A Spiritual Perspective on Dreams and Sleep
"It is only when we wake from dreams that we know we have been dreaming. Similarly, this life may be realized as a dream only when we awake in Cosmic Consciousness."
Paramahansa Yogananda

By
Dr. Joshua David Stone

Dreams are a feedback mechanism of our subconscious mind and Higher Self. Most of us don't have the ability to talk to our soul, or Higher Self, directly in a voice, so the soul uses dreams as one of the ways it seeks to communicate with us. Most of our dreams, however are created by the subconscious mind until that time that the incarnated personality begins to awaken spiritually.

Dreams are like a newspaper printout of our previous day's thinking, feeling, and actions. Instead of this newspaper being in words it is in symbols. The key to understanding dreams is to understand that every part of the dream is a part of ourselves. By examining the organization of these symbols in the dream we can become more conscious of what we are creating, and causing to happen in our lives.

It is very important to understand that the conscious mind is not always conscious. For example, maybe we are being rude to people in real life and are not really aware of it. Our dreams can then give us a dream of a very rude individual taking his irritability out on people. The subconscious and/or superconscious mind is giving us feedback. We cannot come into self mastery of a pattern unless we know what it is.

A lot of people don't pay attention to dreams because they don't understand what they mean. Dreams are like a foreign language. When you are first exposed to a foreign language it is meaningless. Once you study that language, in a very short time it is easy to understand. The same is true of dreams. Dreams are the foreign language or really the universal language of symbols.

Very often people will have prophetic dreams, or dreams of past lives, which are a category of dreams unto themselves. Another common occurrence for people is to have recurring dreams. These types of dreams are especially important for it is saying the subconscious mind and/or soul are trying to make you aware of a certain pattern in which you are stuck.

Most of our dreams, as I have already said, speak to the inner organization of our thought and emotional patterns, however sometimes dreams can also be giving a clear outer life statement. For example, if you dream about a particular person who is about to get in a car crash, the dream may be reflecting that person as being an inner symbol or part of your own personality that is about to crash. Or the dream might be making a statement about this real life person. Maybe your Higher Self and soul, is giving that other person guidance through yourself. That is why I am a firm believer in sharing my dreams with my friends and loved ones when I have dreams about them.

In interpreting dreams there are personal symbols and universal symbols. It is always safer to look at the symbols in your dreams as personal. An example of this might be the symbol of a cat. The standard universal meaning for a cat is independence in most dream books. You, however, may have had certain experiences in childhood that gave cats a special and specific meaning for you besides this, or other than this.

It is also very important when dealing with your dreams not to give your power to them. I bring this up because I know people who have had a bad dream and they let the bad dream depress a good part of their day. We must find a balance of honoring and acknowledging our dreams, yet also understanding that we need to own our personal power and cause our own reality.

It is also a very helpful practice in the morning to reenact our dreams. When we get up in the morning there are certain dreams that we don't like the outcome of. For example someone may be breaking into our house and stealing things. We can reprogram this negative pattern by re-visualizing the dream in the morning and having the police come and arrest this burglar and take him to jail, and then have all our things returned. This procedure corrects the faulty pattern that the dream was indicating to us.

Another common process in dreams is to be flying. This could be a symbol that we are flying in our lives in a psychological sense, however, it could also be a real experience. When we dream at night we leave and very often "astral project". Our flying dreams are, hence, a lucid dream of our astral travels.

Another common phenomena in dreams is for the Masters to contact us in our dreams. When we are dreaming we are experiencing ourselves in a spiritual state without our physical bodies, so it is easy for the Masters to enter our dreams. Sai Baba, the great Master from India, has said that no one ever dreams about Him without His willing it.

Carl Jung, the great Swiss psychologist and contemporary of Freud, called some dreams big dreams, and other ones more normal dreams. Big dreams were the ones that were even more important to remember because they were often created by the soul, or the Masters.

Very often people get scared when they die in a dream. They think that this means that they are going to die. This is most often not the case. When you have a dream of yourself, or some part of yourself that is dying, this can be a very positive dream. This could symbolically mean that you are dying to a certain phase of your life, or part of yourself that is negative. You are being given a message of death and rebirth.

Another confusing symbolism to people is the act of making love in a dream to someone other than your spouse. This does not mean that you should do this in real life, or is something you should be embarrassed of. When we make love to someone we are symbolically connecting with that part of ourselves. Focus on the meaning and symbolism of the person you are making love to.

The Senoi Indians' entire culture is based on dreams. They look at dreams as being almost more important than real life. Every morning upon arising they share their dreams with each other as a sacred ritual. There are many wonderful books that have been written about this most amazing group of people.

Another common occurrence in dreams is to be given direct messages. Very often we don't even need to interpret our dreams, the meaning is given in a clear straight forward message by your soul, a Master, or some symbolic person in your dreams. Words in dreams very often have double meanings. For example, you might have a dream about bugs flying around. This may have to do with someone bugging you.

Another very important thing to look at in your dreams is to see where the conscious mind, or where you are in the dream. In other words, are you just watching the dream, or are you actively participating. An example of this might be you being two hundred pounds over weight, eating too much food, in the kitchen.

This dream image as compared to watching someone else be over weight and eating too much food is a very important differentiation. The dream image where you are watching this occur shows "disidentification" from the process. The pattern of overeating is still in play, however you are aware of it. In the first dream there is no awareness of disidentification from the pattern.

This example gives the importance of watching the sequence of dreams you are having. By watching the sequence of dreams you are having you can watch the development of your consciousness, from total identification to a negative pattern, to disidentification, to self mastery.

This is a very easy process. All one needs to do is give their subconscious mind suggestions right before bed. This can be done verbally, or in writing. Writing might even be better because the physicalness of doing it helps it get into the subconscious mind a little easier. Just say, or write, "I am remembering my dreams tonight" ten times. This will program your subconscious mind, to wake you up.

It is then a good idea to have a small lamp or flash light and pen and paper near your bed. If you don't write the dream down or at least take some notes it is a good likelihood you will forget it in the morning. The interesting thing about dreams is that you remember them from the back forward. They are like a thread or fishing line which you are reeling in. If you don't catch that initial line it drifts away.

It is of the highest importance that you write your dreams down at least in the morning. Just the act of writing them down is healing and integrating. Often the meaning will come to you later in the day or days, or even weeks later. They are also helpful to refer back to when watching your dream sequences.

If you get stuck in interpreting them pray to your Higher Self and soul for help. They will give you immediate insights then or later in the day when you are in a more quiet and receptive moment. It is also important to try and watch how your inner life perfectly correlates with your outer life. Remember what Hermes said in his great Hermetic Law, "As within, so without. As above, so below."

Another very interesting phenomena of the sleep state is sleep walking. What is happening here is the person is identified with their astral body, however the physical body is moving along with the process.

I once had a client who was a young adolescent. About two hours before bed he was planning to steal his parents car and go visit his girl friend. After planning this whole affair out, he changed his mind just before bed and decided it wasn't worth the risk of getting in trouble and getting punished. His conscious mind decided not to do it, however the plan was still in his subconscious mind, and this was an adolescent that was not in control of his subconscious mind.

What happened was that he started to sleep walk and proceeded to steal the keys and push the car out of the driveway and down the street. The car was a block and a half down the street, then he got in the car to start it up when he woke up.

A good lesson here is about the importance of gaining self mastery over the subconscious mind in service of the superconscious mind or soul. This is an example of what can happen when the three minds are all doing separate things and aren't in alignment.

Every night while we sleep we travel in our different bodies. There are classes in all parts of the world every night on the inner plane which are held by the Masters and their initiates. Most people don't realize that while the physical body is sleeping and obtaining its needed rest, we can be going to spiritual workshops and seminars of the highest order.

In the chapter on the Mighty I Am Presence I presented a number of prayers for requesting to be taught on the inner plane while one sleeps. Most people don't take advantage of the tremendous opportunity for spiritual growth that is available to them.

When you sleep one third of self is shut down, and the other two thirds (subconscious and superconscious) are left to be active. Most people function on the astral plane while they sleep, however it is possible and highly recommended to go to higher dimensions if possible.

What governs this is asking to go to the soul or spiritual planes before bed. The other thing that determines this is what you are thinking about before bed. In the "Bhagavad Gita" it says, that where you go when you die is the last thought on your mind before death. The same is true of sleeping. Where you go is the last thought on your mind.

This is why it is terrible to watch the news before bed. The ideal thing to do is to do spiritual work, reading, study, journal writing, meditation or prayer for the last 30 minutes or hour before bed. This will assure you to traveling to a higher level, minimally the higher astral plane.

It is also important to know that the quality of your physical sleep and level of physical rejuvenation will be greatly governed by your thoughts before bed. The physical body is not a machine. It is a synergistic, holistic organism whose quality of sleep is determined by the thoughts you are thinking, and the feelings you are experiencing and creating.

The monad and soul and Master have a very direct connection into your subconscious mind while you sleep. They have this connection when you are awake, however the conscious mind with its critical thinking, and unceasing chatter tends to get in the way. While sleeping you are in a state much like hypnosis, which is hyper-suggestable and totally open. Almost every body goes to school in dream state, even those who are not consciously aware of wanting to go to school. It is the soul that is in charge of each person's course of study. Your prayer requests can and do affect that nature of schooling that does occur, so do take responsibility for your co-creative part in this process.

Many of the Archangels are teachers in the inner classrooms. Some incarnated personalities do service work during dream time. Souls that have died are aided by letting them know they are no longer in the physical, and are lead into the light and towards their next step in their evolution.

Another thing to be careful of is to not go to sleep angry and filled with negative emotions. These thoughts and emotions can pull you like a magnet into the lower astral planes, which are the hell regions traditional to which traditional religions refer.

Sometimes when we are tired in the morning it is because we have worked long and hard on the inner plane. Sometimes this work has to do with going over blueprints, trying to get something built on the astral plane. Often things are built on the astral plane first before they are brought into existence on the physical plane. Some people enjoy the activities of the sleep realm more than the awake state. The ideal, however, is to bring the spiritual state to one's earthly life.

At a specific and special point in your spiritual evolution the sleep state becomes even more important. This occurs when you have entered the path of probation and the path of initiation. It is at this time you enter the "Hall of Wisdom". You have moved to a higher set of classes and learning. It is like graduation from high school to college. The classes become much smaller, sometimes with only two or three students.

Occasionally in these classes you may hear the same lesson for a month straight so it gets totally reinforced into your subconscious mind. It is a way of learning in a more intense manner.

Most people average around seven to eight hours of sleep a night. You can accomplish all you need to get done in the sleep state in four hours, however. Some people sleep a great deal more if their conscious life is traumatized, as a means of escape.

There is an illness where a person falls asleep all the time. This is an extreme case of the subconscious mind not wanting to be here. People in mental hospitals will usually either sleep too much or won't sleep at all. This obviously has to do with their extreme emotional problems.

Very often great inventions and breakthroughs occur in the middle of the night. All knowledge already exists, and only has to be attuned to. At specific times the spiritual Hierarchy put into the earth's universal mind certain concepts and ideas. Those people with the proper attunement and receptivity will pick these ideas up.

This also occurs on a personal level. All that you need to do is state the question you are seeking the answer to. It can be about your personal life or an invention you are working on, or ideas for a script. Your subconscious mind and soul and higher teachers will give you the answers you are seeking. Many people think they are creating great paintings, music, theater, inventions, and so on, themselves. They are more often than not, not creating themselves. They are channeling them from the universal mind or spirit guides.

One other suggestion that I learned from Edgar Cayce is the importance of not eating right before bed. Edgar Cayce said this practice is one of the causes of nightmares.

Many people who are currently incarnated on the earthly plane volunteer to serve on the astral plane while sleeping. These work out of their bodies at night to aid people who are in transition, and by teaching and helping to expand awareness.

The psychological state of lucid dreaming is the state of consciousness of being conscious and aware even though your physical body is sleeping. There are four basic levels of this. The first level might be called witnessing. Witnessing is when you are very much aware you are sleeping, but very much aware of what is going on in the room.

The second phase is when you are sleeping and are aware you are dreaming, and the choices that you are making in your dreams. The fourth stage is that you are sleeping, and aware of your dreams and choices, and then use your will in the dream to create the dream the way you want to from a conscious state of awareness. This is the highest level of lucid dreaming, and most definitely one to be achieved if possible. This is the same process as reenacting your dreams in the morning, except that you are not doing it in the morning. You are doing it while the dream is actually occurring.

Another very important process that takes place within your dreams is the contacting and communicating with your eleven other soul extensions while you sleep. Remember, your monad or "Mighty I Am Presence" created twelve souls, and each of your twelve souls each created twelve soul extensions or personalities who incarnated into the material world. It is in the dream state that we have communication with other of the eleven soul mates or soul group, so to speak.

I was told by Djwhal Khul that I was like an oversoul or teacher to my eleven other soul extensions, and that I had been instrumental in their collective transformation. This all occurred even though on a conscious mind level I had been completely unaware of this.

One other interesting point on this front is that Djwhal Khul also told me that I had a co-dependent relationship to my other eleven soul extensions. When Djwhal told me this it didn't make sense, because I believe myself to be one of the least co-dependent people on planet earth. If anything, I tend to be too independent at times.

What Djwhal Khul explained to me was that what I had just said was true in my earthly relationships but in respect to my eleven other soul extensions, I had been running their karma through my physical body and that was weakening me. He explained to me that the spiritual Hierarchy wanted me to use this body for service, and to let my other soul extensions deal with their own karma and not use me to help them.

This immediately made total intuitive sense to me and I told my eleven other soul extensions in meditation, that I was cutting the co-dependent cords, and that they were on their own in terms of dealing with their own karma. From now on I was responsible for my karma alone and not theirs. They immediately listened and I have not had a problem since. This pattern occurred without me being consciously aware of it.

Your soul and the Ascended Masters can teach through symbols, and direct word communication, and they can communicate through direct emotion. When the emotional body is involved with the dream experience, the communication is far more rich and meaningful. These types of experiences can be very profound because of their emotional intensity.

A dream I had of this nature was when I went, in dream state, to India to be with Sai Baba. At one point in the dream I told Sai Baba how much I loved Him and I burst out crying with tears of love and devotion. Sai Baba came over to me with a box of kleenex and I saw a tear in His eye too. This dream was extraordinarily meaningful to me.

The interpretation of dreams begins with writing the dream down. Once the dream is written down the key is to isolate out each symbol in the dream and find the experiential meaning it has for you. In Gestalt Psychology it is done by actually physically experiencing or role playing the symbol. No interpretation is made until this is done for all the symbols in the dream.

Carl Jung, and Freud used a process of free association for each symbol in the dream. This method is obviously the most practical. An example of this might be to take a particular person who shows up in your dream and free associate as to the qualities and characteristics that describe them. It is important to write these free associations down on paper for each symbol you are working with Once you have completed this process you are ready for the actual interpretation.

It is important to realize that dreams are not telling us what to do, they are just describing in symbols what is actually happening within the organization of our thought, emotional and behavioral patterns.

One of the very big dangers of dream interpretation is that the way we interpret our dreams is going to be governed by our belief structure and outlook on life. Because of this fact there is a danger of self-deception. This process can be overcome to a certain extent by using one's inner guidance and intuition, and asking for the help of your soul and monad in the interpreting procedure.

Once the psychodynamics that are occurring are seen in the dream then it is the job of the conscious mind to make choices as to whether you want to continue the pattern that is in operation. If you don't then you need to exercise your personal power and will to change the patter, and to do visualizing and affirmations to reprogram the subconscious power of all three minds in your life, not just one or two.

If you have a dream that some else is driving your car, then you want to examine who it is and what meaning that person has for you. If the person driving your car is your crazy erratic grandmother, then the dream means that the crazy erratic grandmother part of you is driving your life.

Being nude in a classroom means that you are not "mentally prepared or protected". The symbol of the being in the basement or upstairs would have to do with being in the subconscious realm, or realm of the Higher Self.