Understanding Dreams: What they are and how to interpret them. Nerys Dee
breathe again is to push them gently. Fortunately, they soon grow out of this. It has, however, been suggested that some cot deaths may be due to apnea.
Breath-holding in sleep is less common in adults but if you have ever been alarmed when your sleeping partner holds his or her breath too long, do not worry unduly because it has probably continued since childhood. There are, however, some people who have to use a respirator at night, to make sure they do breathe, but fortunately such cases are rare.
Telepathic communication often takes place during dreams, usually spontaneously. It has been found that when we dream of someone we have not thought about for some time, there is a good chance that they have reciprocated and likewise dreamed of us. Two communicants do not necessarily have to be in harmony for this to happen, but telepathic links are more likely to occur when a close emotional relationship exists.
Sometimes a telepathic message is one of pain, fear and death. An example of this is the dreamer who awoke at 2 am from a dream in which she saw her father holding his hand over his heart and at the same time felt a stabbing pain in her own chest. Next morning she telephoned her father’s home and was told that he had died during the night from a heart attack. This happened at 2 am, the precise moment she had the dream.
Experiencing pain or unpleasant events which do not relate directly to the dreamer is known as ‘sympathetic dreaming’. Telepathic transference of a strong feeling or emotion is one explanation for those dreams which relate to the experiences of others. Such dreams are not prophetic; prophetic dreams reveal that which has not yet occurred.
Teleportation is projection to a distant bedside, where the dreamer in that bed actually sees the dream visitor standing there. This vision may be a false awakening or it may appear in a dream, but either way, evidence exists that this experience does take place. A mother who dreamed her daughter in Australia was seriously ill had this confirmed when she telephoned her next morning. She also discovered that her daughter had seen her mother standing by the bedside. Her daughter had been asleep during the day so the times of the two dream experiences coincided exactly.
This phantom vision, the ghost of a living person, is known as a ‘fetch’. Although most teleportations occur between those closely related, it is not always so. The experience of Tudor Pole, a well-known radio broadcaster, archaeologist, writer and philosopher in the 1930s, was a classic example. When excavating in Egypt he was taken ill with a severe fever. One night, as he restlessly dreamed, he thought he heard a tap on the cabin door. He awoke, or so he believed, and standing by his bed was a doctor dressed in a black cloak and wearing a top hat. The hat fascinated him because he could see right through it. The doctor placed this on a small table then proceeded to tell Tudor Pole that he was in practice in Britain but on some nights he travelled all over the world to visit those who needed his help. He then left, after giving the patient a special potion, which he drank. Next morning, Tudor Pole had recovered completely. The sequel to this was that when Tudor Pole returned to Britain, he appealed on BBC radio for this ghostly healer to come forward and, as a result, a Scottish doctor contacted him and confirmed that he did, in fact, travel during his sleep to those in need.
Flying dreams, known too as a form of astral projection, are experienced by seven out of ten people, at least once in their life. It is a most exhilarating feeling and few, if any, find it frightening. By using your arms like wings it is possible to rise above the ground and travel beyond the bedroom into the street, soar above the treetops and out into the country. It is even possible to be transported to faraway places and, as proof of this, bring back information that could not have been received in any other way. One explanation is that during sleep the spirit leaves the body. The practical belief is that such a dream reflects our inherited memory when, according to Darwin’s theory, our ancestors were birds. Psychologically, it is explained as a form of depersonalisation. These, however, are merely words to describe an experience none of us truly understands.
Whichever of these theories is correct, if indeed any, it still remains that there is a close link between flying dreams of this nature and teleportation. A further revelation is that a person who can fly in their sleep is rarely of a depressive nature. Symbolically, this makes sense because in reality flying dreams show that the dreamer wishes, or indeed is able to rise above his or her problems. They may also denote a desire to be free from a mundane situation that ties the dreamer to a life that is restrictive.
In the 1960s sleep was considered by many to be a waste of time so it was then the fashion to make use of these so-called ‘lost hours’ by learning a skill or foreign language. Those who introduced this believed that the brain had nothing better to do, so it would respond well to hypnotic suggestions. Sleep learning, as it was called, entailed listening to an instruction tape, while asleep, in order to acquire knowledge.
Results from this did not prove positive. Any facts learned in sleep faded from memory just as quickly as those learned when awake and, in addition to this, many who practised it found they could not concentrate during the day. Eventually, this form of learning was described as a form of brainwashing which deprived and inhibited spontaneous dreaming. It was, therefore, dropped.
It is well known that certain knowledge is acquired during sleep, but not in the way thought up by pragmatic educationalists. Many inventors, writers, statesmen, philosophers and musicians have their dreams to thank for the solution to a problem, the plot of a book or a concerto, but this information did not arrive as the result of sleep learning. It came to them spontaneously in dreams.
Professor Kekule
One inspirational dream that revolutionised the world was that of Fredrich August von Kekule, a professor of chemistry in Ghent a hundred years ago. He was having difficulty understanding the molecular structure of a certain substance when, one day, he dozed and had a dream. In this he saw atoms gambolling before his eyes. There were smaller groups which kept in the background, and in the foreground, with the acute vision peculiar to dreams, he distinguished larger structures forming strange configurations. These were in long chains, twisting and turning in snake-like fashion. Suddenly, he was astounded to see one ‘snake seize its own tail and mockingly form a circle. On waking it dawned on him that the circle formed by the snake symbolised the missing link in his researches. By transforming this scene into logic, he discovered it represented the ring theory underlying the constitution of benzene. In essence, he had discovered the complex mixture of hydrocarbons underlying the synthesis of petrol from oil.
Julius Caesar
It is said that Julius Caesar, a prolific dreamer, was guided by his dreams. On the strength of a dream, in which he violated his own mother, he decided to take his army across the Rubicon, a small river running along the Cisalpine border. The result of this was that he had in fact invaded his own motherland, an action that led to war between Caesar and the Senate.
He may well have acted upon his own dreams, but he disregarded those of others, in particular one his wife Calpurnia had. According to Shakespeare, her dream warned Caesar of ‘the Ides of March’. If he had heeded this murderous portent, the tragedy would