dreams

• disordered, disconnected parade of uncoordinated sleeping mind

44:4.74. Pro­mot­ers of or­a­tory. This group of re­cord­ers are oc­cu­pied with the task of pre­serv­ing thought for re­pro­duc­tion by or­a­tory. But in the lan­guage of Neb­a­don we could, in a half hour’s ad­dress, cover the sub­ject mat­ter of the en­tire life­time of a Uran­tia mor­tal. Your only hope of com­pre­hend­ing these trans­ac­tions is to pause and con­sider the tech­nique of your dis­or­dered and gar­bled dream life—how you can in a few sec­onds tra­verse years of ex­pe­ri­ence in these fan­tasies of the night sea­son.

• primitives’ dreams › primitives convinced of afterlife by d.

63:3.5Upon the death of his par­ents, Son­tad, de­spite a se­ri­ously in­jured foot, im­me­di­ately as­sumed the lead­er­ship of the clan and was ably as­sisted by his wife, his el­dest sis­ter. Their first task was to roll up stones to ef­fec­tively en­tomb their dead par­ents, broth­ers, sis­ters, and chil­dren. Un­due sig­nif­i­cance should not at­tach to this act of burial. Their ideas of sur­vival af­ter death were very vague and in­def­i­nite, be­ing largely de­rived from their fan­tas­tic and var­ie­gated dream life.

68:3.1Prim­i­tive de­sires pro­duced the orig­i­nal so­ci­ety, but ghost fear held it to­gether and im­parted an ex­trahu­man as­pect to its ex­is­tence. Com­mon fear was phys­i­o­log­i­cal in ori­gin: fear of phys­i­cal pain, un­sat­is­fied hunger, or some earthly calamity; but ghost fear was a new and sub­lime sort of ter­ror.

68:3.2Prob­a­bly the great­est sin­gle fac­tor in the evo­lu­tion of hu­man so­ci­ety was the ghost dream. Al­though most dreams greatly per­turbed the prim­i­tive mind, the ghost dream ac­tu­ally ter­ror­ized early men, driv­ing these su­per­sti­tious dream­ers into each other’s arms in will­ing and earnest as­so­ci­a­tion for mu­tual pro­tec­tion against the vague and un­seen imag­i­nary dan­gers of the spirit world. The ghost dream was one of the ear­li­est ap­pear­ing dif­fer­ences be­tween the an­i­mal and hu­man types of mind. An­i­mals do not vi­su­al­ize sur­vival af­ter death.

68:3.3Ex­cept for this ghost fac­tor, all so­ci­ety was founded on fun­da­men­tal needs and ba­sic bi­o­logic urges. But ghost fear in­tro­duced a new fac­tor in civ­i­liza­tion, a fear which reaches out and away from the el­e­men­tal needs of the in­di­vid­ual, and which rises far above even the strug­gles to main­tain the group. The dread of the de­parted spir­its of the dead brought to light a new and amaz­ing form of fear, an ap­palling and pow­er­ful ter­ror, which con­tributed to whip­ping the loose so­cial or­ders of early ages into the more thor­oughly dis­ci­plined and bet­ter con­trolled prim­i­tive groups of an­cient times. This sense­less su­per­sti­tion, some of which still per­sists, pre­pared the minds of men, through su­per­sti­tious fear of the un­real and the super­nat­u­ral, for the later dis­cov­ery of “the fear of the Lord which is the be­gin­ning of wis­dom.” The base­less fears of evo­lu­tion are de­signed to be sup­planted by the awe for De­ity in­spired by rev­e­la­tion. The early cult of ghost fear be­came a pow­er­ful so­cial bond, and ever since that far-dis­tant day man­kind has been striv­ing more or less for the at­tain­ment of spir­i­tu­al­ity.

68:3.4Hunger and love drove men to­gether; van­ity and ghost fear held them to­gether. But these emo­tions alone, with­out the in­flu­ence of peace-pro­mot­ing rev­e­la­tions, are un­able to en­dure the strain of the sus­pi­cions and ir­ri­ta­tions of hu­man in­teras­so­ci­a­tions. With­out help from super­hu­man sources the strain of so­ci­ety breaks down upon reach­ing cer­tain lim­its, and these very in­flu­ences of so­cial mo­bi­liza­tion—hunger, love, van­ity, and fear—con­spire to plunge man­kind into war and blood­shed.

68:3.5The peace ten­dency of the hu­man race is not a nat­u­ral en­dow­ment; it is de­rived from the teach­ings of re­vealed re­li­gion, from the ac­cu­mu­lated ex­pe­ri­ence of the pro­gres­sive races, but more es­pe­cially from the teach­ings of Je­sus, the Prince of Peace.

• primitives’ dreams › primitives convinced of afterlife by d.

86:4.1The con­cept of a super­ma­te­rial phase of mor­tal per­son­al­ity was born of the un­con­scious and purely ac­ci­den­tal as­so­ci­a­tion of the oc­cur­rences of ev­ery­day life plus the ghost dream. The si­mul­ta­ne­ous dream­ing about a de­parted chief by sev­eral mem­bers of his tribe seemed to con­sti­tute con­vinc­ing ev­i­dence that the old chief had re­ally re­turned in some form. It was all very real to the sav­age who would awaken from such dreams reek­ing with sweat, trem­bling, and scream­ing.

86:4.2The dream ori­gin of the be­lief in a fu­ture ex­is­tence ex­plains the ten­dency al­ways to imag­ine un­seen things in the terms of things seen. And pres­ently this new dream-ghost-fu­ture-life con­cept be­gan ef­fec­tively to an­ti­dote the death fear as­so­ci­ated with the bi­o­logic in­stinct of self-preser­va­tion.

• primitives’ dreams › primitives believed soul left body during d.

86:5.62. Sleep­ing, nat­u­ral dream­ing.

• primitives’ dreams › primitives believed d. as real as waking experience
• primitives’ dreams › primitives believed soul left body during d.

86:5.10Early in evo­lu­tion sleep was re­garded as prov­ing that the ghost soul could be ab­sent from the body, and it was be­lieved that it could be called back by speak­ing or shout­ing the sleeper’s name. In other forms of un­con­scious­ness the soul was thought to be far­ther away, per­haps try­ing to es­cape for good—im­pend­ing death. Dreams were looked upon as the ex­pe­ri­ences of the soul dur­ing sleep while tem­porar­ily ab­sent from the body. The sav­age be­lieves his dreams to be just as real as any part of his wak­ing ex­pe­ri­ence. The an­cients made a prac­tice of awak­ing sleep­ers grad­u­ally so that the soul might have time to get back into the body.

• celestials seldom use d. to communicate

86:5.11All 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.

• primitives’ dreams › ghost dream was greatest factor in societal evolution

87:5.14It was not merely out of cu­rios­ity that the an­cients sought to know the fu­ture; they wanted to dodge ill luck. Div­ina­tion was sim­ply an at­tempt to avoid trou­ble. Dur­ing these times, dreams were re­garded as pro­phetic, while ev­ery­thing out of the or­di­nary was con­sid­ered an omen. And even to­day the civ­i­lized races are cursed with the be­lief in signs, to­kens, and other su­per­sti­tious rem­nants of the ad­vanc­ing ghost cult of old. Slow, very slow, is man to aban­don those meth­ods whereby he so grad­u­ally and painfully as­cended the evo­lu­tion­ary scale of life.

• interpretation of dreams › largely superstitious and groundless

90:2.5The med­i­cine men put great trust in signs and omens, such as, “When you hear the sound of a rustling in the tops of the mul­berry trees, then shall you be­stir your­self.” Very early in the his­tory of the race the shamans turned their at­ten­tion to the stars. Prim­i­tive as­trol­ogy was a world-wide be­lief and prac­tice; dream in­ter­pret­ing also be­came wide­spread. All this was soon fol­lowed by the ap­pear­ance of those tem­per­a­men­tal shamanesses who pro­fessed to be able to com­mu­ni­cate with the spir­its of the dead.

• particular dreams › Zoroaster’s caused him to remodel his religion

95:6.2This founder of a new re­li­gion was a vir­ile and ad­ven­tur­ous youth, who, on his first pil­grim­age to Ur in Mes­o­po­ta­mia, had learned of the tra­di­tions of the Cali­gas­tia and the Lu­cifer re­bel­lion—along with many other tra­di­tions—all of which had made a strong ap­peal to his re­li­gious na­ture. Ac­cord­ingly, as the re­sult of a dream while in Ur, he set­tled upon a pro­gram of re­turn­ing to his north­ern home to un­der­take the re­mod­el­ing of the re­li­gion of his peo­ple. He had im­bibed the He­braic idea of a God of jus­tice, the Mo­saic con­cept of di­vin­ity. The idea of a su­preme God was clear in his mind, and he set down all other gods as dev­ils, con­signed them to the ranks of the demons of which he had heard in Mes­o­po­ta­mia. He had learned of the story of the Seven Mas­ter Spir­its as the tra­di­tion lin­gered in Ur, and, ac­cord­ingly, he cre­ated a galaxy of seven su­preme gods with Ahura-Mazda at its head. These sub­or­di­nate gods he as­so­ci­ated with the ide­al­iza­tion of Right Law, Good Thought, No­ble Gov­ern­ment, Holy Char­ac­ter, Health, and Im­mor­tal­ity.

• interpretation of dreams › danger to regard as divine communications

100:5.6If one is dis­posed to rec­og­nize a the­o­ret­i­cal sub­con­scious mind as a prac­ti­cal work­ing hy­poth­e­sis in the oth­er­wise uni­fied in­tel­lec­tual life, then, to be con­sis­tent, one should pos­tu­late a sim­i­lar and cor­re­spond­ing realm of as­cend­ing in­tel­lec­tual ac­tiv­ity as the super­con­scious level, the zone of im­me­di­ate con­tact with the in­dwelling spirit en­tity, the Thought Ad­juster. 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.

• disordered, disconnected parade of uncoordinated sleeping mind
• grotesque d. indicate Adjusters’ failure to make efficient contact

110:5.2Man’s dream ex­pe­ri­ences, that dis­or­dered and dis­con­nected pa­rade of the un-co-or­di­nated sleep­ing mind, pre­sent ad­e­quate proof of the fail­ure of the Ad­justers to har­mo­nize and as­so­ciate the di­ver­gent fac­tors of the mind of man. The Ad­justers sim­ply can­not, in a sin­gle life­time, ar­bi­trar­ily co-or­di­nate and syn­chro­nize two such un­like and di­verse types of think­ing as the hu­man and the di­vine. When they do, as they some­times have, such souls are trans­lated di­rectly to the man­sion worlds with­out the ne­ces­sity of pass­ing through the ex­pe­ri­ence of death.

110:5.3Dur­ing the slum­ber sea­son the Ad­juster at­tempts to achieve only that which the will of the in­dwelt per­son­al­ity has pre­vi­ously fully ap­proved by the de­ci­sions and choos­ings which were made dur­ing times of fully wake­ful con­scious­ness, and which have thereby be­come lodged in the realms of the super­mind, the li­ai­son do­main of hu­man and di­vine in­ter­re­la­tion­ship.

• absurdities of d. testify to pressure of unexpressed emotions

110:5.4While their mor­tal hosts are asleep, the Ad­justers try to reg­is­ter their cre­ations in the higher lev­els of the ma­te­rial mind, and some of your grotesque dreams in­di­cate their fail­ure to make ef­fi­cient con­tact. The ab­sur­di­ties of dream life not only tes­tify to pres­sure of un­ex­pressed emo­tions but also bear wit­ness to the hor­ri­ble dis­tor­tion of the rep­re­sen­ta­tions of the spir­i­tual con­cepts pre­sented by the Ad­justers. Your own pas­sions, urges, and other in­nate ten­den­cies trans­late them­selves into the pic­ture and sub­sti­tute their un­ex­pressed de­sires for the di­vine mes­sages which the in­dwellers are en­deav­or­ing to put into the psy­chic rec­ords dur­ing un­con­scious sleep.

• interpretation of dreams › danger to regard as divine communications
• ordinary d. are purely physiologic and psychologic

110:5.5It is ex­tremely dan­ger­ous to pos­tu­late as to the Ad­juster con­tent of the dream life. The Ad­justers do work dur­ing sleep, but your or­di­nary dream ex­pe­ri­ences are purely phys­i­o­logic and psy­cho­logic phe­nom­ena. Like­wise, it is haz­ardous to at­tempt the dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion of the Ad­justers’ con­cept reg­istry from the more or less con­tin­u­ous and con­scious re­cep­tion of the dic­ta­tions of mor­tal con­science. These are prob­lems which will have to be solved through in­di­vid­ual dis­crim­i­na­tion and per­sonal de­ci­sion. But a hu­man be­ing would do bet­ter to err in re­ject­ing an Ad­juster’s ex­pres­sion through be­liev­ing it to be a purely hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence than to blun­der into ex­alt­ing a re­ac­tion of the mor­tal mind to the sphere of di­vine dig­nity. Re­mem­ber, the in­flu­ence of a Thought Ad­juster is for the most part, though not wholly, a super­con­scious ex­pe­ri­ence.

• particular dreams › convinced Zacharias regarding John

122:2.5For five months, how­ever, Eliz­a­beth with­held her se­cret even from her hus­band. Upon her dis­clo­sure of the story of Ga­briel’s visit, Zach­a­rias was very skep­ti­cal and for weeks doubted the en­tire ex­pe­ri­ence, only con­sent­ing half­heart­edly to be­lieve in Ga­briel’s visit to his wife when he could no longer ques­tion that she was ex­pec­tant with child. Zach­a­rias was very much per­plexed re­gard­ing the prospec­tive moth­er­hood of Eliz­a­beth, but he did not doubt the in­tegrity of his wife, not­with­stand­ing his own ad­vanced age. It was not un­til about six weeks be­fore John’s birth that Zach­a­rias, as the re­sult of an im­pres­sive dream, be­came fully con­vinced that Eliz­a­beth was to be­come the mother of a son of des­tiny, one who was to pre­pare the way for the com­ing of the Mes­siah.

• particular dreams › reconciled Joseph regarding Jesus’ birth

122:4.1Joseph did not be­come rec­on­ciled to the idea that Mary was to be­come the mother of an ex­traor­di­nary child un­til af­ter he had ex­pe­ri­enced a very im­pres­sive dream. In this dream a bril­liant ce­les­tial mes­sen­ger ap­peared to him and, among other things, said: “Joseph, I ap­pear by com­mand of Him who now reigns on high, and I am di­rected to in­struct you con­cern­ing the son whom Mary shall bear, and who shall be­come a great light in the world. In him will be life, and his life shall be­come the light of man­kind. He shall first come to his own peo­ple, but they will hardly re­ceive him; but to as many as shall re­ceive him to them will he re­veal that they are the chil­dren of God.” Af­ter this ex­pe­ri­ence Joseph never again wholly doubted Mary’s story of Ga­briel’s visit and of the prom­ise that the un­born child was to be­come a di­vine mes­sen­ger to the world.

• particular dreams › informed strange religious teacher of Jesus’ birth

122:8.6These priests from Mes­o­po­ta­mia had been told some­time be­fore by a strange re­li­gious teacher of their coun­try that he had had a dream in which he was in­formed that “the light of life” was about to ap­pear on earth as a babe and among the Jews. And thither went these three teach­ers look­ing for this “light of life.” Af­ter many weeks of fu­tile search in Je­ru­sa­lem, they were about to re­turn to Ur when Zach­a­rias met them and dis­closed his be­lief that Je­sus was the ob­ject of their quest and sent them on to Beth­le­hem, where they found the babe and left their gifts with Mary, his earth mother. The babe was al­most three weeks old at the time of their visit.

• particular dreams › young Jesus’ sleep disturbed by revolting

125:2.4Je­sus slept very lit­tle that night. His rest was greatly dis­turbed by re­volt­ing dreams of slaugh­ter and suf­fer­ing. His mind was dis­traught and his heart torn by the in­con­sis­ten­cies and ab­sur­di­ties of the the­ol­ogy of the whole Jew­ish cer­e­mo­nial sys­tem. His par­ents like­wise slept lit­tle. They were greatly dis­con­certed by the events of the day just ended. They were com­pletely up­set in their own hearts by the lad’s, to them, strange and de­ter­mined at­ti­tude. Mary be­came ner­vously ag­i­tated dur­ing the fore part of the night, but Joseph re­mained calm, though he was equally puz­zled. Both of them feared to talk frankly with the lad about these prob­lems, though Je­sus would gladly have talked with his par­ents if they had dared to en­cour­age him.

• interpretation of dreams › largely superstitious and groundless

150:3.97. 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.

152:4.1The apos­tles, with­out their Mas­ter—sent off by them­selves—en­tered the boat and in si­lence be­gan to row to­ward Beth­saida on the west­ern shore of the lake. None of the twelve was so crushed and down­cast as Si­mon Pe­ter. Hardly a word was spo­ken; they were all think­ing of the Mas­ter alone in the hills. Had he for­saken them? He had never be­fore sent them all away and re­fused to go with them. What could all this mean?

152:4.2Dark­ness de­scended upon them, for there had arisen a strong and con­trary wind which made prog­ress al­most im­pos­si­ble. As the hours of dark­ness and hard row­ing passed, Pe­ter grew weary and fell into a deep sleep of ex­haus­tion. An­drew and James put him to rest on the cush­ioned seat in the stern of the boat. While the other apos­tles toiled against the wind and the waves, Pe­ter dreamed a dream; he saw a vi­sion of Je­sus com­ing to them walk­ing on the sea. When the Mas­ter seemed to walk on by the boat, Pe­ter cried out, “Save us, Mas­ter, save us.” And those who were in the rear of the boat heard him say some of these words. As this ap­pari­tion of the night sea­son con­tin­ued in Pe­ter’s mind, he dreamed that he heard Je­sus say: “Be of good cheer; it is I; be not afraid.” This was like the balm of Gilead to Pe­ter’s dis­turbed soul; it soothed his trou­bled spirit, so that (in his dream) he cried out to the Mas­ter: “Lord, if it re­ally is you, bid me come and walk with you on the wa­ter.” And when Pe­ter started to walk upon the wa­ter, the bois­ter­ous waves fright­ened him, and as he was about to sink, he cried out, “Lord, save me!” And many of the twelve heard him ut­ter this cry. Then Pe­ter dreamed that Je­sus came to the res­cue and, stretch­ing forth his hand, took hold and lifted him up, say­ing: “O, you of lit­tle faith, where­fore did you doubt?”

152:4.3In con­nec­tion with the lat­ter part of his dream Pe­ter arose from the seat whereon he slept and ac­tu­ally stepped over­board and into the wa­ter. And he awak­ened from his dream as An­drew, James, and John reached down and pulled him out of the sea.

152:4.4To Pe­ter this ex­pe­ri­ence was al­ways real. He sin­cerely be­lieved that Je­sus came to them that night. He only par­tially con­vinced John Mark, which ex­plains why Mark left a por­tion of the story out of his nar­ra­tive. Luke, the physi­cian, who made care­ful search into these mat­ters, con­cluded that the episode was a vi­sion of Pe­ter’s and there­fore re­fused to give place to this story in the prepa­ra­tion of his nar­ra­tive.

• particular dreams › delivered Peter from fear of uncleanness

153:3.6The Phar­i­saic com­mis­sion­ers of the Je­ru­sa­lem San­hedrin were now al­most con­vinced that Je­sus must be ap­pre­hended on a charge of blas­phemy or on one of flout­ing the sa­cred law of the Jews; where­fore their ef­forts to in­volve him in the dis­cus­sion of, and pos­si­ble at­tack upon, some of the tra­di­tions of the el­ders, or so-called oral laws of the na­tion. No mat­ter how scarce wa­ter might be, these tra­di­tion­ally en­slaved Jews would never fail to go through with the re­quired cer­e­mo­nial wash­ing of the hands be­fore ev­ery meal. It was their be­lief that “it is bet­ter to die than to transgress the com­mand­ments of the el­ders.” The spies asked this ques­tion be­cause it had been re­ported that Je­sus had said, “Sal­va­tion is a mat­ter of clean hearts rather than of clean hands.” But such be­liefs, when they once be­come a part of one’s re­li­gion, are hard to get away from. Even many years af­ter this day the Apos­tle Pe­ter was still held in the bond­age of fear to many of these tra­di­tions about things clean and un­clean, only be­ing fi­nally de­liv­ered by ex­pe­ri­enc­ing an ex­traor­di­nary and vivid dream. All of this can the bet­ter be un­der­stood when it is re­called that these Jews looked upon eat­ing with un­washed hands in the same light as com­merce with a har­lot, and both were equally pun­ish­able by ex­com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

• particular dreams › Claudia Procula’s of Jesus

185:5.8Pi­late in­di­cated to those as­sem­bled be­fore him that he wished to read the com­mu­ni­ca­tion which he had just re­ceived be­fore he pro­ceeded fur­ther with the mat­ter be­fore him. When Pi­late opened this let­ter from his wife, he read: “I pray you have noth­ing to do with this in­no­cent and just man whom they call Je­sus. I have suf­fered many things in a dream this night be­cause of him.” This note from Clau­dia not only greatly up­set Pi­late and thereby de­layed the ad­ju­di­ca­tion of this mat­ter, but it un­for­tu­nately also pro­vided con­sid­er­able time in which the Jew­ish rulers freely cir­cu­lated among the crowd and urged the peo­ple to call for the re­lease of Barab­bas and to clamor for the cru­ci­fix­ion of Je­sus.