Sarvananda Bluestone - The World Dream Book: Use the Wisdom of World Cultures to Uncover Your Dream Power

Sarvananda Bluestone, Ph.D.

Destiny Books

Rochester, Vermont

To my two greatest teachers

Ruth RD Levin, ne Perle (19181997)

My mother, my teacher, my friend

and

Osho Rajneesh (19311990)

Who showed me what I already knew

There is a Spirit who is awake in our sleep and creates the wonder of dreams. He is the Spirit of Light, who in truth is called the Immortal. All the worlds rest on that Spirit and beyond him no one can go.

UPANISHADS, C. 800 B.C.E

Let us learn to dream, gentlemen, and then we may perhaps find the truth.

FRIEDRICH A. VON KEKULE,
FOUNDER OF MODERN ORGANIC CHEMISTRY, 1890

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Writing a book is a strange process. On the one hand, it is one of the most solitary occupations on the face of the earth. On the other hand, the finished product represents a confluence of many streams and influences. Many people are helpful along the way.

One of the nicest things about getting a book published is being able to thank people publicly. It really feels good to do that. Its as though, for a tiny piece of time, an author can share his appreciation with the world.

First, I thank the campers at Appel Farm Arts Camp who participated in the Dream Minor during the summers of 1997 and 1998. In these dream workshops many of the explorations in this book were tested. Thank you Marisa Berwald, Daniel Blacksberg, Michael Dorwart, David Gershkoff, Alexandra Gerhsuny, Norah Hall, Rachel Kolster, Sara Radbill, Hannah Schulingkamp, Julia Slomin, and Sharon Zetter. Thank you Lori Adelman, Jessica Angelson, Allison Berwald, Marisa Berwald, Adam Bloch, Julia Brenner, Mark Castaldo, Jessica Engel, David Friedell, Steven Furlong, Jenny Gamell, Rebecca Ivory, Jackie Mott, Alexandra Peterson, Christopher Richards, and Eli Wing.

My thanks to Ellen Foreman and Claire Schmais of the dream group. They have shown the joys of dream awareness.

Thanks to Juhi Bendahan, who shares of herself so exquisitely and has provided several explorations. To Hira Bluestonealways a spark, always so new and yet so wonderfully old. To Helen Weaver, my beloved link to the wonders of being a Gemini, for her help in getting the chapter titles together. To Premda Wunderle for sharing her dreams and very good advice. To Hariet Hunter, who shared her wisdom on the way to the movies.

Shana Cutler, a fountain of ideas, provided valuable suggestions. To Christine Cunnar and the Human Relations Area Files of Yale University, this book simply could not have happened without them.

Thanks to Jonathan Kligler for providing information on Rabbi Hisda; to the librarians at the State University of New York at Albany; and especially to Greg Barron, who made things much easier. Thanks to Susun Weed for generously providing herbal advice.

Thanks to Arnie Weiner, who helped more than he can imagine. To Emma Shakarshy, who shared her dreams and interpretations and who reminded me that intelligence is ageless. To my dear friend Prartho Sereno, for whom the marriage of true minds has never admitted any impediment, but only continuing inspiration.

Thanks to Aseema Wunderle for saving my manuscript from the jaws of my jealous cat, Stella, and thanks to Stella for letting me amuse her and for providing necessary diversion from the monomania of writing. Thanks to Steve Larsen, who pointed me in the right direction. Thanks to Inner Traditions for giving this a chance and to Elaine Sanborn, who has been an authors vision of an ideal editor.

Last and certainly not least, love and thanks to Ralph A. Dale, who always provided me with a wonderful model of courage, curiosity, and chutzpah.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION: MEETING THE DREAMER

To dream is to see the truth at night. If a man says something and you dream about it at night and see it differently at night, then you know that the man is misleading you. It is the dream that shows the truth, because the shades never deceive their children.

ZULU MAN

IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE DREAM

All that we see and feel around usthe mountains, the valleys, the streamswas dreamed. The stars, the sun and men, the moon, the earth and women, laughter, tears and childrenall began with a dream. Thats what the native peoples of Australia have experienced. We are dreamed.

And we dreameach and every one of us. There is nothing more universal than dreams. Nightly, throughout the world, people close their eyes, drop their daytime minds, and are carried away into a different land.

Can we fly? Can we leap across the chasm of time and visit long ago? Can we change our shape in the blink of a thought or melt into an ocean or a mountain? Can we meet and speak with those who have died and those who have yet to be born? Of course we can. We do these things all the time in our dreams. We can build skyscrapers on a bed of clouds. We can travel beyond warp speed to the end of the galaxy. We can dance in the court of Queen Elizabeth or swim in a depthless sea. All this and infinitely more we can do in our dreams.

But dreaming is dreaming and waking is wakingright? We have, from the time we were little, kept these two very separate. Even in our language we recognize the difference between the two: A dream is just a dream; You must be dreaming; Well, thats a nice dream; Dream on; What a dreamer you are!; Its only a pipe dream.

We in the West, in the culture of the industrialized world, have been taught that dreams are not actually real. We have learned that they are projections of the waking mind, wish fulfillment, subconscious, unconscious, preconsciousdefinitely not conscious. But in this belief we are a distinct minority. Most of humanity has seen dreams differently.

In order to change our thinking, we first have to change our language a little bit. This is not about consciousness and unconsciousness. Nor is it about consciousness and subconsciousness. In either case there is a kind of implied judgment. Most of us believe that consciousness is related to the state of being awake. Similarly, we tend to see unconsciousness or subconsciousness as characterizing the dream state.

Think about it. Which is more evolved, human or subhuman? The prefix sub means beneath, below, inferior, or subordinate. Or how about awareness and unawareness? The prefix un simply means not. So unconscious means not conscious. By referring to dreams as either subconscious or unconscious, were stating that dreams are either lower than consciousness or are without any consciousness at all. This is a distinctly modern and Western notion of dreams, an idea that, despite its scientific trappings, has its roots planted firmly in the Middle Ages, when the dominant view was that dreams were the work of the devil.