It is good laboratory practice to keep a laboratory notebook, a lab book, in which one records experiments. I have done this with dreams. I have 17 A4 note books of dreams and meditations, with ~250 dreams typed up.
In the days of the Pharoh decisions about the future were allegedly made on the basis of dream interpretation. You can find plenty of books on dreams. The “Germanic” psychologists were interested and their theories were used to suggest meaning. The iconography of dreams is probably culture specific, someone raised in Tibetan Vajrayana will have a different imagery toolbox to a Western psychologist. The human experience is much more transferable than the images used to convey.
People tend to assert fact when in reality they are talking about an evolving hypothesis. A trained scientist, like me, knows that knowledge and understanding are not fixed, they evolve.
The notion of reincarnation is held widely across the world. But there can never be a six sigma “scientific” proof of reincarnation. There can at best be circumstantial evidence.
I’ll make a postulate. Dreaming may be one way in which past-life knowledge transfers into waking brain consciousness.
I’ll develop a train of thought.
Even though the belief in reincarnation is widespread there is debate upon exactly what reincarnates.
One could set a threefold model for human beings. We might call a wider noumenon “spirit”, that which causes reincarnation “The Dreamer” and the incarnate being “The Dreamed”. In this schema the dreamer causes “itself” to be incarnated into a physical body with a personality, the dreamed.
The dreamer is keen to work off karma, to learn and evolve. So, it picks a vehicle and life circumstance best suited for its own evolution.
At birth the trauma of incarnation causes the dreamed to “forget” about what caused it, what dreamed it in. The connection between the dreamer and the dreamed is foggy. Most people live their lives oriented in the personality and unaware of the needs of the dreamer or Soul. The dreamer struggles to take over the steering wheel of the meaty vehicle.
The dreamer tries to infuse the dreamed with its intent and meets with resistance. The dreamed could live a life very different from the game-plan. It does not cooperate. But the dreamer can guide, in some cases, the dreamed to get back on track. These guidance dreams can be called “dramatizations of the Soul”. They guide the dreamed back towards the original lesson plan. Nightmares happen when the dreamed is far off course, the dreamed needs a wake up call, so to speak.
One could postulate that one of the purposes of dreaming is to, by working with karma, evolve a fate and hence a destiny. Here fate is the integral of all karma in a given lifetime and destiny is the integral of fates over many lifetimes.
Types of Dream.
There are many different types of dreaming, ranging from filing dreams in which the events of the day are reviewed and perhaps fretted about to what I call whoppers. These dreams are ultra-vivid and have meaning. There are emotive dreams, erotic dreams and so-called lucid dreams in which the person dreaming consciously interacts with the evolving dream state. Healing work can be done in dreams. There are dreams which connect to the emotional maya forms and the intellectual illusory forms. Some dreams are prescient. There is another kind of dream which is akin to remote viewing in which people learn about things going on for others to whom they are connected.
If one seeks to work with dreams, it is necessary to record a dream journal. These can be kept by the bedside or you can use Word like I do in the morning. I have a dream, note that I am dreaming, replay it and memorise it while asleep so that I can type it up with my morning coffee. In my opinion it is important to recall as much detail as one can. I have had dreams in excess of four sides of typed A4. When practised enough if one wakes during a dream one can go back to sleep and re-enter the dream.
In order to work effectively with dreams, one needs to calm the internal dialogue, the internal chatter which is a cacophony for some. This noise limits the ability to be sensitive to dream content. If dreams are the signal, then one needs, an instrument a vehicle, with a good signal to noise ratio.
Some kind of waking meditative practice facilitates dreaming and working with dreams.
This page is a work in progress…
Dreamyoga 