Souls on stage: Hooray for Holywood!
For the skeptic and atheist, dream interpretation is one of the last bastions of the ignorant and superstitious. Scientists have tried to disprove theories that dreams are some kind a link to a spiritual world.
One theory advanced by neuroscientists is that dreams are a form of trash removal. Various images cluttering our brains are dumped into a dream trash bin, where our mind tries to make sense of this refuse by weaving these random pieces of junk into a narrative. Finding symbolism in dreams is wishful thinking.
In the first half of the 20th century, the public was more open to a spiritual explanation of dreams. Propelled by the theories of Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud regarding the existence of a subconscious, the public was willing to accept the idea that dreams were a way for the subconscious to resolve the problems of waking life by reworking these conflicts through metaphorical narratives. Thus, a dream in which the dreamer is naked would be an allusion to the dreamer's feelings of vulnerability, or to see a spider web in a dream would be a sign that the dreamer felt trapped.
The ideas of Jung and Freud have largely fallen to the wayside in psychology and psychiatry, not because they have been clearly disproven, but because mental health practitioners have chosen medications, not analysis, as a treatment whose costs and results can be easily measured in objective terms and explained to health insurance companies. The results have been disastrous. Both the rates of mental illness and abuse of mood-altering drugs have soared and little attention has been made to the spiritual, cultural, social and even economic sources of personal dysfunction.
Yet, dream researchers seem oblivious to the possibility that dreams are warning signs for our waking lives. They will measure the frequency and length of dreams, and brain and body activity during dreaming, but are largely indifferent to the actual content of dreams.
Inconvenient truths Scientific attempts to discount or explain away the contents of dreams ignore some basic truths:
1. Dreams are not wishful thinking. Most dreams are unpleasant and force the dreamer into stories that are unwanted or frustrating. In addition, the people and creatures encountered in dreams act independently; they seldom follow the wishes of the dreamer.
2. Dreams often exceed the intelligence or imagination of the dreamer, who often is incapable of writing a story or poem that matches the inventiveness or poetic imagery of the dream.
3. Dreams contain content that is foreign to the experience of the dreamer. In one dream, for example, I encountered a dead horse in the side yard of a suburban two-story house. I had never seen such an image in my life and, in the days before the dream, I had not seen or thought of anything related to horses.
From these observations I would deduce that at least some dream content originates outside the dreamer's brain.
Theater of the soul I would suggest that this outside source is a spiritual realm and that the dream is a "skit" performed on a spiritual stage, with a script, direction and performers provided by persons "on the other side." Since imagery in the spiritual realm is completely fluid, these spirits are free to put on the "masks" of people both known and unknown to the dreamer.
The dreamer, then, is merely an actor in a play not of his own creation. In fact, the dream message in some cases may not be directed at the dreamer; it may be a performance intended to educate and/or entertain an audience of "spirits." There are at least three possible audiences for a dream:
1. The dreamer
2. Persons to whom the dreamer tells his dream
3. The "spirits" on the other side who are either actors in the dream or part of an audience watching the dream
The fact that many of the characters in my dreams are famous actors may be a sign that the spiritual world is telling me and my readers that dreams are indeed "plays" or "skits."
Dream creation in the spiritual realm suggests two other conclusions:
1. Since some of the dream content is based on our personal thoughts and experiences, there is no such thing as a "private" thought. Spirits can access any of our thoughts and memories as source material for their dream theater.
2. The spiritual writers, directors and performers in our dreams may be the spirits of people who have died and passed on to the other side. You don't get to sit on your butt in heaven. You are given a job in "Holywood."
I would offer still another hypothesis: The involuntary nature of dreams prepared the brain of primitive man for culture by training him in the "suspension of disbelief." Your ability to immerse yourself in a different reality after reading only two or three sentences in a book may be a result of how dreams train your brain to accept storytelling.
Schizophrenia I also find it curious how we casually accept that people see and hear things that aren't there if this phenomenon occurs while sleeping, but find it shocking when these visions occur in the waking hours, i.e., schizophrenia. Perhaps the spiritual world's access to our brains is limited to our time sleeping because of some "wall" created by our brain structure or chemistry. Schizophrenia may simply be caused by a "breach" in this wall.
Which raises some questions: Do the spirits who invade the mind of a schizophrenic know they have crossed a barrier? If so, is there a way of telling such spirits to back off and leave the person alone?
Is the material/spiritual world connection a two-way street? Are we projecting images and sounds, welcome or not, into the spiritual realm? Are there spirits on the "other side" who are suffering a "spiritual schizophrenia" because of some reckless seances or other experiments done in this world?
Ignore at your own risk While the conventional wisdom is to dismiss dream interpretation as an amusing and harmless parlor game, ignoring the meaning of a dream can kill you.
In December 2006 an acquaintance related to me a dream he kept having. In the dream, he is a bum wearing tattered clothes, he can't find a parked car, he fights someone, he sees a pretty butter dish, and he encounters a vicious black dog that is trying to scare him away.
I advised him that, according to a dream dictionary, dark demon dogs protect graveyards and are guardians of the underworld. The dog may be chasing him away from thoughts of death. Searching for a parked car indicated that he did not know where he wanted to go in life. To dream that he is a bum revealed that he is feeling like a failure or outcast. Tattered clothes suggested that he is too concerned about how other people see him. Fighting indicated inner turmoil.
The one seemingly benign image, the pretty butter dish, was a sign that he needed gratification and pleasure "dished out" to him.
With recurring dreams, the message may be so important or powerful that it just will not go away. The frequent repetition of the dream should force him to pay attention and confront the dream.
However, I also told him that he was free to dismiss these interpretations as just a bunch of New Age nonsense. "It's your call," I told him.
I was speaking to a person with a much richer life experience than me, was a success in the business community, and seemed in good spirits on the phone. Nine months later he committed suicide. He had hidden his problems from everyone except his wife.
The time gap between the dreams and the death may seem large enough for many to dismiss these events as coincidences. However, on September 1, 2007, I was watching on TV the movie U.S. Marshals, starring Tommy Lee Jones and Wesley Snipes. In one scene, Jones and his partner followed a suspect to a chapel in a graveyard. As they waited outside, the partner stood behind a tombstone engraved with my last name, URBANEK.
The next day, my acquaintance called to ask if I was related to a woman named Urbanek who he had read about in a newspaper obituary. Like my mother, she had been born in Texas and had come to California in the 1930s. No, I was not related. On September 9 he shot himself. Apparently, the juxtaposition of the movie tombstone and the newspaper obituary, both with my last name, was a sign to both of us that we were dealing with a "grave" situation. I wish I had realized that sooner.
Perhaps I could have made a difference. Or perhaps I am a Cassandra who only foretells the inevitable disaster.
