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Introduction to
Lavender
by Montague Ullman, M.D.
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In Lewis
Carroll’s wonderful parable, Alice is hurtled down a
rabbit hole into a very strange environment where
everything is quite the opposite of her safe and secure
waking life.
The protagonist in this book is a bright young woman,
Penelope Peacock. Presumably, she has fallen through a
“wormhole,” a tunnel that connects this universe to
another universe. In this realm, she finds herself in a
heavenly abode peopled by humans and other life forms
that have passed on.
Penelope feels quite at home in this place and happy to
meet old friends, relatives, and her pet cat. Her trip
was prearranged by four remarkable historical figures
who, over the centuries, made ground-breaking
contributions to science: Galen, on the neuroanatomy of
the optic nerve; Ptolemy on astronomy; Steno on
establishing the foundations for the science of geology,
and Marie Curie, the French scientist who was awarded
two Nobel Prizes, through her discoveries related to
radioactivity. These four figures collaborated in a
tutelary arrangement to impart their knowledge to a
bright and eager student. They had an ultimate motive in
mind, not known to Penelope until the very end.
Penelope turned out to be a serious and devoted student.
She did extensive research on her own to keep up with
the subject matter she was learning. Tu-whit, a wise old
owl, came in on occasion as a heavenly archivist to
elaborate on the data. It was not all serious study.
From time to time, she made contact with relatives and
friends who had passed over and who lightened the
atmosphere.
 A word about the setting at this point: This is not an
ordinary classroom nor is the author an ordinary
dreamer. Judy Gardiner has long and colorful dreams
practically every night and awakens with excellent
recall. She not only conscientiously records the dreams;
they are accompanied by stick figures displaying the
action taking place. In ferreting out scientific matter
from personal matter, she has found that her dreams fall
in two categories. In one, the personal, the dream is
focused on private issues. In the other, the cosmic, the
content goes beyond the personal and relates to
large-scale natural events like earthquakes, volcanoes,
tsunamis, and supernova explosions, events she could
have no direct knowledge of. It is these dreams that
Penelope and her four teachers focus on in her effort to
identify the environmental references. Excerpts from her
dreams, precisely as she dreamt them, were the homework
she brought to the classroom. At times, Tu-whit helped
to bridge the gap between dream and reality. The range
of the external referents of the dream imagery includes
the makeup and dynamics of the earth’s crust as well as
the stars and their constellations. Included in a series
of dreams is the sinking of the Titanic, where her
tutors hint at geological activity that may have played
a role in that tragedy. Penelope is an apt pupil. Her
teachers, aware of her lack of a scientific background,
worked with her in small steps. Her dreams provided the
raw material of the lessons. Her mentors helped her
translate dream images into the various components of
the earth’s crust and their interactions. Tectonic
plates bump into or slide over each other. Undersea
volcanoes come to life. All impact the water above, and
tsunamis are born. By the end of the book, she becomes
quite an expert on undersea geology. She also learns a
good deal about the movement of the stars and the
formation of the galaxies. Somewhere between Heaven and
Earth, she discovers the radioactive element uranium,
quite by accident.
Her teachers are very thorough. In addition to
connecting dreams to geological events, they also inform
her of where to go to find substantive evidence for the
existence of geological referents in her dreams. They
cite two places in Canada: Newfoundland and Vancouver.
The author is quick to follow through on this, and with
a companion, she visits both. She does, indeed, find
artifacts in each location that have a striking
resemblance to specific images in her dreams. In some
dreams, the color lavender was very prominent. They
traveled to a small town in Newfoundland where all the
fire hydrants were painted lavender. On another occasion
on a walk through a small fishing village, they came
upon a number of large rocks that were splashed with
lavender paint. Her companions, knowing the purpose of
the trip, were just as excited as she was. I was, too,
when I learned about it. It soon became apparent to her
that there was a distinct difference between the cosmic
dreams and those focusing on personal issues surfacing
in her life at the time. In contrast to the personal are
the dreams noted in the book where the words or images
seem strangely out of place, more impersonal and, when
decoded, outwardly and environmentally oriented. Her
mentors, living in a world outside of time and space, as
we know it, continued to give her hints on where to
discover the corroborative artifacts.
This book is a lengthy parable rooted in facts that
suggest two possible directions our dreams take. The
first is based on the fact that dreaming consciousness
is a natural healing system. There is observational and
laboratory evidence that dreaming is characteristic of
the entire mammalian species and that dreams serve a
survival function of some sort. In humans, our dreams
serve a healing function by confronting us with hidden
truths about ourselves, good or bad, that we have not
yet acknowledged. Since we are creatures capable of
abstract thought, we are able to capture feelings in
metaphors made out of words in poetry, and while we are
asleep and dreaming create images that tell the story.
Both the poem and the dream capture truths about
ourselves that we are not ordinarily capable of
acknowledging in ordinary discourse. What is unique in
this parable – pointing in the second direction – is the
consistent way certain dreams confronted the author with
direct hints about environmental events that involve us
as members of a species. Thus, our dreams confront us
with personal internal tensions that need resolution; as
members of a single species, nature confronts us at
times with an awareness of external environmental
catastrophes.
In short, her dreams took two divergent paths. When the
dreamer focused on personal data, the communication was
rooted in the way feelings are either overtly felt or as
embedded in metaphorical imagery that captures feeling
residues both current and past. They have to do with the
dreamer’s life in the present, past, and expected
future. When in waking life this exposes its meaning to
the dreamer, there is a definite “Aha” feeling, a gut
reaction that a hidden truth has been revealed. Dreams
are creative events. We create pictures that talk to us,
disturb us, puzzle us, but once their mystery dissolves,
they speak to us very simply and truthfully. The strange
involuntary images arising out of an environment
unbeknownst to the dreamer do not carry a personal
emotional charge and generally seem incomprehensible.
This unfamiliar terrain can often be described as a
cosmic dream where oceanic feelings of oneness and
gratitude consume the dreamer.
In my writings, I have regarded dreaming consciousness
as serving the unity of man as a single species by
helping individual dreamers face issues that limit their
sense of unity with each other. They do this by
exploring the depths of the individual psyche that
require attention. The message of this parable describes
the way the dream has a wider purview of potential
dangers to the species.
The story opens another door, namely, the relationship
of dreams to the paranormal. Louisa B. Rhine noted that
telepathy occurs more frequently in our dreams than when
we are awake. The records of the British Society for
Psychical Research have for over a century recorded
impressive accounts of the paranormal which include
telepathy, clairvoyance, and precognition. Beginning in
the second decade of the last century, the American
Society for Psychical Research has done the same thing.
Scientific studies continue in laboratories in this
country, England, Holland, and Sweden. William James, as
well as Freud and Jung, each took an active interest in
psychic phenomena (the older term for the paranormal).
Jung wrote his doctoral thesis on the mediumship of a
young woman. Freud was a corresponding member of the
British Society.
To the extent the imagery of a dream in Lavender is
initiated by external natural ecological events about
which the author could have no firsthand knowledge, such
a dream, would be paranormal. Just as Alice in
Wonderland is more than a fairy tale, so is this book.
When the eternal giants of Science have delivered a
message to us mortals, there is no question that they
are expressing their deep concern about Mother Earth.
This book’s fateful message is one that centers on the
extent to which humans as a species have, ever since the
Industrial Revolution, exploited and corrupted the
physical environment that sustains them.
What is of special interest to me in Lavender is the
realization that dreaming consciousness is
bidirectional, pointing both to our inner and to our
external environments. Dreamwork is generally assumed to
be a voyage into the depths of our being and exposing
the truth, good or bad, about ourselves. The author has
described another direction our dreams take in facing
not only the natural disasters but also the extent to
which we have selfishly exploited nature. Her experience
has taught her the difference between dreams, calling
attention to outer realities and dreams focusing on
inner realities. More than that, she spent a good deal
of time searching for objective evidence that linked the
imagery to an external reality.
At story’s end, she learns what the message was and why
she was selected to carry it out. What brought her four
mentors together was their common concern about the
future of humankind because of the degradation of its
own sustaining ecosystem through exploitation and
corruption. Penelope validated their omniscient view
that dreaming consciousness could serve as an early
warning system not only for natural disasters but also
for man-made ones. Just as dreams in pointing inward
ferret out flaws in our individual character structures
(as well as assets that we are not using), our dreams
can point outward to environmental hazards. If Penelope
is in touch with this feature of our dream life,
probably all dreamers have this Janus-like bidirectional
potential. The message is clear: dreams can reach a
broader domain in monitoring our ecosystem.
Steno has taken the lead in this unique classroom that
spans two different universes. He urges Penelope to go
on to a postgraduate program they have planned for her.
This throws her into a complete panic since his appeal
threatens to shift her from the personal future she
planned for herself to a task she is not sure she can
handle. She ultimately registers in the postgraduate
program with hopes that her readers will join her in
unraveling the many loose ends of her cosmic mystery.
Reading Lavender is a voyage into a range of our
dreaming psyche that reaches beyond the mundane, calling
attention to the corruption of our environment, which
has gathered speed during the nuclear age. The author
has done with the intrinsic honesty of dreams what Al
Gore and others have done with hard scientific facts.
Gore’s dedicated commitment has exposed one aspect of
the dangers we face because of global warming. In its
own way, this book complements his effort by calling
attention to other environmental hazards.
The story is unique in both content and style. The
bidirectional nature of its dreaming suggests the
existence of a collaborative unconscious that alerts us
to dangers both personal and global. It reminds us that
our dreams are private events, but that we are also
members of a single species and have a role to play in
its survival. The seriousness of the message of Lavender
is buttressed by the intensive research the author
engaged in to verify her very rich and fascinating
supply of dreams. This somewhat nonlinear adventure
story of spiritual-scientific proportions becomes a
refresher course in understanding the challenge we face
both from nature and our failure to fully understand
what nature expects from us.
Finally, the story is written in a lightly personal and
eloquent style that gathers many threads together,
piquing our curiosity about a universal unconscious and
leaving us with a greater awareness of the role of
industrial society in fueling the dangerous outbursts of
nature.
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