Extraordinary Dreams and How to Work with Them Ķ
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EXTRAORDINARY DREAMS AND HOW TO WORK WITH THEM ķ Stanley Krippner, Fariba Bogzaran, and André Percia de Carvalho SUNY series in Dream Studies Robert L. Van de Castle, editor EXTRAORDINARY DREAMS AND HOW TO WORK WITH THEM ķ Stanley Krippner, Fariba Bogzaran, and André Percia de Carvalho Published by State University of New York Press, Albany © 2002 State University of New York All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise with- out the prior permission in writing of the publisher. For information, address State University of New York Press, 90 State Street, Suite 700, Albany, NY 12207 Production by Marilyn P. Semerad Marketing by Patrick Durocher Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Krippner, Stanley, 1932– Extraordinary dreams and how to work with them / Stanley Krippner, Fariba Bogzaran, André Percia de Carvalho. p. cm. — (SUNY series in dream studies) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0–7914–5257–3 (alk. paper) — ISBN 0–7914–5258–1 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Dreams. I. Bogzaran, Fariba, 1958– II . Carvalho, André Percia de, 1969– III. Title. IV. Series. BF1091 .K75 2002 2001042011 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 To extraordinary dreamers Rita Dwyer Daniel Deslauriers Patricia Garfield Montague Ullman Robert Van de Castle and our other pioneering colleagues Contents ķ Acknowledgments ix Chapter 1. Introduction 1 Chapter 2. Understanding Dreams and Dreaming 9 Chapter 3. Creative Dreams 23 Chapter 4. Lucid Dreams 33 Chapter 5. Out-of-Body Dreams 45 Chapter 6. Pregnancy Dreams 57 Chapter 7. Healing Dreams 67 Chapter 8. Dreams within Dreams 77 Chapter 9. Collective Dreams 83 Chapter 10. Telepathic Dreams 93 Chapter 11. Clairvoyant Dreams 107 Chapter 12. Precognitive Dreams 115 Chapter 13. Past Life Dreams 127 Chapter 14. Initiation Dreams 135 Chapter 15. Spiritual and Visitation Dreams 147 Chapter 16. Dreams and Personal Mythology 157 Notes 169 Glossary 189 Indexes 193 vii Acknowledgments ķ he authors would like to express their appreciation to the Chair for the TStudy of Consciousness at Saybrook Graduate School for partially fund- ing the preparation of this book, and acknowledge the support of the Dream Studies Program at John F. Kennedy University. We would like to thank Steve Hart for his assistance in locating many ref- erence materials; Marilyn Fowler and Dolores Richards for their invaluable editorial input; and the support of Daniel Kortenkamp, Tara Matheny- Schuster, Caroline Crossfield, Laura Faith, Emily Anderson, and our consci- entious production editor, Marilyn P. Semerad. Unless otherwise noted, all non-cited dream reports in this book were obtained from our students and colleagues. We would like to thank them for their collaboration, without which this book would not have been possible. Some of the material in this book was previously published in Sonhos Exoticos by Stanley Krippner and André Percia de Carvalho, Summus Publications, Sao Paulo, Brazil, 1998. ix In the World They Call a Dream These things I have seen in the world they call a dream: the swaying of tall burgundy trees surrounded by luminous red auras; twin moons, milky and full, above the horizon; a bottomless canyon where silvery water rose to fill the void; yellow stars swirling in an inky sky. These things I have done in the world they call a dream: stood enraptured in an empty light-filled room jutting into the sea; ridden captive on a train whose journey had no end; scuttled through craggy underground paths to reach a city of women; glided over a beach in search of stones. These things I have said in the world they call a dream: that relationships ripen like apples, and sometimes a little worm gets inside; that people are used to complex “truths”; that to take away our humanity is to take away our best tool; that we don’t have to prove we can swim by almost drowning. —Deborah Hillman ķ Chapter 1 Introduction olores had just dreamed that someone was banging on the front door of Dher house in the middle of the night. In the dream, she walked down the hallway and saw a man in an overcoat through the front door, silhouetted by the full moon outside. He had a hat pulled down low over his face. Alarmed, she called out, “What do you want?” He answered brusquely, “I want to sleep here tonight.” Dolores walked back to her bedroom and called the emergency operator. When she explained her concern about the man at the front door, the operator replied, “Oh yes, we know who he is. His name is Nisrock.” Perplexed, Dolores asked for the spelling of the odd name. Meanwhile, she could hear the man trying the other doors of her house. They were all well locked. A split sec- ond later, she noticed that her telephone was sitting on a large Spanish dresser she had left behind in a move sixteen years earlier. At that moment, she real- ized that this was a dream and awakened. Several days later, still reflecting on the dream, Dolores stopped at the local library and found an interesting book about the unconscious. She opened it at random, and, to her amazement, saw a drawing from an old manuscript. The caption read, “Nisrock, the winged Babylonian god who takes the souls of dreamers to the place of the dream.” The remarkable synchronicity first led Dolores to conclude that the dream was precognitive. It seemed to foretell an event, namely the soon-to-be-dis- covered book with the origin of the name Nisrock. However, as she began to reflect on her life in relation to the dream, she realized that the Nisrock figure 1 2 Extraordinary Dreams and How to Work with Them was more accurately a representation of the unknown to which she needed to “open” herself. She had recently moved from the United States to another country and was worried about her ability to survive on her own. Her concerns had her “locked in” and she needed the courage to open herself to new experi- ences. As Dolores worked to more fully understand her dream, she realized that it was helping her psychologically, emotionally, and spiritually to embrace her new life. The Dream Process To understand the dream process, we must first describe the basic sleep cycle. Most people dream at least four or five times each night. About ninety minutes after falling asleep, we typically enter that stage of sleep marked by rapid eye movement (or REM) activity. Although dreams can appear during other sleep stages, it is during REM that our dreams generally occur. Laboratory sleep research shows that most sleepers, when awakened from REM sleep, will usu- ally recall a dream. At the beginning of the night, our first REM period may last only five minutes; toward the end of the night, a REM period may last as long as thirty minutes. This stage of sleep is marked not only by rapid eye movements but also by a loss of muscle tone, sexual excitation, and brain waves resembling those that characterize wakefulness. The reason for REM sleep is unclear, but it may facilitate memory stor- age, maintain brain equilibrium during bodily repose and, among infants, may accelerate the development of the brain and the coordination of the eyes. All of these potential goals of REM sleep indicate that its psychological activities are superimposed on more primary biological functions. While dreams may assist the dreamer to become aware of life issues, identify personal myths, and solve problems, these psychological activities are secondary to the biological pur- poses served by REM sleep. According to one widely-held theory, during a REM period, a cascade of potent chemicals (including seratonin) is released. This stimulates the visual and motor centers of the brain, evoking the dreamer’s memories. No matter how they are elicited, it is these memories that the dreaming brain uses as building blocks for the dream—recombining them in original, vivid, and often baffling ways to create a story. The dreaming mind may create the story by pro- viding a script that has been waiting patiently for the material that would allow it to surface, or by producing an on-the-spot narrative that matches, as best it Introduction 3 can, the images that have been kindled.1 In either event, the dreaming brain appears to have remarkable self-organizing properties that create several more or less coherent stories each night. Some dream stories reflect basic problems in daily life with which we have wrestled for years, stories that hold deep meaning for the dreamer. Other sto- ries may be more trivial in nature, reflecting events of the past few days or hours that surface as “day residue.” Still others may be little more than a jumble of disparate pictures and events, lacking any coherent theme. Regardless of the type of dream story presented, the story-making process can be likened to what transpires when we use language while awake. In fact, dreams are often called the language of the night. We can define dreams as a series of images—reported in narrative form— that occur during sleep. Our mental and emotional processes during dream time are, in many ways, quite similar to those we experience during wakeful- ness. In one study people were asked to make up a dream while awake. Surprisingly, the judges could not discriminate these imaginary accounts from the written reports of nighttime dreams.