Probably everyone has been under the impression of their sleep at least once in their lives. It could be an erotic dream, an emotional nightmare or a joyful experience that you can even miss; sometimes it is a horror film or sleep paralysis, indistinguishable from reality. Scenarios can be cyclical; maybe we notice similar patterns in very different dreams. Sometimes they leave a kind of aftertaste; or echo. Most often however, we dream illogical abstractions that evaporate a few seconds after waking up.
I’ve never given dreams a deep meaning, although I like to play with them. I know the aforementioned sleep paralysis very well, I have practiced lucid dreaming. Many, however, see it differently. Some people (over) interpret dreamed images; others maintain that dreams can help you know the future. The Internet and the press are full of dream books, where the secrets of dreaming are explored by a broadly understood esoteric group. Science with various effects also tries to bite this topic.
While I consider all prophecies or other personality analyses based on dreams to be complete horoscope nonsense, I find dreaming itself to be at least intriguing. Maybe one day I will describe my subjective experiences related to the subject, but in this post I will summarize what The Urantia Book has to say about dreams.
Freddy Krueger
Dreams are not a discovery of modern civilization. Primitive man also dreamed. In fact, The Urantia Book calls dreams, specifically ghost dreams, “probably the single most important factor in the evolution of human society”.
Dreams generally disturbed our ancestors, but it was dreams about the spirits of the dead, or rather the fear they aroused, that brought them together in groups. These were real threats. The savages believed that their dreams were as real as reality. It seemed to us that the night apparitions were real and therefore that they would be able to do us real harm. In such circumstances, close relationships with the confreres were encouraging. After all, it is easier to ward off dangers in a group; Also those elusive and flowing from another world. Today, we invariably sleep better together.
The 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.
86:4.1 (952.7)
It was not only the social sphere that benefited from ghost dreams. The first beliefs in a future spiritual existence also came from dreams. Well, since the leader returned from beyond the grave, death did not have to mean the final end of human life. Over time, such beliefs began to counteract the self-preservation, although paralyzing fear of death. It turns out that dreams also had an impact on human courage.
What the modern believer calls the soul, the immaterial part of man, was to our ancestor his dream double, almost identical copy. It could be seen and heard; only did not respond to touch. And since at the beginning we did not think very highly of ourselves — at times we saw ourselves inferior to animals — hence the erroneous belief that everything has a soul. It seemed logical that since a man has a soul, that not only animals or plants, but also objects, tools and stones must have a soul. After all, everything appears in dreams. And while many people still hold this belief, The Urantia Book is clear: only humans have an evolving soul.
We underestimate dreams. And it was dreams that created, then formed, and with time expanded the early spiritual world of our ancestors. They were proof that a ghost can leave the body not only after death (it is still referred to as “dying of the ghost”), but also during sleep or unconsciousness, when it moved away only not far and temporarily; “Cheers!” Saying it as a polite phrase is also an echo of those times, because it was believed that sneezing was an unsuccessful attempt of the soul to escape from the body.
Savages treated dreams seriously and with respect. They slowly woke up the sleepers to give the soul time to return. Problems with waking up the unconscious or injured meant that the ghost moved further away; and that he can escape for good. Which death seemed to confirm.
Religion
The inevitable consequence of associating dreams with spirits, and then with the soul, was to associate them with religion. In the past, which is not unheard of today, we were convinced that it was then that God spoke to us. The power of dreams is deeply rooted in us, and their volatile aftertaste only favored such tendencies. Imagine how such beliefs must have influenced the content of dogmas or shamanic rituals.
The Urantia Book says directly: “… spirit personalities do not utilize ordinary dreams in their attempts to contact material beings”. The issue of communication with the dead is similar. The deceased never and in any way contact their living relatives; this also applies to any night visits. Visiting the deceased is nothing more than a figment of the mind. Moses tried to eradicate such erroneous views.
Jesus, in his discourse “Magic and Superstition“, referred to dreams as follows:
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.
150:3.9 (1681.4)
Extraordinary dreams
However, when we take a closer look at contacts with God, the matter of dreams will not be so obvious. In the passage quoted above, “ordinary dreams” caught my attention. If God does not communicate with us through ordinary dreams, then perhaps He does so through extraordinary dreams? Jesus also used the phrase “to a large extent”.
Before I further this subject, I will mention a few words about the Thought Adjuster. To put it simply: According to the records of The Urantia Book, a Thought Adjuster is a fragment of the Universal Father which resides in the mind of (almost) every human being. So we can say that God is always with us; He personally supports each of us and patiently leads us towards good. The personality of those who sincerely and finally attune their wills to the Father’s will forever be united with him. Literally, we will become one with God, for eternity.
In the context of the topic under discussion, it is important that the Thought Adjuster, that is, de facto God, can communicate with us during dreams. So what is it like in the Bible? First, ghosts do not communicate with us in this way, and then they do it?
To understand this apparent inconsistency, we must first look at the following message:
It 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.
110:5.5 (1208.4)
The fact that we have a fragment of God Himself within us, or that He communicates with us, does not mean that He does it in the way and for the purpose we think we do, or in the way we would like it to be.
Our spiritual development has barely begun to crawl. This religious immaturity invariably, though erroneously, connects spirit with matter. The Adjusters support our spiritual progress; exclusively spiritual. And this, contrary to priestly assurances, has nothing to do with earthly life. Despite countless proofs of this, we still stubbornly know better. That is why we must be treated like children. To paraphrase the above Message: It is better for us to ignore the actual voice of the Universal Father than to give our exclusively human experience a divine meaning. In other words: It’s better if you don’t eat a nutritious mushroom at all than if you eat toadstools…
It turns out that from the aforementioned extraordinariness, you can safely exclude about 99.99% of dreams. However, I will not tell you how to sense which dreams are ordinary and which are not. Personally, I treat all kinds of nightmares, Hollywood chases, visions of the future and returns to the past, or other dreamed sexual pranks, only as a form of entertainment. I have strange dreams. Stranger than others, ones I can’t name; as if they were inexpressible. Maybe it’s these? I do not know. I leave this 0.01% in the sphere of subjective interpretations, but the above-quoted Message always helps with doubts.
Remaining with the nocturnal influences of the Thought Adjusters, it is worthy of mention that some of them may temporarily leave us. This happens during sleep, “[…] for the purpose of communication, contact, re-registration or other superhuman service …[…]”.
I don’t know what this means in practice. Nor can extraordinary dreams reflect this disconnection in any way, although the following passage from the paper seems to confirm such assumptions:
The heaven conceived by most of your prophets was the first of the mansion worlds of the local system. When the apostle spoke of being “caught up to the third heaven”, he referred to that experience in which his Adjuster was detached during sleep and in this unusual state made a projection to the third of the seven mansion worlds.
48:6.23 (553.4)
In passing we should remember that the divine Adjusters cannot (or do not will) arbitrarily influence human thought. And they never do. And they are certainly not a chattering voice in your head. During sleep the Thought Adjuster attempts to achieve only that which the human will, as a result of its resolutions and fully conscious decisions, has one hundred percent approved.
While 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.
110:5.4 (1208.3)
Good morning
To make it not so easy, I also found Messages that speak directly about the visits of superhuman personalities during sleep. And this further complicates the distinction between which are ordinary and which are not. I myself have never experienced anything even similar to such a visit, but many people are still happy to tell similar stories today. Especially those who are greedy for applause and influence.
Joseph 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.
122:4.1 (1347.3)
These 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”.
122:8.6 (1352.2)
Good night
As usual, The Urantia Book leaves us room for our own thoughts. Also encourages them. How to distinguish ordinary dreams from extraordinary ones? And if they were to succeed, what could they mean for us? What is the nocturnal “recording of the creativity of Thought Adjusters in the higher realms of the material mind”? I don’t know.
If I were to distinguish any kind of dreams, it would be the aforementioned ineffable dreams; different from the rest, the ones that I can’t grasp, but which make a lasting impression on me. I tried to explain them, but I had to resort to such drastic simplifications that it ceased to have anything to do with their actual content. Ineffable dreams reveal nothing to me, or, horror of horrors, command me nothing; I do not foresee the future. Sometimes, however, what I have dreamed stays with me for years.
Undeniably, I have a certain aberration when it comes to dreams. They have been intriguing me for so long. Since I was a child, I like to dream (and sleep!), and I like all dreams. I tame even the worst nightmares. But whenever I have doubts as to their value or meaning, whenever the taste of a dream awakens religious emotions, I recall Paper (1208.4) 110:5.5. I don’t want to get fly agaric poisoning. That’s why I consider distance to be the healthiest approach. Therefore, it is the distance (and pleasant dreams) that I also wish you, the reader.