International Institute for Dream Research

Esoteric Dreams -or- The Astrological Navel of the Zodiac

The Kabbalah and Mysticism -or- Shamanism and the Occult

As a student, my interest in Carl Jung began the summer of 1976 when I read his book "Four Archetypes". Then in the late 1970's, I became interested in the esoteric work of Carlos Castaneda, Jane Roberts, Helena Blavatsky and P.D. Ouspensky. Ouspensky's "A New Model of the Universe" is a book that still finds a place in my personal library.

From a Jewish, Christian and Islamic mysticism perspective, I studied the conceptual spiritual ideas inculcated in the Kabbalah. I had read that Freud had an ambivalent attitude towards Jewish mysticism and viewed the occult as a "black tide". Jung of course became very interested in the occult, which in part led to the separation of the two modern pioneers of psychodynamic psychiatry and therapy.

There seems to be a synchronicity to the dream reported below, and my friendship and conversation with a Swiss physicist which began over 30 years ago. We agreed to meet for the first time one afternoon at 3pm at the "Urania-Planetarium" (read German Wikipedia article) in Zürich. Urania was the ancient Greek muse of astronomy. One of the dialogical threads of our first conversation started with us discussing Casteneda's "Don Juan" and the value of shamanism. Our conversations today seldom return to such esoteric ideas, instead we have turned our attention to a mathematical model of nature and the universe, one that is closely related to the ideas that Wolfgang Pauli and Carl Jung envisioned where mind, body and consciousness are seen through the optics of quantum physics as a unified psychodynamic process (read IIDR interpretation "The Dreams of Wolfgang Pauli").

The dream below takes place in a "fictious village", in what has been called the "global village".

Here is the dream;

Timothy, 29 Portugese

I have had several important dreams in my life; by important I mean those dreams that you remember beyond the years and which facts you tend not to alter with story telling.

Actually I have had thousands of dreams, that are characterized in general by the following norms: they are lucid - I know at every moment that I am dreaming; I am split in two: the "I" that lives the dream fully and the I that comments and analyses the dream as a kind of a voice (while dreaming I tend to wander at the magnitude of my dreams); they are set in the same fictious village, that I remember from dream to dream, but the characters and plots (intricate and prone to visually very detailed) are totally different from time to time. I love dreaming and doing it and telling dreams to my close friends (with self and hetero analysis purposes) are part of what I would consider be the person I am.

I have moderate success on understanding my dreams... please help me on this one.

I am laying face up in bed and I don't know I am dreaming. I am stuck to bed as if an invisible force paralyzed me, I can't move or speak but am fully aware, kinda like a sleep paralysis episode (of which I was having many at the time of the dream, I'd be around 23-24). Then a light came and starting on my left wrist it started carving symbols - tattooing them in blue but it was painless. The symbols where astrological, like the planetary and the zodiac symbols. They covered both my arms until the moment it reached my heart where it tattooed the symbol for the planet Uranus. At that moment I felt an immense stream of energy coming from my whole body concentrating on that point and a beam of light shot from my heart and I woke up. I was deeply affected by the dream, both sensorial and intellectually as I developed a profound fascination for Uranus as a planet and as an astrological entity. Can you help me unscramble this dream? Thank you.

New Model of the Universe -or- The Creative Rays of Prana

Having just been to Olympia in Greece in October 2010 for the first time with said Swiss physicist, I realized the astrological importance of the planets in the horoscope as they were related to the ancient Olympic games. Reportedly, the Antikythera mechanism was an ancient mechanical calculator designed to calculate astronomical positions in relation to the Zodiac. It is believed the device aided in the calculation of the dates and timing of the Olympic games.

Much like in the film "Avatar", the dream speaks of a "stream of energy" that is coming from your body, this energy has been described by the esoteric tradition as "prana" and "kundalini". Henri Bergson would call it "élan vital". In the dream we find astrological and zodiac symbols that become tattooed on your body. Carl Jung in "Psychology of the Unconscious: a study of the transformations and symbolisms of the libido, a contribution to the history of the evolution of thought" would provide an archetypal description of the symbolism of "psychic energy". Einstein would put a scientific spin to the concept of energy in the universe in his famous mathematical equation: E = mc².

Many of the esoteric ideas found in the dream above find a conceptual basis in P. D. Ouspensky's "New Model of the Universe". Many dreams received by the International Institute for Dream Research that speak about esoteric phenomena such as;

All these phenomena carry a "parapsychological" feel with them. The American psychologist William James was interested in such "psychic" phenomena. The Canadian psychiatrist Richard Maurice Bucke "Cosmic Consciousness: A Study in the Evolution of the Human Mind" is a modern transpersonal study of mystical experiences. Those Bucke historically included as having had such mystical experiences were the likes of Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, Dante and William Blake.

My concern stated in the "Lucid Dreams and Altered States" interpretation (see above link) is; "And while such dreams and visions are appealing, the question must be asked whether they are just one more form of escape and distraction from the "real" problems and nightmares our planet is faced with on a daily basis such as poverty, starvation, disease, war, crime, prejudice, corruption, greed and pollution to name a few?"

Dream Vision Videos