The Knowledge From Dreams (Slides)
DAY 1
THE KNOWLEDGE FROM DREAMS
Conceptual Clarification
Dreams:
-
It is made up of motion Pictures with Sound and Images
-
It is stored in the Memory for Recollection and Interpretation.
Trance:
This is a short form of dream, and often from Naps (short sleep).
-
Dreams are like a wakeful state, hence we experience Emotions that reflect through our physical bodies.
-
Bizarre: It contains motion pictures that often contradict (1) the laws of Nature and Logic (2) the laws of Space and Time (3) the rules of Morality and (4) contains Familiar and Unfamiliar Symbols and Images
3. It often contains different Categories of Persons within the same space and time.
CAUSES AND CLASSIFICATION OF DREAMS
AND IMAGES IN DREAMS
These metaphorical symbols stand for something other than what they originally stood for. Examples are black (death, occult), red (danger, sacrifice, occult), white (purity, cleanness, holiness, occult), ocean (mysterious, subconscious), etc.
CAUSES AND CLASSIFICATION OF DREAMS
-
Everyday experiences of wakeful state (The view of most scientists). Here memory plays a major role.
-
Past Experiences (Memory and Brain evolution): Here we are dealing with childhood experiences and “memories derived from the ancestral past. … [up] to our prehuman ancestors.” (Jung)
3. Environmental Contingencies: Temperature, women’s circle and pregnancy, state of health (physical and mental), etc.
4. Wish Fulfilment (Freud): These are Unsatisfied Desires of a wakeful state: anger or hatred (attacker), fear (being attacked), hunger (eating in a dream), shame (disgraced, naked),
5. Compensatory (Jung): Dreams are from the dreamer’s psyche; it is the neglected aspects of the dreamer’s Personality or Selfhood in search of recognition and action.
DAY 2
OTHER CATEGORIES UNDER IMPINGEMENT THEORY
1. Problem-Solving Dreams: These are dreams that help resolve scientific puzzles, improve and perfect artistic works, and help solve everyday problems or issues.
2. Contingent Future-Revealing Dreams: These are dreams that reveal the thoughts, feelings, plans, and actions of persons; and the future contingent states of objects and things.
Here we have dreams concerning human planned Events (Wedding, Funeral, Parties, traveling, War, bombing, Hijacking, Kidnapping, Attacks, etc), the state of the human body (Health issues), and the state of our environment including plants and animals (Storm, Fire, Flood, etc).
3. Revelatory Dreams: These are dreams that inform us about:
(i) what has happened in the past.
(ii) what will surely happen in the future.
In the case of actions that will surely happen in the future, we have three categories:
-
Human planned actions that other (i) human persons cannot stop from happening or (ii) disembodied persons have allowed to happen following the principles of personhood (like the dream of Joseph to flee to Egypt with Mary and Jesus).
-
Planned actions of disembodied persons (e.g. Demons) that the Supreme Being has allowed to happen (e.g. The Fall of Man, The Trials of Job).
-
The Will of the Supreme Being – God. (Creation, Incarnation, etc)
INTERPRETING DREAMS
1. Ancient Babylonians & Assyrians: Dreams are either from evil spirits or messages from the gods. Thus priests were consulted to interpret dreams.
2. Ancient Greece: The gods were the originators of dreams (e.g. Aesculapius, the god of healing and medicine)
Hippocrates believed in the hidden remedy in dreams.
Aristotle: He rejected the divine origin of dreams and the astrological interpretation of dreams. His theory of the soul includes the vegetative soul (plants), the animal soul (animal instinct), and the human soul (rational).
3. Other Ancient Cultures (Africa, Asia, etc): Some cultures link dreams to reality, such that to commit an immoral act in a dream makes you guilty of it at a wakeful state.
Some cultures require that you re-enact the dream in real life to satisfy the wishes of the soul/mind toward avoiding evil or danger.
4. Artemidorus (2nd-3rd C): In his Interpretation of Dreams, in which he claimed to have studied about 3000 dreamers, he opined that the meaning of Symbols in dreams is subjective, relative, and prone to change over time.
5. 19th and 20th C: The ideas of the Subconscious, Unconscious, Psyche, and “Subliminal Self” to explain and interpret dreams were developed.
Freud: Dreams were Wish Fulfilment
Jung: Dreams were interpreted as Compensation for what is lacking expression in our Personality or Selfhood.
DAY 3
-
Thought Transfer: Possible but difficult to calculate.
6. Dream Series Method: Record about 50 – 100 of your dreams and search for a meaningful pattern concerning the symbols in it.
7. Content Analysis Method: Categorise persons, objects, or things in your dreams and interpret the dreams based on your relationship with these symbols.
8. Impingement Theory: Record your dreams and classify them; then you interpret them based on your
(a) Classification and
(b) the understanding you rationally deduce from your record over time, guided by your subconscious intuition.
Auto-Suggestion
The Subconscious adoption or acceptance of one’s idea towards reprogramming the Subconscious mind.
-
Vivid Thoughts negating or redirecting a frequent negative dream towards bringing it to an end.
-
Vivid thoughts about how you can abruptly stop your dream can give you some control of your dreams.
Sylvester Idemudia Odia, Ph.D. (CEO)