by Tina Grady
illustration by Dave Molinaro

People have always been interested in the unknown and the mysterious.

Dreams are a common focus of human inquiry, right along with debates over the plausibility of alien life. But unlike extraterrestrial encounters, dreams happen every night around the world and have done so for thousands of years.

The ancient Greek philosopher and playwright Aristotle believed dreams were a healing resource. "He often talked about dreams being able to reveal subtle bodily changes that would lead to illnesses - changes that wouldn't be revealed in the waking state," says Bulkeley, who is also a professor at the Graduate Theological Union at the University of California-Berkeley, where he teaches about dreams and spirituality.

Others alive during the time of Aristotle shared his dedication to dreams. The ancient Greeks built temples throughout the Mediterranean region to honor Asclepius, the mythological god of healing. People would go to the temples, pray to the gods and drift off to sleep.

"While they slept," Bulkeley says, "they waited for a dream to come from the gods. There were hundreds of reports that gods came to them in dreams. Virtually every culture throughout history has regarded dreams as important and worth paying attention to. Some have seen dreams as divine intervention - that dreams were a good way of communicating with the divine, whether it was God, ancient spirits or sacred powers."

The ancient Chinese and Japanese cultures held the universal belief that dreams helped to heal both the body and the mind. "In modern culture, it's the same kind of thing," Bulkeley says. "It is just more modernized." Dreams still fascinate, and some even believe dreams can be therapeutic.

The Australian aborigines, whose culture dates back more than 40,000 years, used dreams to connect themselves to mysterious spirits and as a vital resource in the process of becoming a shaman, according to Malcolm Goodwin's The Lucid Dreamer - A Waking Guide for the Traveler Between Worlds, a book dedicated to nocturnal experiences. The aborigines believed that the shaman, or "karadji," was taught by the "rai," or spirits, through conscious dreaming. Dreams were the way to connect the aboriginal people with "Dreamtime," a primal state that allows them to embrace "the creation of the world at the dawn of time" and to connect to the dimension of the mythical beings responsible for creating the universe.

The Iban shamans of Indonesia, Taoists and Buddhists were not only conscious of dreams, but also integrated them into their cultures. And in 12th-century Tibet, Dream Master schools were set up because dreaming was seen as a powerful method of meditation that could help speed up the enlightenment process. "Some people used to think that the soul left the body, and then came back during dreams," says Benjamin Newberry, a Kent State professor of psychology who has done research on dreams. "Dreams have had a huge spiritual significance."

But the history of dreams still doesn't answer all the questions.

"There is a lot of controversy over whether dreams are important phenomena," Bulkeley says. "Some experts think they are just the 'frothy stuff' that bubbles up during sleep." Some dreams are just nonsense, but even those dreams serve a valuable function, he says. Dreams help the brain process new information, help consolidate new memory and help maintain a "sense of emotional balance."

Newberry says dreams are legitimate and necessary to function in the waking state. From evidence charted in sleep laboratories, Newberry says that if a person is physically waked up while dreaming, he or she "becomes irritable and tired."

Dreams most likely reflect individuals' waking preoccupations, but during the slumber state, the brain allows itself to delve further into those thoughts.

"When you go to sleep, your brain doesn't completely shut down," Newberry says. "You are just conscious in a different way." Dreams occur during the state of sleep known as rapid eye movement, more commonly referred to as R.E.M., into which the brain enters about four or five times every night.

"The brain becomes incredibly lively during this state," says Bulkeley, whose doctorate of philosophy has an emphasis on dreams and spirituality. "In fact, the brain is as active in R.E.M. as it is when you're awake. In that sense, evolution has created us to be dreaming creatures."

Many people argue that they do not dream, but Bulkeley isn't convinced by such a claim. "The functions of dreaming are valuable - even if you don't remember the dream. We are not always aware our stomach is digesting food, but it happens. Dreams are the mind digesting an experience," Bulkeley says. "It is probably a good thing that we do not remember everything because there wouldn't be enough room in our heads."

Bulkeley says there is "a natural ebb and flow" to remembering dreams. Daily experiences help to create dreams, and when dreams are remembered, it serves as a kind of signal for a person to give the problem or concern "some conscious reflections," he says. "If you do remember a dream, there may be a reason it has stuck with you."

Dreams can be used as a tool because if a person has a recurring dream every night - and it does not gradually change bit by bit - it can signal that there is a problem. Unchanging, recurrent dreams are a cause for concern: Many times people who have been in wars or have been sexually abused have these type of dreams because of post-traumatic stress syndrome. "This can make the person aware he or she needs help," Bulkeley says.

But do some dreams delve so deep into the mind that they can produce psychic abilities and help a person foretell the future? "This is hard to study," Bulkeley says, "because you cannot just put someone in a sleep lab and say, 'Have a prophetic dream now.' You just can't do that. But I wouldn't rule out the possibility."

There have been thousands of documented cases in which people claim they have been warned of something or given a message about the future, Bulkeley says. One documented case involves the experience of President Abraham Lincoln.

In nearly every Lincoln biography, the dream in which Lincoln may have foretold his own death is mentioned. According to numerous books, as described by family members to the authors, Lincoln dreamed before his assassination that he was in the White House and heard people talking about someone having died. In the dream, he jumped out of bed and went to the East Wing of the White House and saw a coffin. He watched people standing around a coffin crying, so he asked, "Who is dead in the White House?" and was told, "The President. He was assassinated." Then Lincoln woke up. Two weeks later, he was shot at the Ford's Theater, and died soon after.

"If this is not a random coincidence, how can you explain something like that?" Bulkeley says. "If nothing else, since we assume he was not making it up, this is at least a reason to keep studying dreams. This is all very exiting. It is, and will probably remain, a controversial area of research for a long, long time. Just think of dreams as a gift from the deeper part of the mind. Dreams open up a window to the deepest tower of the human mind and soul."

Dreams are a bizarre and mysterious phenomenon, but there is a way to discover the underlying meaning, Bulkeley says. "If you look at dreams and ask questions, meanings start to emerge," he says. "But there is not a one-size-fits-all meaning. It would be nice if this were true, but every person's dreams come out of their own life context."

First, the dreamer needs to ask himself or herself a question of specification "because dreams have infinite creative abilities," Bulkeley says. Simple parts of dreams that are often overlooked can indicate the underlying importance behind a dream. "Ask questions and let the answers emerge," he says. "But don't overly intellectualize. This requires letting go of some of the rational ways we think."

Another part of interpretation explores the places in a dream to help discover meaning. "Look at the places in a dream with a sudden change and transition," he says. "Points of change are often where something new is being created."

Bulkeley says a person also needs to pay attention to exactly what changed, how it changed and if this is the kind of change the person dreaming would make in his or her own waking life. "You need to ask yourself, 'Is this dream giving me an idea?" It may be providing new potentials and new visions of life."

And to set the record straight, not all dreams are about repressed sexual wishes as claimed by psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud's theory, Bulkeley says. "The emergence of sexual and romantic dreams can be troubling, and part of dreaming seems to be part of the arousal," he says. But romantic and sexual issues are so predominant in some relationships or in some people's minds they are natural subjects for dreams.

"Many dreams do deal with concerns and desires, but they are not necessarily about sex," Bulkeley says. "Not every long object that occurs in a dream is phallic and not every time an enclosed object appears does it symbolize something vaginal. This is a bad interpretation."

These sexual dreams can symbolize "deeper, creative powers," he says. Sexuality can be the symbol for general creativity.

Though dreams should not be discounted, Bulkeley warns that some people are offering false interpretations.

"There is all sorts of silly stuff," he says. "There are booklets that have symbols in dreams that say you can match them to the winning lottery numbers. This only takes advantage of gullible people."

People should never believe everything that "experts," like himself, say about dreams, Bulkeley says.

"While it's usually helpful to hear what professional researchers say about the possible meanings of a dream, in the end, only the dreamer can know for sure what the dream means for his or her life," he says. "The key test is always the dreamer's own personal intuition."

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