Tag: religion

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The Distinguishing Features of Big Dreams

If someone presented you with two sets of dreams, one of most recent dreams and one of highly memorable dreams, you could predict with a high degree of confidence which type of dream was in which set, based only on word usage frequencies.

The set with more references to flying, air, family, animals, fantastic beings, Christianity, and death is more likely to consist of highly memorable dreams.

This is a testable hypothesis that emerges out of a comparison of the SDDb baselines for most recent dreams (MRDs) and highly memorable dreams (MemDs), available here.  To be clear, it’s a prediction of probability, not certainty.  Some highly memorable dreams have none of these elements, while some most recent dreams have several of them.  But according to the SDDb baselines, it is the statistical tendency of highly memorable dreams to contain significantly more of these elements than we generally find in most recent dreams.

Whether or not this hypothesis has any practical application, it adds new evidence in support of the theoretical claim that dreams are meaningfully structured not just for the individual dreamer but also in relation to each other.  There really are different types of dreams, and their differences can be expressed in increasingly precise terms.

Other researchers such as Harry Hunt and Don Kuiken have proposed psychological models to account for different types of dreams (what Hunt calls “the multiplicity of dreams”).  I am not yet at the point with the SDDb baselines to feel comfortable engaging directly with their approaches, but that is definitely a long-term goal.

At this stage I want to look more closely at the higher-frequency MemD elements and try to understand what they might contribute to the dreams’ long-term impact on waking awareness.

Flying: Not all dream references to flying involve magical powers–some relate to the flight of birds, or flying on airplanes, or floating in water, or time “flying” by.  But many of the references are indeed about people flying magically, and I think it makes good sense that overall, MemDs have significantly more flying references than MRDs.  I would be surprised if it were otherwise, based on the recurrence of magical flying dreams through cross-cultural history.  Genuine flying dreams tend to be quite vivid and realistic, and it’s reasonable to assume that such unusually stimulating sensations would make a lasting impact on waking awareness.

Air: Some of the air references occur in flying dreams, but in most MemDs the air references appear in different contexts: the dreamer is struggling to breathe, or facing a tornado, or noticing the wind blowing.  I don’t know about dreams of wind, but certainly with dreams of tornados and potential suffocation the memorability of the experience is likely to be very high.  A tornado is the most powerfully destructive form of air in nature, and suffocation is a perennial threat to human life, perhaps especially in sleep for people who snore or have apnea.

Family: References to family members appear often in MRDs; they appear even more often in MemDs.   I think it’s fair to say that most people’s strongest emotional relationships (both positive and negative) are with family members.  Thus it makes sense that their appearance in a dream correlates with high memorability.  Looking in more detail at the word search results, references to parents (e.g., mother, father, mom, dad) tend to be the highest, suggesting that dreams in which the individual is cast as a child or in a child’s role are more likely to be memorable.

Animals: Based on any of several different theories (psychoanalytic, developmental, evolutionary), it could be expected that MemDs would have a higher proportion of animals than MRDs.  Psychoanalytically, animals symbolize powerful instinctual energies. Developmentally, animals appear more often in children’s than in adults’ dreams, and MemDs are often recalled from early in childhood. In evolutionary terms, animals in dreams may reflect ancestral threats that we are innately primed to notice and remember.

Fantastic Beings: This category by definition includes characters who are not “real,” so their appearance in dreams naturally arouses some degree of heightened awareness and emotional impact.  Many of them are perceived as extremely frightening and dangerous to the life of the dreamer.  I was surprised by the SDDb baseline results that the MemDs do not have more fear-related emotions than the MRDs, but perhaps what makes some MemDs different is the supernatural source of the fear. There is a connection to be made here with the notion of “minimally counterintuitive supernatural agents” as used in the cognitive science of religion–dreaming is a rich experiential source of people’s religious and spiritual beliefs about such beings.

Christianity: Many references to Christianity in both MRDs and MemDs are relatively trivial references to Christmas, or mild oaths, or a person’s name.  But more often in the MemDs there are direct references to interactions with Jesus, battles with demons, visiting heaven, and worshipping in church.  In a majority-Christian country like the U.S., where all the SDDb baseline participants reside, this seems like an expectable result.  Insofar as Christianity, like most religions, is concerned with deep questions of morality, suffering, and faith, any dream that refers to religious teachings is likely to register more memorably in the dreamer’s awareness.

Death: Whether considered in religious or secular terms, death surely counts as a major existential concern of human life.  Dreaming itself has long been mythologically associated with death, and cultural traditions all over the world have stories about dreams as a portal to the afterlife.  In MemDs the theme of death takes many forms: other characters dying or being killed right in front of the dreamer, dead relatives appearing as if alive (i.e., visitation dreams), and, more rarely, the dreamer him or herself dying.  When the prospect of mortality arises in a dream, it’s not surprising that the individual takes notice and remembers.

What do these seven higher-frequency MemD elements have in common?

For one thing, several of them involve “counter-factuals,” i.e., phenomena that are literally impossible in ordinary waking life.  Magically flying in the air, encountering fantastic beings, seeing people who are dead appear as if alive–these are strikingly anomalous experiences that stand out from ordinary life and make a big impression on memory.

Secondly, several of the MemD themes involve dire threats to the individual’s life and well-being.  Dreams of death, demons, monsters, wild animals, suffocation, and tornados naturally arouse a host of psychological and physiological responses that can literally seize the dreamer’s attention and hold it long after waking.

Thirdly, a few MemD themes relate closely to the prominent themes of children’s dreams generally, with more animals and higher family references.  As I noted earlier, the SDDb baseline for MemDs includes numerous childhood-era dreams reported by children and adults, so it is definitely skewed toward children’s dream content.  That means the differences between MRDs and MemDs could be explained as artifacts of the differences between adults and children.  I grant there will be a large degree of overlap between highly memorable dreams and children’s dreams–precisely because the most memorable dreams people often recall are dreams from childhood.

Not all children’s dreams are big dreams–but many big dreams are dreams that have been remembered from childhood.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Dream Education = Religious Studies Education

This is an excerpt from a panel on dream education at the recent conference of the International Association for the Study of Dreams.  My co-panelists were Phil King and Bernard Welt, with whom I wrote Dreaming in the Classroom: Practices, Methods, and Resources in Dream Education.

 

Any class on dreams that occurs within a school context must, at a minimum, provide educational benefits consistent with the school’s mission.  These benefits usually include critical thinking, literacy skills, knowledge acquisition, global citizenship, etc.  All of us on the panel agree that classes on dreams can do a wonderful job of providing these educational benefits and contributing to the general goals of almost any kind of school.

 

But dream classes can do more than that.  Indeed, dream classes are always doing more than that, whether or not the teacher and students are explicitly aware of it.   Something happens when dreams enter the classroom, something very different from other topics of study.  Each of us on the panel has different ways of talking about that educational surplus.  For me, what’s interesting is how every class on dreams becomes at some level a class on religious studies.  By that I mean a class that studies human expressions of ultimacy via symbols, metaphors, and myths.  The historical aspect of this may be most obvious.  Prior to the rise of psychology as a Western academic discipline in the mid-nineteenth century, the primary arena in which people shared, discussed, and explored their dreams was religion–in Hinduism, Buddhism, Daoism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and the spiritual traditions of the indigenous peoples of Africa, the Americas, and Oceania.  Any class that’s trying to provide a solid base of knowledge about dreams can’t ignore the history of religions.  This is true whether you are teaching in psychology, literature, biology, or any other discipline—as soon as you start telling your students about dreams, you’ll need to talk about religious history, too.

 

I understand this might seem daunting to educators without any training or background in comparative religious studies.  I’m not saying you have to include large amounts of this material in your curriculum.  But I am saying you should think carefully about how you’re going to present the topics of your class within this bigger historical framework.  You should let your students know there IS a bigger historical framework, even if that’s not the specific focus of your class.

 

There’s another way that dream classes become religious studies classes, even more important than the historical aspect.  Whenever dreams become a topic of classroom discussion, the students are inevitably prompted to reflect on their private dream experiences.  The class may not explicitly involve personal dream sharing, or keeping a journal, or anything directly about the students’ own dreams—but I guarantee you, the students are thinking about their dreams in relation to what’s coming up in the class.  Especially if the teacher is a good one and gets the students excited about the topic, they’re going to be curious to explore their own dreams.  And once they do that, they’re very likely to come across themes, questions, and experiences that go to the heart of many of the world’s religions—for example, the prospect of death and an afterlife, the struggle of good and evil, the illusory nature of reality, prophetic anticipations of the future, nightmarish suffering and existential dread, haunting encounters with supernatural beings, and so forth.

 

Teachers can ignore all this if they wish, but I think it’s better if they at least recognize that their students are wondering about these kinds of issues in their dreams and thinking about how the class is, or is not, helping them make better sense of their experiences.  Again, this doesn’t mean you have to devote extensive class time to the religious implications of dreams in people’s lives.  You could devote some time to this topic, of course, and I think you’d be surprised at what your students would say if given the chance!  But it’s enough if you simply let the students know that, just as people in the past drew religious inspiration and philosophical insight from dreams, so do many people today.  It’s not a matter of ancient superstition carrying over into the modern world, but rather a recognition that humans in all times and places, up to and including us today, are dreamers, and our dreams bring us into contact with ideas, feelings, and energies that most cultures through history have regarded as religiously meaningful.  Whether or not we use religious language, the personal impact of certain dreams can be intensely meaningful and even transformative.  As dream educators, we have to give our students some degree of informed awareness of those spiritual dimensions of dreaming potential.

 

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The Art and Science of Dreaming

Why do we have dreams?  Where do they come from?  What, if anything, do they mean?  These mysterious questions have puzzled humankind since the earliest days of history.  The best answers, I suggest, come from integrating the insights of art and science.  Dreaming is rooted in the physical workings of our brains, and it expresses our highest spiritual yearnings and deepest psychological concerns.  In dreams the mind, body, and soul come together in a creative ferment, giving us new perspectives on the emotional realities of our lives.

Looking first at art, people throughout the ages have regarded dreams as a source of creative inspiration.  A number of famous works of Western art and literature were directly influenced by their creator’s dreams. 

Among writers, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley dreamed up several key scenes in her novel Frankenstein, and Robert Louis Stevenson had a dream about a divided soul at war with itself that gave him the core plot idea for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.  Surrealist painters like Salvador Dali and Rene Magritte drew upon their dreams for bizarre, symbol-laden images of melting clocks and floating bowler hats. In more recent years, a number of prominent movie directors have experienced dreams that influenced their films, including David Lynch in Blue Velvet, Francis Ford Coppola in Apocalypse Now, and Akira Kurusawa in Dreams.  Contemporary musicians have also described their dreams as creative inspirations.  Paul McCartney had a dream that gave him the tune for “Yesterday,” and Sting’s song “The Lazarus Heart” came from a personal nightmare.

If we consider religion as another realm where humans express their deepest creativity, then we can see even more evidence of the inspiring power of dreaming.  In the Hebrew Bible, visionary dreams come to Abraham and Jacob, while Joseph saved his people by his ability to interpret dreams.  In the New Testament, prophetic dreams of guidance help Jesus’ parents before their child’s birth and Paul during his missionary travels.  The Muslim Prophet Muhammad told of his dreams in the Qur’an, and each morning he asked his followers what they had dreamed, so they could better discern God’s will.  Hindu and Buddhist mystics consider all of life to be a dream, a great illusion shaped by our desires.  Many indigenous cultures around the world have myths (e.g., the Australian Aborigine’s “Dreamtime”) and rituals (e.g., the Native American vision quest) to help their members learn more about the creative potentials of their own dreaming.

Do the insights of artists and mystics stand up to the findings of modern science?  Surprisingly, the answer is yes.  Based on the latest evidence from research in cognitive psychology, it appears that dreaming is a natural and normal aspect of healthy brain/mind functioning.  Not all dreams are heaven-sent revelations or artistic breakthroughs, but in general dreaming is an accurate and meaningful expression of our fears, concerns, conflicts, and desires in waking life. 

Since the 1950’s scientists have known about the different stages of sleep, and it appears that dreams occur most often during the stage of REM (rapid eye movement) sleep.  During REM sleep our brains are very active, but in a different configuration than in waking.  In REM the brain centers for instinctual emotions and visual imagination are highly activated, while the parts of the brain responsible for focused rational attention are less active.  This evidence fits the general qualities of many dreams—less rational, more emotional and visual—and it supports the idea that our capacity for dreaming is hard-wired into the human brain.

However, it is important to recognize that dreams occur in stages of sleep other than REM.  REM sleep may be the most common trigger for dreaming, but research has shown that dreams can occur throughout the sleep cycle.  This means that we still do not have a complete picture of the dreaming brain.  We cannot “reduce” dreams to REM sleep.

Most people remember one or two dreams a week, but that can vary depending on many factors.  Some people remember at least one dream almost every night, while others say they have never recalled a dream in their whole life.  Researchers have found that small efforts to pay more attention to dreams can lead to big increases in dream recall.  It’s like the movie “Field of Dreams”: If you build it, they will come—if you open your waking mind to the possibility that your dreams have something meaningful to say, you’re likely to start remembering more dreams.

When people ask me how to interpret their dreams, I start by emphasizing that only the dreamer can know for sure what his or her dreams really mean.  “Experts” like me can offer ideas and possibilities based on our research, but ultimately you are the final authority on your own dreams.

Sometimes dreams speak in direct and literal terms.  For example, you may be scared of flying, and thus you might have a nightmare of crashing in an airplane.  But sometimes dreams speak indirectly, in a language of metaphor and symbol.  Your nightmare of a crashing airplane may symbolically reflect your waking anxieties about your finances, your health, or a personal relationship.  To understand your dreams you need a flexible mind that can perceive these kinds of metaphorical connections between dream imagery and your emotional concerns in waking life.

One of the most important functions of dreaming is to look ahead, to anticipate what might happen in the future and prepare us for possible dangers and threats.  This isn’t a simple matter of “prophecy,” although that’s what ancient people called the same basic process.  Scientists today have found that many of our most memorable dreams revolve around visions of worst-case scenarios, and it seems that these kinds of dreams are like fire drills, getting us ready in case those dangers actually occur in the waking world.  Even though many of our dreams are negative and disturbing in this way, they are still promoting our physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being.

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This article appears on pp. 22-23 in the August 2011 special issue on Sleep and Dreams in Vintage Newsmagazine, a publication in Tulsa, Oklahoma.  Thanks to editor Betsy Troyer for inviting me to contribute.

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Lucid Dreaming Quiz Answers

Who is more likely to say they have had a dream of being aware they are dreaming:

Men or women?  Women 66.8%, Men 59.8%

People between the ages of 30 and 49 or people age 65 and older?  Between 30 and 49 68.6%, 65+ 54.8%

Whites, African-Americans, or Hispanics? Hispanics 67.3%, Whites 62.4%, African-Americans 58.9%

People who make less than $25K a year or people who make more than $100K a year? <$25K 67.8%, $100K+ 64.8%

People who are politically progressive or people who are very conservative? Progressives 68.9%, Very Conservatives 58.3%

People who live in the Southern US or people who live in the Western US? Western 66%, Southern 59.6%

McCain voters or Obama voters? Obama 67.3%, McCain 56.8%

People who say they are “spiritual not religious” or people who say they are neither spiritual nor religious? Spiritual not religious 66.1%, neither spiritual nor religious 59.4%.

OK, what do you think we should we make of these results?

The differences aren’t huge, and in every case the low end of the spectrum is still greater than 50%.  I’d say these findings, based on a survey of 2992 American adults, adds more evidence to the idea that lucid dreaming is a widespread phenomenon among the general public.

Women tend to remember dreams than men, and younger people tend to remember usually recall more dreams than older people, so the results on gender and age make sense.

The racial/ethnic finding is intriguing.  I don’t know of any other research on this question.

The political results are certainly consistent with my previous research on this topic. 

The political dynamic may account for the regional difference, with somewhat more lucid dream recall in the West than the South.  As a California native this seemed an obvious one to me, but no one guessed it.

The spirituality/religion results mayreflect the appeal of lucid dreaming to people who are spiritual seekers of one form or another. 

The income difference isn’t that large.  From what I can tell of the results from the whole survey, income has more of an impact on the recall of frightening dreams (higher among those lower on the income scale). 


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Patterns in Jewish Dreaming

As a follow-up to the previous post about religious and non-religious people’s dreams, I’ve looked more carefully at the responses of people who identified themselves as Jewish.  This is a much smaller group in my data set, with 131 participants (82 male, 49 female).  I’m more confident talking about the sleep and dream patterns of protestants (1130 people), catholics (575) and “other/nones” (1078).  But I don’t know of any other study of Jewish dreaming that includes even 131 participants, so it’s worth taking a look.

Compared to the others, Jewish people reported about the same amount and quality of sleep, somewhat lower dream recall but somewhat higher nightmare recall.  Jewish people were most likely to talk with family or friends about their dreams, a finding that may indicate the influence of cultural and religious beliefs. 

The survey included eight yes-no questions about “typical dreams,” asking “have you ever dreamed of:” falling, flying, being chased or attacked, sexuality, being in a situation exactly like waking life, being visited by someone who is dead, being aware of dreaming, and being able to control the dream. 

 Jewish participants had by far the lowest frequency of falling dreams.  They reported the lowest frequeny of dreams of flying, chasing, being in a situation like waking life, and dream awareness.   They were in the middle with the other groups on visitations from the dead, sexuality and dream control.

Based on this small sample it appearss that contemporary American Jews are relatively open in talking about their dreams with other people, but their personal dream lives tend to be moderate.

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Religious and Non-Religious People: A Survey of their Dreams

People who are not Christian and not religiously observant report higher dream recall and a higher frequency of most typical dreams. That’s one of the initial findings from a study I’m doing on the demographics of dreaming, based on survey results from 2992 American adults.  Most religious traditions regard dreams as spiritually significant.  But the people who are most engaged with their dreams in present-day America tend to be those who are not affiliated with mainstream Christianity and who rarely or never attend worship services.

Compared to Protestant and Catholic Christians, people who answered “Other/None” to the question of their religious affiliation reported the highest frequency of dreams of chasing, sexuality, falling, flying, and being able to control their dreams.  Similarly, people who never attend religious worship services have higher dream recall and higher frequencies of many types of dreams as compared to people who attend worship services once a week or more.  These findings are consistent with the results presented in chapter 3 of my 2008 book American Dreamers:

“Non-religious people report more of every type of dream, especially sexual dreams.” (91)

That finding came from a survey in 2007 of 705 American adults.  The appearance of the same pattern in the 2010 survey suggests the correlation may be worth pursuing for the new light it can shed on the psychology of religion.

The new survey has the advantage of including narrative dream reports from many of the participants.  I’m just beginning to sift through this data using word searches and other methods of analysis.

Here are a couple of short nightmares from the “Other/None” people who never attend worship services:

“I often have nightmares about spaceships, or unknown forces coming across a horizon, often with a sense of impending doom. The anticipation of death lasts and lasts and lasts…eventually i wake up.”

“I was being chased by a huge blob monster that looked like purple jello. I shot it with a rifle, but it broke up into several monsters. I ran into a house that looked like a Disney castle, and it swallowed the house.”

Here are two from Born-again Christians:

“I was falling in a fast freefall with no end in sight and as I went further I know I was trying to scream but only a low gutteral sound was coming out. I heard myself make that noise and sat up sweating and scared.”

“I was chased and attacked by demons. I tried to “rebuke” them in the name of Christ, as I’ve heard you should do in real life if ever confronted by demons, but they just kept coming toward me. They were hitting me, throwing me around and otherwise tormenting me. I woke up in a cold sweat; only time I can remember that happening. I was a teenager at the time, but I was so freaked out, I woke up my mother. She came and slept in my bed the rest of the night.”