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Listening to Your Dreams
by Dick Bain, Ga., USA
Our song titles are full of dreams: Beautiful Dreamer, Dream Lover, I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas, etc. Dreams often announced important events to people in the Bible. Two prominent psychologists, Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud, found great, though different, psychological import in dreams. The discoverer of the structure of the benzene ring was led to that discovery by a dream picturing a ring of snakes. Martin Luther King said, "I have a dream..."
Researchers tell us that we spend as much as six years of our lives dreaming. But what is the dream state? Why do we dream? Are there any messages for us in our dreams? If so, can we read the messages? Where do the messages come from?
Researchers have found that dreams occur during a period known as REM or Rapid Eye Movement sleep. About every 90 minutes, we leave so-called S (synchronized) sleep and enter an altered state of consciousness known as dreaming. We are generally unaware that we are in a dream state, though some people occasionally have a dream in which they are aware they are dreaming. This is known as lucid dreaming. Our voluntary muscles are usually nonfunctional while we're dreaming, though some people may have episodes of walking or talking in their sleep. While researchers can measure our physiological responses and study the content of our dreams, there is no consensus on what causes dreams or the purpose of dreaming.
Sleep researchers have noted that the primitive part of our brains periodically sends impulses to the higher part of our brain (cortical areas.) They feel that these impulses randomly stimulate the cortex, and that dreams are the result.1 This may be the cause of dreams, but what is their purpose? Sleep researchers have a number of theories about the purpose of dreaming: dreaming may encourage development of the brain; it may have a restorative function, a vigilance function, an erasure function, or it may enhance memory storage and reorganization.1
Dream content has been the subject of speculation ever since people first pondered the meaning of life. The ancients used to place a standard interpretation on dreams, and some moderns still try to do the same. Dreams about snakes, for instance, are supposed to have a sexual connotation. Dreams about water are supposed to be spiritual messages. Sigmond Freud felt that dreams are the expression of repressed sexual urges. Carl Jung thought that archetypes or universal symbols appeared in our dreams. These universal archetypes supposedly have origin in the collective subconscious, which is an unconscious reservoir containing the experience of all people, present and past.
The authors of The Urantia Book take a rather dim view of dream interpretation. They tell us, "The great danger in all these psychic speculations is that visions and other so-called mystic experiences, along with extraordinary dreams, may be regarded as divine communications to the human mind. In times past, divine beings have revealed themselves to certain God-knowing persons, not because of their mystic trances or morbid visions, but in spite of all these phenomena."(1099)
And, "All down through the ages men have stood in awe of the apparitions of the night season, and the Hebrews were no exception. They truly believed that God spoke to them in dreams, despite the injunctions of Moses against this idea. And Moses was right, for ordinary dreams are not the methods employed by the personalities of the spiritual world when they seek to communicate with material beings." (1054)
Also from a talk on "Magic and Superstition" by Jesus to his apostles: "The interpretation of dreams is largely a superstitious and groundless system of ignorant and fantastic speculation. The gospel of the kingdom must have nothing in common with the soothsayer priests of primitive religion." (1680)
It is evident that the authors of The Urantia Book and Jesus seem to frown on dream interpretation, no doubt because of the danger of reading meanings into dreams that are incorrect. Does this mean that there are no spiritual messages in dreams?
The Urantia Book lists a number of important dreams. Zoroaster had a dream at Ur that convinced him to return home to his homeland to remodel the religion of his people. (1049) Zacharias, father of John the Baptist, was not convinced that his wife would give birth to a "son of destiny" until he had an impressive dream. (1345) Likewise, Joseph, Jesus' father, did not become reconciled to the idea that Mary was to have an "extraordinary child" until he had a dream in which a "brilliant celestial messenger appeared to him..."(1347) The so-called "Three Wise Men" went to seek "the light of life" because of the dream of a "strange religious teacher" of their country. (1352) And finally, Pilate's wife told him of a disturbing dream she had the evening before Pilate gave in to the crowd and sentenced Jesus to be crucified. (1994) There certainly were spiritual messages in these dreams, but what of our dreams today? Do they have spiritual messages for us, and if so, where do these messages originate?
The authors of The Urantia Book inform us that dreams were the source for primitive peoples' idea of the soul. "The concept of a supermaterial phase of mortal personality was
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