The Three "Only" Things: Tapping the Power of Dreams, Coincidence, and Imagination (12 page)

Then something happened to change his mind. On June 6, 1914, Churchill sent a telegram to his beloved “Clemmie,” who was with their young children at her mother's home in Dieppe. He told her he would give up flying at least until their “kitten” was born. (She was pregnant with their third child.)He would do this with regret, since he so loved the air and was so close to earning his pilot's wings. But he would do it all the same.

Churchill's biographer, Martin Gilbert, gives us the text of his telegram to his wife, and we get the hint that Churchill's decision to stop buzzing around in those early flying caskets may well have saved his life. But in the thousand-plus pages of
Churchill: A Life
, Gilbert does not tell us what Clementine said in a telegram she sent to her husband from Dieppe the previous day. In it, she reported on one of her dreams, and this inspired Churchill's decision to give up flying.

Let's restore this world-changing dream to history.

Clementine's telegram to Winston on June 5, 1914, contained the following passage:

Dearest I cannot help knowing you are going to fly as you go to Sheerness & it fills me with anxiety. I know nothing will stop you from doing it so I will not weary you with tedious entreaties, but don't forget that I am thinking about it all the time & so, do it as little, & as moderately as you can.

Clemmie had sent Winston many previous messages about her fear of his flying. But in this particular message, she told him something more. She told him a terrible dream. It was not a “crash-and-burn” dream, but it was a dream that evidently shook himto the core. Clemmie dreamed she gave birth to an idiot baby, a baby she wanted to kill. Let's look at her own words, with her own punctuation:

I dreamt that I had my Baby, but the Doctor & Nurse wouldn't shew it to me & hid it away — Finally after all my entreaties had been refused and I jumped out of bed& ran all over the house searching for it. At last I found it in a darkened room. It looked all right & I feverishly undressed it and counted its fingers&toes — It seemed quite normal and I ran out of the room with it in my arms —

And then in the Daylight I saw it was a gaping idiot. And then the worst thing of all happened — I wanted the Doctor to kill it — but he was shocked & took it away fromme&I wasmad too. And then I woke up&went to sleep again and
dreamt it
a second time. I feel very nervous and unhappy & the little thing has been fluttering all the morning.

Your telegramarrived late last night after we were in bed — Every time I see a telegram now, I think it is to announce that you have been killed flying — I had a fright but went to bed relieved & reassured; but this morning after the nightmare I looked at it again for consolation& found tomy horror that it was from Sheerness & not from Dover where I thought you were going first — So you are probably at it again at this very moment.

Goodby Dear but Cruel One
Your loving Clemmie
All the Sun is gone to-day
& it has turned very cold & Bleak.

As Churchill himself might have put it, Clementine 's dream, and the fact that she was able to get it through to her husband, turned the “hinge of fate.” ThoughWinston had ignored all previous appeals fromhis wife and others to give up flying, thismessage turned a key inside him. He immediately responded with the telegram promising her that he would give up flying at least until their third child was born.

It is instructive to compare the admonitory dreamof Churchill's wife with the warnings received in dreams by the wives of other great men. Famously, Calpurnia dreamed twice of Caesar's murder the night before he was assassinated. Her dreams were explicit, and yet Julius Caesar ignored them.

Perhaps the indirectness of Clementine 's dream was a key to its reception. Did Winston ask himself whether
he
might be the “idiot” in question?Did the dreamalert himto the possibility that Clemmie 's fears and emotions could endanger her pregnancy? These questions can't be answered by the surviving documents. What we do know is that
this
dream persuaded a man who once said he preferred facts to dreams to accept a dream as a fact. This may have changed the world, but it is part of the history we are not taught.

MISSING THE DREAM DIMENSIONS OF ISLAM

It's bad enough that, in theWest, we are so often blind and deaf to the role of dreams (and other imaginal events) in our own history. It's even worse that we fail to appreciate their role in societies where dreams and visions are honored and revered. This is one of the critical reasons why the Western democracies have failed to understand — and respond in appropriate ways — to events in the world of Islam that have come to challenge everyone 's freedom and security.

All major branches of Islam place a very high valuation on dreaming. This is reflected in the well-known statement (in a hadith attributed to the ProphetMuhammad) that “dreaming is oneforty- sixth part of prophecy.”Now, one-forty-sixth of something may not sound like a big deal, but only because we do not understand the context.
All
Muhammad did for the six months prior to the
lailat al-miraj
, the heavenly journey from which he returned with the content of the Koran, was to dream. That journey made him the Prophet. He lived for twenty-three years after that tremendous night of revelation. Six months is one-forty-sixth of twenty-three. In this context to say that dreaming is “one-fortysixth part of prophecy” is to say it is of the most fundamental importance; it is the key and precondition for prophecy.

Islamic dream psychology distinguishes the
al-ruya
, or “true dream,” whichmay be experienced in sleep or in a waking state of vision. The condition for “true dreaming” is that the dreamer must be in an appropriate state of consciousness, perceiving with the guidance of spiritual allies.

Central to Islamic dream psychology is the belief that in dreams a part of the soul or spirit of the dreamer travels beyond the body and may visit locations at a distance or other dimensions of reality. Through these soul journeys, the dreamer may bring back accurate information about future events or situations at a distance, or may have access to mentors on another plane of reality.

In all major branches of Islam, it is recognized that there is ongoing communication between the dead and the living in dreams. The ninth-century
Book of Dreams
of Ibn Abi al-Dunya includes three hundred vivid accounts of dreams of the dead, including stories of pacts between friends that whoever died first would visit the other and give him a tour of conditions on the other side. Ibn Sirin, the eighth-century author of
Dreams and Their Interpretation
— still the most popular dream book in the Muslim world — pronounced that “Whatever the deceased tells you in sleep is true, for he stays in the world of truth.”

Islamic dream psychology is not merely a matter of interpretation. Many Islamic schools teach and practice the skills of transferring consciousness to another realmof reality, a “dreamworld” believed to bemore real, not less real, than the realmof the senses.

The Dream Mandate

Across history, in all major branches of Islam, dreams have been mandates for authority. Leaders have been inspired and then accredited because of powerful dreams, especially dreams involving a personal encounter with the Prophet Muhammad.

The Ottoman Empire, which became an Islamic superpower that dominated the Middle East and southern Europe, traced its origins to the dreams of Osman (1258–1326), the founder of the dynasty. TheOttoman sultan was also the caliph, the “successor” to the Prophet, commander of the faithful, and titular leader of the entire world of Islam.

One of Osman's
big
dreams was a dream of religious conversion. He had come from a fierce tribe of horse warriors who worshipped the powers of sky and earth. On the night a pious Muslim started instructing him in the Koran, an angel appeared to himin a dreamand told himthat because he honored the Book, his house would be honored from generation to generation. This dream helped to justify the Ottoman caliphate.

In another big dream, Osman saw a great tree grow from his loins until it shadowed the earth. Then he saw the world-city, Constantinople, as a diamond set between sapphires and emeralds in a wedding ring he reached to place on his finger. This dream prophesied world empire and the fall of Constantinople to Osman's descendants in 1453. It also convinced a neighboring Muslim sheikh who had been unimpressed by Osman's pursuit of his beautiful daughter to give him the girl in marriage. The dreamer became Sultan Osman I, and that tree grew for many centuries.

Today, dreams still provide a mandate for political and religious authority in the Islamic world — and sometimes produce an extraordinary mobilizing force to embody the dream — in ways we urgently need to understand.

Look at the career of MullahOmar, the founder of the Taliban in Afghanistan. He was a physically unimposing, uncharismatic figure. Yet he gathered a devoted and fanatical following at amazing speed as word spread that he had had a true dream, an
al-ruya
, in which the Prophet had charged him with the mission of leading a revolution in his country and transforming the practice of Islam. Mullah Omar's personal dreams very quickly became
movement
dreams, collective dreams.

For Mullah Omar, as for other Islamist leaders — including the leadership of al-Qaeda — dreaming is also valued as a source of secret intelligence. Mullah Omar called the BBC correspondent in Peshawar to discuss a dreamin which his brother had seen theWhiteHouse on fire prior to the September 11 terrorist attacks in 2001. The Taliban leader wanted to check whether details of the White House in his brother's dream were accurate, perhaps in order to gauge its reliability as tactical intelligence. As Taliban leader, MullahOmar reportedly refused to authorize anymilitary operation unless his dreams sanctioned it.

WhileWestern governments andmediamay have a hard time accepting that in dreaming we can scout across time and space and gather crucial information, in the Islamic world this is common knowledge. And it is
used
.

I'll give two more examples. One involves a secret factor — a dream factor — in the outcome of a great battle between the Ottomans and the European powers. The other concerns the secret background — the dream background — to the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

The Sultan and the DreamMaster
Suleiman the Magnificent (1494–1566), sultan of the Ottoman Empire and caliph of Islam, was the master of many battles. But his luck turned and his army stalled on a campaign in Carinthia. For once, hiswillpower seemed to fail him. This victor of many battles — andmaster of three hundred concubines — hesitated in his tent.

Then Suleiman was told that an apprentice of Hudai Effendi was in his camp. Hudai was a sheikh who had accompanied Suleiman in his conquest of the island of Rhodes, and he had been granted a strong hilltop position where he founded a monastery for his order of dervishes. He was known as a master of dreams. He had an enormous bed constructed, big enough to accommodate a dozen dervishes stretched out in all directions. At night, the dream master lay down with twelve of his chosen apprentices, heads together, bodies extended like the spokes of a wheel. They entered
al-ruya
— the state of the true dream — together. They traveled across time as easily as you might walk across a street. The master's great gifts were multiplied to the twelfth power by the cartwheel of dreamers.

Suleiman summoned the apprentice to his tent and told himhe had need of the master's sight. He offered him money and safe conduct to travel to Rhodes and return with his sheikh. The dervish surprised the sultan by telling him Hudai Effendi was not far away at all; he promised that the dream master would visit Suleiman before morning prayers. He offered the sultan a “soporific apple” to carry him gently into sleep; Suleiman peeled it and ate it. Before he retired, the sultan told his court officers to stand vigil, and usher Hudai Effendi into his presence as soon as he arrived.

Come morning, the Grand Eunuch was red-eyed and weary with watching. He was certain enough of Suleiman's love to complain that the apprentice was clearly a fraud. “You are wrong,” Suleiman responded. “Themaster visitedme in the night and told me he has taken care of everything. He has gone in person to the battlefield and our victory is now certain. A messenger will bring news of it within the hour.”

The messenger galloped up punctually, to report that the enemy commander — a prince of Hungary — had been seized by a strange mania and issued crazy and confusing orders to his generals, dooming his side to defeat, before falling fromhis horse in a dead swoon.

This episode gives us a window into a society in which scouting and psychic operations conducted inside the dream state are a part of high strategy.

Dreams of Terror
Let's move uncomfortably close to the present. One of the most chilling pieces of information to surface after 9/11 was that al- Qaeda operatives and other Islamist extremists were dreaming the details of the terror attacks ahead of time

The source for this statement is a captured videotape, made in Kandahar on November 5, 2001, that records a conversation between Osama bin Laden and an extremist Saudi cleric about the background to 9/11. They share stories about members of both their networks who were having explicit dreams about the operation prior to the attacks, even though (on the ordinary level) they knew nothing about what was being planned. Many of the sheikh's followers dreamed of planes being flown into tall buildings in America, though they had been told nothing of the hijack plan.

Bin Laden told the sheikh that he became worried that if loose talk about these dreams continued, it could jeopardize operational security. “I was worried that maybe the secret would be revealed if everyone starts seeing it in their dream,” he said. So he told one dreamer in his camp who had seen an attack on a tall building in America, “If you see another dream, don't tell anybody.”