Waking life: Dreaming life.. The construction of Realiity
in Walking life and dreaming life.
by Stanley Krippner
Shamans were the first dreamworkers and the
first to ask traditional philosophical questions. They used (and still
use) altered states of consciousness to travel into "dreamtime," obtaining
power and knowledge to help and heal members of their communities -- the social
group that awarded them shamanic status. In psychological terms, shamans
regulate their attention to obtain information not available to their peers,
using it to reduce stress and improve the living conditions of members of
their society.
Over
the centuries, Western scientists and philosophers have dismissed shamanic
"journeying" as fanciful at best, and delusional at worst. Julian Silverman
(1967) postulated that shamanism is a form of socially sanctioned schizophrenia,
and George Devereux (1961) took the position that shamans are neurotics
and hysterics. Roger Walsh (1990) has pointed out the fallacies in
these arguments and, in recent years, scientific data, numerous case studies,
and anecdotal reports have emerged supporting the beneficial use of dreams
(especially lucid dreams), imagination, and imagery to treat disease, improve
sports performance, and enhance creativity (Krippner & Dillard, 1988;
LaBerge, Levitan, & Dement, 1986). From this perspective, shamanic
reports of "journeying" to the Lower World and the Upper World can be viewed
as useful metaphors for the accessing of unconscious material and latent
potentials.
A
similar body of parapsychological literature, both anecdotal and experimental,
supports the shamanic model of “journeying" backward and forward in time and
space. These accounts are rejected by most established academic institutions,
allegedly because they are flawed, fraudulent, or fabricated (e.g., Grey,
1994). However, the French philosopher, Henri Bergson (1914), took the
position that each person is, at each moment, potentially aware of all concurrent
events as well as of his or her past experiences; to prevent being overwhelmed
by this information, the brain acts as a "filter" to suppress all input except
that which is relevant and practical. Though accounts of shamanic "journeying"
do not easily adapt themselves to the practical pursuits of the West, even
if a small number of them had merit, shamanic philosophy would deserve to
be reconsidered (Krippner, 1994).
For
the shaman, there were no rigid boundaries between "waking life" and "dreaming
life"; both were regarded as "real” but full admission to the latter usually
depended on training and discipline. Malidoma Patrice Some' (1994),
an African Dagara shaman, remarks, "Nothing can be imagined that is not already
there in the inner or outer worlds" (p. 233). This assertion echoes
the Greek philosopher Parmenides' claim that "what is there to be said and
thought must needs be: for it is there for being, but nothing is not."
Further, it has been observed that the fanciful travels Parmenides recounted
in his poems resemble the "journeys" described by shamans (Kirk, Raven, &
Schofield, 1983, pp. 242-243).
Before
his initiation, Some's mentor had asserted, “The dream world is real....It's
more real than what you are observing now" (p. 211). During his lengthy
initiation, Some' knew that this procedure would prepare him to live “as
if I were in a dream in which worlds collided and different realities confronted
one another....The contrast between this state of mind and what I had been
accustomed to...was the same as the difference between liquid and solid.
It seemed to me that Dagara knowledge was liquid in the sense that what
I was learning was living, breathing, flexible, and spontaneous. What
I was learning made sense only in terms of relationship. It was not
fixed, even when it appeared to be so....By contrast, I could see that the
Western knowledge I had been given had the nature of a solid because it
is wrapped in logical rhetoric to such a degree that it is stiff and inflexible.
The learning one gets from a book, from the canons of the written tradition,
is very different from the living, breathing knowledge that comes from within,
from the soul....Could one reality contradict another? What kind of
new reality was I being introduced to? What is reality predicated
upon?” (p. 185).
Current
efforts to train people to "dream lucidly," to engage in "shamanic journeying,"
and to "function psychically" can be seen as renewed attempts to enter what
anthropologists have designated "dreamtime" so as to engage in activities
deemed impossible in ordinary states of consciousness. They may also be
considered attempts to obtain a deeper "truth" than is available to ordinary
awareness. Within the early Hindu religion, dream journeys were seen
as intermediate states of the path toward divine truth (O'Flaherty, 1984,
p. 15). While the early Hindus saw both the waking and dreaming states
as operating within "samsara," illustrating the propensity of human societies
to decide what they opted to designate as "reality," some Indian philosophers
felt that dreamtime contained fewer of these “mortal" distinctions (p. 18).
Parmenides' claims again seem relevant, namely his contrast between the
truth in "changeless being" and the mere "mortal opinions" of most human
beings. Reflecting on his dream research data, Harry Hunt (1989) has noted
that while the dreamer's body remains inert, his or her "dream body" seems
to operate on its own, traveling to distant places and engaging in exotic
activities.
There
seems to be a perennial dichotomy between "appearance" and "reality," between
one's perceptions of the world and the external world said to exist independently
of that perception; this dichotomy has tilted in favor of "mortal opinions"
and "samsara" in Western academia. This tilt is exemplified by the
fact that in 1994, Princeton University’s graduate program did not teach
a single course on Eastern, African, or Latin American philosophy out of
a total of 64 listed in their information booklet. Princeton's course,
"Philosophy of Religion," is described as providing "readings from contemporary
analytical philosophy of religion, and from historical sources in the Western
tradition." Furthermore, the only philosophy course at Harvard
University which explicitly mentions non-Western thought is entitled "Socrates,
Buddha, Jesus," despite the fact that only Buddha qualifies as "non-Western."
The Rediscovery of Dreams in the West
Plato's
model of the "soul" strikingly resembles Freud’s model of the "psyche."
The "soul" was divided into three parts, "reason," "spirit," and "appetite,"
just as Freud's "psyche" was compartmentalized into "superego," "ego," and
"id." For Freud, "superego" was the supreme disciplinary force; "ego"
was an executive force that interacts with the external world; "id" was
an instinctive force associated with sexual and "animalistic” drives.
For Plato, "reason" was the awareness of a goal or value, "spirit" was the
drive toward action (neutral at first, but eventually responding to the direction
of reason), and "appetite" was the desire for things of the body.
Plato, in a vein similar to Freud's notion that dreams play out the fulfillment
of unconscious urges, believed that "appetite" ran loose in dreams: “There
are superfluous desires...that are awakened during sleep, when the rest of
the soul, the rational and gentle and dominant part, is asleep; but the part
that is like a wild beast and untamed, full of food and wine, leaps up and
throws off sleep and tries to get out and satisfy itself. Then he will
dare to do anything at all, since he is set free from all shame and reason.
He will not shrink from copulating with his mother (as he imagines that
he does), or with any other human or god or wild beast, and he will not
hesitate to commit a polluting murder, and there is nothing he will not
eat" (O'Flaherty, 1984, p. 40).
The
philosophers and theologians who followed Plato propounded a host of ideas
about dreams; in the third century, St. Clement of Alexandria took the position
that nighttime dreams could reveal a spiritual reality (Kelsey, 1974, p.
11). However, the Platonic tradition of relegating dreams to appetite
and images eventually won out, and by the end of the 19th century, the dream
had lost its earlier reputation as a mediator between human and divine realms.
Theologians no longer regarded dreams as bona fide revelations, philosophers
were only concerned with dreams' metaphysical implications, and literary
critics focused on the way dreams were portrayed in literature (usually
inaccurately) (Parman, 1991; Webb, 1990). Hendrika Van de Kemp (1910)
has reviewed the place played by dreams in American and British periodicals,
both popular and professional, between 1860and 1910. She discovered
a steady increase of articles about dreams from 1860 to 1870. Thereafter,
articles in popular periodicals declined, while those in professional journals
increased. In 1893, Mary Calkins had described the status of the dream literature
of the 1890s. ”The phenomenon of dreaming has rarely been discussed or investigated
in a thorough and in an experimental manner: of description, of theory,
of discussion, of poetic analogy and illustration there has been no end;
of accurate observation almost nothing....The most scientific books...have
been wholly and chiefly the results of the observations of abnormal subjects
and in the interest more or less distinctly of pathology....The fullest discussion[s]
of the subject...are largely compilations of the recorded dreams of other
people.” (p. 311)
The
time was ripe for a scientific discussion of the dreaming process and Sigmund
Freud's theories provided the spark. Freud's contribution was to place
the dream squarely within the scientific domain while emphasizing its clinical
interpretation. Freud downplayed those dreams that had obvious spiritual
implications and derided dream theories that were metaphysical in nature.
He also attempted to establish scientific criteria by which dreams could
be distinguished from "waking reality" (O'Flaherty, 1984, p. 42).
This was an important philosophical issue because both Plato and Descartes
asked the question, "How can you prove whether at this moment we are sleeping,
and all our thoughts are a dream; or whether we are awake, and talking to
one another in the waking state?" (Plato, 1871, p. 158). Descartes
(1952) felt he answered this question by appealing to the criterion of consistency.
“For at present I find a very notable difference between the two, inasmuch
as our memory can never connect our dreams one with the other, or with the
whole course of our lives, as it unites events which happen to us while
we are awake.” (p. 103)
Freud
concluded that dreams emerge from the dynamically repressed unconscious,
but many of his predecessors had taken a more organic point of view.
In 1862, the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer stated that while a person is
awake, external stimuli impinge upon the mind and cause it to erect models
of time, space, and causality in relation to the realities of the external
world. During sleep, by contrast, the sources of external stimulation
decrease markedly, allowing internal stimuli to be remodeled into forms occupying
space and time by rules unique to the brain itself. Freud criticized
this point of view, arguing that dream interpretation would be rendered practically
impossible if the analyst had to trace dream content back to an obscure organic
stimulus (Hobson, 1988, pp. 45-46). Nevertheless, Schopenhauer's perspective
is echoed today by many researchers who emphasize the neurological substrates
of the dreaming process, as well as by dream researchers who view the dream
as more than a mere rearrangement of memories.
I
would define a dream as a series of images, reported by the dreamer in narrative
form, that occurs during sleep. The night's first period of rapid
eye movement (REM) sleep (from which most but not all dreams are reported)
generally begins 90 minutes after a person falls asleep. REM sleep
continues to occur in regular cycles during the night. J. Allan Hobson
(1988) has constructed one of the leading psychoneurological models of dreaming,
based on his laboratory data, a model that is widespread but not universally
accepted. According to Hobson, the neurons at the base of the skull
periodically fire a random barrage of high voltage impulses, unleashing a
cascade of potent chemicals that pour into the forebrain. The visual
and motor centers are stimulated, triggering memories that are presented
and combined in original, vivid, and often baffling ways. Immediately,
the brain's mind creates a story that will make sense of these fragments,
either providing a pre-existing script which serves as a template for the
images, or producing a narrative on the spot that matches -- as best it can
-- the stored memories that have been evooked (Krippner, 1990, pp.209-210).
Ernest Hartmann (1991) has commented on this connecting function of dreams:
Dreaming brings together thoughts, images, memories, wishes, and feelings
that are usually kept apart, at least in wakefulness (p. 25).
This
model is provocative in terms of Bergson's theory of brain function.
It could be that the brain's "filters" shift their attention during dreaming,
enabling the dreamer to become aware of memories, thoughts, feelings, and
information not otherwise available during wakefulness. If so, the dreaming
process could serve to recall, to synthesize, and even to transform the evoked
material. But inner "reality" can not only expand, it can metamorphosize.
In any
event, as it has been astutely noted by such philosophers as Norman Malcolm
(1959), researchers do not deal with the dream itself but with a dream report;
these reports take the form of narratives and stories. Sometimes these
stories reflect basic problems in living with which the dreamer has wrestled
for years. At other times they reflect the events of the past few
days or hours, some of them trivial, some of them consequential. And
in other instances, as far as it is known, the mind's search for meaning
produces little more than a jumble of disparate pictures and events.
Many
psychotherapists, however, are convinced that their clients will benefit from
an understanding of their dreams because, on reflection, dream activities
frequently appear to be metaphors for the dreamer's waking concerns, and it
is often helpful to find a metaphorical image or activity for a client's problem.
Some writers, artists, and musicians have made deliberate use of dream narratives
and images in their work. Other individuals have claimed that scientific,
technological, or athletic breakthroughs resulted from dreams that were serendipitously
recalled.
In the
meantime, Hobson's theory has been bolstered by his experimental use of
a device aptly named the "Nightcap." It fits over the dreamers' heads monitoring
their brain waves in the privacy of their own homes. This naturalistic
research setting has advantages over the sleep laboratory which is an unfamiliar
environment for most dreamers, sometimes producing aberrant brain wave patterns
and atypical dream reports. According to Hobson, the neurons at the base
of the skull periodically fire a random barrage of high voltage impulses,
unleashing a cascade of potent chemicals that pour into the forebrain.
The visual and motor centers are stimulated, triggering memories that are
presented and combined in original, vivid, and often baffling ways.
Immediately, the mind creates a story that will make sense of these fragments,
either providing a pre-existing script which serves as a template for the
images, or producing a narrative on the spot that matches -- as best it can
-- the stored memories that have been evooked (Krippner, 1990, pp. 209-210).
Ernest Hartmann (1991) has commented on this connecting function of dreams:
Dreaming brings together thoughts, images, memories, wishes, and feelings
that are usually kept apart, at least in wakefulness (p. 25).
The
nighttime process of tale-telling and story-making in dreams is remarkably
similar to what transpires when language is used while a person is awake.
Dreams can be thought of as a text employing a language that emphasizes
feelings, persons, objects, and settings. The mental and emotional
processes involved in “dreamtime" are similar in many ways to the thoughts
and feelings expressed during wakefulness. People who were asked to
make up a dream while awake produced accounts that judges could not discriminate
from written reports of their nighttime dreams (Cavallero & Natale, 1988-1989).
Freud's
The Interpretation of Dreams (19001\1965) was actually published in 1899
but his publisher gave it a 1900 publication date, anticipating the book's
ramifications for the intellectual thought of the new century. Even
though the book only sold 351 copies in the first six years after its publication,
Freud's publisher was eventually vindicated. By the end of the 20th century,
consciousness researchers, psychotherapists, and neuroscientists were using
several major vehicles to explore the vast reaches of the human mind -- meditation,
hypnosis, drugs, biofeedback, fantasy, brain imaging devices, and -- of course
-- dreams.
While
many investigators consider dreams to be the most useful and amenable path
to the exploration of consciousness, and have studied them quite extensively,
there are still many unanswered questions about their origin, and their
function. Assuming that memory images may be evoked by the brain’s
random neural firings, is there a point at which what we can call "the brain's
mind" takes over and brings in other memory fragments to round out or expand
the narrative? Or could it be that the originally evoked images elicit
entire trains of associations that are "schemas" and "personal myths" rather
than memories? These "schemas" and "myths" could be the guiding forces
that direct the dreamer's behavior during wakefulness and that construct
innovative scenarios during sleep (Feinstein &Krippner, 1988).
If these scenarios, as reported upon awakening, actually contain meaning,
is it hidden or obvious? Is it deliberately obscure (representing the dreamer's
defenses), or is the message accessible to those who will take the time to
associate to those images, activities, and emotions that they have recalled?
Perhaps
the dream sometimes creates meaning; the sleeping dreamer may pull material
from his or her experiences, fantasies, and life issues, making the appropriate
applications and incrementations to the evoked material. If so, the
dreamer is able to take an amorphous lump of clay (the collection of images
evoked by neural firing) and create something meaningful from it.
In so doing, the dreamer does not merely combine his other memories in an
unusual way. Instead, a novel perceptual world is created -- and often
is unlike anything that the dreamer has experienced (or even imagined) in
waking life, such as the shaman's claims to travel in time and space, or
to dexterously bridge "dream reality" with "waking reality."
Some
dream researchers (e.g., Llinas & Pare', 1991) have turned the dreaming/wakefulness
paradigm on its head, defining wakefulness as a dreamlike state modulated
by the constraints produced by specific sensory inputs. If it is considered
"normal" for one's attention to turn away from sensory input toward memories,
then wakefulness becomes an aberration and dreaming becomes the standard
to which other states of consciousness must be compared. Nightmares,
feverish dreams, and the like become to ordinary dreams what the work of
the surrealists are to novels and fiction (States, 1992, p. 254).
This
point of view is in opposition to that of dream researchers who regard dream
content as essentially meaningless, although a careful reading of their articles
and books indicate that they have often been victims of stereotypes that
do not do justice to their thoughts. However, dream imagery that is
randomly evoked could still be meaningful. In his discussion of dreams,
Bert States (1992) evokes chaos theory to propose "order and disorder" as
a cleaner dichotomy than "meaningfulness" and "meaninglessness." Even
though some degree of orderliness is a precondition of meaningfulness, disorder
may provide the type of chaotic activity which may prove to have an underlying
meaning, or to eventually produce something of significance. There
may be no single, authoritative meaning to a dream (Globus, 1991, p.32),
but over-determination and multiple interpretations have been part of dreamworking
lore since the days of Freud. For States, the crucial difference between
waking and dream experience, regarding content, is that the dream is an
imaginative condensation of experience. "It is not better, more (or
less) coherently, plotted than life; it simply is not constrained by what
has happened, or is possible to happen, in the empirical world" (p. 253).
Finally,
the position that dream content is without meaning is difficult to maintain
in view of the research data on the topic. Rosalind Cartwright (e.g.,
Cartwright & Lamberg, 1992) has provided clinical evidence that dreams
help clients understand events from the day, place their current situations
into the context of past events, and suggest means for dealing with life
problems. She also found that dreamwork following a night in a sleep
laboratory was beneficial as a preparation for clients who were at high risk
for dipping out of psychotherapy. (Cartwright, Tipton, & Wicklund, 1980).
M.C. Cogar and C.E. Hill (1992) reported positive therapeutic effects of
dream interpretation in brief psychotherapy. Clara Hill and her associates
(Hill, Diemer, Hess, Hillyer, & Seeman, 1993), in an ingenious experiment,
divided 60 college students into three groups. One group interpreted
their own dreams; one group interpreted dreams that had been reported by
other students; the third group interpreted a recent life event. At
statistically significant levels, interpreting one's own dream was more effective
in terms of subject-rated quality (of depth, insight, and emotionality) that
interpreting other peoples' dreams or one’s own life event. These results
argue against the possibility that people benefit from dreamwork because
they project meaning into images that are basically meaningless, or that
they would gain more benefit by focusing on "waking life” than on "dreaming
life."
Another
set of data not only undercut the notion that dream content is without meaning,
but threaten the concept of “reality" upon which such judgments are based.
There are four collections of dream "stories" or "texts" that are enigmatic
in nature. Some of these "stories" are anecdotal in nature, while
others come from controlled observations or laboratory experiments.
Specifically, they involve alleged precognitive dreams, telepathic and clairvoyant
dreams, shared dreams, and dream "apports" (in which the dreamer claimed
to bring a material object back from "dreamtime"). Some of these "stories"
are more credible than others, but each of them is provocative, entertaining,
and worth considering.
The Enigma of Precognitive Dreams
Harrison,
a graduate student at Saybrook Institute, was a middle-aged business executive
who was nearing the end of his vacation in Cairo, Egypt. One night
he dreamed that he was crossing the street in Cairo near the hotel where
he was staying, heading toward a Wimpy's fast food restaurant. He noticed
David Brinkley walking toward him, and said "Hello." Brinkley smiled
back and "bowed knowingly." Harrison noticed that Brinkley had a shaved
spot on the top of his head. Harrison was surprised to see the newscaster
in Egypt. The next morning, motivated by his own curiosity, Harrison
walked toward Wimpy's restaurant on the exact street that he recalled from
his dream. David Brinkley did not appear, but an event took place
that was so "newsworthy" for Harrison that the newscaster might have served
as an appropriate symbol. While Harrison was crossing the street,
a taxicab went out of control and headed toward him. Before Harrison
could dodge the oncoming car, it had struck him down and knocked him unconscious
(perhaps symbolized by the shaved head in the dream). Harrison woke up in
a hospital where he was informed that he had several broken bones and could
not be moved.
Harrison
eventually recovered, but his stay in Egypt was prolonged for several weeks.
Was this event a coincidence? Was this a "precognitive" or "premonitory"
dream? Or did the dream generate "reality" in a highly unusual way?
It can be argued that Harrison was aware of the erratic traffic patterns
in Cairo, and lost his usual caution due to his excitement about the dream.
The entire congruence can also be passed off as coincidence. Nevertheless,
Harrison would never had gone to that particular street corner had it not
been for his dream.
A
series of dream premonitions was reported by Tracy, a college student in Charleston,
South Carolina. At the time of her first dream, Tracy was looking for
another student to share her apartment. In her dream, someone rushed
into a restaurant where she was working telling her that her apartment was
on fire. Tracy's second dream also took place in the restaurant where she
worked in waking life; this time it was her new apartment mate, Cynthia,
who told Tracy her apartment was on fire. In the third dream, Tracy
was again interrupted at work by someone who told her the alarming news.
Rushing home, she found her apartment in flames but could not locate Cynthia.
A few weeks later, she began to feel nervous and anxious, and had an irrational
urge to get out of her apartment. She left town to visit her mother
and pick up her car which was being repaired. She remembers repeatedly
telling her mother, "I hope my roommate is all right. “When Tracy returned
to Charleston, she discovered that there had been a fire in her apartment.
Cynthia had been drinking and smoking in bed, had set the mattress on fire,
and had died in the flames (Ryback, 1988, pp. 33-35). Of course, it
can be argued that Tracy knew Cynthia's smoking and drinking habits, but
suppressed them because she needed an apartment mate so desperately; however,
this argument does not explain the first dream. Ultimately events in
"waking reality" were mirrored in each of Tracy's three dream narratives.
J.B.
Priestly (1964) commented that precognitive experiences tend to be about either
"terrible" or "trivial” events. In contrast to these two "terrible"
dreams is a "trivial" example, as told to Loyd Auerbach (1991). The dreamer
reported a dream about his mother's friend: "She had on a dark blue
T-shirt and she held up a check, saying that she got her income tax return
on a Monday." The next day, the friend visited the dreamer's mother.
She was wearing a navy blue T-shirt, and it was Monday; she had just received
her income tax check (p. 173). For all we know, the check had been expected
and the woman had a limited wardrobe; nevertheless, this is one dream (if
correctly reported) in which the dream narrative was immediately confirmed,
and in it directly matched the events in "waking reality."
These
are the types of dreams ignored by the writers of most academic books and
articles about dreaming. Sometimes, these dream enigmas herald a disastrous
event such as Harrison’s accident or Cynthia's death. At other times
they represent a "sharing" of information between two or more people, or
a "channeling" of information that would be unlikely for the dreamer to obtain
in "waking reality." None of these dream reports are welcome in most
respectable academic and scientific circles in the West, yet their reported
occurrence in various times and places shows no signs of diminishing.
In Western
academic circles, the notion is promulgated that "knowledge is power."
However, Michel Foucault (1980) has pointed out that power (e.g., political,
economic, ideological, or religious authority) determines what is considered
to be knowledge (and, therefore, "reality") in any given temporal and spatial
location. The knowledge accumulated by parapsychologists about enigmatic
dreams and other anomalous experiences (e.g., Edge, Morris, Palmer, &
Rush, 1986) lacks a major power base; as a result it fails to become "legitimate"
and to play a major role in mainstream scientific discourse. H.M.
Collins and T.J. Pinch (1982) have described how science is socially constructed,
paying special attention to such fields of inquiry as parapsychology that
lack an adequate power base for mainstream recognition.
David
Hess (1992) constructed a typology of the mechanisms for disciplining "heterodox"
scientists and used it to evaluate the utility of Foucault's framework.
Through correspondence and interviews with 20 U.S. academic parapsychologists,
he documented instances of "direct intellectual suppression." Of the
20, 13 reported cases of prejudicial action (e.g., denial of research funds,
blocked advancement, limited job opportunities). One interviewee reported
that he requested permission to include a parapsychological condition in
his dissertation research project but was told, "If you really imagine that
you are going to get a parapsychology component through a dissertation committee,
I think you'd better go back and do some very serious reality testing" (p.
231). Another interviewee said that he had lost a departmental vote
for promotion because several professors felt "that work in parapsychology
was inherently disreputable" (p.233). Another reported that he was
told, during a job interview, that he could not publish any research involving
parapsychology while another claimed that a hostile department chair surreptitiously
destroyed parapsychology data on 5,000 subjects (p. 237). These reports
are compelling evidence for the case that Western academic circles are inhospitable,
and even actively hostile, to reports of anomalous human experience, including
enigmatic dreams.
The Enigma of Telepathic and Clairvoyant Dreams
"Telepathy"
is a word used to describe purported information obtained by one individual
from another, supposedly through "mind-to-mind" contact. It is one
manifestation of the events that parapsychologists refer to as potential
psi phenomena -- anomalous (enigmatic or unexplained) interchanges of information
or influences that appear to exist apart from currently identified physical
mechanisms. Other manifestations of psi include clairvoyance (reported
anomalous perception of information), precognition (reported anomalous perception
of future events), and psychokinesis (reported anomalous influence on objects
or organisms). Considerable overlap exists, especially between telepathy
and clairvoyance. For example, Carlos claimed to dream of a gift that
Maria, who lived overseas, had decided to buy him for his birthday.
Was this a possible instance of telepathy? Or could Carlos have had
clairvoyant knowledge of Maria's thought processes? Or did Carlos know
Maria so well that he correctly guessed the identity of his gift? Or
was it merely a coincidence?
A survey
of more than 7,000 self-reported anecdotal telepathic experiences was tabulated
by L.E. Rhine (1962); nearly two thirds of these experiences were said to
have occurred in dreams. These data support Freud's conjecture that
sleep and dreams create favorable conditions for telepathy. Carl Jung
incorporated the concept of telepathic dreams into psychotherapy, using
the term crisis telepathy to refer to instances in which a dream contains
anomalous information about a loved one whose death is imminent or who has
suffered an accident, assault, or any other life-threatening situation.
Anecdotal
reports of telepathy in dreams are unreliable because one cannot easily
prevent the possibility of coincidence, dishonesty, self-delusion, or logical
or sensory clues of which the dreamer was unaware. The Parapsychological
Association, an international organization of professional researchers, insists
that the term psi phenomenon be used only to describe events obtained under
conditions in which all known sensor channels for anomalous interactions
have been eliminated.
It was
not until 1966 that telepathic dream studies using the monitoring of REM
sleep were reported. Designed by Montague Ullman and one of the present
authors, with the assistance of several colleagues at Maimonides Medical
Center in Brooklyn, these studies paired a volunteer subject with a "telepathic
transmitter"; the pair interacted briefly, then separated and spent the night
in distant rooms. An experimenter randomly selected an art print (from
a collection or "pool" of which the subject was unaware) and gave the print
to the transmitter in an opaque sealed envelope, to be opened only when the
transmitter was in the distant room. The experimenter awakened the
subject near the end of each REM period and requested a dream report.
We had
these reports transcribed by a secretary who was never present on any of
the experimental nights, then sent the transcripts to outside judges who,
working independently, matched them against the pool of potential art prints
from which the actual print had been randomly selected. Statistical
evaluation was based on the average of these matchings, as well as by self-judgings
of the subjects following the conclusion of the experiment. We contended
that there was no way in which sensory cues or fraudulent subject/transmitter
collaboration could have influenced the dream reports and statistical results.
The data showed an overall pattern of statistical significance supporting
the telepathy hypothesis (Ullman & Krippner, with Vaughan, 1989).
One
example of a finding in an experiment that obtained statistically significant
results occurred on a night when the randomly selected art print was "School
of the Dance" by Degas, depicting a dance class of several young women.
The subject’s dream reports included such phrases as "I was in a class made
up of maybe half a dozen people," "it felt like a school," and “there was
one little girl that was trying to dance with me." An examination
of the dream reports and the matched art prints indicated a similarity in
this process to the way that day residue, psychodynamic processes, and subliminally
perceived stimuli find their way into dream content. Sometimes the
material corresponding to the art prints was intrusive (for example, "There
was one little girl that was trying to dance with me"), and sometimes it
blended easily with the narrative (for example, "It felt like a school").
Sometime it was direct, at other times symbolic. Although these dream
reports had presumptively telepathic characteristics, their construction
and description did not appear to differ in significant ways from other
dreams collected in laboratory studies (Krippner, 1993).
A statistical
meta-analysis of the Maimonides experiments was reported by Irving Child
(1985). He found that six of the fifteen studies attained statistically
significant results and that data from one other study was nearly significant.
Including the latter study, statistical significance varied from the .06
level of probability (only 6 possibilities in 100 that chance was responsible
for the results) to the .000002 level (less than two chances in one
million that the matches between dream report and art print were sheer coincidence).
Considering the significance of the data, the overall results of our experimental
telepathic dream studies need to be seriously considered. On the other
hand, several critics (for example, Zusne & Jones, 1982) would not go
this far and claimed that there were serious flaws in the procedure. In response
Child declared that some of these criticisms were irrelevant and that others
reflected actual misrepresentation and distortion of the original experiments.
Alack of reliable replication by other researchers is the most important
criticism that can be made of these dream telepathy studies.
Another
analysis of the Maimonides data provided provocative results. Michael
Persinger and I (1989) examined the first night that each of 62 subjects
in telepathic or clairvoyant dream experiments spent at the Maimonides laboratory.
We observed a significant difference between "high psi" nights and "low
psi" nights: The former were more likely to occur in the absence of electrical
storms and sunspots as measured by archival records of geomagnetic activity.
These data may indicate that the telepathic and clairvoyant capacities of
the human brain are sensitive to geomagnetic activity.
If a
hallmark of "reality" is that its information must be amenable to sharing,
and if these studies can be replicated under rigorous conditions, support
would be found for the old shamanic claim that distant information can be
obtained in "dreamtime." At least a modicum of the information in dreams
may come from a person geographically distant from the dreamer, from a geographically
distant location, or from a temporally distant situation. Indeed,
we studied precognitive dreams at Maimonides as well, obtaining statistically
significant results with a subject who almost consistently was able to dream
about an event that was randomly devised for him the following day.
One morning, after the subject had awakened and left the soundproof sleep
room, he was taken to an office draped with sheets to resemble snow.
While he inspected a photograph of an Eskimo wearing a parka hood (the target
word selected just one hour previously utilizing a random number table),
an assistant dropped an ice cube down his back. During the previous
night, this subject had dreamed about ice, a room in which everything was
white, and a man with white hair (Krippner, Ullman, & Honorton,1971).
The Enigma of Shared Dreams
Heraclitus
maintained that "those awake have one ordered universe in common, but in
sleep every man turns away to one of his own" (in Stumpf, 1988. p. 15).
Although Heraclitus' intent was most likely metaphorical, his statement is
quite applicable to how dreams are conceptualized today. However, if
"reality" needs to be consensual, several dream reports -- if valid --suggest
that some dreams have the potential of sustaining a "separate reality."
Indeed, if dreams can "sustain" what seems to be a "reality," it might be
inferred that ordinary waking "reality" might be "sustained" in a similar
fashion. As a matter of fact, A.R. Manser (1967) has taken issue with
such philosophers as Descartes who provided criteria for discerning dreams
from "reality," observing that some dreams are sufficiently similar to "reality"
such that a person could not immediately tell the difference. Manser
concluded, "Philosophers have sought for some mark or test that would solve
this problem, but there is none available" (p. 415). Centuries earlier,
the Chinese philosopher Chuang Tzu (369-286 BC) awakened and "did not know
whether I was Chuang Tzu dreaming I was a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming
I was Chuang Tzu."
Recent
investigations into lucid dreaming have demonstrated that, with training,
a subject can tell whether he or she is dreaming within one or two minutes
and sometimes can sustain lucidity for an hour or more. Highly reliable
"reality tests" include reading lines of text twice (the words usually change),
or attempting to defy the laws of physics by flying or walking through walls
(LaBerge & Rheingold, 1990). In this context, the central question
is not whether a person is dreaming he or she is a butterfly, or a butterfly
is dreaming it is a person, but whether the perceptual and experiential
differences pinpointed by "reality tests" actually signify a fundamental
ontological difference between the waking world and the dream world.
In the meantime, lucid dreams rebut Jean-Paul Sartre's (1940/1960) insistence
that reflective consciousness does not occur in dreams, and that if it did,
the dream would be destroyed (p. 233).
Carlos
Castaneda is a controversial figure in anthropology and has little if
any standing in parapsychological circles (see Fikes, 1993). Nevertheless,
in 1993, he devoted an entire book to the topic of extraordinary dreams.
In this book (Castaneda, 1993), he describes how the purported training
practices of the alleged sorcerer don Juan Matus allowed him and another
adept to share a dream, finding themselves in the plaza of a small town.
Castaneda grabbed several people in the street, recalling "They were as
real as anything I consider real....Everything seemed real and normal, yet
it was a dream." His companion pointed out, "Those people out there
are so real that they even have thoughts" (pp. 239-240). For some readers,
this account is pure fiction; for others, it is a metaphor. But for
some, it represents the untapped possibilities of dreaming that Westerners,
to their peril, adamantly deny.
In
1975, an anthropologist challenged Castaneda to demonstrate dream-sharing
to him. Castaneda asked the anthropologist to select seven individuals
known to him, write down their names, and to share the list with only one
other person. Sometime later, Castaneda asked the anthropologist to
contact these individuals and ask them if they had recalled any unusual dreams.
Each of the seven people recalled dreams about small animals or fish.
Castaneda claimed that he had performed a ritual enabling several of his animal
"allies" to appear in the dreams of these individuals -- even though he was
unaware of their identities. One of the dreamers, a clinical psychologist,
is known to me personally. Her dream was about a toilet bowl "in which
there are two rodent-like fish, or fish-like rodents." There is "something
repulsive about them. They look half cartoon-like, with pink bodies,
black ears, and long blacktails." The psychologist told me that she
could understand the presence of a toilet bowl in her dreams, because of
recent life events, but that the fish/rodents made no sense to her until
the anthropologist revealed the nature of the experiment (in Krippner &
Villoldo, 1986, pp. 177-178).
An extraordinary
instance of shared dreams has been reported with some patients with "dissociative
identity disorder” whose "alter" personalities recall dreaming the same
dream on the same night, often with minor but intriguing differences.
Deirdre Barrett (1994) reports the case of a patient, Sarah, who told her
therapist that she recalled a dream from the previous night in which she
heard a girl screaming for help. Later, during the same session, an
"alter" personality, 4-year-old Annie, remembered a nightmare of being tied
down naked and being unable to cry out as a man began to cut her vagina.
Another "alter" was Ann, supposedly aged 9; she recalled a dream of watching
this scene and screaming desperately for help. An adolescent "alter,"
Jo, said that she had dreamed of coming upon this scene and clubbing the
little girl's attacker on the head; he fell to the ground, dead. In
Ann's and Annie's dreams, the teenager had appeared as well, striking the
man to the ground; but he arose and renewed his attack. Sally, another
4-year-old "alter," dreamed of playing with her dolls happily, noticing nothing
else. Both Ann and Annie had recalled a little girl playing obliviously in
the corner of the room.
Psychotherapists
are divided in their concepts of dissociative identity disorders, a few
holding that they represent intruding "spirits," others believing that they
are merely figments of the patient's imagination, and still others taking
the position that they are the residue of a shattered psyche. In any
event, Sarah, Ann, Annie, Jo, and Sally all told the therapist that these
dreams had occurred on the same night, making them noteworthy in the annals
of shared dreams. In fact, this remarkable dream may represent the
host personality’s repression of the traumatic experience. Sally happily
plays with her dolls while the unfortunate Annie is being violated.
An older alter, Ann, has regained enough of her strength to scream for assistance,
and enough mastery has been recouped for the adolescent alter, Jo, to strike
her attacker.
Shared
dreams are reported by any number of people who are not known to be students
of sorcery or to suffer from dissociative disorders. Barbara Shor
(1992) has developed a program for dream sharing, working with volunteers.
Her dreamers attempted to use preset meeting places, both real and imaginary,
because past experience had demonstrated that a specific time and place
for the attempt needed to be extremely clear. Even then, the meeting
site often changed unexpectedly. Shor recalls, "We began dreaming
spontaneously of meeting each other in an auditorium with an exquisite dome
inlaid with lapis lazuli. On the night we officially tried to meet
there, however, we ended up in a vast columned lobby of black marble. We
met in the same place all right, but it was the same wrong place" (p. 37).
Some of her dreamers exchanged photographs, yet never met in person; even
so, they reported dream meetings in such sites as the crown room of the Statue
of Liberty and the grand staircase in the lobby of the Metropolitan Museum
of Art.
Shor's
group felt that there were developmental stages in dreaming together resembling
a group "hero's journey." During “the call," dreamers often reported
dreams interpreted as initiatory and cleansing rituals. During the
"separation" stage, dreams reflected a reexamination of dreamers' personal
lives and of familiar events and institutions. This led to other stages,
i.e., "finding our paths," "being challenged by the new," "becoming the other,"
"victory and defeat," "transcendence,""confession," and "owning the shadow."
Shor has not presented a research hypothesis or methodology, but her pilot
work could be reformulated into a project with appropriate controls.
Many
members of Shor's dream sharing group began to question their notions of "reality,"
and because of this questioning, their personal lives often changed as well.
Shor recalls, "As we examined our relationships in new ways, some people
felt threatened, and old silences were no longer tenable. Some relationships
grew and prospered; others ended; new ones appeared. Jobs, even entire
career paths, changed. Dearly held long-term goals became irrelevant
as our understanding of ourselves, of others, and of our world shifted dramatically"
(p. 38). Nevertheless, many dreamers reported enjoying the new intimacy
afforded by shared dreams, and even proposed that the perspective on reality
it afforded could help heal troubled families, develop creative business
projects, stimulate research on consciousness, and assist in dealing with
global issues (Magallo'n & Shor, 1990).
The Enigma of Dream Apports
The
most enigmatic dream reports are those in which apports (i.e., physical objects
that reportedly appear with no discernible source) are purportedly brought
from "dreamtime" into the dreamer's waking life. Most Western philosophers
and scientists would reject these reports outright. O'Flaherty (1984)
has discussed the manipulation of dreams in Tibetan Buddhism which led to
a technique "by which the dreamer could make the object of his dream materialize
when he woke up" (p.27). This special technique was employed during
what Western scientists call the "hypnopompic state," the junction between
sleep and wakefulness or the "liminal moment of dangerous transition between
the two worlds." To prepare for this phenomenon, a master and his
student sleep near the initiation fire; since they have the same consciousness
at that time, they have the same dream. In this way, the dreamer could
purposely dream about something that was shared by his teacher; this would
create "an objective material thing that had not previously existed except
in his mind" (Ibid.). In this instance, shared dreams are said to
produce "realities" that resemble those in the waking world to such an extent
that they persist once the dream is over. A similar differentiation
is made by Castaneda (1993) between "ordinary dreams" and the "second attention."
The
African shaman Some' (1994) recalls that at a crucial period in his initiation,
he and his companion “began to speak about the location of our specific assignments.
Each one involved entering a cave....I went that way, jumping from rock
to rock till I reached the entrance to the magical cave....It felt like
a womb. The floor was sandy and dusty and I noticed with surprise
that the walls were perfectly carved out of red granite. There were
animal footprints everywhere....The space seemed custom-made to fit me.
My fire went out....The blackness closed in. I closed my eyes in an
effort to blot out images of what would happen if I had to back out. When
I opened them again, I could see something that looked like a light a little
distance ahead of me....It grew bigger and bigger, and soon I realized that...I
had reached the other side of the mountain! The cave must be, I thought,
a tunnel that pierced straight through the mountain....{So this is the elders'
idea of the underworld, I thought....Writing about what came next is an extremely
difficult task. What I have been able to convey so far of my experience
in the underworld seems very limited, sometimes insignificant compared to
what really happened....The underworld is not under our world and probably
not above it either. It is a world all by itself. Where I was, nature
was beautiful, much finer than in the world I had left behind....I saw a
tree that distinguished itself from the others by its unusual size....Under
the roots of the tree was a bluish-violet stone that glowed as I looked at
it. It had a very bright center whose light increased and decreased,
making the stone seem as if it were breathing. I have never seen its
likes before....As I grasped the stone and brought it out through the opening
in the roots, it began to glow fiercely....When I stood up and opened my
hand, it would not fall off, but clung there, stinging me. Against my will
I closed my fingers around it. My hand was shaking, and so was my whole
body. Just as I could not stop holding the stone, I could not stop
looking at it....My hand had taken on a violet color as if the irradiation
of the stone were infectious. The violet glow spread slowly from my
palm to my fingers. It was so powerful that I could clearly see it
shining through the back of the hand stuck on top of it....Soon I felt as
if I were in the middle of a huge violet egg that had no shell. Inside the
egg there was a whole world, and I was in it....In that moment of awareness,
I had an epiphany, that the light we encounter on the road to death is our
being in the act of coming home to itself....The light is where we belong....So
we leave the light to go and experience the need for light, and thus come
back to it anew. Then it was if I were seeing a series of my own past lives,
beginning very far back in time....[Then] I realized I was standing back
under the enormous tree, still holding the stone in my hands....I could remember
the entire experience I had just lived through, but it bore the aftertaste
of a fantastic dream. Actually, I felt more like myself that I had ever felt
before.....I had lost track of the hole where I had exited from the mountain....Suddenly,
out of nowhere, I saw a girl....Though I wanted to inquire about this region
and her business in it, Instead found myself asking her for directions.
She looked around at the four directions..., and said pointing west, "You
see those mountains over there?...Go to the...one in the middle, and cross
to the other side of it. There is a cave there. That is your
way home." I found the cave the girl had told me about and ran
in. It became dark as soon as I reached its interior....I could see
the stony ceiling two or three feet above me. I had crossed back through
the mountain almost instantaneously....How had all this happened? Looking
behind me, I realized that this cave was like any other cave, as black as...my
dream, with no suggestion of a light existing on the other side of it....Something
bit me inside my hand. It was the blue stone, my only proof that what
had happened had been real.” (p. 244 ff)
Rohanna
Ler, an Indonesian shaman living in Ujung Padung, Sulawesi, told me a similar
story. Although her ethnic heritage was Torajan, Rohanna had been
happily married to a devout Muslimwho ran a successful automobile repair
shop. Rohanna's domestic bliss was shattered in 1973 when one of their
sons began to lose his sight. Desperate, they sought both Western
and traditional medical advice, but nothing helped. Inexplicably,
their son’s eyes began to bleed. Close to utter despair, Rohanna had
a powerful dream. An elderly man appeared, telling her that it was
her nasib (fate) to become a dukun or traditional healer. The first
client she would treat would be her son, and if she rejected her "call,"
her son would go blind and never recover his sight. The visitor picked
up a stone from the ground and placed it in her hand. Upon awakening,
she found a stone in her bed. She placed the stone on her son's eyes
and before long he had fully recovered.
Rohanna's
description of the elderly man resembled Puang Matua, the "Old Lord" or
"Lord with Gray Hairs" who is the supreme god or Aluk Todolo in the Torajan
tradition. During the origin of the world, Pang Matua created humankind
on a bellows using as his raw material gold gathered from the "Region of
the Setting Sun." Here we see the completion of a cycle: gold is secured
from the land of death (the setting sun) to initiate life. Among the
human creations of Puang Matua were six pande or craftspeople including
the guardian of medicine, Indoq Belo Tumbang, and five priests. Pande
is also a title for a metallurgist who forges swords. While her dream
and the subsequent cure of her son had convinced Rohanna to become a healer,
she still had to seek the approval of her husband. He attributed their
son's recovery to other causes and refused to allow Rohanna to follow her
call, stating that he would be embarrassed to have a dukun in the household.
Furthermore, he insisted that no devout Muslim would become a dukun -- a
practitioner whose grounding was in a "pagan" tradition.
Rohanna
went on with her life. She took pride in her royal Torajan lineage
and the traditionally designed Torajan house which she had persuaded her
husband to build in Makale, the village of her birth. However, there were
still regrets as Rohanna knew she had not fulfilled her mission. In
1976, Rohanna had what she now calls "a dream-like vision." A young
man and a young woman appeared, asking her why she had not followed her call
to heal. She told them that her husband had forbidden it. They
took her outside and she witnessed an enormous fire which threatened her
husband's body shop. This, they said, would be the consequence of her
refusal to follow the call. The young couple gave Rohanna a ring.
Indeed when she returned to her ordinary state of consciousness, a strange
ring was in her hand.
When
Rohanna shared this news with her husband, he was understandably alarmed.
It took several years of pleading and persuading, but in 1981, Ler reluctantly
allowed his wife to follow her call. But there were two conditions:
Rohanna must never refer to herself as a dukun and she must give all the
money she earned to charity. Rohanna was overjoyed and accepted both
conditions quickly.
Her
first client was a man with an infected leg; his physician’s advice was
an amputation but after Rohanna's treatments, the amputation was unnecessary.
Her fame began to spread and soon clients were arriving not only from Ujung
Padung but from other parts of Sulawesi as well (Carpenter & Krippner,1993).
In this account, the "fate" and "destiny" of a woman clash with the "will"
and "custom" imposed by a man. The woman’s “destiny" persists.
It refuses to be "sublimated" into a powerless folklore or "filtered out"
in favor of more habitual activities.
Reports
of dream apports are not limited to shamans. Stanley Krippner and
Bruce Carpenter (1993) interviewed a Balinese artist, I Wayan Ariana, who
had used his dreams as source material for his drawings and wood-carvings.
Two years before their 1984 interview with Wayan, he had been involved in
a house-building project with a foreigner who eventually withdrew from the
project. This placed Wayan in a difficult spot because he was perceived
as wealthy enough to build a house when, in actuality, he was in debt.
To make matters worse, the site for the house was located along a canyon
that had never been the site of human habitation. Because he was short
of money, Wayan had been unable to afford the traditional Hindu cleansing
ceremony where he would make offerings and ask permission of the local deities
and spirits to live there. One night he slept in the unfinished house,
taking the precaution of making offerings to several gods and spirits, because
it was the night of a full moon and a day in the Balinese calendar considered
to be auspicious for the operation both benevolent and malevolent magic.
The
next morning Wayan recalled a dream; his report read, in part, “I had fallen
asleep about midnight when I thought I saw a bold black-skinned giant....He
awakened me with a great yelp....Being very tired, I went back to sleep.
Again he returned and I awoke. But this time I got up and started to
sweep the floor....Picking up [an] offering to examine it, I noticed that
a coin fell out -- a coin that I had definitely not put in the offering.
It was black and dirty. Without thinking, I put it in my pocket and
went back to sleep. Again the giant came to me....He said that this
land was suci [holy]. I was destined to own in and must therefore never
sell it because the land would bring me kesaktian [power]....The giant revealed
to me that the coin I had found in the offering had magical powers and that
it was his gift to me. He said that he gave it to me because he felt
kasian [compassion] for my poverty and bad luck....He told me that I must
never give my coin to others and must always carry it on my person.”
During
the interview, Wayan displayed the coin. It resembled the old Chinese
bronze coins with square holes in the center that are often used in Balinese
ceremonies. These coins are often mentioned in studies of Balinese
magic.
Implications and Interpretations of Anomalous Dreams
Some
philosophers believe that anomalous dreams, and psi in general, have no
important implications for philosophy (e.g., Flew, 1953), while others consider
the data to support "psychophysical dualism," a "common unconscious," a "subliminal
self," or a number of other brain/mind models currently out of fashion (e.g.,
Price, 1949/1967; Smythies, 1967). C.M. Mundle (1967) makes the case
that since philosophy attempts "to supply a coherent set of concepts and
principles which shall cover all regions of fact" (p. 57), it must take account
of parapsychological data. Even if the data supporting anomalous dreams
are found unconvincing by philosophers, there remains the indisputable fact
that people have been reporting stories about them for millennia; these anecdotal
reports comprise a large body of evidence and represent the most "replicable"
phenomenon in parapsychology, appearing in a variety of cultures and time
periods (Krippner, 1989). In the meantime, the veridical evidence supporting
these reports appears to violate certain "basic limiting principles" around
which Western concepts of "reality” are constructed (Wheatley, 1977, p. 152).
Gordon
Globus (1987) proposes that "dreaming life" and “waking life" share more
similarities than differences, and that both are "thought" into existence
in a manner not unlike the way in which the Upanishads described how Vishnu
"dreamed" human beings and their world into existence. In the case
of "waking life," environmental information passes freely across a person's
sensory receptors; if they match the "tunings" of the neural filters, they
help form that person's life world. In "dreaming life," information
from the preceding days, and from earlier life experiences, become reoperative.
But the dreamer creates a specific life world out of many possibilities;
"dreaming life is our own formative creation" (p. 173). Again, Globus
echoes Hindu scripture's description of dreaming sleep as an opportunity
for human beings to create "as the gods create, by emitting images" (O'Flaherty,
1984, p. 237). However, Hindu philosophy used a divine artisan as its
model, while Globus's (1987) mechanism is "a possible world machine" that
creates by selection from a plenum of enfolded possibilities that includes
genetic predisposition, life experiences, and -- indeed -- randomness (p.174).
Alan Watts (1961) adds that Zen masters seem to "take the world and its
sufferings as if it were just a dream"(p. 134), and that when their students
-- or psychotherapy clients -- stop idenntifying themselves with the image
of themselves that society has forced upon them, they are on their way to
liberation (p. 161).
During
waking hours, the available information swamps the brain, usually overwhelming
any number of subtle signals that could yield information. The dreaming
brain, however, is virtually shut off from the external data field.
Not only can it pay more attention to subtle signals, but it does not consider
them any more unusual than other dream creations. Fred Wolf (1994)
remarks, "During dreams we reexperience the wholeness of the events of our
lives." If human consciousness exists not only "under the skin" but
also "out there," it should not be regarded as unusual that dreamers can
share dreams or obtain information in ways they would tend to reject while
awake (pp. 204-205).
Wolf
describes "events" as being specific, geographically and temporally locatable,
and requiring some form of object-subject distinction to result in a personal
experience. Something becomes an "event" when it is noticed. The term
“quantum" refers to the specific way in which possibilities are changed
into actualities; a possibility becomes an experienced “event" (i.e., an
actuality) when it is an observed "event." Two "events" may be related
to each other simultaneously in space and time; in this model, the experiencing
self exists "out there" in a space-like network of all "events" capable
of being correlated. Human consciousness encapsulated by the skin does not
represent the limits of conscious awareness. Eventually, a type of
consciousness may develop that requires quantum physical correlations.
This extended awareness can be developed in many ways, including dreaming.
Wolf
states, "Limited self-awareness...is incapable of correlating with stimuli
outside the skin. To go beyond this limit, we dream. Paradoxically,
we shut off the outside world to correlate with the universe" (p. 188).
Shamans did the same thing; they utilized dreams and other altered states
of consciousness to visit other "realities" in order to assist the survival
and growth of their community and its members. Mindell (2000) suggests that
the shamanic challenge is to develop a worldview that does not simply favor
"dreaming life" and other "altered" conscious states over "waking life,"
but sees both as aspects of one and the same world. For Mindell, this "way
of looking at things is the long-awaited paradigm shift into a unified worldview"
(p. 161).
Both
Tibetan Buddhist philosophy and Western social constructionism describe how
the "individual self" is socially constructed. These "selves" are manifestations
of the "filtering" process described by Bergson, but during dreams the “filters"
often collapse and humans are opened not only to the subtle signals described
by Wolf but to new conceptions of being such as the "wholeness of the events
of our lives." Ullman (1979) has viewed "species connectedness" as
a basic property of consciousness that characterizes "dreaming life" more
frequently than it does "waking life." In ordinary consciousness, it
appears as if our being is centered in our brains and bodies; but dreams
attest that one's being is centered not in one's self but in the relation
between one's brain and others. Some of this feeling can be retrieved
by group dreamwork and dream sharing during wakefulness. For Ullman,
the history of waking consciousness is a history of fragmentation and separation,
but the dreaming self reflects another "reality" -- the dreamer as a member
of a single species.
This
notion is foreign to Westerners, as are anomalous dreams. But if
even a few of these anomalies have merit, they challenge the Western notions
of the individual self, the mind/body "problem," as well as traditional ideas
about "freewill" and "determinism." Virtually all members of humankind
know the differences between "waking reality" and "dream reality,” even though
those dissimilarities have been constructed in varying ways in different
cultures. Skilled lucid dreamers can answer the question "Am I dreaming?"
within a few seconds. Most others can answer the question "Was I dreaming?"
upon awakening. If the answers are so obvious, why are the questions
so persistent? Perhaps the attempt to distinguish "dream reality" from
"waking reality" is part of a larger program, one that -- in the West --
typically distinguishes object from subject, science from myth, intellect
from body, reason from intuition, modernity from postmodernity, the normal
from the paranormal, humans from nature, men from women, monotheism from
paganism, technology from "spirit" --basically, the established order from
the "other."
Therefore,
it should come as no surprise that dreams should be linked with myth, intuition,
postmodernity, the paranormal, the dominion of nature, the demands of the
body, the domain of women, the rituals of paganism, the realm of the “spirit,"
and all aspects of the "other" that can only be treated by Westerners safely
as "object" lest they slide through the “filters" that Westerners have erected
to protect their "reality." Perhaps there are aspects of "dream reality"
and” species connectedness" that pose a vibrant threat to a worldview that
has exploited the environment, violated women, persecuted minorities, belittled
other ways of knowing, and maintained a patriarchal approach to politics,
economics, warfare, and the social order.
In
1816, Samuel Taylor Coleridge asked the question, "If you could pass through
Paradise in a dream, and have a flower presented to you as a pledge that your
soul had really been there, and if you found that flower in your hand when
you awoke...What then?" This question is more than poetic fantasy.
The enigma of precognitive, telepathic, clairvoyant, and shared dreams,
and of dream apports, may yet force Westerners to revisit shamanic traditions,
asking questions outside of their frame of “reality" and -- perhaps -- obtaining
answers that will require a revision of that framework. Just as dreams
often provide explanations and solutions to personal problems, the social
and global problems of "waking reality" may one day be resolved if “dreamtime"
is entered and explored.
Abstract
Enigmatic, anomalous dream reports challenge the Western philosophical
worldview, hence they are ignored or derided by most mainstream philosophers
and scientists. Nevertheless, there is compelling evidence from parapsychological
research that at least some of these reports have consensual validation
and waking life consequences. Shamanic models of "reality" (which
reflect shamanic philosophies) also have been ignored in mainstream academic
circles. They provide anecdotal evidence, congruent with parapsychological
data, and need to be reconsidered by the dominant Western academies because
these models encompass anomalous dreams, and because they furnish provocative
data.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
References
Auerbach, L. (1991). Psychic dreaming: A parapsychologist's
handbook. New York: Warner Books.
Barrett, D.L. (1994). Dreams in multiple personality disorder. In
D.L. Barrett (Ed.) Trauma and dreams (in press). Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.
Bergson, H. (1914). Presidential address. Proceedings of the
Society for Psychical Research, 27, 157-175.
Calkins, M. (1893). Statistics of dreams. American Journal of Psychology,
5, 311-324.
Carpenter, B., & Krippner, S. (1993). Spice Island shaman.
In D. Thong, A Psychiatrist in Paradise: Treating mental illness in
Bali (pp. 147-165). Bangkok: White Lotus Press.
Cartwright, R.D., & Lamberg, L. (1992). Crisis dreaming:
Using your dreams to solve your problems. New York: HarperCollins.
Cartwright, R.D., Tipton, L.W., & Wicklund, K. (1980). Focusing
on dreams: A preparation program for psychotherapy. Archives
of General Psychiatry, 37, 275-277.
Castaneda, C. (1993). The art of dreaming. New York:
HarperCollins.
Cavallero, C., & Natale, V. (1988-1989). Was I dreaming or did
it really happen? A comparison between real and artificial dream reports.
Imagination, Cognition and Personality, 8, 19-24.
Child, I. (1985). Psychology and anomalous observations: The
question of ESP in dreams. American Psychologist, 40, 1219-1230.
Cogar, M.C., & Hill, C.E. (1992). Examining the effects of brief individual
dream interpretation. Dreaming, 2, 239-248.
Collins, H.M., & Pinch, T.J. (1982). Frames of meaning: The social
construction of extraordinary science. London: Routledge and Kegan
Paul.
Descartes, R. (1952). Meditation VI (E.S. Haldane & G.R.T. Ross,
Trans.) In M. Adler (Ed.), Descartes, Spinoza (pp. 96-103). Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Devereux, G. (1961). Shamans as neurotics. American Anthropologist, 63,
1008-1090.
Edge, H.L., Morris, R.L., Palmer, J., & Rush, J.H. (1986). Foundations
of parapsychology: Exploring the boundaries of human capacity.
Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Feinstein, D., & Krippner, S. (1988). Personal mythology: The
psychology of your evolving self. Los Angeles: Tarcher.
Fikes, J.C. (1993). Carlos Castaneda: Opportunism and the psychedelic
sixties. Victoria, British Columbia: Mellenia Press.
Flew, A. (1953). A new approach to psychical research. London:
Watts.
Foucault, M. (1980). Power/knowledge: Selected interviews
and other writings, 1972-1977. (C. Gordon, Ed. & Trans.). New
York: Pantheon.
Freud, S. (1965). The interpretation of dreams. J. Strachey
(trans.). New York: Avon. (Original work published 1900)
Globus, G. (1987). Dream life, wake life: The human condition through
dreams. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Globus, G. (1991). Dream content: Random or meaningful?
Dreaming, 1, 27-40.
Grey, W. (1994, Spring). Philosophy and the paranormal. Part
2:Skepticism, miracles and knowledge. Skeptical Inquirer, pp. 288-294.
Hartmann, E. (1991). Dreams that work or dreams that poison: What
does dreaming do? Dreaming, 1, 23-25.
Hess, D. (1992). Disciplining heterodoxy, circumventing discipline:
Parapsychology, anthropologically. In D. Hess & L. Layne (Eds.),
Knowledge and society: The anthropology of science and technology
(Vol. 9) (pp. 223-252). Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.
Hill, C.E., Diemer, R., Hess, S., Hillyer, A., & Seeman, R. (1993).
Are the effects of dream interpretation on session quality, insight, and
emotions due to the dream itself, to projection, or to the interpretation
process? Dreaming,3, 269-280.
Hobson, J.A. (1988). The dreaming brain. New York: Basic
Books.
Hunt, H.T. (1989). The multiplicity of dreams: Memory, imagination,
and consciousness. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Kelsey, M. (1974). God, dreams, and revelation; a Christian interpretation
of dreams. Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg.
Kirk, G.S., & Raven, G.E., & Schofield, M. (1983). The presocratic
philosophers (2nd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Krippner, S. (1989). Some touchstones for parapsychological research.
In G.K. Zollschan, J.F. Schumaker, & G.F. Walsh (Eds.), Exploring the
paranormal: Perspectives on belief and experience (pp. 167-183).
Lindfield, New South Wales, Australia: Unity Press.
Krippner, S. (1990). Frontiers in dreamwork. In S. Krippner(Ed.),
Dreamtime and dreamwork: Decoding the language of the night (pp. 207-213).
Los Angeles: Tarcher.
Krippner, S. (1993). Telepathy and dreaming. In M.A. Carskadon (Ed.),
Encyclopedia of sleep and dreaming (pp. 612-613). New York: Macmillan.
Krippner, S. (1994). Waking life, dream life, and the construction of reality.
Anthropology of Consciousness,5(3), 17-24.
Krippner, S., & Carpenter, B. (1993). The dreams of a Balinese
artist. In D. Thong, A Psychiatrist in Paradise: Treating mental
illness in Bali (pp. 167-178). Bangkok: White Lotus Press.
Krippner, S., & Dillard, J. (1988). Dreamworking. Buffalo,
NY: Bearly.
Krippner, S., Ullman, M., & Honorton, M. (1971). A precognitive
dream study with a single subject. Journal of the American Society
for Psychical Research, 65, 192-203.
Krippner, S., & Villoldo, A. (1986). The realms of healing (3rd ed.).
Berkeley, CA: Celestial Arts.
LaBerge, S., Levitan, L., & Dement, W. (1986). Lucid dreaming: Physiological
correlates of consciousness during REM sleep. Journal of Mind and
Behavior, 7, 251-258.
LaBerge, S., & Rheingold, H. (1990). Exploring the world of lucid
dreaming. New York: Ballantine.
Llinas, R.R., & Pare', D. (1991). On dreaming and wakefulness.
Neuroscience, 44, 521-535.
Magallo'n, L.L., & Shor, B. (1990). Shared dreaming: Joining
together in dreamtime. In S. Krippner (Ed.), Dreamtime and dreamwork:
Decoding the language of the night (pp. 252-260). Los Angeles: Tarcher.
Malcolm, N. (1959). Dreaming. London: Routledge and Paul.
Manser, A.R. (1967). Dreams. In P. Edwards (Ed.), Encyclopedia
of philosophy (pp. 414-417). New York: Macmillan.
Mundle, C.M. (1967). Philosophical implications of ESP phenomena.
In P. Edwards (Ed.), Encyclopedia of philosophy(pp. 54-58). New York:
Macmillan.
O'Flaherty, W.D. (1984). Dreams, illusion and other realities.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Parman, S. (1991). Dreams and culture: An anthropological study
of the Western intellectual tradition. New York: Praeger.
Persinger, M., & Krippner, S. (1989). Dream ESP and geomagneticactivity.
Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, 83, 101-116.
Plato. (1871). Theaetus (B. Jowett, trans.). Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Price, H.H. (1967). Psychical research and human personality. In
J.R. Smythies (Ed.), Science and ESP (pp. 33-45). London: Routledge
and Kegan Paul. (Original work published 1949)
Priestly, J.B. (1964). Man and time. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.
Rhine, L.E. (1962). Psychological processes in ESP experiences: Part
II. Dreams. Journal of Parapsychology, 26, 172-199.
Ryback, D., with Sweitzer, L. (1988). Dreams that come true. New
York: Dolphin/Doubleday.
Sartre, J.-P. (1960). The psychology of imagination. Secaucus,
NJ: Citadel Press. (Original work published 1940)
Shore, B. (1992, Winter). The promise of shared dreaming. Gnosis,
pp. 36-42.
Silverman, J. (1967). Shamans and acute schizophrenia. American Anthropologist,
69, 21-31.
Smythies, J.R. (1967). Is ESP possible? In J.R. Smythies (Ed.), Science
and ESP (pp. 1-14). London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Some', M.P. (1994). Of water and the spirit: Ritual, magic,
and initiation in the life of an African shaman. New York: Tarcher/Putnam.
States, B.O. (1992). The meaning of dreams. Dreaming, 2, 249-262.
Stumpf, S.E. (1988). Socrates to Sartre: A history of philosophy.
New York: McGraw-Hill.
Ullman, M. (1979). Psi communication through dream sharing.
In B. Shapin & L. Coly (Eds.), Communication and parapsychology(pp. 202-227).
New York: Parapsychology Foundation.
Ullman, M., & Krippner, S., with Vaughan, A. (1989). Dream telepathy
(2nd. ed.). Jefferson, NC: McFarland.
Van de Kemp, H. (1910). The dream in periodical literature: 1860-1910.
Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, 17, 88-113.
Walsh, R. (1990). The spirit of shamanism. Los Angeles: Tarcher.
Watts, A.W. (1961). Psychotherapy East and West. New York:
Pantheon Books.
Webb, W.B. (1990). Historical perspectives: From Aristotle
to Calvin Hall. In S. Krippner (Ed.), Dreamtime and dreamwork:
Decoding the language of the night (pp. 175-184). Los Angeles: Tarcher.
Wheatley, J.M.O. (1977). Implications for philosophy. In S.
Krippner (Ed.), Advances in parapsychological research (Vol.1, pp. 149-174).
Jefferson, NC: McFarland.
Wolf, F.A. (1994). The dreaming universe. New York: Simon and
Schuster.
Zusne, L., & Jones, W.H. (1982). Anomalous psychology:
A study of extraordinary phenomena of behavior and experience. Hillside,
NJ: Erlbaum.
Index
Recovery stories
myth