
Jung said that dreams are dramas on one’s interior stage. These have a series of steps. First is the opening
scene introducing the setting, characters, and initial situation of the main character. Second is the development of
the plot, third is the emergence of a major conflict, and fourth is the response to the conflict by the main character
or another character. Some dreams are too short or fragmented to be classified in these terms. These are still
attempts at problem solving in the personal structure. The ending of the dream shows the possibilities for the
dreamer in waking life to solve similar problems.
Jung was puzzled by paranormal dreams. He could not classify them the way normal dreams could be, but the
mystery did lead him to expound on his principle of synchronicity. This concept is that events occur together in time but are
not linked through cause and effect connections. For instance, a clock might stop at the moment of its owner’s death, but
these are purely synchronistic and unrelated events. Jung concluded that perhaps there is some sort of order in the universe,
where a manifestation appears psychically while the related manifestation in physical reality happens at the same time.
Jung did not try to establish a particular school of thought or acquire disciples, so his concepts were not
well known outside of his home country, Switzerland. While Freud created an international society around his
work, Jung remained obscure in public view. He is also not as good a writer as Freud, so his texts did not gather
the kind of attention Freud’s did. Jung is labeled a mystic by some intellectuals, and at the same time, his
viewpoint of the personality is more optimistic and positive than Freud’s.
Jung differed from Freud in many ways, particularly in the area of seeing dreams as something that actually
happened to the dreamer rather than wish fulfillment as Freud endorses. Freud did not encourage his patients to keep
dream journals, and Jung did. Freud did not believe the dreaming mind has reasoning faculties. Jung did, and in fact, he
believed that the dreaming mind contained abilities that the conscious mind would never have. Freud looked at dreams
as infantile fantasies, while Jung looked at them as arenas for working out problems as life progressed for the individual.
Most dream analysts and psychology practitioners use the Jungian methods for analyzing dreams rather
than the Freudian methods. In a way, Jung did surpass his predecessor and colleague because his methods have
lasted over time while Freud’s deductions and methods have not.

Archetypes
Archetypes, some of which are described above in the section about Carl Jung, are symbols used in
almost every dream in some way or another. In this section, let’s look at what these particular archetypes are. The
following excerpt is from the book Dream Work (1983) by Jeremy Taylor: “Just as there are basic patterns, or
archetypes, of biological form, so there are also basic structural patterns to the human psyche. Each person is an
absolutely unique physical specimen, while at the same time embodying the same basic physical structure shared
by all human beings. So it is with the psyche. Each one of us embodies the archetypes of the objective psyche, or
ʺcollective unconscious,ʺ in our unique and personal fashion, while still repeating the same basic pattern shared
by all human beings.
“Understanding the archetypes and how they inter‐relate is a complex and subtle task without
apparent end. The archetypes are reflected both as personal, interior categories of experience, and as
collective patterns of history and culture. Very briefly, some of the major archetypes often encountered at the
beginning of dream work are:
Persona ‐ the part that shows, the ʺmaskʺ ‐ analogous to the skin ‐ made up of our choices about how we
wish to be perceived, individually and collectively.
Shadow ‐ the part that is denied and repressed, the dark, scary, ʺimmoral,ʺ unpredictable, and unconscious/
unknown part of ourselves.
Light & Darkness ‐ archetypes of consciousness and unconsciousness‐the quality of light in dreams is most
often a metaphor of the extent to which the main theme of the dream either is or is not already
known and acknowledged in waking life.
Animus & Anima ‐ the man inside a woman, and the woman inside a man respectively, figures representing
our deepest intuitions and feelings about the opposite sex.
Trickster ‐ a figure representing human consciousness itself‐simultaneously knowing and foolish,
overblown, yet the source of all the gifts of culture.
Divine Child ‐ a figure representing new consciousness and self‐awareness‐born amidst trouble, yet most
often surviving with its miraculous powers and the aid of Divine sources.
Animals ‐ figures often representing instincts and natural drives‐elements of life that are vital but not yet
consciously differentiated, creatures and servants of Divine sources.
Great Mother ‐ Mother Nature, Mother Earth, cyclic time, the divine perceived in feminine form, the
feminine principle[s]‐multiplying, dividing, nurturing, bringing forth all life, and simultaneously
condemning all to inevitable death.
All‐Father ‐ the thunderer, the law giver, linear time, the divine perceived in masculine form, the masculine
principle[s]‐abstracting, constructing, judging, and calculating with objectifying will.
Spirit Bird ‐ a figure representing and embodying communication with the divine‐unites the realm of the sky
with the plane of the earth.
Wise Old People ‐ the figures representing the oldest and wisest and most loving possibilities of our being‐
figures sometimes referred to as ʺmana‐personalities.ʺ
Willing Sacrifice ‐ a figure representing and embodying the increasing consciousness of interior and exterior
oneness‐the One dividing itself into the Many, and the many in the act of dying to rejoin the One.
Mandala ‐ an image uniting the circle and the angular figure exhibiting radial symmetry and a defined
centered image of harmony, beauty, balance, order, often used as a visual aid in meditation/worship.
Spiral ‐ image of evolution‐the spontaneous archetype of cyclic, repeating rhythmic processes occurring amidst the
forward flow of time‐visible at all scales and levels from the shape of galaxies to the DNA helix.
Perilous Journey ‐ image of life and being alive, often a sea journey, a descent into the earth, or into a
labyrinth, the journey to the land of the dead, the search for treasure, wisdom, immortality.
Death & Rebirth ‐ in the realm of dream and myth, as in physics, energy cannot be destroyed, only transformed. Each
dream death is a liberation of psychic energy from specific form and is linked inevitably with a new birth.”
(end of excerpt, Dream Work (1983) by Jeremy Taylor)

Symbols and archetypes have lived throughout time in every culture, in every race, and in every individual
that has ever walked the Earth. This is why legends across cultures are so similar. There must be something more to
symbols than physical experience. Perhaps symbols and archetypes are something instilled into the human experience
from the spirit worlds long before humans ever set foot on the Earth. Gary K. Yamamoto, in his book Creative Dream
Analysis (1988), says, “Symbolic language allows stories to be passed on with minimal distortion. Symbols are usually
very concrete. They are not dynamic as are abstract thoughts or philosophies. Their meanings change little with time.”
John Layard has a lot to say about archetypes in dreams in his book The Lady Of The Hare (1988). This
book follows a patient through her exploration of re‐occurring dreams about hares. She had no conscious
knowledge about the mythological nature of the hare, but her dreams reflected all the associations with the hare
that were common in the archetype of the hare. The four associations are 1) its sacrificial nature, 2) that it is a
willing sacrifice, 3) its bright eyes, and 4) the whiteness so often associated with the hare. Layard attests to the
possibility that archetypes live in our collective unconscious, and this is why someone like his patient, with no
conscious knowledge of their attributes, can have dreams that are perfectly in conjunction with common traits of
any given archetype. This is unconscious knowledge that is available to us all in the collective unconscious.
In The Encyclopedia Of Psychic Science (1966) by Nandor Fodor, the author quotes Letourneau, who wrote
Bulletins et Memoires do la Societe d’Anthropologie de Paris: “Certain events, external or psychic, which have made a
deep impression on a person, may be so deeply engraved upon his brain as to result in a molecular orientation, so
lasting that it may be transmitted to some of his descendants in the same way as character, aptitudes, mental
maladies, etc. It is then no longer a question of infantile reminiscences, but of ancestral recollections, capable of
being revived. From that will proceed, not only the fortuitous recognition of places which a person has never seen,
but moreover a whole category of peculiar dreams, admirably coordinated, in which we witness as in a panorama,
adventures which cannot be remembrances, because they have not the least connection with our individual life.”
Jeremy Taylor, in Where People Fly And Water Runs Uphill (1992), quotes Greek therapist Evangelos Christou:
“It is not so much that the archetypes are in us. The more important truth is that it is we who are surrounded by and
immersed in the archetypes.” Taylor goes on to say that the archetypes are capable of evolution, just like humans. The
personal work of the individual influences the development of archetypal forms and goes into the collective
unconscious mind. “This may sound very theoretical, but I believe that ‘ordinary people’ do this psycho‐spiritual work
of evolution on themselves and the archetypes every day… Every person who succeeds in breaking the ‘trance’ of
conventional attitudes…manages to break the chain so that these attitudes and self‐limitations are not passed on to the
next generation. In this way, the individual dreamer contributes in a most profound and real way to the liberation of all
people, and the planet as a whole… Our individual triumphs and defeats…feed back into the realm of the archetypes, in
the same way that the archetypal energies embodied in our dreams and myths influence our waking lives.”
The fact that we dream in symbols and pictures is based on the fact that this is the universal language of all beings.
This was the first “language.” Even in our conscious mind we think in symbols and pictures. This is the only language that is
common among all people, no matter what language they speak or write. In Elsie Sechrist’s book Dreams: Your Magic Mirror
(1968), it is stated, “We dream in symbols because we tend to think in symbols or pictures at the conscious level. If someone
mentions your wife or husband, you immediately picture a human face rather than the word wife or husband. Man first
learned to write by using pictorial images… Perhaps the most fundamental aspect of symbology is that it is universal
language, teaching and preserving permanent basic truths. What shorthand is to words, symbology is to ideas.”
Archetypes are in every one of our stories and these stories abound in every culture. Many movies and
TV shows depict the most famous of all the archetypes, the hero on an adventurous journey of triumphing over
evil. The book The Art Of Daydreaming (1995), by Veronica Tonay, looks at how archetypes play a crucial part in
the stories that influence young people in the media arena of entertainment. “The fact that the huge world interest
in television, movie or popular music personalities has become a mammoth industry in itself attests to the great
need all of us have for a constellation of ego ideals or alter egos, whose adventures we can follow and whose fates
we can share vicariously. For relatively young persons such fantasies and identifications form a critical part in the
molding of their personalities and of the direction of their goals, as well as their aesthetic tastes.”

The Shadow Self
Our greatest adversary in dreams is our own fear. The shadow part of the self is the part that most of us
contend with in dreams. The shadow is represented by the archetypes that are less desirable than the others. It is
most recognizable as figures who are threatening or repulsive in other ways. In waking life, our shadow is
recognized as people we dislike or fear. If these shadow forms remain unrealized as the projections that they are,
we will never fully mature. Elsie Sechrist says in her book Dreams: Your Magic Mirror (1968), “Broadly speaking,
you usually meet yourself in your dreams in a myriad of artful disguises. People of authority such as policemen,
ministers, parents, and judges usually represent the higher self, the conscience, and its dictates. Immoral, lawless
persons, and groups from the lower strata of society relate to the lower or undisciplined self.” This is further
supported by Jeremy Taylor’s statement in his book Where People Fly And Water Runs Uphill (1992), “…Everything
and everyone in the dream is a living representation of some aspect of the dreamer’s total being and psyche…
The life in all dreams, and in waking experience too, for that matter, is a blending of the individual’s own
personal vital energies with the larger life of the archetypes and the cosmos itself.”
The shadow is indicative of the parts of ourselves that must grow and become integrated into our whole
being. These are the parts of us that have not fully developed, or the parts with which we have not made peace.
Jeremy Taylor says in his book Dream Work (1983), “The shadow is that very thing that has been lacking and is the
most required for further healthy development. The ‘dark’ figure of the Shadow always bears the great gift. In
order to receive the great gift, the fear and repugnance first awakened by the ‘dark’ aspect of the Shadow must be
overcome… By the same token, when we flee from death in dreams…we are often fleeing from inner promptings
that it is time once again to grow and change.”
Stephen LaBerge and Howard Rheingold say in their book Exploring the World Of Lucid Dreaming (1990) that
lucid dreaming lends itself well to dealing with the shadow figures of the self. The authors have some useful
suggestions on how to handle the shadow figures, as well. “If you become fully lucid in a nightmare, you will
realize that the nightmare can’t really hurt you, and you don’t need to ‘escape’ it by awakening. You will remember
that you are already safe in bed…attacking unfriendly characters may not be the most productive way to handle
them… hostile dream figures may represent aspects of our own personalities that we wish to disown. If we try to
crush the symbolic appearances of these characteristics in dreams, we may be symbolically rejecting and attempting
to destroy parts of ourselves… a conciliatory approach is most likely to result in a positive experience for the
dreamer… would generally cause them to look and act in a more friendly manner.” LaBerge and Rheingold go on to
suggest, “Lucid dreamers can deliberately identify with, accept, and thereby symbolically integrate parts of their
personalities they had previously rejected, or disowned… Don’t slay your dream dragons, make friends with
them… the true way to healing is to seek out the ‘barking dogs of the unconscious’ and reconcile with them.”
Jeremy Taylor has much to say about the uses of lucid dreaming for confronting shadow characters in his
book Where People Fly And Water Runs Uphill (1992). “…The lucidly ‘awakened’ dreamer transcends the fear and
confusion in the dream…One of the best gifts is to ask the seemingly menacing and hostile figures or elements in
the dream what they are up to… If a dreamer can gather his or her wits together sufficiently in the lucid state to
ask a question… [he/she] will always be rewarded with an answer. Most will be an answer of profound
importance to the dreamer’s waking life.”

Scientific Facts & Research On Dreams
Laboratory Testing
In laboratory testing, mentioned in almost every book about dreams, electrodes and/or sensors are placed
on the face and skull to detect brain activity and eye movements during sleep. These electrodes can tell the
experimenter what level of sleep the subject is in. This is how this information about brainwaves and REMs has
been found. However, it was not until fairly recently, the past forty years, that any data was retrieved from these
machines, for they had not been invented yet. There have been multitudes of studies around dreams and sleep
activity in the centuries that preceded the possibility to measure actual brain waves. The experiments and
observations are far too numerous to list here in this material, but I will speak of some here.
Apparently, the first systematic effort to investigate the effect of external stimulus manipulation in
dreams was carried out in 1831 by C. Girou de Buzareingues. He was a physician and a report of his work
appeared in the first volume of The Lancet, a British medical journal. He played with different physical stimuli in
order to induce dream events. In his first experiment, he left the back part of his head uncovered during sleep. In
his dream, this showed up as an outdoor religious ceremony where members of that faith were allowed to have
their heads uncovered while worshiping, which was uncommon at that time. In another dream, he left his knees
uncovered and dreamed that he was in a stagecoach traveling at night, and everyone at that time knew that the
knees were the first to get cold in night‐time stagecoach travel. This was the first proof that external physical
stimulus can induce dream events that are related in some way to the external world.
J. Borner published a book in 1855 describing how he tried to induce nightmares with external stimulus.
When he experimented on himself, he buried his face in a pillow as he fell asleep, trying to induce nightmares of
smothering. When he used someone else as a subject, he covered their mouth and nostrils with bedclothes,
inducing dreams of not being able to breathe.
Alfred Maury, a French scientist, published a book in 1861 (expanded and revised in 1878) called Le
Sommeil Et Les Reves, “Sleep & Dreams.” He carried out many experiments using himself as the subject. He had an
assistant apply all sorts of physical stimuli one at a time and reported dreams that coincided with the stimuli.
Another French experimenter studying sensory stimuli and dreams was Marquis Hervey Saint‐Denys. He
published his work on dream imagery and lucid dreams in 1967. He played with perfume scents that coincided
with particular places he was familiar with. When these different perfumes were applied sporadically to his
pillow at night by a servant, he dreamed of the places that the perfumes were associated with.
Taste stimuli were researched minimally during the nineteenth century, but there were experiments with
this. So were visual stimuli experimented with, although it was quite difficult to introduce visual stimuli after the
subject had fallen asleep. It was mostly done by giving the visual stimuli before sleep, and then the subject would
dream about those visuals later.
George Trumbull Ladd did some experiments in the late 1890s around visual dreams. He theorized that
the visual dreams which follow immediately after going to sleep originate predominantly from the condition of
the retina, and later he proved it. He awoke from dreams, remembered the dream, and immediately examined his
retinal field. He discovered that the rods and cones in the eye corresponded with what he saw in a dream and
vice versa, examining the retina before he fell asleep, and then noting what his dream was.
J. Mourly Vold, a Norwegian psychologist, did extensive examination of pre‐sleep visual stimuli, using
himself as the primary subject. Over seven years, and three hundred exposures, he would open a packet
containing a number of small objects or figures cut from cardboard, place the objects on a black or white
background, and gaze at them for a specific length of time, between 2 and 10 minutes, even up to a half hour. In
the subsequent dreams, the forms and sometimes the colors of the objects remained unchanged. He also
experimented with restraining a limb during sleep. He noted that in the dreams the limb subjected to restraint
played some important part in the dream, either of being restrained or being used in an exaggerated way.
There were many experimenters with physical external stimuli and dreams, but for the sake of this
course, we will not go into every single one. In fact, all sorts of experiments were done, from exploring the power
of suggestion to planting desires in dreams. Multitudes of psychological experiments were done and many
dreams were recorded. However, the most important information about dreams and sleep patterns came with the
invention of the electroencephalogram (EEG). This new technology showed the brain’s electrical activity during
sleep and wakefulness and was a godsend to those who were experimenting with sleep patterns. It solved many
mysteries! The EEG was invented in 1930, and by the 1940’s vast amounts of data had been gathered about the
patterns observed during sleep. Very few experimented with dreams, for at that time dreams were still
considered unimportant and not worthy of scientific study. Dream research did not really begin until the 1950’s
and 1960’s.
The first true dream research using the EEG began with Nathaniel Kleitman, a physiologist at the
University of Chicago, and Eugene Aserinsky, one of the medical students working in Kleitman’s laboratory.
Aserinsky, observing the sleeping behavior of infants in their cribs, noted that there were periods when the baby’s
eyes were moving for certain amounts of time. He and Kleitman monitored the duration of these movements by
attaching electrodes around the baby’s eyes. Then they wondered if adults had these eye movements in the same
patterns and durations. They discovered that they did. They named these movements Rapid Eye Movements
(REMs). They decided to wake the sleeper during these movements in order to find out if the subject was
dreaming at that time. Out of 27 of these awakenings, 20 detailed descriptions of dreams were recalled. They also
woke people when these movements were not present 23 times. For 19 of these occasions, no dream was reported.
Aserinsky and Kleitman also recorded the brainwaves, heart rates and respiration patterns present
during these REM periods. When they looked at all the data, they realized that during REM periods, there was a
higher heart and respiration rate, and an EEG pattern showing a different electrical activity from the more passive
periods of sleep. They published a short two page summary of their findings in the journal Science on September
4, 1953. That was the first serious research done on dreams up to that point. What came afterwards was an
outpouring of research by many inspired researchers. Aserinsky and Kleitman published a much more detailed
description of their investigation in 1955.
Aserinsky left the university after he finished his doctoral dissertation and another student took his place.
His name was Dement and he was primarily focused on psychiatry. He monitored only mental patients at first.
He monitored them with the EEG machine quite differently than his predecessor, however. He turned the
machine on for one minute out of every five instead of occasionally during the night, as was done before. This
extra monitoring proved to be of utmost importance in discovering more about sleep patterns and dreaming.
Dement noted that REM activity always came after a frequency of about ten cycles per second was being
recorded.
Dement published a landmark article in 1957 with Kleitman. They left the machine on all night, and the
results were incredible. This created a foundation for all the dream experimentation that came after that. They
discovered that REM periods occurred every 92 minutes. Subjects were awakened during REM states and NREM
(non‐REM) states alike. During the REM periods, subjects reported dreams 80% of the time. When awakened
during NREM periods, subjects only reported dreams by 7% of the time. REM awakenings made within 8
minutes after the end of an REM period, dream recall was 29%. After 8 minutes, the recall rate was only 5%. This
indicates that dream recall fades rapidly after the REM period. Awakenings were also conducted during REM
periods, from 5 to 15 minutes of REM, to determine if the length of the dream had any connection to how long the
REM state was going on. It was determined that the length of time the REM state took and the length of the
dream were associated with each other.
They published yet another article in 1957 where subjects were monitored uninterrupted just to see what
patterns were noticeable. They discovered that in a six hour period of sleep, four REM periods usually happened
between one and seventy two minutes. The average amount of sleep time spent in REM activity in a six hour
sleep would average 18%. This percentage was higher if an eight hour period of sleep were used. They discovered
that REM periods became progressively longer as the night wore on and the REM activity happened more often
closer to morning and the more sleep time, the higher the percentage of REM time.
Much experimentation was done on dreams after this, and the terminology began to get mixed up. It was
not until 1968 when a committee of experienced sleep researchers got together and devised a standard
terminology for measuring sleep patterns in A Manual Of Standardized Terminology, Techniques and Scoring System
for Sleep Stages of Human Subjects.

Basic Facts
Everyone dreams, even if the dreams are not recalled upon awakening. There is no one who doesn’t dream,
even though they might say they do not. There are two phases of sleep: the passive phase and the active phase.
During the passive phase, not much is happening, although the brain still may show some activity at the electrical
level. Dreams happen during the active phase in sleep when REMs occur. REMs happen for everyone during sleep.
REMs are an indication that a dream is taking place. It is believed that the eye movements are a reaction
of the dreamer to the events happening in the dream. Not only the eyes move, but also fingers and other muscles
twitch, depending on what is happening during the dream. During the active state, the brain burns just as much
fuel as it does in waking life. No human has ever been discovered yet who does not have REM periods during
sleep. Some yogis in the past have claimed that they no longer need dream time and therefore do not dream. As
of yet, this has never been documented or tested.
Everyone has watched a cat twitch during sleep. It certainly appears that the cat is trying to catch a
mouse or a bird, or is running and jumping. The reason that the body does not act out more than just a few
twitches or eye movements during a dream is because a natural sleep paralysis is induced in the body during
sleep, in animals and humans alike. This was certainly good planning on nature’s part! This is also why it might
seem so difficult to wake up at times, or why once awake, one cannot move for the first minute or so. Dream
paralysis will be discussed in more detail later in this material.
When one falls asleep, there is a progression of levels one passes through before the sleep state is actually
achieved. First is the transitional state between drowsy wakefulness and light sleep. This stage is short and is
marked by small dreamlets, or hypnagogic images. The word hypnagogic originates from Greek, meaning
“leading to sleep.” The second stage is bona fide sleep with brain wave patterns called “sleep spindles” or “K‐
complexes.” Thought processes are sparse. In the third stage, about twenty to thirty minutes into sleep, Delta is
reached. This signifies that long slow brain waves are happening. None, or very little, dream activity happens in this
phase. It is said in some ancient East Indian texts that this is the stage of sleep where we are in direct contact with
our innermost consciousness, or original consciousness.
After lingering in Delta sleep for about thirty or forty minutes, one comes back up to the second stage about
seventy to ninety minutes after sleep first started. (After five or ten minutes of REM, one moves back into stage two
and then into stage three Delta again, cycling this way through the night.) REM is achieved approximately every 90
minutes during the night, with more REMs closer together, even a half hour apart, closer to morning. REM periods
last longer closer to morning. After REMs, it is common for a brief awakening to happen, although one usually
forgets about it because falling back to sleep happens so quickly and seamlessly.
There are four types of brain waves: Beta, Alpha, Theta and Delta. These states are described as follows
by D. Scott Rogo in his book Leaving The Body (1983). Beta brainwaves are the most predominate and are typical of
waking consciousness in everyday life. Beta waves register between 14‐30 cycles per second and accompany
intellectual activity, such as problem‐solving. When one relaxes and clears the mind, but is still alert, the brain
waves slow down to 8‐12 cycles per second. These are called Alpha brainwaves. A typical Alpha state happens
when one watches TV. The next layer down in consciousness are Theta waves, which register between 4‐7 cycles
per second. These waves can appear during sleep but they can also occur during deep meditation. Theta waves
are somewhat uncommon and fall between Alpha and Delta waves. They manifest when a person is involved in a
deep alteration of consciousness, like meditation or creative inspiration. Theta waves are not unknown to appear
during the deep sleep and delta phases, and are often present during a lucid dream or astral projection (leaving
the body, not in a dreamlike world, but a parallel version of the physical world). People who have Theta
brainwave activity often report having lucid dreams, out‐of‐body experiences or divine revelations. Theta waves
have something to do with divine experiences of all sorts, whether awake or asleep and are often accompanied by
a divine floating feeling or inner spaciousness. Delta waves are the deepest, longest and slowest brainwaves and
only appear during sleep at ½‐3 cycles per second. They cannot appear during meditation.
In the book Our Dreaming Mind (1994), Robert L. Van de Castle, Ph.D. describes these brainwave patterns in
more depth. Alpha is actually split into two levels instead of one. Alpha 1 is alert wakefulness, very short small
waves, 12‐30 cycles per second. Alpha 2 is described as the restful alertness, rather than wakeful alertness, and is
quite different from Alpha 1. It has a greater amplitude and a frequency of only 8‐12 cycles per second.
Things get interesting when Delta waves enter the picture. They are very high‐amplitude slow‐frequency
waves at 1‐2 cycles per second. In stage 2 NREM Delta waves and Alpha waves are somewhat mixed, Delta
waves making up 20% of the mix. Stage 2 NREM is marked by sleep spindles, or spikes, with a frequency range
of 12‐14 cps. Stage 3 contains between 20‐50 % Delta waves, and 4 NREM contains more than 50% Delta waves.
This is when deep sleep has been entered. Here, the Delta waves are somewhat regular and a pattern is more
easily seen, but some spindles are still present. Stage 2, 3, and 4 NREM Delta sleep are noted for the sleep
spindles, or K‐complexes, where cycles speed up and are irregular in between the deeper rhythms of Delta, stage
4 NREM being the calmest with the highest percentage of Delta waves.
Stage 1 NREM and stage 1 REM are almost the same brainwave patterns, but are differentiated by the
presence or absence of rapid eye movement. In stage 1 NREM state there are sharp vertex waves from the crown
of the skull that are not present during REM periods.
The deepest sleep is gotten in the earlier parts of the night, based on the patterns between REM and
NREM sleep. The unfolding of sleep moves from drowsiness into Stage 1 sleep. Stage 1 is passed very quickly,
descending into stage 2, 3 and 4 NREM. Most of the time is spent in stage 4. Ninety minutes after stage 1 NREM,
there is a rise into stage 3 again, and soon stage 1 reappears, lasting about 5 minutes. There may or may not be
REMs, for sometimes the dream is not very active, or doesn’t form fully for some reason. Then there is a drop
back into stage 2 or 3. Very seldom, and if so only briefly, is there a return to stage 4 sleep after the first REM
period. Most of the time will be spent in stage 3 NREM before the next REM period, which appears 90 minutes
after the first one. For the rest of the night, most of the time is spent in stage 2 NREM before returning to REM.
As the night goes on, succeeding REM periods become longer and longer, reaching as much as 25 – 45
minutes. For the normal adult, and this is of course only an average among many subjects, REM time is 22% of
the entire sleep period. The rest of the sleep is spent 50 % of the time in stage 2 NREM, 7% is spent in stage 3
NREM, 14% in stage 4, and 7% in stage 1 NREM without rapid eye movements.
There is no difference in sleeping patterns between the sexes, but there is a difference in ages. A normal
infant spends 50% of its sleeping time in REM, and a premature infant spends as much as 70 – 80 % of its time in
REM. Young children under four years old have decreasing time spent in REM until they reach the same patterns
as an adult by the age of four. Young children still have a higher percentage of sleep spent in stage 4 NREM than
adults, during which time growth hormone is secreted.

Physiological Sexual Factors
Other interesting physiological factors appear during REM sleep. Measurements of other parts of the
body during sleep show that everything is fairly slow and even during NREM sleep, but as soon as REM appears,
things change in the physical body. The respiration speeds up, spinal pressure changes, muscle tone changes, and
genital arousal happens, interestingly enough. Genital arousal, for men and women, is present in 95 % of the REM
periods. At first, only men were studied in the laboratory, rather than women, for erectile function was easier to
observe. Studies were done on women later as the results came in for the men.
Sixty percent of the male’s REM time was spent with a full erection and thirty five percent was spent with
partial erections. Quite amazingly, children between the ages of three and nine had the highest percentage of full
erection, this decreased as age progressed until in the elderly it was discovered to be half that amount of time.
These erectile periods seemed to come right before REM starts and linger after REM ends.
It was discovered that subjects who had impotence due to a physical reason like nerve damage or
diabetes did not have erections during REM periods. However, those who were impotent due to psychological
reasons did have normal full erections during sleep, even though they could not obtain an erection during waking
hours.
Nocturnal erections do not necessarily mean that an erotic dream is in progress. Rather, it is a purely
neurological function that is activated automatically. Erections can be diminished if the dream contains context
that causes anxiety, but they are still activated automatically, nonetheless, in both men and women.

The Need To Dream And Psychological Health
It appears that there is a need to dream in humans and animals both. The first experiments on this subject
were done in 1959 at New York City’s Mount Sinai Hospital by William C. Dement, a psychiatrist and former
student of Nathaniel Kleitman. For five nights in a row, subjects were awakened as soon as they started to dream.
I mentioned this experiment in the introduction briefly, but let us go into it in more detail now. With each night,
subjects began to exhibit REM stages of sleep more and more often until by the last night, they had to be
awakened twenty two times, which is quite high in comparison to the normal five to ten REM periods in a normal
sleep pattern. It seems that the human brain was trying to recover the lost REM time in the succeeding nights. The
subjects began to exhibit such alarming psychotic behavior that the experiment actually had to be discontinued
prematurely. Originally, this experiment was supposed to be longer.
After the fifth night, Dement allowed them to have a normal night of sleep. The subjects spent more of
the recovery night than normal in the REM stage. The contrasting group of subjects who were awakened just as
many times, but only during NREM sleep, did not increase their dream time during the recovery night. The
conclusion of the experiment was that dreaming seems to be a needed and important function for both
psychological and physical health. The experiment was continued on cats and rats by Dr. Jouvet in France, and he
and his colleagues determined that the prevention of dreaming produced death “while in perfect health” in these
animals. They concluded that dreams are so essential to the function of life that it is less dangerous to undergo
hunger and thirst than to be deprived of dreams. This further supports Jung’s theory that dreams are a self‐
regulatory and compensating function at the psychological level.
Gary K. Yamamoto, in his book Creative Dream Analysis (1988), says, “Research has shown dreams to be
an essential part of life. If a person is kept from dreaming for any length of time, his personality will begin to
change. Even if other sleep states are experienced, a single night without dreaming will cause nervousness and
irritability. The longer the person goes without dreaming, the more irritable he becomes. Finally, if dreaming is
prevented for a few days, definite psychological changes in behavior result.”
It has been found by a study by Ernest Hartmann, professor of psychiatry at Tufts University School of
Medicine, and director of two Boston sleep laboratories, that the waking life depletes the brain’s supply of
particular critical chemicals. During REM sleep, these chemicals are replenished, resulting in emotional stability
and through processes like learning and memory. The book Dreams & Dreaming (1990) by George Constable,
Editor In Chief, covers this experiment. The books says that, “REM sleep is not always restorative, and it seems
that there can be too much of a good thing. It has been found that some people who suffer from severe clinical
depression pass through the initial stages of sleep to the REM phase more quickly, and stay there longer, than do
healthy people… unlike healthy sleepers, who dream most frequently during the last third of the night, depressed
people may dream more during the first third, another indication of a malfunction in the body’s natural sleeping
rhythms. Scientists cannot explain why such disturbances occur, but they have learned that a depressed person
deprived of REM sleep for two or three weeks may find the feelings of despair and apathy lessening. In some
cases, this simple therapy can be as effective as an antidepressant medication.”
A study at Georgia Mental Health Institute in Atlanta showed that 50% of the subjects who were
depressed showed an improvement with a course of REM deprivation. Those who did not respond to this
therapy also did not respond to medication. It is believed that the inner clock of depressed patients is flawed and
needs to be reprogrammed with healthy sleep patterns. This whole body of information does not support that
dreaming is needed by the psychological structure, but it does show that perhaps dreaming must happen at a
certain time in the sleep pattern for it to be useful or else it is not useful at all.
On the contrary, other studies spoken about in Women’s Bodies, Women’s Dreams (1988) by Patricia
Garfield, Ph.D., show that dream recall decreases during a period of mental illness, especially during severe
depression. Cessation of dreaming in a person who usually recalls dreams is often an indicator that suicide will be
attempted, according to statistics. Remembering dreams seems to be a necessary way to stay aware of how we are
feeling.
Garfield also tells us about laboratory studies conducted on dreaming and the mental functioning in the
elderly. Irwin Feinberg found that the elderly who had more REM periods also had a high level of alertness. He
also found that changes in the sleeping patterns of the elderly are related to impaired memory.
Another aspect of psychological and physical health is that of having a joyful countenance. Stephen
LaBerge and Howard Rheingold contend in their book Exploring the World Of Lucid Dreaming (1990) that the,
“healthiest people seem to be those who enjoy pleasure, seek it out, and make it for themselves… Some people
may protest that they do not have time to have fun. But as long as you have time to sleep at night, you have time
to enjoy yourself in your dreams. By learning to have lucid dreams, you open for yourself a limitless amusement
park full of all the delights you can imagine. Admission is free, and there are no lines!” Many believe that the
greatest antidote against illness is happiness. Dreams can serve in this way, creating more happiness, thus less of
a possibility for illness.
Moods are carried into waking life from the dream world. Stephen LaBerge and Howard Rheingold
explain in their book Exploring the World Of Lucid Dreaming (1990), “We can carry not only knowledge but also
moods from the lucid dream state to the waking state… This carryover of positive feeling into the waking state is
an important aspect of lucid dreaming. This is all the more true of inspirational lucid dreams.” These moods
affect our psychological structure, and therefore affect those we come in contact with during the day. If we truly
want to have a good day, perhaps having a good dream that puts us in a good mood is the first order.
There have also been studies using lucid dreams as a means for achieving psychological healing by
finishing unfinished relationships. It is thought possible to achieve resolution through inner dialogues with
important people in one’s life with whom there have been issues, or with whom there are presently issues. In
lucid dreams, what was left unsaid can be said, or something needing to be re‐interpreted in a new way about the
relationship to that person can be understood. The studies revealed that it did not matter if the person was dead
or alive for beneficial results to be evident. Solving conflict is a definite necessity to psychological health. Stephen
LaBerge and Howard Rheingold concluded in their book Exploring the World Of Lucid Dreaming (1990), “Lucid
dreaming can help people settle unfinished emotional business with family members and intimate friends. When
an important relationship ends, people often find that they are left with unresolved issues that cause anxiety and
possibly even strain later relationships.”
Dreams are not only necessary for psychological health, but they can assist to rebalance psychological
health once balance has been lost, simply by observing the content of the dreams and interpreting their meaning.
Jeremy Taylor says in his book Dream Work (1983), “Dreams come always in the service of promoting wholeness.
They have an inherently opening effect, always bringing to consciousness those aspects of our own being which
we have closed out of our waking experience… Because one purpose of dreams is always to promote increasing
wholeness there is always a thread of constructive self‐criticism in every dream.” The dreams where we
experience ourselves in ways that seem self‐depreciating actually create the opportunity for us to examine our
psyche and make changes where they are necessary. These may seem like bad dreams to some, but they are
actually quite therapeutic by showing aspects of ourselves which need psychological healing.

Dream Paralysis
Dream paralysis has often been a fearful experience for those who awake from a sleep and cannot move the
body for the first few minutes of wakefulness. However, there is a very scientific explanation for dream paralysis.
This state sometimes is accompanied by hallucinogenic experiences that can create even more fear. The
reason for these visual and auditory continuations of experience upon awakening is that there are still dream
state brainwaves, even though the subject has left the realm of sleep, or REM. “…imagery is often the
continuation of a dream. The sleeper’s eyes may even have opened, but the transition to the waking state is not
yet complete,” according to George Constable, Editor In Chief of Dreams & Dreaming (1990).
The physiological experience of paralysis upon awakening is quite simple and easy to explain. When the
dreamer enters REM, the body produces particular chemicals which cause the body to be temporarily paralyzed
in order to keep the body from acting out the dreams because the brain is receiving messages that it is a real
experience and therefore instructs the body to move. These messages for movement are blocked by bio‐chemicals
which are most particularly focused on large muscle groups. This was first discovered by Michel Jouvet, a French
researcher. He found a way to block the process that causes muscular paralysis during REM in cats. It was not
pretty, but the cats moved around in REM, acting out their dreams as if they were awake.
The frantic struggle to move upon awakening is futile and counterproductive, for it is precisely the
commands to the large muscles that are particularly blocked. The twitches one observes in a person or animal
who is in REM sleep are produced only by the small muscles that are last in line to receive the chemical block to
their commands. In Jeremy Taylor’s book Where People Fly, And Water Runs Uphill (1992), he says, “Oddly enough,
experience shows that the most effective way to ‘break the spell’ of dream paralysis is to make a face, because it is
the small muscles of the face and neck that are least affected by the paralysis, and moving them voluntarily
appears to be the easiest and most effective way to send the missed ‘signal’ to the endocrine system that the
dream is over and it is time to restore command of the voluntary muscles to the cerebral cortex. It may even be
the case that it is the unintentional facial expressions of distress and frustration that accompany the unsuccessful
efforts to move that actually accomplish the release from the ‘spell’ of continuing paralysis in these circumstances.”
There are nerve cells in the brain stem called gigantocellular tegmental field (GTF) neurons that act as a
switch that turns on REM. Another group of neurons in the brain stem, called locus coeruleus, act as an off
switch. As the GTF neurons reach peak activation there is a burst of REM and a dream begins. This is one product
of the biochemical reactions that take place when dreams occur.
The second part of this paralysis process has to do with noradrenalin (sometimes called norepinephrine).
The presence of noradrenalin in the bloodstream is the most crucial of the necessary elements needed to prevent
the voluntary nervous system from responding to dream events with physical actions as would occur in a waking
event. Noradrenalin neutralizes the nervous impulses to action. It responds to the signal that the REM switch has
been “turned on” with the presence of the GTF neurons. Noradrenalin is constantly replenished throughout the
REM cycle, for it dissipates very rapidly in the bloodstream and constantly must be reproduced. When the “off
switch” is recognized with the presence of the locus coeruleus neurons in the brain stem, noradrenalin is no
longer replenished and dissipates rapidly. The body returns to the normal state of control and command of the
voluntary nervous system, fully capable of physical actions. Paralysis has to do with the fact that the noradrenalin
didn’t dissipate as fast as the dreamer awoke.

Women’s Natural Propensity For Dreaming
It is believed that women have a more natural propensity for dreaming. Interestingly, women have more
propensity for dreaming lucidly. It has been speculated that the neurological organization of the female brain
predisposes them to be able to dream lucidly more easily than men. This does not mean men are not capable of it,
but perhaps they have to work a little harder at it.
It is believed that the female hormones are closely linked. It is possible that high estrogen levels may have
something to do with it. It is a known fact that women are better dream recallers, and they have more dreams to
report whenever a study on dream recall is done.
Women’s Bodies, Women’s Dreams (1988) by Patricia Garfield, Ph.D. details this information precisely. She
says, “The amount women dream, as well as their recall of dreams, fluctuates with the stage of their menstrual
cycle. Researchers occasionally report that the peak of dreaming, and memory of doing so, occurs between
ovulation (when estrogen is high) and the onset of menstruation (when estrogen is low). Older women who take
estrogen to replace their own diminished supply also sometimes report that their amount of dream recall varies
during the month. Investigators studying menopause find that post‐menopause women who ingest estrogen, to
replace their diminished supply, dream more than those who do not take the hormone.”
Garfield continues her prose about women’s superior qualities in the field of dream recall by quoting
researchers who “routinely report that pregnant women, especially in the second trimester, recall their dreams
even more readily than women who are not pregnant. This finding is, I believe, an important clue to women’s
apparently superior dream recall... Some researchers think that women who are pregnant dream more than at any
other time in their adult lives. Probably because the female sex hormones are at flood level during her pregnancy,
the woman is served a banquet of dreams. This bountiful feast of REM sleep often results in more remembered
dreams than usual.”

Time And Dreams
It is quite a mystery as to whether or not time sequences in dreams are the same as time on Earth. There
are conflicting reports about time in the dream state and it is also very difficult to measure, since one cannot take
a watch on these sojourns. There is still much exploration in this area to be done. Some experimenting with this
has been done by Stephen LaBerge in his sleep laboratory. He believes that time in dreams is quite similar to
Earth time. Stephen LaBerge and Howard Rheingold contend in their book Exploring the World Of Lucid Dreaming
(1990), “In all cases, we found time estimates made in lucid dreams were within a few seconds of estimates made
in the waking state, and likewise quite close to the actual time between [predetermined eye movement] signals.
From this we have concluded that in lucid dreams, estimated dream time is very nearly equal to clock time; that is, it
takes just as long to do something in a dream as it does to actually do it.”
One would ask then about the fact that some dreams seem to cover an entire lifetime’s worth of activity,
those epic dreams that pack in a lot of adventure and exploration, or a story that goes on and on. To this LaBerge
and Rheingold respond by saying, “I believe this effect is achieved in dreams by the same stage trick that causes
the illusion of the passage of time in the movies or theater. If on screen, stage, or dream, we see someone turning
out the light as the clock strikes midnight, and after a few moments of darkness, we see him turning off an alarm
as the bright morning sun shines through the window, we’ll accept (pretend without being aware that we are
pretending) that many hours have passed even though we ‘know’ it was only a few seconds.”
This suggests that yes, entire lifetimes worth of adventures can be had in the dream state if one deletes all
extraneous and unnecessary time passages like the time it takes for transportation, sleep, and other mundane
tasks that can be easily left out of a story without loss of content.

Meaning & Interpretation Of Dreams
The meaning and interpretation of dreams has long been an area of confusion. It is difficult to interpret
and find meaning in dreams for there is no cut and dry method or dictionary of dreams that works for everyone.
It is argued, however, that, “The dream is a series of images which are apparently contradictory and meaningless,
but that it contains material which yields a clear meaning when properly translated,” according to The Basic
Writings of C.G. Jung (1959) edited by Violet Staub De Laszlo.
Jane Roberts, in her book The Nature Of The Psyche (1979), says about the meaning of dreams, “Often the
seeming meaninglessness of dreams is the result of your own ignorance of dream symbolism and organization…
When you understand how your own associations work, then you will be in a much better position to interpret
your own dreams…and finally to make an art of them.” She goes on to speak about how we occupy more than
one reality at the same time, and dreams span those realities, giving us information from each of them and
therefore it is seemingly garbled and incomprehensible as to what the dream means. “…You have other minds.
You have one brain, it is true, but you allow it to use only one station, or to identify itself with only one mind of
many. A mind is a psychic pattern through which you interpret and form reality. You have minds that are
invisible. Each one can organize reality in a different fashion. Each one deals with its own kind of knowledge…
When you use all of these minds, then and only then do you become fully aware of your surroundings.”
Roberts elaborates on the analogy with the idea of a television station dial: “Suppose that you turned on
your television set to watch a program, for example, and found that through some malfunction a massive bleed‐
through had occurred so that several programs were scrambled, and yet appeared at once, seemingly without
rhyme or reason. No theme would be apparent. Some of the characters might be familiar, and others, not. A man
dressed as an astronaut might be riding a horse, chasing the Indians, while an Indian chief piloted an aircraft. If
all of this was transposed over the program that you expected, you would indeed think that nothing made any
sense. In the dream state then, you are sometimes aware of too many stations. When you try to make them fit into
your recognized picture of reality, they may seem chaotic.”
Roberts gives yet one more example in this book: “You may have a dream… in which you see a tailor’s shop. The
tailor may be dancing, or dying or getting married. Later, in waking life, you may discover that a friend of yours, a Mr.
Taylor (spelled), has a party, or dies, or gets married, whatever the case may be; yet you might never connect the dream
with the later event because you did not understand the way that words and images can be united in your dreams.”
This explains how the dreams might have no meaning. Too many “stations” at once are being perceived
or personal symbology and associations are misunderstood. Once we learn how to interpret more than one reality
being presented to us at a time, perhaps then dreams will be quite easy to understand. It is possible to learn your
own personal ways of combining all this information, your own personal associations and symbology.
In Elsie Sechrist’s book Dreams: Your Magic Mirror (1968), Erich Fromm is quoted to explain why some people
dismiss their dreams as nonsense: “…If all our dreams were pleasant phantasmagorias in which our hearts’ wishes
were fulfilled, we might feel friendlier toward them. But many of them leave us in an anxious mood; often they are
nightmares from which we awake gratefully acknowledging that we only dreamed. Others, though not nightmares,
are disturbing for other reasons. They do not fit the person we are sure we are during daytime. We dream of hating
people whom we believe we are fond of, of loving someone whom we thought we had no interest in. We dream of
being ambitious, when we are convinced of being modest; we dream of bowing down and submitting, when we are so
proud of our independence… But worse than all is the fact that we cannot understand our dreams while we, the
waking person, are sure we can understand anything if we put our minds to it. Rather than be confronted with such an
overwhelming proof of the limitations of our understanding, we accuse the dreams of not making sense.”
This is so true of all of us. We often think we are something we are not, perhaps thinking more or less of
ourselves than we reveal of ourselves in dreams, and our waking perceptions of ourselves are quite different than our
perceptions of self within dreams. Dreams are more honest however, than our waking life. Dr. Gayle Delaney says in
her book Sexual Dreams: Why We Have Them, What They Mean (1994), “While dreaming, we blurt out the truth about
how we really feel and think about the most important issues in our lives… you are much more honest with yourself
when you dream than when you are awake. When you dream, you look at your life from a wiser, less defensive, more
mature perspective… As you work with your dreams you will find that they are usually several steps ahead of your
waking self in the degree and quality of insight they offer.” That is, if we can learn to interpret our dreams.
Elsie Sechrist referring to Edgar Cayce’s opinion in the book Dreams: Your Magic Mirror (1968), “… Unless an
individual is seeking to improve his spiritual life by asking for help in terms of prayer, his dreams will primarily be a
meaningless jumble. If, however, he is unselfishly seeking God’s will for him, then the higher consciousness will
monitor his dreams and give him a clearer sense of direction in his daily life. There is little therapy or value in simply
learning the meaning of a dream, especially if it is related to an aspect of behavior, unless an individual wants to
change or improve himself.” I am not sure I agree with that, entirely, but I can see how having an intent for self
improvement could seriously increase one’s ability to understand dreams. I do not believe that dreams are a
meaningless jumble if one is not petitioning the higher consciousness or otherwise spiritually inclined. I believe that the
value of dreams is available to everyone who cares to remember them and learn their own symbology.
Jane Roberts has more to say on the meaning of dreams in her book Dreams, Evolution & Value Fulfillment
(1986). “…Dreams appear to be staticky objective background noise left over from when you sleep. But that is how
physical experience would seem to someone not focused in it, or inexperienced with its organization… The dream
world is not an aimless, nonlogical, unintellectual field of activity. It is only that your own perspective closes out much
of its vast reality, for the dreaming intellect can put your computers to shame… The intellectual abilities as you know
them cannot compare to those greater capacities that are a part of your own inner reality… The conscious mind cannot
handle that kind of multidimensional creativity.” This is obviously why we cannot hold all the information in the
conscious mind easily. This, I believe is a process of evolution. Perhaps millennia from now the human mind will be
able to perceive such multidimensional creativity and attention with more ease than it does now.
Perhaps the real problem with interpreting dreams has to do with the fact that we are trying to interpret
and understand dreams from the viewpoint of the waking consciousness. Roberts elaborates in her book The
Unknown Reality, Volume One (1977) on the meaning of dreams and why we cannot understand them. “You
always examine your dreams…from an ‘alien’ standpoint, one prejudiced in favor of the ordinary waking state…
the dreaming condition is consequently experienced in distorted form… By contrast to waking consciousness it can
appear hazy, not precise, or off‐focus. This does not always apply, because in some dreams the state of alertness is
undeniable.” Roberts continues by encouraging us to look at the waking condition from the dream state. From the
dream state, the waking condition will appear quite distorted and hazy, just as the dream state seems to us when we
look at it from the waking state. In the dream state, the waking self is considered the dreamer.
Stephen LaBerge and Howard Rheingold suggest in their book Exploring the World Of Lucid Dreaming
(1990), “The experience of dreaming is not ‘rational,’ but this does not mean that it is not meaningful… [dreams]
are primary manifestations of the processes of association from which all possibilities of meaningful self
awareness arise in the first place.”
A common reason for the failure to understand dreams is that these events are so multidimensional in
nature that they simply cannot be interpreted in the framework of space and time, especially when only
fragments of a dream can be remembered. Upon awakening, it is nearly impossible to remember every
component of a dream, for even in the telling or writing of it, pieces are lost.
Jeremy Taylor instructs us in his book Dream Work (1983), “It is most important to remember the two
basic truths about dream work: 1) only the dreamer can know what his or her dream means; 2) there is no such
thing as a dream with one meaning.” This coincides with the analogy by Jane Roberts that dreams are like
overlaid TV stations bleeding into each other, each with its own story and meanings. He continues by saying, “Why
then are dreams generally so obscure and opaque to waking consciousness? It is because every dream has multiple
meanings, and multiple levels of meaning woven into a single metaphor of personal experience. It is the multiple,
many‐layered quality of dreams that makes them so often appear obscure and devoid of meaning on first awakening.”
The Greek Christian authority, who felt that dreams were useful for spiritual purposes for the common
man, was the first to suggest that following dream dictionaries was a mistake. He felt that each individual needed
to make his or her own personal dream dictionary, for everyone had different associations and symbols that the
individual mind thinks and communicates with through dreams. Helen McLean & Abiye Cole agree in their book
The Dreamworking Handbook (2001). “While dream dictionaries can be interesting on a superficial level, their use
cannot help but miss the essential meaning that your personal dream symbols will have for you.” This does not
mean that a therapist is not useful in this process of finding one’s inner symbols and associations. A therapist can
serve well in that sense, assisting with possible interpretations, ideas and inquiry.
Gary K. Yamamoto suggests in his book Creative Dream Analysis (1988), “The first and simplest method is to
use the natural psychic ability that we all possess. If we ask our inner intelligence what type of dream we have had, we
will receive and answer. This becomes easier as we gain confidence in our own psychic ability.” Almost everyone can
agree that when one remembers a dream, it is possible to immediately guess what it is about simply by using the
knowledge of oneself and the issues that are on the mind. If the mental body is relaxed enough more information will
come in about the meaning of the dream if only a psychic space for an “ah‐ha” realization is opened.
This innate knowing is also addressed by Jeremy Taylor, in Where People Fly And Water Runs Uphill (1992):
“Only the dreamer can say with any certainty what meanings his or her dreams may have. This certainty usually
comes to the dreamer…in the form of an aha experience of insight and recognition – a wordless ‘felt shift’ – when
something true and on‐the‐case is suggested about the possible meanings of one’s dream. This aha is the only
consistent touchstone in determining the multiple meanings of a dream.”

Sex In Dreams
When sex occurs in a dream, it is not always about sex, according to Dr. Gayle Delaney in her book Sexual
Dreams: Why We Have Them, What They Mean (1994). Sometimes sexual activity in dreams is more about intimacy
in relationships with ourselves and others that may or may not have anything to do with sex. She says sometimes
these dreams are directly about our sexual lives, though. “Our dreams about sexual matters offer us the chance to
understand the effects of early conditioning and current conflicts in our sexual lives.” She goes on to say that,
“having orgasms while dreaming is perfectly normal for both men and women. The Kinsey Institute estimates
that forty percent of all women have had at least one nocturnal orgasm, with women in their forties having the
highest rate… My clients and our students at the Dream Center have often commented that a number of their
orgasmic dreams are lucid ones.”
Many people are embarrassed about having sexual dreams, but there really is no need for this. Sex is an
integral part of being human. Sexual dreams can often lead us to understand our secret desires toward other
people to whom we didn’t even know we were attracted. Sometimes these sexual dreams are completely out of
context with the social conduct of the waking world, but in the dream world, everything goes.
It is possible that dreams could offer relief to many people who cannot access sexual encounters as
readily as others. Many people live alone, or are single, or are dissatisfied with their partner’s sexual prowess, but
don’t want to leave because they love their partners. Stephen LaBerge and Howard Rheingold suggest in their
book Exploring the World Of Lucid Dreaming (1990), “...Lucid dreaming can provide a sexual outlet for people
confined to prisons, working in isolation, or whose activities in waking life are limited by a physical handicap.”
Many dream therapists believe that sex is synonymous with our need for love. When sexual activities
appear in dreams, love is really what we’re after. Gary K. Yamamoto says in his book Creative Dream Analysis
(1988), “On a still deeper level, dreams of sex reveal our need for love. Love is such a necessary part of our lives
that we spend a lot of time looking for it. It is the main theme of our movies, our music, our poetry, and even our
dreams… We begin to equate sex with love. Sex is convenient. It is easily identified, measured and evaluated.
Even in our language we substitute the word ‘love’ for ‘sex.’”

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.”

Dream Content Depending On Age, Sex, & Society
Fetus Dreams
It is well known by the scientific community that the human fetus dreams in the womb. There have been
intriguing findings in gynecological research. Dr. Michele Clements of the City of London Maternity hospital has
demonstrated that the fetus not only hears auditory stimuli, but also reacts and retains the memories into adult
life. Dr. Carl Sagan has also said that a large portion of the fetus’s experience in the uterus is spent in dreams, and
these dreams most certainly do not derive their material from the fetus’s own life experiences. In chickens, there
are physiological signs that dreaming occurred in the chicks before the hatching of the egg, and in kittens, dreams
were evident before the opening of the eyes. All of this suggests that dreams are made of more than just life
experiences. Perhaps the early dreams of the fetus are made of material from the spirit worlds from whence it
came as well as the sensory experience of the physical novelty of having a new body.

Birth Dreams
It is believed in many schools of thought that how one is born greatly effects his or her outlook and
personality in life. Almost everyone could assume that he or she dreamt at least once about the birth event. Many
positive or negative emotions can be experienced during this somewhat traumatic event, and for the rest of life,
these may be processed to some extent or another in dreams. It is not uncommon for someone to report a dream
that very closely resembles the feelings and impressions that are had during the birth process.

Children’s Dreams
One of the most consistent findings across all studies of children’s dreams is the content of animal figures.
The reports of dreams from children between 3 and 4 years old are the ones most likely to contain animal content.
It is speculated that animals are part of our ancestral memory and children are quite in touch with that. Children
this age usually only have a sentence or two and the dream is fairly simplistic. Often these animals are seen as
protectors or helpers. However, the child who had the most animal dreams of all the children displayed
aggressive behavior. Perhaps these animals represent the animal drives within the human genetic structure.
At ages 5 through 6 dream reports are double in length and dreams are a little bit more complicated. The
main character usually is in a passive role, however, watching. Sex differences begin to emerge. Girls’ dreams are
usually nice ones with friendly outcomes while boys’ dreams tend toward conflict. All these dreams of both sexes
contain animal and family characters, with the conflict coming from outside the family.
At ages 7 through 8, dreamers became more active in the dreams. Boys’ dreams became tamer and more
friendly and the preoccupation with conflict and strangers drops away. Girls’ dreams stayed relatively the same,
with friendly outcomes.
From 9 to 12 year olds, interaction with peers in social situations is more prominent and family characters
decline. Peer characters are usually of the same sex as the child. Dreams of conflict and aggression begin to
preoccupy the boys’ dreams again. Male children have roughly twice as many aggressive dreams as do female
children. Issues of sex roles are worked out. Boys dream of athletics and male oriented tasks and girls dream
about acquiring domestic skills.
From ages 13 to 15, dreams become more troubled. The setting is more vague and distortion of the
characters is prominent. Anger appears more often and happy outcomes happen less often. Girls have happier
dreams than boys, but they still are more troublesome than their dreams earlier in life. It has been suspected that
role identification is more difficult for boys than it is for girls because boys are forced by society to dis‐identify
with the mother whereas girls are not under this pressure.
When children’s dreams are compared with adult dreams, significant differences appeared. Children’s
dreams contained more parents and other family members, fewer strangers, and more animal characters. Nature
also appeared more in children’s dreams, and of course there were more toys and such. They did not dream of
cars very often and it was sometimes difficult to discern whether the setting was an indoor or outdoor one.
Children also have more dreams about aggression being directed at them and most dreams had no outcome in
the situation, positive or negative. Children also seem to notice color more significantly than adults.
“Children’s dreams are more intense than those of adults because the brain is practicing its event‐forming
activities,” according to Jane Roberts in her book The Nature Of The Psyche (1979). Veronica Tonay says in the book
The Art Of Daydreaming (1995), “My own research and that of various colleagues and students suggests that even
in three and four year olds, we can discern the beginnings of strong individual differences in modes of using
make‐believe as a way of dealing with the world. By adolescence these predispositions to resort to fantasy as a
resource are well established and may play an important later role in the life style of the individual.”
Elsie Sechrist says in her book Dreams: Your Magic Mirror (1968) that children respond readily to their
inner teachers. “Children as young as six seem as responsive to dreams as any adult. What has gratified me as
much as it has the parents of the children is the power of a correctly interpreted dream to persuade a child to
correct his own failings. Parents have admitted that where appeals and scoldings have been useless, a single
dream has caused the child to put his own counsel into practice.”

Dreams of the Elderly
Many of the elderly have dreams about having difficulty with taking care of physical functioning. They
have less dreams about fear‐based or anger‐based situations, especially women. They often dream about emerging
in a birth‐like fashion in another world. Many of these dreams are about passing through a tunnel into light. The
spiritual beliefs of the dreamer play a significant role in how the death is faced. Life review is often done in the
dreams of the elderly as well. The dreams do not signify demise, however, but rather a resolution and a beginning
in a new world.

Gender Differences
Men dream more often about outdoor settings. Fewer people appear in men’s dreams and are more often
strangers. Men are more concerned about boundary issues and the male usually is the central figure playing out
his role in his dream. Men are more likely to see themselves as lone figures in a strange world.
It was discovered that females tend to dream about indoor settings and are more concerned about
intimacy and personal relationships. Women’s dreams are more likely to include family and sensory input from
the surrounding environment. Dreams of destruction or collapse are more common during the days preceding a
woman’s menstrual cycle. Women who are pregnant are especially prone to somatic (physically influenced)
dreams as the baby moves or develops within her. It is not uncommon for women to see a bulging building or
other such patterns in their dream imagery. Depending on how they view their pregnancy, women were quite
preoccupied with dreams around this event.

Social Class Influences
It was found that lower class girls experienced and expressed more aggression in their dreams than
middle class girls and boys, and also more than lower class boys. In adults, there were more human characters in
the lower class than the upper middle class. Perhaps it is because lower class people experience crowding more
often. The lower class dreamed much more of home and family than did the upper middle class. Greater anxiety,
unhappiness and misfortune appeared as obstacles more in the dreams of the lower class.

Positive Vs. Negative Dreams
Overall, regardless of class, all adults and all children had more negative and fear‐based dreams than
positive dreams. Therefore, the positive dreams must be more elusive than the dreams that are products of the
conflicts within. The majority of dreams are unpleasant all across the board. Perhaps by responding to the
unpleasantness in our dreams we work out waking life problems more easily. Dreams may be the messages from
the Self that are meant to assist growth, and perhaps that is the primary function of dreams altogether. A dream
could easily be an indicator of emotional health or lack of health in certain areas.

Paranormal Dreaming
Dreams As A Vehicle For Evolution
George Constable, Editor In Chief of Dreams & Dreaming (1990), speculates, “It seems that many great
events throughout the ages, religious and secular, were preceded by relevant human dreams.” It definitely seems
to be the case when one ponders the number of dreams that rulers have acted on, or religious figures in the Bible
acted on. In this same book, Montague Ullman is quoted as saying, “…While asleep, we are not only able to scan
backward in time and tap into our memory, but are also able to scan forward in time and across space to tap into
information outside our own experience. Regardless of how seldom they occur, these manifestations cast a new
light on the range of our psychic abilities. They persuade us to look at dreams as ever‐occurring in a much larger
and more complex frame than we are accustomed.”
Perhaps this ability to cross dimensions of space and time might be the very way we have unconsciously
evolved as a species. It is believed by many that dreams are a place where the unconscious mind interprets for
consciousness the events and information that are otherwise completely unavailable to the conscious mind, but
are absolutely necessary ingredients for evolution. Perhaps not a single invention would have been created were
it not for this ability to tap into the unknown, even though a dream or internal experience might not be
remembered. Somehow it found its way into the evolution of the species, whether or not there is awareness of
where it came from.
A much used quote by Carl Jung reads as follows: “In dreams we pass into the deeper and more
universal truth and more eternal man, who still stands in the dusk of original night in which he himself was still
the whole and the whole was in him in bright undifferentiated pure nature, free from shackles of the ego.” This is
one of the most brilliant things he said, in my opinion, and I believe it to be true. Dreams might be the doorway to
the eternal nature of humankind. Many cultures believe that dreams are the realm of the true self, and that the
physical world is the illusion.
Jeremy Taylor, in Where People Fly And Water Runs Uphill (1992), says, “The benefits of paying more
regular attention to our dreams will be great, both at the level of the personal details of our lives, and the larger,
collective level of our shared reality and interdependent existence. To quote the old Universalist maxim, the
dream comes in the service of health and wholeness to promote ‘the reconciliation of each with all.’”

Telepathy & Predictions
Telepathy and other such phenomena, like predictions and remote viewing, have long been subjects of
conversations among those who have had a dream about something before it happened or knew something that
was going on at the moment it was happening. In the book There Are No Accidents: Synchronicity And The Stories Of
Our Lives (1997) by Robert H. Hopke, he says, “Besides dreams which coincide with subsequent events in a
synchronistic way, any dream seems to disclose not just what will be but what is in ways that are impossible to
know through normal sensory experience. The word most people would use, ‘extrasensory,’ is the simplest
description for such dreams.” He says in another section of his book, “I have had clients report dreams with any
number of details about my personal life that they could not possibly have known and which I certainly never
revealed to them. One woman dreamed that it was my birthday when in fact it was my birthday. Another
repeatedly dreamed of the number 909, which is my unlisted home address.” These are good examples of remote
viewing dreams, or knowing what is presently happening.
Dreams of events that come true in physical reality are thought by many to be synchronistic dreams,
dreams in which the story is told within before the identical outer story. Some people think that it takes great
talent or natural ability to be able to have telepathic or predictive dreams. Jeremy Taylor disagrees in his book
Where People Fly And Water Runs Uphill (1992), and says, “Transmission’ or ‘talent’ have virtually nothing to do
with it. Everyone is born with an undeveloped potential for intuitive expression. My experience is that telepathic
connections are formed of deep feeling and emotion. The strength of emotional association determines who will
have telepathic communion with another person.” According to Taylor, only a deep emotional connection
between two people is necessary for telepathic dreams to happen.
Bob Larson, an advocate against metaphysical concepts and ideas, says in his book Straight Answers On
The New Age (1989), “Those who believe in dreams provide access to psychic powers and are a means of guiding
the future venture into the territory of divination, which God has forbidden.” Larson goes on to say that playing
with these deeper forces of the self are not allowed because these are the realms of God, in which we should not
tread because we do not understand them and could invite evil forces upon ourselves.

Pre Sleep Influences On Dreams
Emotions that are predominant in waking life are usually predominant in dreams. If someone suffers
insecurity, it is highly likely the emotional insecurity will appear in dreamtime. The dream characters will reflect
the unlikable aspects of the self, and experiences in the dream world will usually be similar to encounters with
other people in physical reality.
Physical conditions are another influence on dreams. If the body is experiencing discomfort in some area,
it is highly likely that it will show up in the dream in some context within an event.
Movies and stories influence dreams quite often. Almost everyone can remember a time when they
watched a movie before going to bed and then dreamed that they were the hero in the movie who saved the day,
or had heroic adventures.
Social situations are often an influence on dreams, especially if that social situation is unusual or out of
character for the individual.
Almost anything that happens in daily life could become a pre sleep dream influence.

Lucid Dreaming
Lucid dreaming is by far one of my favorite subjects in the world. A lucid dream is an instance where the
dreamer wakes up in the dream and realizes that he or she is dreaming. It does not necessarily depict control of the
dream; it only signifies that the dreamer is aware that he or she is inside a dream. Well known authorities on lucid
dreaming, Stephen LaBerge and Howard Rheingold say in their book Exploring The World Of Lucid Dreaming (1990),
that once one realizes that it is a dream, “Rather than disappearing… [it] might increase in clarity and brilliance until
you find yourself dumbfounded with wonder. If fully lucid, you would realize that the entire dream world was
your own creation, and with this awareness might come an exhilarating feeling of freedom.”
The history of lucid dreaming dates back as far as the first written account of lucid dreams in Tibetan
Buddhist text. In the eighth century A.D., Tibetan monks pursued the mastery of lucid dreaming and it was made
a prerequisite to seeking enlightenment. By mastering the art of lucid dreaming, the spiritual seeker would come
to see waking life as made of a similar substance that is a projection of the mind. The monk would then find
enlightenment in this realization that the world is an illusion just as dreams are, and that consciousness is the
only consistent and continuing substance, rather than the material world.
The next written account of lucid dreaming came when Saint Augustine wrote about two lucid dreams
had by a former Roman physician name Gennadius who had been reassured by these dreams that there was life
after death.
Islam also instructs its subjects to pursue the art of lucid dreaming. If thoughts and actions could be
controlled in the dream world, they could be controlled in waking life.
Frederik Van Eeden is credited with coining the term “lucid dream.” He was a Dutch psychiatrist and
experienced lucid dreams himself, 352 of which he recorded between 1898 and 1912. He tested and experimented
with his lucid dreams and came up with much interesting information about how they work.
Lucid dreams are characterized by the freedom one feels at suddenly finding oneself free of all the
limitations of the body and physical reality, without consequences for experiences like flying and such. In a lucid
dream, one can do anything and everything one has ever wanted to do. They are also characterized by an increase
in vividness of colors and imagery. Ecstatic emotions often accompany lucid dreams. Celestial music is not
uncommon to hear.
Lucid dreaming has met with much skepticism by scientists. All the reports that have been recorded on
lucid dreams do not prove a thing. Laboratory studies began on lucid dreams using the EEG machine.
The dreamer was instructed to signal from sleep that he or she was having a lucid dream by moving the
eyes in a particular pattern. If the subject could awaken in the dream, he or she could also be aware enough to
send a physical signal to the external world. Alan Worsley conducted the first of this type of experiment on April
12, 1975. Two years later, independent and without knowledge of this experiment, Stephen LaBerge and
associates at Stanford University conducted the exact same experiment. Both men used themselves as the subject
and were able to signal that a lucid dream was achieved by particular eye movements. LaBerge did the most
extensive laboratory observation and study of lucid dreaming. These experiments marked the first time that the
conscious world (the lab technicians) could directly communicate with the human unconscious (the lucid
dreamer) and receive messages from the unconscious mind as it is in action. This is an exciting development for
many in the study of the unconscious mind.
Stephen LaBerge has created The Lucidity Institute. He has also developed a gadget for helping people
learn how to dream lucidly in their own homes without help from a laboratory technician. I used mine religiously
until I was able to dream lucidly on command. This gadget is called the Dreamlight, or NovaDreamer. The way it
works is quite simple. It fits over the face like a mask and a movement sensor watches for REM periods during
sleep. When the sensor notices that REM is taking place, red electrodes flash in alternating patterns in order to
alert the dreamer to realize that he or she is dreaming. The dreamer is alerted by flashing lights or flickering in
the setting, scenery or situation in the dream. This is the signal to the dreamer that he or she is dreaming.
Many people have a lucid dream quite spontaneously without any techniques being used. In fact, it is
believed, from surveys done, that 58% of the population has had at least one lucid dream. Children are the most
common lucid dreamers. It was not uncommon for ten year olds to report monthly lucid dreams. As children age,
lucid dreams diminish. Perhaps if there were support and acknowledgement of lucid dreaming, a child would
grow into an adult who never loses the ability to lucid dream.

Reasons & Uses For Lucid Dreaming
Lucid dreams are often very surreal and vivid. James Matlock says in his book Harper’s Encyclopedia Of
Mystical And Paranormal Experience (1991), “Lucid dreams are characterized by light (sometimes very bright),
intense emotions, heightened colors and images, flying or levitation, and a sense of liberation or exhilaration.
Some are almost mystical in nature.” It is reported in many accounts in other books that lucid dreams are surreal,
exhilarating and liberating. These seem to be the common words used to describe the sensation of having had a
lucid dream.
In their book, Exploring The World Of Lucid Dreaming (1990), Stephen LaBerge and Howard Rheingold’s
first and foremost speculation on why lucid dreaming is a useful skill is because life is short and yet we are
sleepwalking through our dreams. Instead, dreams are “many thousands of opportunities to be fully aware and
alive.” These are moments we can experience events that are just as important as physical waking life events.
They can be learning experiences, fantasy fulfillment experiences, self exploration experiences, and interactions
with the divine. By awakening in our dreams, we could add much to our stores of experiences, which would in
turn enrich our waking life. It is as if one could double one’s time to be alive, so if someone lives to be 80, they in
fact really have something like 160 years if they are able to dream lucidly.
Learning is another very important reason for achieving the ability to lucid dream. The learning achieved
in the dreamworld is carried over into the waking world. This can be quite useful to musicians who would like to
improve their playing, or the mother who is learning how to handle the unruly child, or the person who needs
experience with giving a speech before one actually does the speech in real life. The uses for learning that could
be had in dreams are significant and would add much richness to the waking life.
Positive feelings are often a result of an experience in lucid dreams. These feelings of ecstasy, bliss, peace,
freedom and other such positive feelings carry over into the waking life. The exhilaration of being fully conscious
in an entirely different kind of world is often reported to last for a few days after the dream. Freedom of all the
physical world’s limitations, and even the body’s limitations, is a positive experience indeed—especially for those
who are limited in some way, such as being physically handicapped.
Realizing one is awake in a dream translates into real life in an enlightening way. It is a long held belief in
many cultures and religions that mankind is actually sleepwalking through life, much the way we sleepwalk
through our dreams, not realizing that we are awake and alive in the moment. If one experiences the feeling of
being awake and alive in a dream, it would be likely that he or she would experience that in physical life as well.
Stephen LaBerge & Howard Rheingold continue by saying in their book Exploring The World Of Lucid Dreaming
(1990), “By cultivating awareness in your dreams and learning to use them, you can add more consciousness,
more life, to your [waking] life. By waking to dreams, you can waken to life.”
Fantasy fulfillment is another very special use of the skill of lucid dreaming. Every one of us wishes we
could have something we don’t, or wishes the world was a different way, or for something impossible and out of
our reach. The dreamworld has it all waiting for you, that amazing and magnificent career, that notable discovery
that everyone responds to, that huge house, lavish lifestyle, your private jet, all of it. It is already in you and you
can have these experiences without having to manifest them in the waking life. Consciousness does not
necessarily know the difference between the waking world and the dream world. Yes, you know if it officially
happened in physical reality or not, but the signature of the experience is independent of whether it happened in
the physical world or not. The brain registers it as a real experience. For instance, feeling the exhilaration of a
speech well done and an entire arena giving you a standing ovation is a healthy experience whether it happened
in the physical world or the dream world. It has been documented quite well that pleasure, fun, happy
experiences, and wish fulfillment is good for you, even if it happens in a dream. Wish fulfillment is the ultimate
use that many people make of their lucid dreams.
This takes away the need for ego gratification in the physical world. There is freedom and peace in
knowing that the experience you wish to have could be had anytime in the dream world, independent of physical
world manifestations or skills. Being a brain surgeon in the dream world can be a quickly gratified ego desire,
whereas in the physical world, eight years of college and working up a good reputation takes quite a lot of time.
Fantasy fulfillment in the dream world is instant. We all like instant gratification. The nice thing is that there is
nothing wrong with that in the dream world! It is not against the rules.
Problem solving and rehearsal for waking life might be the most important use of lucid dreaming,
besides doubling the amount of time you can spend being conscious during a lifetime. The kinds of problems that
can be solved are many. Social issues can be resolved through trial and error communication attempts, finding
what works in communication and what doesn’t. Scientific problems can be figured out in the dream world. Even
automotive or household problems can be recognized or resolved in the dream. Many times, a message is given
in a dream that is the direct key to solving a waking life problem. The nice thing about this is that trial and error
can be done without having to pay any consequences for the error.
Healing can be quite a good use for lucid dreaming. It is often reported from patients, who are
mysteriously healed of terminal illnesses, that a dream about the body healing in a very clear and lucid dream
came before it. What an interesting world we would live in if our doctors prescribed certain lucid dreams to have
in order to achieve healing of any given illness!

Techniques For Lucid Dreaming
Most lucid dreams occur between 5AM and 8 AM, times that are most likely to be longer REM periods.
LaBerge’s work at Stanford confirmed this occurrence. The first step is to develop good dream recall. If one
cannot remember dreams at all or has difficulty remembering dreams, then lucid dreaming is nearly impossible.
Awareness must be developed in the area of dreaming. First of all plenty of sleep is necessary, and the longer one
sleeps, the more dreams are possible. As the night progresses, dream periods get longer and closer together until
near wake up time, the dreams are forty‐five to sixty minutes long and only a half hour apart. The first dream of
the night is the shortest, perhaps only five to ten minutes in length.
Dream recall happens when the dreamer awakens directly from the dream, which happens after almost
every dream a person has. We fall back to sleep and forget the dream because we are in the habit of it. One way
around this would be to set an alarm clock to wake you up at a time when you are likely to be dreaming. You
could set your alarm for ninety minutes after bedtime, or other various intervals of ninety minutes from bedtime.
If you are aiming for a period of time that would be richer with dream time, try setting the alarm(s) for six or
seven hours after you go to sleep. Dreams are thickest and most likely during the later morning hours of sleep,
right after or before dawn, depending on when you like to wake up. The probability of a lucid dream during this
time is also double that of the earlier part of the sleep period.
Remind yourself of your intention to remember your dreams before you go to bed. Motivation is a big
factor in the success or failure of dream recall. It will help to keep records of the dreams you recall, for this will
inspire more dreams to be remembered.
As soon as you awaken in the morning ask yourself immediately what you were dreaming, for you were
just dreaming before you woke up, if you woke up naturally. If you cannot remember to ask yourself this, try
putting a note next to your bed reminding yourself to ask this question. Don’t move when you wake up. Stay still.
Don’t think about anything either. If you can’t remember what you were dreaming, ask yourself what feelings or
thoughts are present. This will give you clues to what you were just experiencing and might jog your memory.
This may bring back the entire dream. At first, only fragments of the dream will be remembered by the person
who does not have good dream recall, but with practice, more will be revealed without as much effort.
Many techniques are available to train oneself to dream lucidly. One common technique taught by many,
including the Don Juan character in Carlos Castenada’s books, is to look for the hands in the dream. Once the
hands are seen, one can realize one is dreaming because the signal was recognized, and then one is lucid in the
dream. If the hands begin to change, one must look away or lucidity might be lost.
A very potent technique for inducing lucid dreams is to train the waking life consciousness to always be
asking itself if it is dreaming. Every 90 minutes, one could ask oneself if he or she is awake or dreaming, and
always answer, “Yes, I am dreaming. This is a “conditioned response” that will show up in the dream world.
Bizarre occurrences are dreamsigns, triggers which become doors to lucidity. A single out of place object,
character or circumstance can be a dreamsign. These are clues to show you that you are dreaming. For instance, a
streetlight is flashing blue, rather than the familiar red, green or yellow. This would be a dreamsign for the
dreamer, and the dreamer could then realize that this is a dream, rather than physical reality. Then lucidity is
achieved. If a tree in a familiar courtyard were pink instead of green, this could be a dreamsign. If your boss
comes into work wearing a tutu, when this is completely out of character for that person, this can also be a sign
that the dreamer is dreaming. Almost every dream has dreamsigns, some defiance of physical laws, social laws,
or out‐of‐the‐ordinary interactions of objects, people and things. By training yourself to recognize dreamsigns,
you can wake up in any dream you like. Train the waking consciousness to look for out‐of‐place objects,
situations or people in waking life. Noticing that one’s boss is wearing an orange hat with a feather in it when it is
completely out of character for him or her, this could be considered a dreamsign. A dreamsign is something that
is unordinary, like purple kittens, and this would be a signal to the dreamer that he or she is dreaming.
Impossible situations and objects are possible only in a dream.
Another discipline is looking for dreamsigns during waking hours and then this mental attention will be
carried into the dream world. Simply recognize the out of the ordinary experiences all around every day, confirm
that it is a dream, and as the dreamworld presents unusual events, the mind will respond similarly in the dream
state as it did in the waking state by confirming that it is a dream.
An ancient Tibetan Buddhist technique is to maintain wakeful consciousness as one drifts off to sleep.
Stephen LaBerge and Howard Rheingold say in their book Exploring The World Of Lucid Dreaming (1990), that
Rinpoche, a Tibetan teacher who was visiting America, taught people to “think of all our experiences as dreams
and to try to maintain unbroken continuity of consciousness between the two states of sleep and waking.” One
could most easily do this when going back to sleep after just having awakened from a dream. It is more difficult if
the first REM state hasn’t been reached yet.
Another is called “Mnemonic Induction of Lucid Dreams,” or MILD, the phrase coined by Stephen
LaBerge. Mnemonic means “something that aids the memory.” It is difficult for most of us to even remember that
we are trying to awaken in a dream, let alone do so. Stephen LaBerge’s MILD technique can assist with this. This
is a close cousin to the technique of looking for dreamsigns, but differs because you are the one who picks
something to look for, rather than just waiting for something out of the ordinary to happen. For instance, one
could program oneself to wake up in a dream every time he or she opens a door. This is done by remembering in
waking life to check whether or not one is dreaming every time a door is opened in waking life. Then, in the
dreaming life, this will automatically happen again, the question will be posed and the dreamer will then awaken
in the dream.
A second version of this method, MILD, is to recall the dream just awakened from. While returning to
sleep, imagine returning to that dream and waking up inside it. Before falling back to sleep, pick something you
want to do as soon as you see yourself awakening in the dream, like flying or something like that. Often, the
dream one was having is returned to and one and might remember that one had seen oneself waking up in this
particular dream.
Another method for inducing lucid dreams is called “sleep redistribution.” A normal eight hour period of
sleep might be between midnight and 8 AM. With this method, the eight hour sleep period is cut short by
sleeping only until 6 AM. One goes about his or her business for two hours and then goes back to bed from 8 AM
to 10 AM. During these two hours, one will have more dreams than was possible from 6 AM to 8 AM in normal
sleep. It is a fact that within only a few moments of falling back to sleep, especially during the morning period,
REM can be re‐entered quite quickly.
Stephen LaBerge’s invention, the Nova Dreamer, also called the Dream Light, is a wonderful device that
delivers a trigger while the dreamer is dreaming. Other methods mentioned above deal with bringing a trained
waking awareness into the world of dreams, but this method sends a direct cue into the dream as it is actually
happening. This device, as mentioned before, flashes light into the dreamer’s closed eyes whenever it detects
REM. The dreamer will then see flashing lights in the dream and may use the trigger to wake up in the dream. It
is most effective if the waking mind is trained to look for light sources in the dream. I have personally found this
device quite effective.
Wake Initiated Lucid Dreams, or WILDs, are lucid dreams based on the idea that one can fall asleep
consciously. This means that the body falls asleep while retaining full wakefulness and enters the dream state
with consciousness intact. Full lucidity would be present immediately with the beginning of the dream. This is
probably the most difficult technique of all, but it has been reported that it works, especially from the Tibetan
Monks. A WILD is most likely when one awakens during the night and then goes back to sleep. It is not as
effective in the beginning of the night for the deep delta sleep must be attained first before much else can happen.
The ability to stay awake is quite a skill indeed, and might only be possible for meditators who have gained much
mastery in not slipping over the sleep/awake border so easily into sleep. It takes great training to straddle this
border without losing the wakefulness of waking life consciousness.

Controlling Dreams
This idea of being able to control dreams is a little bit misleading. If one could completely control dreams
with the waking ego intact, this would be working against what the dream realities are all about: teaching us
about the parts of ourselves that we do not know much about, the unconscious parts. The dream ego is much the
same as the waking ego, but it is more flexible than the waking ego, most importantly because it cannot be
harmed in the dream the way the waking ego can. Stephen LaBerge and Howard Rheingold say in their book
Exploring The World Of Lucid Dreaming (1990), “The person, or dream ego, that we experience being in the dream
is the same as our waking consciousness. It constantly influences the events of the dream through its expectations
and biases, just as it does in waking life. The essential difference in the lucid dream is that the ego is aware that
the experience is a dream. This allows the ego more freedom of choice and creative responsibility in finding the
best way to act in the dream… Your expectations and assumptions, whether conscious or unconscious, about
what dreams are like, determine to a remarkable extent the precise form your dreams take.”
The usefulness of waking up in the dream is control of the self, rather than control of the dream. Control
of the self means that one can decide what one wants to do inside the experience. One can decide how one wants
to act in a spirit of co‐operation with what is presented to the dream ego in the form of events and occurrences.
Jeremy Taylor, in his book Where People Fly And Water Runs Uphill (1992), puts down the “rhetoric of
popular promoters of lucid dreaming who regularly promise that if you buy their books or listen to their training
tapes you will learn to control your dreams. In my view, this is simply false advertising since control is
impossible, increased influence is all that can be achieved, and it is a much more interesting and valuable
accomplishment than ‘control’ would be, even if it were possible.” He goes on to say that it is about co‐operating
with what the dream is trying to help us evolve in ourselves rather than over‐riding our inner teacher. “It is my
experience that the dreamer will then inevitably meet the same or a similar situation again, either later in the
same dream, or in a subsequent dream. The multitude of lucid‐dream stories that come from the Tibetan and
other Asian traditions suggest that no matter how dedicated and skilled the lucid dreamer, the dream remains
autonomous and defies counterproductive manipulation and control.”
Jeremy Taylor pontificates in his book Dream Work (1983), “It is certainly possible to be preoccupied with
comparative trivialities in lucid dreams, but the unconscious element of our being from which the dreams spring
is so much older, wiser, stronger, more creative, loving and reconciling that we even imagine that it seems to me
that even aggressive triviality on the part of a lucid dreamer…can easily be absorbed. To imagine that the
dreaming unconscious could be totally overwhelmed and controlled by even the most practiced and disciplined
lucidity seems to me to be simply hubris at worst, and at best a failure of perception and imagination.” He
finalizes this statement by saying that it is impossible for the deeper self to be fooled by such antics on the dream
ego’s part, even if it is successful in the short run at controlling dreams. “The dreaming unconscious is a center in
our being which is so much older, wiser, stronger and more far‐seeing than waking consciousness that to imagine
it could be dominated or ‘controlled’ by even the most adept lucid dreamers is to misunderstand its basic nature.”

Out Of Body Experiences (OBEs) or Astral Projections
Inducing lucid dreams naturally leads to the ability to astral project, or have out‐of‐body experiences
(OBEs). This is often what is happening when one has a false awakening from a lucid dream. A false awakening
happens when one ‘wakes up’ from the dream, but does not realize that he or she is not awake physically. A short
time later, the subject does realize a dream is still in progress, but it may or may not be a dream, but instead
might be an astral projection. The world of OBEs is slightly different than the dream worlds in the fact that it is a
mirror image of the physical world, not a completely invented world like the world of dreams. The astral world
has the same picture on the wall in your living room as your actual living room does. It is more parallel to the
Earth plane, and one has the freedom to travel the Earth world while in spirit. This is the difference from lucid
dreaming.
It is easy to create the experience of a false awakening in a lucid dream and induce an OBE from that
platform. It is easier to get into the astral world from the dream worlds, some say, than it is to get into the astral
worlds from the physical state, even if one is asleep, or falling asleep.
One of the fringe benefits of learning to dream lucidly is the fact that OBEs are a natural by‐product of this
skill. The techniques for inducing lucid dreams are the same techniques for learning how to have an OBE. It is all
about learning to free oneself from the limitations of the physical body. Learn one skill and you get a bonus skill!

Conclusion
Questions of whether or not the dream world is made of some sort of substance related to physical matter
have yet to be answered by mankind. Perhaps a millennia of exploration of the dream world is necessary before
these questions can be answered. I think we are on the brink of a great discovery. Dreams are finally being
viewed as an important area of scientific discovery, especially as more reports from the dream world reflect
physical world benefits. The first benefit is the personal unfoldment and growth that is possible in the dream
world, therefore making the citizens of physical reality more mature and healthy beings. The second benefit of the
dream world is the information we can retrieve from there and bring back with us into the physical world.
Our dream life is continuous, not a life that starts and stops when we are asleep or awake. According to
Jane Roberts in her book The Unknown Reality, Volume One (1977), we continue to dream while we are awake, but
our conscious mind averts its attention away from the inner world to the outer world. She says that we do not
understand that “Dream life is continuous. It has organization on its own levels that you do not comprehend, and
from its rich source you dream much of the energy with which you form your daily experience… It often seems
that sleep is almost a small death, and psychologists have compared dreaming with controlled insanity. You have
so divorced your waking and dreaming experience that it seems you have separate ‘lives,’ and that there is little
connection between your waking and dreaming hours…” This means that the realities being perceived
underneath physical reality when we dream are happening whether or not we are currently paying attention to
them consciously. The events in the various dimensions we occupy simultaneously, i.e., the dream world, the
physical world, and perhaps a few others yet to be officially named, are active and influencing us, whether or not
we are dreaming. Jane Roberts continues by saying, “You dream whether you are living or dead. When you are
alive, corporally speaking, what you think of as dreaming becomes subordinate to what you refer to as you
conscious waking life.”
I would liken it to the multitudes of TV stations that are playing in the vast arena of consciousness that
we are as eternal beings, and just because we tune in clearly to one station, like physical reality, it does not mean
that the events happening on the other stations have stopped, but rather that our attention is the only thing that
changed. Our activities in the dream worlds go on without our conscious awareness of them. Perhaps our dreams
can be thought of more as snapshots that we take with the conscious mind of things that happened while our
attention was elsewhere focused on physical reality events. Jane Roberts continues to say in this book, “A
remembered dream…is a snapshot of a larger event, taken by your conscious mind.”
Perhaps becoming an oneironaut will be a childhood aspiration, just as becoming a fireman is. Robert Van
De Castle laments the lost possibilities in childhood in his book Our Dreaming Mind (1994), “It is unfortunate that
our culture doesn’t provide more reinforcement for children to develop and expand their capacity for lucid
dreaming.” What wonders these children would produce! Would the speed of our evolution as a species be
increased exponentially? Wouldn’t it be quite interesting to grow up with the expectation that one will go to
college and earn a degree in oneiromancy, becoming a valued explorer of the dream world and returning with
treasures of knowledge and information for mankind to use in the physical world? What an honored position in
society it would be, rather than the nonchalance such explorers are viewed with presently.
This is how potent I believe the dream world is, and how powerful it can be in the unfoldment of
evolution. If every child were taught to maintain the ability to dream lucidly, for we are born with the ability and
forget as we grow older, what kind of world would we live in? What kind of discoveries could be made? Could
communication with other dimensions or other worlds within the physical universe be achieved through spirit
communication before physical communication is possible? Are there other communities in the universe who
traverse the universe freely and are able to connect with us in the dream world? What if our political leaders were
to attempt such a thing?
Of course, these are all fantasies at this time, but so was the idea of inventing the airplane and the
automobile before they were manifested physically. I believe that dreams are a huge unexplored frontier of
human consciousness. If we were to begin to explore and map this world, we would discover much about
ourselves, our physical world, and our nature. Perhaps we could even blend the worlds at some point and bring
powers like the ability to move objects, or make physical reality more fluid in other ways, into manifestation.
Perhaps we can even learn to levitate in physical reality and fly the way we do in dreams. It is estimated that we
only use 10% of our brain. What is the other 90% of the brain for? Is it to harness and embrace these other worlds
in which we live simultaneously and bring gifts back and forth to each of these realities? Are these the abilities
that are latent in human beings, awaiting our intent to explore them?
Let us become oneironauts and find out! Jane Roberts says in her book The Unknown Reality, Volume One
(1977), “The true mental physicist will be a bold explorer⎯not picking at the universe with small tools, but
allowing his consciousness to flow into the many open doors that can be found with no instrument, but with the
mind. Your own consciousnesses…can indeed help lead you into some much greater understanding…” In The
Unknown Reality, Volume Two (1986) she says, “Any of your scientific or religious disciplines could benefit from a
study of the dreaming consciousness, for there the basic nature of reality exists as clearly as you can perceive it.”
She also says in The Nature Of The Psyche (1979), “Then you would put all religions and sciences out of business,
for you would understand the greater reality of your psyche. The physicists have their hands on the doorknob. If
they paid more attention to their dreams, they would know what questions to ask.”
Stephen LaBerge and Howard Rheingold say in their book Exploring the World Of Lucid Dreaming (1990),
“Given that dreams are such fertile fields for inspiration, why is there not yet a school of dreaming in the Western
world? …Once researchers have investigated creativity in dreams more thoroughly they should be able to give
you more precise guidance in how to use your sleeping time to solve problems and be creative.”
In the book Dreams And Dreaming (1990), George Constable, Editor In Chief, states, “The shades of
consciousness, from full engagement with the waking world to retreat into deep sleep’s profound solitudes, are
being sorted out in ever finer gradations by researchers. They have traced the psychological and physiological
paths human beings follow as the slip in and out of the world of dreams. But mysteries still abound.” Using
dreams for scientific exploration, not to mention religious and spiritual exploration, would be a good beginning
that does not cost us much in resources, money or extra time. It can all be done while we sleep. There cannot be a
better business proposal than this! Discover treasures, explore the universe, communicate with the population
within, and learn about the different possibilities for physical reality, all while we sleep in our beds! This is a
good use of our time here on Earth spent in sleep.
I have asked more questions in this material than I have answered. One question only spurs many more.
The dream world is yet an undiscovered territory, an unmapped frontier, in human reality. So let us use our
consciousness to the utmost of our ability. Let’s make the quality of our lives better, using dreams as another outlet
for experiences in which we can grow, learn and discover the secrets of the universe and ourselves while in the form
of individuality. Waking life experiences are not our only opportunities for growth. Dreams offer thousands more
opportunities for experiences than we can fit into one physical lifetime, especially if we become lucid in them. Let us
take advantage of that time, making the best use of it we can, and truly expand ourselves as a species.
“Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.” —Thoreau

Dream Recall And Interpretation
Exercises & Techniques
This portion of the material has brief outlines and suggestions for recalling and interpreting your dreams.
There are many books in existence that have detailed outlines of how to handle dreams in certain ways. If you’re
serious about being an oneironaut, you may want to purchase some of those books. Below are a few suggestions
for your personal use.
Functions Of Dreaming
Solving problems ‐ a variety of solutions can be Pleasure and fun
found through the activities of dreams. It is See the big picture
not uncommon to wake up knowing exactly Reveal the unconscious
what to do about a past, present, or future Experience the divine
situation Explore ego of the self and relationships
Process and clarify feelings with others
Receive new thoughts and ideas Learn from mistakes
Trial and error scenarios Messages from the future self with the
Express things that cannot be expressed in daily life benefit of hindsight
Process newly learned skills and information Rebalancing the psyche
Practice new ways of being
Signs Of An Important Dream
Extremely vivid images A sense of taste or smell (occur rarely in dreams)
Vivid colors
Strong emotions
Death or dismemberment, gory images
Personal or world catastrophes
Physical pain
Disorientation
Floating or falling
Warnings
Guidance
Dream Recall
It is no wonder that dreams are so hard to recall because the memory function of the brain is shut down
during sleep. Often it is only possible to remember the dream right upon awakening rather than being able to
recall it during the day. It is a fleeting memory. That is why it is so important to write dreams down if you plan
on becoming serious about exploring and understanding your dream world. I have also found that recording
dreams on a voice recorder is quite effective and allows one to go back to sleep fairly uninterrupted. The act of
writing and using the hands wakes one up so much that it is hard to go back to sleep for some people. When I
listen to the recorder the next day, I have found that I hear recorded dreams that I didn’t even remember upon
awakening. They were recorded sometime during the night. This method produces anywhere between 3 and 7
detailed dream recordings per night.
Strephon Kaplan‐Williams says in his book Dream Working (1991), “We do not forget what we most want
to remember… A developed memory is the mark of a conscious being. Those who lack passion are great
forgetters.” This may be true on some levels but I do not believe it’s a general rule across the board for everyone.
Some people are naturally gifted at remembering dreams and others have to work at this skill. It may have more
to do with biochemistry than anything else, but it is possible to have mind over matter by using intention.
Dream recall has much to do with intention, for it is most difficult to have good recall unless the mindset
to do so has been created. Many have used affirmations, visualization, and intention techniques successfully. The
following are some pointers to assist you in better dream recall:

Deterrents To Dream Recall
Blocking out dreams because of fear Medication
Getting out of bed to quickly Alcohol and drugs
Waking up during non‐REM sleep

Practical Advice For Dream Recall
Upon going to sleep, clear your head by briefly reviewing your daytime activities, and this will keep
you from doing this in dreams, therefore letting you get to deeper dream content sooner.
Write down anything and everything even fragments of dream. Write something down every morning,
even if it seems unimportant. This helps create habit and intention.
Donʹt wake up with music or alarms, for this will distract you upon awakening. The exception to this
would be the practice of using alarms on purpose to wake you up at intervals when you would
most likely be dreaming.
Upon awakening donʹt think of the dayʹs activities and donʹt get out of bed.
Write quickly before trying to organize the whole dream in your head, don’t analyze, just start writing.
Recording your dream on a tape recorder is even easier and can be done in the dark when you
wake up from dreams in the middle of the night.
Create affirmations for yourself in order to program the conscious mind to remember dreams. For
instance: I am a talented oneironaut and I remember my dreams easily.

Incubation Of Dreams
“Often the dream you get after incubation seems totally unrelated to the subject matter you had in mind.
Remember that dreams come in the language of metaphor and symbol,” Joan Mazza, M.S. says in her book Dream Back
Your Life (2000). Just because the dream may not seem related to your question does not mean that you did not receive
an answer. It is up to you to interpret the dream you received. If the dream seems completely unrelated then watch your
dreams for two more evenings, three altogether, and find your answer within those three nights of dreaming.
Write down what it is you would like to know.
Make sure the answer must be more than a yes or no answer. Be very specific.
Do something special before you go to sleep to signify the magical nature of incubating a dream.
Place your paper with your dream request under your pillow or on your altar.
Know that you will dream and that your incubation of the dream has been successful.
Before going to sleep, visualize yourself recording the dream upon awakening.
Experience your feelings at having received your answer even though you havenʹt dreamt yet.
Assume that whatever dream you receive is the answer to your question.
If you really want to get the answer in a dream, do a magical ritual of some sort all day, keeping a focus
on what it is youʹre seeking an answer to. Remember, the ancient Greeks spent all day incubating their dreams
with ritual, focus and intention.

Interpreting & Understanding Dreams
Strephon Kaplan‐Williams says in his book Dream Working (1991), “The interpretation…does not start
after the dream report, but before it.” He believes that we know what our dreams mean long before we have
them. After all, the dream is made up of your own personal symbols and personal language of your innermost
unconscious self.
The first and foremost necessity for interpreting and understanding your dreams is to learn your personal
language of inner symbols, concepts and ideas. This means making a dictionary for yourself so that when the
object again appears in a new dream, you might know its meaning. This is done by observing the same item in
many dreams and observing what the object means in the dream situation and in daily life. Creating this
dictionary for yourself will make understanding your dreams easier. It is helpful to look up definitions in a
published dream dictionary, but realize that your own personal symbols override those in any published volume.
The dream dictionaries may actually be the personal symbols for someone elseʹs inner landscape, namely the
author of the book. You must write your own dream dictionary book if you are to become a serious oneironaut.

Dream Therapist Questions For Interpreting Your Dreams
The questions below will assist you in determining your own interpretation and understanding of your
dreams. Interpretation is a highly subjective practice, just as personal symbols and metaphors are also highly
subjective. If you take any dream and ask the following questions and write down the answers, this will be a
large step toward understanding your dream. These are the questions that a dream therapist would ask you.
What are the main events of the dream?
What are your dominant feelings during the dream?
Is it possible that something influenced your dream while you were sleeping like a sound, smell or
something that touched you: i.e. a pet, your spouse, your child, something shifting on the bed…
Describe each dream element: people, places, situations, animals, objects, etc.
What are your feelings related to each object in the dream?
What were you thinking before you went to bed?
What were the main events of your day?
What resemblance (or lack of) do these dream characters or your dream ego have to your daily life self?
What is the difference between your waking emotions and your dreaming emotions?
What situation in your dream resembles daily life?
Have dialogues with the dream characters, including your own dream ego (yourself). What do they say?
What are the sub‐personalities, or unknown aspects of yourself, portrayed by each of these dream
characters? How are each of them your own self?
Experience the events of the dream through the dream character’s or dream object’s eyes.
What information is delivered in this dream?
Is this an innermost honest statement about your current situation?
How do you feel now?
What are the other possible meanings for this dream?
If this were someone elseʹs dream how would you interpret it, what questions would you ask, and what
does it say to the dreamer?
Summarize the dream in one sentence.
What does the dream seem to be about?
Do you see a pattern in this dream?
If you know about archetypes, what archetypes are in your dream?
How am I acting in this dream?
What relation does this dream have to my future?
What message does this dream have for my personality?
Is there an adversary in this dream?
What is being wounded in this dream and what is being healed?
What healing or helping force is in this dream?
What does this dream want from me?
Why did I need this dream?
What would I like to avoid in this dream?
Why have I dreamed of so‐and‐so now?
How can I make this dream real in daily life?

Questions For Dialogue With Dream Character
What is your name?
What is your purpose in my dream?
What do you symbolize in my daily life?
How do you represent me?
Are you a friend or foe?
What do you want from me?
What can I do for you?
How will the situation be resolved?

Finding Patterns In Dreams
What symbols (situations, objects, people, and others) show up frequently in your dreams?
What animals show up in your dreams, if any?
What are you often doing in your dreams?
How do you feel emotionally most often in your dreams?
How do your dreams usually end¬on a happy note or a sad note?
Do your dream endings tell you something about how you handle life?

Re‐entering Or Rewriting A Dream
How would you change the events of the dream?
How would you act differently in the dream?
What could you do or say to make the change happen?
How does the dream make you feel once it is changed?
Ask yourself how you stop this positive change from appearing in your life?

Cataloging Dream Symbols
Anytime you notice a particularly powerful character, animal or object in a dream, write it down.
Write down what it represents for you every time it appears in a dream. Add these definitions to your
dream dictionary if the entry already exists.
Notice variations in the meanings of your symbols, and in what context of dream situations do they
change?
Leave space after your entry for future additions to the meanings and definitions of the symbol. Perhaps
you might like to use 3x5 index cards for each entry.
Browse the dreams of your past journals, look for the same symbols and determine their meanings.

Changing Endings
Changing the ending of your dream is perfectly fine as an exercise in writing or as a vocal exercise with a
dream partner. This can be very therapeutic and can often create a breakthrough experience when it comes to
challenging situations. Sometimes you may find that you wished you could have made a different choice while
you were in the dream, so do it now in creative visualization, writing, or vocal experience. This is a wonderful
way to work with nightmares or reoccurring dreams, especially since those are dreams that call for a different
action or perspective in life.
“By changing a dream ending youʹre consciously giving yourself a new signpost,” says Joan Mazza, M.S.
in her book Dream Back Your Life (2000).

Nightmares & Recurrent Dreams
Conquering nightmares
Your nightmare is a gift, really, and if you approach it as such, it can heal you or teach you something.
Strephon Kaplan‐Williams says in Dream Working (1991), “Nightmares are incomplete dreams.” They are dreams
people wake themselves up from because they are not able to deal with the implications of the dream. Most often
it is the dream ego itself that is under attack. Often a nightmare represents a daily circumstance or situation that
the dreamer does not want to face but wonʹt go away without a resolution. Here are some tips for working with
nightmares and recurrent dreams. “A nightmare is a call to action,” says Joan Mazza, M.D. in Dream Back Your
Life (2000).
Recurrent Dreams
Work with recurrent dreams the same way you would work with nightmares. Recurrent dreams are
usually nightmares. Helena McLean and Abiye Cole say in their book, The Dream Working Handbook (2001), “The
fact that a dream keeps returning means that it contains a vital message that needs to be listened to. Such a dream
becomes more and more exaggerated the longer it is ignored.” They also say, ”We need to recognize and
acknowledge our own reflection in the monsters of our dreams. Then they will lose their power to make us
afraid.” Jung calls this technique “facing the shadow.”

Steps To Understanding Nightmares & Recurrent Dreams
Write your nightmare down on paper without any attempts to understand the dream.
Circle all the words that catch your attention.
Write down all the feelings you had while in the nightmare.
What are the metaphors and waking life scenarios that might be reflected in the dream?
If the dreams were a message, what would you hear?
What would you do if you were fearless and had unlimited resources?
Can you make this change what the dream signifies? If not, what is in the way?
What do others say about your nightmare?
After what events do your nightmares happen?
Has anything in your diet changed?
What fear is the dream bringing up?

Lucid Dreaming
“People who remember dreams and do regular dream work are more likely to be lucid in their dreams
than those who remember dreams only rarely or who donʹt usually pay attention to their dreams,” says Joan
Mazza, M.S. in her book Dream Back Your Life (2000).
Techniques for lucid dreaming are covered thoroughly in the Masters Degree course called Lucid
Dreaming. In the Masters Degree course you will receive charts and other relative material for learning how to
dream lucidly. For now, try the exercises below:

A few tips for lucid dreaming, to help you develop the appropriate mental environment:
1. Do reality checks. Ask yourself if you are dreaming while you are going about your daily tasks.
2. Look for inconsistencies or bizarre details in your daily surroundings.
3. Could these events really happen?
4. Be very attentive for the entire day, pretending that you are walking around in a lucid dream. Earth life itself is
actually a lucid dream for the soul.
5. Affirm to yourself you will recognize you are dreaming in your next dream.
6. If you become lucid, ask the characters who they are and what their purpose is.
Dream Symbols
(Note: these are brief versions of lengthy descriptions in various books)

Above: consciousness, divinity Blind: lack of vision, foresight or faith, unable to make
Aisle: pathway, walking down the aisle, spiritual a decision, fear
bonding, vows, commitment, dedication or purpose Blood: emotions, the soul, vital life‐force, matters of
Alien: deceased being, feeling alienated, seeing another the heart, symbolic of sacrifice
as strange and unpredictable Blue: truth, spirituality, sadness, peace
Alley: related to life’s path, can be dark and tunnel‐like, Boat: conveyance, rite of passage, method of moving
or a shortcut across abyss within the self
Animal: religious or spiritual symbol, instincts, primal Bog: charting uncertain territory, putrefication that
forces within, lower brain activity precedes rebirth
Arch, Archway: rite of passage, new chapter in life, Book: self‐discovery, absorbing inner information,
change in thinking, change for the better unread pages of self
Architectural structures: body parts, parts of the self, Bridges: connections to another world, to others, and
being inside = being inside the self to self, crossing into another way of being
Arms: protection, embracing love, tools for mobilization Briefcase: a collection of ideas, secret or important
and creation information, status symbol
Ash: raw material of spiritual rebirth, phoenix rising Bright lights: fame, exposure, not hiding unsavory
from the ashes, triumph parts of the self anymore, or showing the beautiful
At sea: not on solid ground, without understanding, parts of self.
unstable, free Broken window: self‐destruction, emotional
Automobile: the ego, look for details like what the car upheaval, inner turmoil
looks like (self esteem), if it is lost, traveling fast, etc. Bugs: little things bothering you, uncleanliness, fear of
Axe: as weapon, represents war and violence; liberating filth
power of spiritual light, sky god powers Building: the self, creative impulses, constructive
Awakening: recognition, revelation, illumination outlook
Baby: achievement, body of work, creation, creative Bunk: unification, steadfastness
process Bushes: subterfuge, concealment, submerged sexual
Background: past life, past experiences, childhood urges, genitalia
Back seat: not in control, being driven, letting self relax Calling card: sense of identity, networking
and let life take over the work Camel: beast of burden, responsibility
Ball: sphere, world, self‐concept, as point around which Camp: staying entrenched, an adventure, self‐
everything revolves sufficiency
Barefoot: baring one’s soul, getting in touch with the Candles: magic, optimism, illumination
earth, instinctual nature, freedom Car: driving self, in control, inside a small or specific
Basement: the unconscious, parts of the self not yet world, car can represent body, mobilization
examined, something spooky or ugly Cartoon: unreal aspects of self, caricatures of self, the
Bathroom: relief, cleansing, self care silly parts of self or the parts that don’t seem steady in
Beach: solitude, peace, inner movement across unknown reality
areas in psyche Cashier, check‐out person: adding things up, taking
Bear: resurrection, initiation into life’s passage, stock of self, giving energy to stranger
darkness before rebirth, raw power Castle: the body, lofty, mature sense of self, fortress of
Beast: animal instincts self, manifestation of self
Bee: industriousness, being too busy and over‐ Caverns: dark parts of the psyche, female genitalia,
committed, individual submerged in the group void within
Behind: past Ceiling: limiting factor
Below: the unconscious Chair: permanence, solidity, place of rest,
Bench: permanence, inactivity, rest, peace, stagnation interrogation
Black dog: symbol of foreboding, omen of future Chased: sense of being pursued, self chasing self,
unpleasant event, death monster
Blanket: security, comfort, protection
Circle: concept of self, totality, wholeness, timelessness, Envelope: deliverance, announcement, sealed off,
continuance, mandala, coming full circle enveloped
Cities: symbolic of dreamer, beautiful cities‐love of self Excrement: death, decay, defilement
and life, ugly cities‐ hate of self and life Explosions: sexual activity, ejaculation or orgasm,
College course: the course of life, learning, introspection climax, falling apart of life or self in abrupt way,
Columns: body, phallic symbol, standing tall, breakthroughs in consciousness
supportive, upholding ideals, order Extended objects: full growth potential
Conductor: energizer, conduit, one who runs things or Falling: surrender to, loss of control, letting go, flying,
regulates things end of the line
Corners: the four points of reference in the world, Fertile ground: womb, great idea, incubation of
totality, wholeness project
Costume: disguise, deception, roles we assume Film: distortion, veiled layer, projection of fantasy,
Coverings: layers of memory, layers of undiscovered identity issues, watching others
self Fire: frenzied activity, intellect, sexual energy, desire,
Crib: safety zone, protection passion, excitement
Dancing: joy, happiness, creativity, sexual activity, Firearms: fear of death, control of life and death, anger
celebration of life or self Floating: superficial, without depth, on top of a
Darkness: ambivalence, apathy, surrender, fear, devoid situation, above all human affairs, freedom
of knowledge Flying: freedom, renunciation, independence,
Datebook: passage of time, agenda, schedule, self‐ detachment, objectivity, defiance of rules, elevation,
identity establishing individuality, ascendance
Deep water: trouble, unknown parts of the self that are Flying a plane: control, making all attainable,
feared, spirituality responsibility
Demons: primitive instincts, repressed sexuality, Food: emotional nourishment
concentrations of fear within self, ugly parts of the self Foreground: present life, future life, what is in front of
Descending: quest for self‐knowledge, self‐discovery, you
the unconscious Forgetting: repression, frustration, fear of loss or
Devils: protagonists, tempters, seducers, negativity, inefficiency, power of selection
hopelessness, falling out of favor Frog: evil spirit or good spirit historically linked to
Diagnosis: ongoing analysis in dream superstition, something bewitched that was
Digging: self‐discovery, searching the unconscious, transformed for the worse
looking for something Front: the future
Dinner: emotional nourishment or protection, Front seat: co‐navigation, privilege
satisfaction of needs Frozen: stubbornness, resistance, rigidity, reluctance,
Dog: Dionysian animal spirit, instincts, making friends inhibitions, fears
with yourself, friend Garage: cemetery, graveyard, underworld,
Dolls: babies unconscious, storage of information or things
Door: entrance to illumination, imagination, opening up Garden: cultivation of creative side, unrepressed
or closing off, forbidden nature, passion, spirit, origins
Driving wheel: wheel of life, symbol of control, Glass: perception, clarity, transparency
responsibility Glass hall: perception of viewing or being viewed or
Drowning: suffocation by system, being engulfed or watched over
overwhelmed, loss of identity, immersing oneself in God: father, creator, eternal being within self, divinity,
spirituality wisdom
Drum roll: performance Going outside: independence, beyond confines of self
Dust: layers of memory, veil, past or life
Edge: looking into the unknown, borderline, hesitation Green: unripe, unseasoned, birth and fruition, healing
to enter unknown energy, growth
Egg: beginnings, new project, phase of life, sense of self, Green pasture: affirmative view
the womb of Mother Goddess, hope Hair: strength, power, if cut=castration or weakness
Empty hole: unconscious Handbag: self‐identity, security
Harsh light: harsh realization
Hives: anger, physical eruption Mother: one who births, rescues, creates, nostalgia for
Holding back breath: not accepting a situation, fear, the womb, nourishment
anticipation Motorcycle: sexual prowess, aggressive tendencies,
Home, house: the body, personality, being, self, state of freedom, mobility
mind, the mother, security, refuge, the more palatial, the Mountains: obstacles, insurmountable problems,
grander the sense of self dominating presence, immortality, place of sanctuary
Ice: the opposite of an erection, something that becomes Mouse: meddler, mischievous
hard in the cold, without emotion, linked to death, Multistoried structure: multifaceted personality
stiffness Music: passions, being transported, rhythmic activity,
Incline: struggle, maturation process beauty, emotions
Interiors: the mind, introspection Nakedness: truth, purity, birth, innocence exposure,
Invisibility: unborn, protection, forgetting or being origins, shame, fear
forgotten Name: recognition, self‐identity
Island: isolation, independence, inaccessibility, Nature: essence, giver and taker, hostile or docile
autonomy, the individual self forces, unpredictability
Jesus: father, paternal figure, savior, the good, spiritual Nature trail: road of self‐discovery
experience, forgiveness Ocean: psyche, soul, unconscious depths, mother,
Journey: departure, death, adventure death, danger, largeness
Jungle: the unconscious Ostrich: repression, hiding
Key: unlocking of higher truth, understanding, opening Ovation: approval
up Parked car: deceased individual or dead part of
King: father, in control, boss, authority personality
Lake: reflection, giving surface view Party: celebration of life, contentment
Large audience: the eternal being, judgment, desire to be Passenger terminal: transportation between worlds
heard within self
Leaves: something fallen, dead, or something alive and Pelican: scavenger, hunter
green, healthful Picture: the whole truth
Left: the past Pimple: the wish to break out or leave, recognition of
Light: consciousness, awareness, clarity, of spiritual repressed anger, blemish in personality
matter Playing: motivation, free expression
Lighthouse: empowerment, scope, self‐illumination, Playing the game: life’s challenges
finding one’s path home Pool: body’s internal fluids, amniotic, pregnancy,
Little dog: helplessness, children, the underdog, spiritual experiences
compassion Precipice: on the brink of disaster, on the edge of the
Losing a pocketbook: loss of identity, sense of violation unknown
Losing a tooth: a gap or void, fear, consequences for Pregnancy: filling a void, creative process, body of
inability to make the right decision work, death of baby is death of one’s youth, fear of
Lynx: animal instincts responsibility
Makeup: covering reality, covering up ugly parts of the Profile: not the whole picture
self, making beautiful parts more visible Puppy: baby, child or new friend
Magazine: the self, storehouse of information, gossip Queen: mother, grace, wisdom, beauty, success,
Male hostility: fear of castration, negative animus, authority, feminine of king
trying to take control of situation Radio: the mind, transmitted thought
Mask: disguise, persona Rain: birth, nourishment, purification, growth, tears,
Medicine: corrective measures, guidance, problem emotional outpouring
solvers Remedies: corrective measures
Mermaid: magic, goddess figure, sexual attractiveness Repairs: emotional or physical imperfections
Mirror: self‐reflection, looking for truth, imitation Restaurant: emotional nourishment, socialization
Mist: blurred reality, inability to make a decision, Road: quest for knowledge, freedom of expression,
lostness direction
Moon: wholeness, luminous enlightenment, magic, Rooms: the body, the personality, self
feminine presence, purity, ascendancy
Sand: restrictive side of reason, sterile, barren, abrasive, Text search: looking for answers, looking for a way
with ocean is combination of vastness and restriction out
Scenes: memories, facades, visions Ticket: gaining admittance, approval, acceptance
Script: part one plays in life, meaning, ideology, Tiered seats: developmental stages of life, levels of
philosophy, destiny, lack of free will consciousness
Sea: unconscious, immersion in spiritual matters Tomb: death, silence, sanctuary, powerlessness, womb
See‐through: truthfulness Swan: soul symbol, solitude and peace
Shoes: watching your step, seeing where you’re going, Sword: phallic, masculine symbol, authority, justice,
observing dividing right from wrong, good/bad, etc.
Shrinking: fear Tower: aloofness, independence, spiritual or mental
Silhouette: outline, only part of the picture elevation, fortress, impenetrable
Skating: avoiding issues Tree: of life, creativity, fortitude, happiness, nurture
Sky: without limit, open‐minded‐ness, independence Trapped: being trapped by people, a job, or life
Snake: temptation, fear, transcendence, letting go of old circumstances
and bringing in new Tree branches: offshoots, thoughts, evolution
Soul: psyche, eternal self, God Tunnel: accessing unconscious realm, emerging‐
Space: void, freedom, the unknown symbol of rebirth, going in‐ introspection
Spear: phallus, murder, power, authority Twilight: neither here nor there, noncommittal,
Spheres: the world, consciousness transition, beautiful ending or closure of a situation
Spiderwebs: entrapment, stuckness, beauty, something Underneath: the unconscious
to stay away from Valley: unconscious, mother, nurturing wholeness,
Stadium: magic circle, mandala, wholeness, totality, depression, a low point in life
harmony Video games: at the controls of life, maneuvered or
Stage: set‐up, platform for ideas, maturational phase of maneuvering
development, spiritual elevation Warm water: tears, nourishment, return to origins, rest
Stage manager: God, parental figure, guide, someone Waves: being swallowed up, washed over, waving,
you admire welcoming or dismissive
Stairwell: stasis, moderation, ascent or descent in Weather: driving, changeable force, physical or
consciousness. emotional condition
Storm: stressful time, emotional release Wheel: the sun, divinity, forces beyond one’s control
Striking: lashing out, not accepting, fear White: purity, religious devotion, cleansing truth
Summer: youth, blooming, fun, love White House: the presidency, leadership, authority,
Sun: God, new beginning, realization protection, success
Surfaces: relating to sense of touch and feelings, Windows: the self, the soul, opportunities
superficial, to rise into view Winter: death or dying, what is forgotten or covered
Taxi: being transported, inside vehicle under someone over, old age, deceased, loneliness
else’s control, specific world Wires: wired‐in, connected, networking
Telephones: communication with the deceased, calling Wise old man: guardian, God, spirit guide
someone telepathically Witch: magic, sorcery, manipulation, beauty, ugliness,
Tests: preparations, self‐expectations negative feminine side of psyche

Suggested writing exercise to do for yourself: List three symbols in a dream you have had and speculate on what
the symbols might mean to you

Dreams & Dreaming Bibliography

Allen, Edward Frank 1966
The Complete Dream Book, New York: Warner Books
Constable, George, Editor In Chief 1990
Dreams & Dreaming, Alexandria, Virginia: Time‐Life Books
Delaney, Dr. Gayle, Ph.D. 1994
Sexual Dreams: Why We Have Them, What They Mean. New York: Fawcett Columbine
Fodor, Nandor 1966
The Encyclopedia Of Psychic Sciences. USA: University Books
Garfield, Patricia, Ph.D. 1991
The Healing Power Of Dreams. New York: Simon & Schuster
Garfield, Patricia, Ph.D. 1988
Women’s Bodies, Women’s Dreams. New York: Ballantine Books
Guiley, Rosemary Ellen 1991
Harper’s Encyclopedia Of Mystical And Paranormal Experience. San Francisco, Harper
Guiley, Rosemary Ellen 1995
The Encyclopedia Of Dreams, New York: Berkeley Books
Hopcke, Robert H. 1997
There Are No Accidents: Synchronicity And The Stories Of Our Lives. New York: Riverhead Books/Penguin
Putnam
Hunt, Morton 1982
The Universe Within. New York: Simon & Schuster
Kaplan‐Williams, Strephon 1991
Dreamworking: A Comprehensive Guide To Working With Dreams. San Francisco: Journey Press
LaBerge, Stephen, Ph.D. & Howard Rheingold. 1990
Exploring The World Of Lucid Dreaming. New York: Ballantine Books
LaBerge, Stephen, Ph.D. 1999
A Course In Lucid Dreaming. Standford, CA: The Lucidity Institute
Larson, Bob 1989
Straight Answers On The New Age. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers
Lawrence, Lauren 1999
Unlocking the Power Of Your Unconscious Mind. New York: Dell Publishing
Layard, John 1988
The Lady Of The Hare: A Study In The Healing Power Of Dreams. Boston: Shambhala
Laszlo, Violet Staub De 1959
The Basic Writings Of C.G. Jung. New York: The Modern Library
Mazza, Joan 2000
Dream Back Your Life. New York: Berkeley Publishing Group
McLean, Helen, and Abiye Cole, 2001
The Dream Working Handbook, London: Carlton Books
McLean, Helen and Abiye Cole 2001
The Dreamworking Handbook. London: Carlton Books
Miller, Gustavus Hindman 1999
Ten Thousand Dreams Interpreted. New York: Rand McNally & Company
Nacson, Leon 1999
Interpreting Dreams A‐Z. Carlsbad, CA: Hay House, Inc.
Roberts, Jane 1979
The Nature Of The Psyche: Its Human Expression. New York: Bantam Books
Roberts, Jane 1986
Dreams, Evolution, and Value Fulfillment, Volume I. New York: Bantam Books

Roberts, Jane 1978
Dreams & The Projection Of Consciousness. New York: Stillpoint Publishing
Roberts, Jane 1977
The Unknown Reality, Volume I. New York: Bantam Books
Roberts, Jane 1986
The Unknown Reality, Volume II. New York: Bantam Books
Robinson, Lady Stearn & Tom Corbett 1974
The Dreamer’s Dictionary. New York: Warner Books
Rogo, D. Scott 1983
Leaving The Body: A Complete Guide to Astral Projection. New York: Simon & Schuster
Sanford, John A. 1968
Dreams: God’s Forgotten Language. New York: J.B. Lippincott Company
Sechrist, Elsie 1968
Dreams: Your Magic Mirror. New York: Cowles Education Corporation
Singer, Jerome L. 1975
The Inner World Of Daydreaming. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers
Spurr, Pam, Ph.D. 1999
Understanding Your Child’s Dreams. New York: Sterling Publishing Company
Strephon Kaplan‐Williams, 1991
Dream Working: A Comprehensive Guide To Working With Dream. San Francisco, CA: Journey Press
Taylor, Jeremy 1983
Dream Work. New York: Paulist Press
Taylor, Jeremy 1992
Where People Fly And Water Runs Uphill. New York: Warner Books
Tonay, Veronica Ph.D. 1995
The Art Of Dreaming. Berkeley, CA: Celestial Arts
Ullman, M.D., Montague & Nan Zimmerman 1979
Working With Dreams. New York: Dell/Eleanor Friede Book
Van De Castle, Robert L., Ph.D. 1994
Our Dreaming Mind. New York: Ballantine Books
Walsch, Neale Donald 1998
Conversations With God, Book III. Charlottesville, VA: Hampton Roads Publishing Company, Inc.
Wilson, Ian 1982
All In The Mind. New York: Doubleday & Company
Wollheim, Richard 1971
Sigmund Freud. New York: Viking Press
Yamamoto, Gary K. 1988
Creative Dream Analysis: A Guide To Self Development. New York: Wings Books
Zolar 1984
Zolar’s Encyclopedia & Dictionary of Dreams. New York: Arco Publishing

Further Reading On Dreams
Faraday, Ann, The Dream Body (Berkeley, 1997)
Freud, Sigmund, The Interpretation Of Dreams (Avon 1965)
Freud, Sigmund, On Dreams (W.W. Norton, 1952)
Jung, C. G., The Archetypes And The Collective Unconscious (Princeton University press, 1965)
Jung, C. G., Memories, Dreams, Reflections (Vintage Books, 1965)
Lewis, James R., The Dream Encyclopedia (Invisible Ink Press, 1995)
Rimpoche, Sogyal, The Tibetan Book Of Living And Dying (Rider 1992)
Dreams & Dreaming Exam Questions

Name ___________________________________________________ Phone # ___________________________________

Address ____________________________________________________________________________________________
(Please supply name, phone #, and address as identifying factors for giving credit properly)

1. Jane Roberts says a mass shared dream is .
A. like a group meditation C. a substance induced hallucination
B. your present universe D. lucid dreaming

2. Name the quoted Bible verse where this phrase is found: “… 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.”
A. Genesis 24:12 B. Deuteronomy 10:8 C. Numbers 12:6 D. Exodus 12:6

3. What were the psychological results experienced by William Dement’s subjects during the experiment where
they were awoken during R.E.M. periods of sleep?
A. They were confused and half‐asleep C. They were relaxed and calm
B. They became increasingly agitated, unclear, and irritable D. Neither A, B or C

4. was said to have been invented through a dream that the inventor had experienced.
A. The singer sewing machine C. The auto‐drip coffeemaker
B. The Novadreamer D. Neither A, B or C

5. Name the book in which you can find the quote, “All of your grandest civilizations have existed first in the
world of dreams. You might say that the universe dreamed itself into being.”
A. Bringers of the Dawn C. Dreams, Evolution, and Value Fulfillment
B. The New Testament D. Lucid Dreams in 30 Days

6. An oneironaut is .
A. an advanced astronaut C. a teacher of lucid dreaming
B. a lucid dreamer D. a dream adventurer

7. is the Mesopotamian goddess of dreams.
A. Gula B. Makhir C. Kishar D. Inanna

8. Complete this sentence which refers to the Mesopotamian belief about symbolic dreams: “These dreams were
to one’s health, and they were never recorded unless the interpretations served to ease the situation.”
A. dangerous B. beneficial C. invigorating D. rejuvenating

9. What did the Egyptians call the soul?
A. Ra B. Bes C. Ba D. Nut

10. was the Egyptian god of dreams.
A. Sekhmet B. Serapis C. Tawaret D. Thoth

11. Why did the Chinese not use alarm clocks when they were first invented?
A. It was believed that if the sleeper was disturbed, the Hun, or immaterial soul, could have trouble
getting back into the body.
B. They felt that it was healthier to use one’s “inner” alarm clock
C. They did not know how to use them
D. All A, B and C
12. Who was it who asked after awakening from a dream, ʺAm I a man dreaming that I am a butterfly, or am I a
butterfly dreaming that I am a man?“
A. Lao Tzu B. Confucius C. Hui Neng D. Chuang Tzu

13. Where do the Tibetans believe we go right after death?
A. The 4th dimension B. The 7th level of heaven C. The Bardo worlds D. Purgatory

14. According to the Upanishads, what occurs in the level of dreamless sleep?
A. The dreamer’s mind becomes restful C. The dreamer visits the astral worlds
B. The dreamer becomes one with the absolute D. The dreamer can begin to sleep walk

15. In ancient Greek culture, one did not “have a dream”, but instead one a dream.
A. experienced B. saw C. dreamed D. revealed

16. were the daughters of Aesculapius.
A. Demeter & Hera B. Athena & Artemis C. Hygeia & Panacea D. Aphrodite & Persephone

17. The Oneirocritica is the name of the collection of books by Artemidorus, the title of which means “the
interpretation of dreams.” T F

18. What was the name of the Hebrew sexual demon that appeared to women as male and to men as female?
A. Lilith B. Mavet C. Resheph D. Azazel

19. Which book of the Bible came from a vision?
A. Genesis B. Exodus C. Leviticus D. The Book of Revelation

20. What famous Greek leader had a dream in which God visited him and told him that he would be led to
victory by using the symbol of the cross in battle?
A. Achilles B. Agamemnon C. Constantine D. Penelope

21. Synesius was the first to suggest that people keep dream journals and learn about their own symbolism and
inner language of dreams. T F

22. Saint Jerome translated the Bible into Latin in 382 B.C.E. T F

23. The work of Macrobius inspired paranoia about the connection between evil spirits and dreams. T F

24. What was the name Freud gave to the part of the mind that prevents primal and crude material from getting
into the conscious mind, and also puts unacceptable conscious material into the unconscious?
A. Id B. Ego C. Superego D. Censor

25. Secondary revision, the dream façade, is what Freud called the process in which the mind organizes dream
content into an intelligible story or sequence of events. T F

26. Jung used anyone but himself as a subject to frequently study. T F

27. Complete this quote by Gary K. Yamamoto: “Carl Jung thought that people were tied together through a
common and vast intelligence called the .”
A. collective unconscious B. collective conscious C. super conscious D. universal mind
28. Animus and Anima were what Jung called the “archetypes of the soul.” T F

29. Why do Jungians capitalize the word self?
A. Jungians believe in a higher existence
B. Jung believed that the Self was the final product of life
C. Jung believed that the Self was born in the beginning stages of life
D. Neither A, B or C

30. Freud looked at dreams as infantile fantasies, while Jung looked at them as .
A. opportunities for scientific experimentation
B. arenas for working out problems as life progressed for the individual
C. threats
D. expressions of our unconscious

31. The is the archetype that is described as “the mask”.
A. shadow B. id C. persona D. ego

32. In dreams, animal archetypes represent .
A. instincts and natural drives
B. elements of life that are vital, but not yet consciously differentiated
C. creatures and servants of divine sources
D. All A, B and C

33. Name the archetypes being discussed here: ʺIn the realm of dreams and myth, as in physics, energy cannot be
destroyed, only transformed.”
A. Energy and life B. Life and death C. Death and rebirth D. Birth and death

34. Name the person who is quoted as saying, “It is not so much that the archetypes are in us. The more
important truth is that it is we who are surrounded by, and immersed in, the archetypes.”
A. Carl Jung B. Evangelos Christou C. Sigmund Freud D. Neither A, B or C

35. La Berge and Rheingold tell us, “Donʹt slay your dream dragons, .”
A. make friends with them B. feed them C. fly with them in the sky D. ignore them

36. The most insightful information about dreams and sleep patterns came with the invention of the .
A. Electroencephalogram (EEG) C. Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI)
B. Computerized Axial Tomography (CAT) Scan D. Neither A, B or C

37. Dement and Kleitman first discovered that R.E.M. periods occurred every 92 minutes. T F

38. What book standardized terminology for measuring sleep patterns?
A. The Dream Dictionary
B. The Diagnostic Statistics manual
C. A manual of standardized terminology, techniques, and scoring system for sleep stages of human subjects

39. is the stage of sleep that shows long slow brain waves and very little dream activity.
A. Alpha B. Delta C. Beta D. R.E.M.

40. is common, though usually forgotten, after R.E.M. sleep.
A. Dreaming B. Agitation C. A brief awakening D. Fear

41. Genital arousal, for men and women, is present in of the REM.
A. 95% B. 10% C. 5% D. 100%
42. Dr. Jouvet and his colleagues concluded, “…it is less dangerous to undergo hunger and thirst than to .”
A. have lucid dreams B. be deprived of dreams C. have nightmares D. Neither A, B or C

43. Feinberg found that elderly subjects who had more R.E.M. periods also had a higher level of alertness. T F

44. The bio‐chemicals of dream paralysis are most focused in .
A. the central nervous system C. the peripheral nervous system
B. the frontal lobe D. large muscle groups

45. During what period of the womenʹs menstrual cycle does a peak in dreaming, and the memory of doing so, occur?
A. Pre‐menstrual C. Between ovulation and menstruation
B. Pre‐menopausal D. Neither A, B or C

46. Stephen LaBerge said time in dreams is .
A. opposite of earth time B. similar to earth time C. of its own dimension D. All A, B and C

47. Complete this quote by Jane Roberts: “Often the seemingly meaninglessness of dreams is the result of .”
A. your own ignorance of dream symbolism and organization C. the meaninglessness of dreams
B. your own lack of enthusiasm towards the dreams D. Neither A, B or C

48. Dr. Gayle DeLaney says of dreams, “As you work with your dreams you will find that they are _______.”
A. sometimes your friends, and other times your enemies
B. enriched with symbols of waking life
C. usually several steps ahead of your waking self in the degree and quality of insight they offer

49. is cited as a common reason for the failure to understand dreams.
A. Ignorance
B. The events being so multidimensional in nature that they simply cannot be interpreted in the
framework of space and time, especially when only fragments of the dream can be remembered
C. Fear
D. Forgetfulness

50. The most common content of the dreams of children between the ages of 3 and 4 consists of _______.
A. flowers B. animals C. food D. toys

51. Name the person who is quoted as saying, “In dreams we pass into the deeper and more universal truth and
more eternal man, who still stands in the dusk of original night in which he himself was still the whole and
the whole was in him in bright undifferentiated pure nature, free from the shackles of the ego.”
A. Sigmund Freud B. Jane Roberts C. Gayle DeLaney D. Carl Jung

52. Taylor says that is necessary for telepathic dreams to happen.
A. a deep emotional connection between dreamers C. psychic skill development
B. meditation D. lucid dreaming

53. The Dreamlight, or NovaDreamer, is the device that Stephen LaBerge created to help people learn how to
dream lucidly in their own homes. T F

54. People who remember dreams, and do regular dream work, are more likely to be lucid in their dreams. T F


Dreams & Dreaming

Transféré par

Informations du document

Copyright

Formats disponibles

Partager ce document

Partager ou intégrer le document

Options de partage

Avez-vous trouvé ce document utile ?

Ce contenu est-il inapproprié ?

Droits d'auteur :

Formats disponibles

Dreams & Dreaming

Transféré par

Droits d'auteur :

Formats disponibles

Dreams & Dreaming

Vous aimerez peut-être aussi

Dreams &amp; Dreaming

Transféré par

Informations du document

Copyright

Formats disponibles

Partager ce document

Partager ou intégrer le document

Options de partage

Avez-vous trouvé ce document utile ?

Ce contenu est-il inapproprié ?

Droits d'auteur :

Formats disponibles

Dreams &amp; Dreaming

Transféré par

Droits d'auteur :

Formats disponibles

Dreams & Dreaming

Vous aimerez peut-être aussi

Dreams & Dreaming

Dreams & Dreaming