The Dream Sourcebook: A Guide to the Theory and Interpretation of Dreams (38 page)

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Authors: Phyllis R. Koch-Sheras

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BOOK: The Dream Sourcebook: A Guide to the Theory and Interpretation of Dreams
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iments with precognition, clairvoyance, and telepathy. It was Montague Ullman who began in the 1960s what dream researcher Robert Van de Castle, himself a test subject, calls "the most systematic study of paranormal dreams in a laboratory setting." While at Brooklyn's Maimonides Hospital, Ullman worked with psychologist Stanley Krippner to develop what would become the gold standard for other paranormal dream studies. Their 1970 book
Dream Studies and Telepathy
recounts their experiments and the often astonishing results.
Using a randomly selected target picture, a "sender" would sit in a locked room where no contact with the dreaming subject was possible; in fact, later experiments placed the subject fourteen miles away. When monitors indicated the beginning of a REM period, the sender would be signaled to awaken and concentrate on the target picture; when REM ended, the two participants would return to sleep. The following morning, the dreamer was asked to rank the likelihood of an illustration's being the target picture.
The results seemed more than coincidental. Although images were not always precise, as Van de Castle points out"a full moon represented by a crystal ball, or a pencil by a telephone pole"there was much similarity, especially given that there was absolutely zero contact between sender and recipient during the night of sleep.
Since these early experiments, researchers all over the world have continued to document and catalogue psi dreams. In looking at psi dreams from a cultural perspective, Finnish folklore expert Leea Virtanen points out that cultural or folk beliefs can influence what a dream indicates to a particular dreamer. "If percipients have known from childhood that a certain dream about teeth indicates death [a popular Finnish folk belief], it is quite possible that feelings about death will take this form of
 
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expression in their dreams." Similarly, childhood beliefs may have had bearing on the "precognitive" dreams of a woman who reported to us that when she dreams of snow, she knows that personal crisis will occur that day in her waking life. "When I was a child, my mother had some sort of card that had the different dream interpretations on it, and snow was supposed to symbolize bad tidings." In cases such as these, the symbol may appear when the dreamer unconsciously perceives that some turmoil is about to unfold. Whether the image appears as a pure indicator of some future event is fairly difficult to discern. (This can be frustrating for dedicated dreamworkers. But then again, these mysteries are what make psi dreams so intriguing.)
In some ways, psi dreams are open to interpretation in much the same way as other dreams. The metaphors we associate with other kinds of dreams appear also in precognitive dreams, Virtanen explains. We might dream, for instance, that someone close to us leaves on a long journey, only to discover later that he has died. Still, in at least 25 percent of psi dreams, she reports, the events or circumstances depicted are "completely realistic." "Usually," she writes, "the information is not limited to a simple 'X is dead,' or 'Y is ill and needs help'. . . . The realistic dream is instead a vivid experience in which the dreamer learns dramatic and specific details." Most often, these are details of a violent attack, serious accident, or sudden illness; rarely, Virtanen says, do people have psi dreams "about someone's peaceful, 'natural' death."
Identifying Your Psi Dreams
Sometimes, what seems like a psi dream may indeed be nothing more than coincidence. The following dream about a car accident at first seemed like a psi dream, but further consideration led the dreamer to conclude otherwise:
 
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"Volvo Spin"
I dream I am riding in my friend's silver Volvo with her and her daughter. We are in an accident, and the car begins spinning around and around in one place. We are shaken, but okay.
"I had this dream on a Sunday night," reports the dreamer. "The next night, the tires on my gray Honda were slashed. I wondered whether there was any connection." It is sometimes confusing to try to figure out which dreams are psi dreams and which dreams are merely coincidental dreams. As always, the place to start is with the basic dream interpretation techniques discussed in this chapter. An examination of recent associations with the dream images (perhaps a feeling of "going around in circles"), previous experiences (being in a Volvo that wrecked), or upcoming plans (such as a car trip with the friend) may net a meaningful interpretation that does not involve a psychic element at all. There are several plausible explanations for dreams that initially seem like psi dreams.
Previous But "Forgotten" Knowledge
Like Kekulé von Stradonitz, who had a dream that incorporated forgotten information that led to the discovery of benzene's molecular structure, you can know something (or theorize it), only to forget about it until it later surfaces in a dream. For example, a woman whose great-grandfather worked on a railroad repeatedly dreamed of an old man who reaches out a train windowa dream that was "cut off" at that point each time it recurred. Upon learning that the great-grandfather had died when he reached out to pick up a mailbag, the woman wondered whether she had experienced a psi dream. It is impossible to know, but worth speculating that she may have heard the details of the man's death while still a small child, only to forget them except in dreams.
 
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Future Plans
If you are planning to attend a conference, you may dream about participating on panels or in workshops, dining in the hotel restaurant, or other activities. Your fellow participants may do so as well. Does that mean that you have experienced a mutual dream? Not necessarily. If the event you dream about is likely to occur in the future, the dream cannot be considered a true psi dream.
Sheer Coincidence
Unless the dream depicts virtually the same event that later transpires, or is mirrored very closely by the other "mutual" dreamer, you can chalk it up to coincidence. The "Volvo Spin" dreamer, for instance, is unlikely to have experienced a psi dream: The events were not related closely enough.
So that's how you can begin to tell when it's
not
a psi dream. How do you know when it
is
one? Some frequent psi dreamers report a special quality to their psi dreamsan "old-time-movie" feel or an extremely vivid intensity (as with lucid dreams). Perhaps the best way to track your potential psi dreams is to keep a detailed dream journal, in which you have room to go back and connect dream images and events with happenings from your waking life.
"Out-of-Body" Experiences
Can we leave our physical bodies during a dream? As described in chapter 2, many cultures throughout history have characterized dreams as nocturnal wanderings of the soul: Ancient Hindus and Egyptians, tribal peoples such as the North American Zuni, the Sambia tribe of Papua New Guinea, and Central American Quiche Maya, whose
nawal
or "free soul" wanders during sleep
 
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(hence Carlos Castaneda's term
Nagualism
to describe the lucid dream techniques of Don Juan, the South American sorcerer who was his teacher). Today, we call these dream experiences
out-of-body dreams
, or
astral projections
(from the notion that our selves are projected onto the astral plane). This type of dream is so vivid that it seldom seems like a dream at all. People who experience these out-of-body experiences, or OBEs, may see themselves as though an observer, perhaps rising up "out of" their bodies and hovering over themselves, or "traveling" bodilessly through the night to visit the bedroom of a sleeping friend. One man recalls an OBE that he still believes may have been "more than a dream":
"Floating and Flying"
I rise up above my bed and look down at my body, which is still asleep. Then, I take off at great speed, flying through my bedroom into the adjacent master bathroom, toward the fireplace. I land on the floor, and look up to see my father, who appears to be the age he was when I was about five years old. He is shaving, and I watch him for a few minutes before flying back to my bed and slipping back into my sleeping body.
"Many people who have an OBE may have two conscious selves, one that remains in the body and participates in whatever activity is going on and one that floats above the body, a silent observer," explain Jayne Gackenbach and Jane Bosveld in
Control Your Dreams
. "When this sense of two selves occurs during sleep, some people may not realize they are sleeping, believing instead that they are awake, which of course they areawake within a dream." The authors report that similar experiences occur when people meditate, take psychedelic drugs, and endure extreme stress. Out-of-body dreamers even report turning
 
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to look at their own sleeping physical bodies from a location somewhere outside them. Thus "freed" from the constraints of more mortals, they then roam the world.
A heightened sense of awareness is characteristic of astral projection dream experiences, as a woman named Maggie recalls. Her astral projection dream occurred twenty-two years ago, but as she describes the dream, and the circumstances surrounding it, it's clear that it remains a vivid and transformative memory. Maggie had left home for good after an argument with her grandmother, with whom she lived. A week later, she received the news that her grandmother had died. "My hate and resentment melted into shock, pain, and overwhelming guilt," she says. After a few nights tossing and turning, unable to forget their terrible fight, she slept and had the following dream:
I see my grandmother in spirit form float into my room and hover over my bed. I then see myself float out of myself and join her. We hold hands and journey up and up and up. We do not speak. We go up so far we are circling the earth. We just move in space together. Telepathically she communicated to me that she was all right and she loved me, and that I was not to punish myself. I cannot speak, but just send waves of gratitude for her visit. She then takes me back down to earth and I see myself come back into my body. When I woke up the next morning I knew that I had been given a profound gift.
Stanley Krippner and Andre de Carvalho suggest that the out-of-body sensation may originate with an extension of the physical paralysis of REM sleep. Eye muscles may move, and the respiratory and circulatory systems continue to function, but the body is immobilized during the dream state. "Occasionally," however, "this paralysis remains active while the individual is fully awake, and might give [him or her] the sensation that [he

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