| Dreams have always been
connected with the spiritual side of
human experience, even though today many
spiritual leaders disagree with
consideration of dreams. Because dreams
put the dreamer in touch with the source
of their own internal wisdom and
certainty, some conflict has existed
between authoritative priesthood and
public dreaming. The modern scientific
approach has placed large question marks
against the concept of the human spirit -
an eternal aspect to human life. Study of
the brain’s functions and biochemical
activities have led to a sense of human
personality being wholly a series of
biological and biochemical events. The
results of this in the relationship
between doctor and patient, psychiatrist
and client, sometimes results in a
communication of human personality being
of little consequence. It may not be put
into words, but the intimation is that if
one is depressed, it is a biochemical
situation or a brain malfunction. If one
is withdrawn or autistic, it is not that
there is a vital centre of personality
which has for some reason chosen to avoid
contact, but that a biochemical or
physiological situation is the cause. It’s
nothing personal - take this pill to
change the biochemistry, because you are
not really a person.
Of course we have
to accept that human personality must
sometimes face the tragedy of biochemical
malfunction - but we also need to accept
that biochemical and physiological
process can be changed by human will and
courage, and particularly by the
transformative influence of the spiritual
dimension of experience.
What
is the human spirit?
In attempting to
find what the human spirit is by looking
at dreams, the simplest definition is
that when a dream enables us to go beyond
the limitations of our personal memories,
our learning, our body and our sense of
what life is, it opens our spiritual life
to us. The most profound of these
expereinces usually involve a sensse of
existing throughout all time - that at
ones core exists a level of being that
has always been, and is beyond the
changes of life and death. Certainly one
of the sources of the spiritual is that
we have a sense of something, or an
experience, that shows us a very
different view of our life and the
objective world than we usually arrive at
through our sense impressions or our
inherited cultural views. Common
experiences of the spiritual are as
follows:-
- Tragedies
in our life are suddenly seen
from a much more inclusive view,
or one’s personal situation is
seen as a part of a continuing
and cosmic process. This
dignifies and integrates our life
into a greater whole, and removes
the sense of tragedy.
- The
spiritual might also be felt as
experiencing our own wholeness.
This meeting might be an
encounter with a holy being.
- We
experience ourselves as part of
one great life, existing
throughout time and space. We
then see the variety of living
creatures and inanimate matter
are all manifestations of that
one life. The oneness behind
multiplicity is experienced as
self existent.
- A
great experience arises in us of
the essential part of us
streaming back throughout all
time. Our personal life connects
with all that has existed and all
that will exist.
- A
realisation of oneself as being
more than one’s thoughts,
emotions and body sensations.
This direct experience of being
is called illumination and cannot
be described as it is outside of
the thinking process and its
definitions.
Anthony explored
the dream and knew himself as the man on
the beach. He then experienced a
connection with the great ocean of life.
This was not making him turn away from
everyday life - shown as facing the land.
It gave Anthony an experience of a
radiance within him existing beyond
effort - just being. Whenever he relaxed
he experienced this gentle radiance
bathing him. This removed from him a
great sense of struggle that had dogged
him all his life. He also felt his life
was meaningful, and part of a great
wonder. He was filled with a radiance
from within.
The
many levels of being
I felt myself rushing
upwards in blackness. Then a sense of
release followed, like a cork coming
out of a bottle and I could see. I
was floating above my bed, near the
ceiling of the room. Below I could
see myself asleep. Terror overcame
me. In hindsight I think I was afraid
I was dying. Then I realised I had
read about people doing this, and the
terror became uncontrollable
laughter, perhaps release of the
awful tension moments before.
Next I was flying
through space with my knees up to my
chest. I was in the RAF in Germany at
the time, and I could see the land
underneath. It was still a light
summer evening. I started to pass
over the sea, and could see a few
ships, but was suddenly at my home in
London. I couldn’t believe what was
happening, it was so real. I noticed
I was in my clothes, not pyjamas. My
mother was sitting knitting. My dog
was asleep by the gas fire. I called
excitedly to my mother. She paused
but didn’t see me. I couldn’t
understand this as I experienced
myself as totally real with full self
awareness. I shouted to her in an
attempt to break through what I felt
must be a barrier. She carried on
knitting, but I had an immediate
experience of there being two levels
she operated at. There was the level
of herself that was knitting but not
aware of me; then there was a level
her everyday waking self wasn’t in
contact with. This level knew I was
near her. There was a merging of
consciousness and a sharing of love -
a becoming ‘one’. At the same
moment my dog was awoken. He ‘saw’
me and rushed to me barking and
howling, as he usually did when he
saw me after an absence. Then I woke
in Germany, feeling as heavy as lead.
I found out that my mother had been
alone knitting on that evening, and
the dog had unaccountable rushed to
the back of the sofa howling. Tony C.
The above
experience shows Tony going beyond the
usual boundaries of his senses, and
perhaps even of time and space.
An aspect of the
human spirit demonstrated by dreams is
consciousness of massive integrated
experience. The unconscious mind, if its
function is not clogged with a backlog of
undealt with painful childhood experience
and non functional premises, has a
propensity to form gestalts. It takes
pieces of experience and fits them
together to form a whole. This is
illustrated by how we form gestalts when
viewing newsprint photographs, which are
made up of many small dots of different
shade. Our mind fits them together and
sees them as a whole, giving meaning
where there are only dots. When the human
mind is working well, when the individual
can face a wide range of emotions, from
fear and pain to ecstasy, this process of
forming gestalts can operate very
creatively. This is because it needs
conscious involvement, and if the
personality is frightened of deep
feeling, the uniting of deeply infantile
and often disturbing experience is cut
out. Yet these areas are very rich mines
of information, containing our most
fundamental learning experiences.
The
magic of personal insight
If the process is
working well, then one’s experience is
gradually transformed into insights which
transcend and thereby transform one’s
personal life. For instance, we have
witnessed our own birth in some manner,
we also see many others appearing as
babies. We see people ageing, dying. We
see millions of events in our own life
and in others. The unconscious, deeply
versed in imagery, ritual and body
language, out of which it creates its
dreams, picks up information from music,
architecture, traditional rituals, people
walking in the street, the unspoken world
of parental influence. The sources are
massive, unbelievable. And out of it all
our mind creates meaning. Like a process
of placing face over face over face until
a composite face is formed; a synthesis
of all the faces; so the unconscious
scans all this information and creates a
world view - a concept, a synthesised
image of life and death. The archetypes
Jung talks of, are perhaps the resulting
synthesis of our own experience, reaching
points others have met also. If we dare
to touch such a synthesis of experience
it may be searing - breathtaking. It
breaks the boundaries of our present
personality and concepts because it
transcends. It shatters us to let the
hugeness of the new vision emerge. It
reaches, it soars, like an eagle flying
above the single events of life. Perhaps
because of this the great hawk of ancient
Egypt represented the human spirit.
When our awareness
does lift up above the particular
thoughts and impressions, above our
individual life, and flies like the hawk
to have a synthesised vision, we attain a
spiritual dimension, and gather wisdom in
a new way. Within the one great life in
which our personal existence merges like
water in the ocean, is all experience,
all history, all knowledge.
I thought about the
dream that I had about L., the dream
was that L. had a very red face when
she told me that she was pregnant.
But I didn’t think that I could
have made her pregnant and I told her
so. She then changed her mind and
said, ‘OK then I’m not pregnant’.
In working on the dream
I imagined becoming L. I entered into
her pregnant body and felt her
sexuality and understood the dream.
She had offered herself to me, her
sexuality and her body but I hadn't
recognised it, I didn't see it and so
she withdrew. L. wants another child
and she had offered herself to me but
I couldn’t give myself to her. I
had never given myself before. In the
dream I felt I was not responsible
for her pregnancy, and that
represents the denial of my own
sexuality and of all that results
from it.
This is when I entered
into the house of God. At first I saw
the image of a huge cathedral or
church with a magnificent domed roof
and I knew that I was in the house of
God. I felt the utopia. I felt like I
have never felt before, so very good,
so excellent. I knew all things. I
didn’t have to read the bible or
any kind of teachings because the
answers are all here in the presence
of God. In this state I could ask any
question and know the answer. I knew
God, yet I was God because there was
no separation. Neal C.
The
journey inwards
As we meet our
immensely varied internal contents a
process of change occurs in us. What we
meet within is often very dramatic,
enormously powerful, yet our external
change may appear small in comparison
with the journey we undertook. We might
have met everything from the experience
of our birth; the pains and trauma of
childhood; the adventure and triumph of
becoming independent and surviving
amongst other humans; we may have faced
the void in which all sense of self
disappears, and all certainties are
melted by seeing all opposites as true;
we will certainly have become acquainted
with death in many forms; we will also
know the various people we are inside.
Despite this enormous breadth of
experience, for the traveller the
question often arises as to what one has
gained from it all. Possibly the most
obvious is that one can allow all manner
of things to have life in consciousness
and pass through. One becomes a shape
shifter.
This intense
journey may also bring one to the
realisation that one has always existed
in a life that is wider or larger than
ones conceptions. A realisation of ones
existence and participation within this
wider life brings with it the insight
that the experience of the greater life
has been gradually built in ones own
being by the love and sympathetic
connections one has built with others,
whether human animal or plant. It is
through these connections, perhaps
through a love affair, through being in a
helping capacity, dealing with ones own
inner life, or through meeting stress
together, that ones wider awareness
emerges and grows.
The infinite is
infinite. We experience it in an infinite
number of ways. People ask if there is a
personal God, or even if a god exists at
all. Within the infinite all things are
possible. Here is another way of
experiencing the essence.
Suddenly, toward the
end of working on my dream, I seemed
to leap beyond anything I had ever
experienced before. Instead of being
someone separated from everybody else
living a certain day in time, I was a
river that flowed through all time. I
had always existed and was involved
in all history. As this happened I
knew just as clearly as in ordinary
life I know my name, that a life had
been lived in which the 'I' of that
person had been persecuted for their
religious beliefs. In persecution
some of their family had been killed,
and as that person I had made a
decision to never again trust people.
The decision brought about the desire
to live isolated from human group
activity. With an amazing heightened
vision I could see this influence
flowing through all my present life,
subtly shaping it. The things I had
chosen to do or work at were all
connected either as a means of trying
to change that decision or as an
expression of it - Tracy M.
Doing
the impossible
Lastly, humans
have always been faced by the impossible.
To a baby, walking and not wetting its
pants is impossible, but with many a fall
and accident it does the impossible. It
is a god in its achievement. To talk, to
fly heavier than air planes, to walk on
the Moon, were all impossible. Humans
challenge the impossible every day. Over
and over they fall back into defeat. Many
lie there broken. Yet with the next
moment along come youngsters with no more
sense than grasshoppers, and because they
don’t know what the difference is
between right and left, do the
impossible. Out of the infinite
potential, the great unknown, they draw
something new. With hope, with folly,
with a wisdom they gain from who knows
where, they demand MORE. And it’s a
common everyday sort of miracle. Mothers
do it constantly for their children -
transcending themselves. Lovers go
through hell and heaven for each other
and flower beyond who they were. You and
I grow old on it as our daily bread, yet
fail to see how holy it is. And if we
turn away from it, it is because it
offers no certainties, gives no
authority, claims no reward. It is the
spiritual life of people on the street.
And our dreams remember, even if we fail.
For this is the body and blood of the
human spirit.
|