Dreaming is the most fascinating part of our sleep. This is a universal experience; we all dream. Those who say they never dream probably forget their dreams, for we all dream during REM sleep. This has been studied both biologically and psychologically in the previous chapters. However, in this chapter, I am going to study dreams and philosophy.

Our nightly supernatural trips

There is no reason to believe that the basic structure of the dream of primitive man was very much different from that of mode man’s dreams. Of course the contents of the dreams would chang with the passage of time—buildings, modes of transportation, foo clothing, customs, etc. kept on changing and will continue to chang in the future. Naturally, the contents of dreams will be very muc different a thousand years from now.

In spite of the changing contents, the basic format of dream remains the same throughout the ages. The experience of dream is universal. Whilst we are dreaming, we can experience thing considered as supernatural in our real lives. For instance, we ca~ in a very short space of time, travel thousands of miles away an visit places sometimes totally strange to us. We may even be able to talk to relatives that are no longer with us. It is as if, during dreams, part of us can leave our bodies to experience all these unusual events and rejoin our bodies the moment we wake up. For mo of us this is the only time in our lives that we can have the supernatural experiences.

Subconsciously these dream experiences give us some insight in the mystery of the spiritual world. All religions, despite differ cultures and different social backgrounds, believe that soi separable part of the human being is immortal. When the bo dies, this immortal part may leave the body and live on. In Western society, this is known as the soul. Is the understanding of the soul made much easier as a result of the supernatural experience of our dreams night after night?

Am I dreaming?

This supernatural experience can sometimes be very real during dreaming and it may not be easy to tell what is real and what is a dream. My daughter Melinda told me about a dream she once hid. We had been playing billiards the night before and she lost. That night she dreamt that she was pushing the billiard ball with her teetn and tried to get it into the side pocket of the billiard table. She tried so hard that her front tooth became loose. She touched her gum and there was blood on her hand and the tooth fell out. She was not frightened as somehow she knew she was in a dream. She made a conscious effort to wake up, as she thought if she could wake up and look in the mirror she would see that her tooth was still there. Still asleep, she dreamt that she woke up, and pinched herself just to make sure. She felt relieved and looked in the mirror. To her horror the tooth was still missing. The rest of the dream was vague and hazy. When she was telling me this dream, she still touched her teeth to make sure the dream was really over. Dreams can be so real, that pinching yourself and feeling the pain does not imply that you are not still in the dream. Sometimes I wonder if there is anything you can do to tell for sure whether you are actually in the dream or the real world.

Throughout the ages, philosophers have marvelled at the reality îò dreams. A sleep researcher, G. W. Leibniz, talked about a dream consciousness lasting the life of a man. In other words, we are two people, going side by side, one in the dream state and the other in the waking state. The Nobel Prize winner, Bertrand Russell, went îne step further, and stated that real life was actually the dream and waking life a persistent nightmare.

Dream prophesy

Many people believe that dreams contain some message for the dreamer, often foretelling the future. One of the most famous dreams was that of the Pharaoh of Egypt interpreted by Joseph and recorded in the Old Testament of the Bible (Genesis, chapter 41). Joseph was sold to an Egyptian courtier as a slave. Because he was very handsome, his master’s wife wanted to have an affair with him, but he refused.She became terribly upset and she told the master Joseph had made love to her. The master put Joseph in prison.

Whilst in prison, he became well known for his ability to predict the future through dream interpretation.

One night the Pharaoh had a dream in which he was standing by the River Nile. He saw seven fat cows feeding on the grass, but then seven thin cows came up and ate the seven fat cows. In his next dream there were seven ears of good healthy corn and seven ears of withered corn blighted by the east wind; the seven thin ears swallowed up the seven good ears.

No one in the palace could interpret the dream. Joseph was called from the prison to interpret the Pharaoh’s dream. Joseph explained that Egypt would have seven years of plenty followed by seven years of famine. The Pharaoh was very pleased with Joseph and made Joseph the Governor of Egypt. Joseph began stockpiling grain and was able to do this for seven years. But the next seven yea-were ones of severe world-wide famine. Joseph had lots of grain and became the most powerful man of his time, for soon the whol world was coming to Egypt to buy grain.

This is one of the many stories of dream prophecy, illustratin the fact that some people can dream what is going to happen i the future. It is believed that such people possess psychic power. But dreams are in fact a reflection of our inner feelings an unconscious thinking. Perhaps dreams represent a sixth sense—the ability of seeing into the future.

The psychiatrist Carl Jung had his own theory of the interpretation of dreams. Jung saw the mind as being divided into two main compartments, the conscious and the unconscious. Deep in the unconscious portion there is a part that is common to all mankind and he called this the ‘collective unconscious’. The collective unconscious is the common denominator of our personalis irrespective of culture, race, and time. Jung thought there were tw kinds of dream, the personal and the collective.

The collective dream obtains its source from the collective unconscious and is significant both to the individual and to society Primitive people described the personal dream as the ‘little’ dream and the collective dream as the ‘big’ dream. The dream of the Pharaoh of Egypt was a big dream It was of supreme importance to the people and, at that time, dreams were believed to be sent by God. At the time of the Pharaoh, cows and ears of corn both had tremendous meaning to the Egyptians, conveying symbolic meaning. Food and its accumulation meant power and stability. The Egyptia worshipped a god of corn, and they had sacred bulls. These were the symbols in the collective unconscious of the Egyptian mind.

But how Joseph was able to predict seven years of famine through a dream remains unanswered. Perhaps he was doing what the present day economists are doing all the time-predicting when our next recession will be.

*15/23/6*

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• SLEEP LABORATORY: BRAIN WAVES
• WHY SLEEP?

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