Psi Dreaming
Montague Ullman: Discussant
IASD (International
Association for the Study of Dreams)
2007 Psiber Dreaming
Online Conference |
The last
decade of the last century was known as the decade of
consciousness. By that term the reference was to waking
consciousness. The Journal of Consciousness Studies was
launched. As far as I can recall, no article appeared
devoted to the form of consciousness or unconsciousness
that shaped our dreams. When the term consciousness was
used it referred to waking consciousness. Things changed
a bit at the turn of this century but the essential
focus remained waking consciousness. With the appearance
of the IASD things began to change. Bill Stimson, a
friend and colleague, started a newsletter devoted to
dreams in the seventies. Under the guidance of Roberta
Ossana it morphed into the Journal of Dreams and Myth.
Only with the turn of this century and with the creation
of the IASD did dreams begin to come into their own.
The paper Judy Gardiner has presented is a contribution
that has broadened the search for an open-ended and
deeper understanding of dreams. It represents a unique
dream series which addresses the interconnection of the
spiritual, scientific and personal aspects of dreaming.
The essence of Judy’s paper is that dreaming
consciousness arises out of a much broader matrix than
the unconscious that Freud wrote about and even the
collective unconscious of Jung. She is working with a
much larger canvas using colors that derive from both
the world of science and the world of spirit. She came
to these conclusions from the way her dream life
extended beyond the truth of her own personal
unconscious domain to both an ecological and a cosmic
domain hinting at the unity of matter and spirit.
Although she received a stream of scientific data
dealing with sciences outside of ecology, her immediate
attention was turned to geology and focused on ecology
because of the poor condition of Mother Earth. There
were two domains beyond the personal – namely the world
of science and the reality of spirit. There was no line
of demarcation between the personal and the
transpersonal until her awareness of a theme had
emerged. Once she understood that scientific metaphors
were guiding her toward a higher truth, it was easier
for her to differentiate between the two domains.
As she notes, she became aware of two distinct modes of
dream content. One was the usual: dreams capturing
feelings, dreams dealing with still unresolved issues in
her life, the ordinary content of dreams – and dreams
that go beyond the personal and touch on the scientific
and spiritual domains. Two distinct styles of dreaming:
the dream in its personal healing function and the other
oriented to a transpersonal domain. The former opens the
opportunity to personal growth; the other, ecologically
oriented to events going beyond the personal such as
nature’s destructive happenings. The former calls
attention to personal issues. The latter addresses
environmental issues that include but go beyond the
personal.
Judy is introducing something new to the range of
dreaming consciousness, something akin to an early psi
warning system such that other mammals possess before a
natural disaster occurs.
Dreaming consciousness is not only a unique warning
system to the individual dreamer. It is also a built-in
protective device relating to the welfare of the
species. Awake we focus on ourselves. Asleep and
dreaming we are concerned with ourselves as members of a
unified species.
In summary, our dreams not only foster emotional growth
for ourselves but also for our existence as a distinct
species. Nature sometimes has tricks up her sleeve and
one of those is that our dreams not only work for
ourselves as individuals but also as a species.
Sometimes it does it through dreams that foster
emotional growth. Healthy emotions connect us to each
other. Unhealthy emotions separate us. In bringing the
ecological, the personal and the transpersonal together
as features of dreaming consciousness, our dreams put us
back in the classroom where we have so much to learn
about ourselves and the world we have helped to create.
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