Page 24 - NAMAH-Jul-2020

Namah Vol. 28, Issue 2, 15th July 2020

dreams heal us — psychologically, physically, Spiritual guidance from dreams
in our relationships with others and the earth.
Lastly, dreams help us connect with our The third function of dreams is the
spiritual essence. transcendent function. Dreams become our
spiritual guides. A person who has reached
The healing power of dreams a level of consciousness where she can tap
into dreams for spiritual guidance will
Often people who have a physical ailment also see survival and healing dreams. For her,
get clues of their healing from dreams. dreaming will become as important as waking
In a sense, we all seek healing, physical life, or perhaps even more. Some cultures have
or psychological. Dreams use various given primacy to dream-life, such as the Tibetan
means to bring our healing into focus. culture. Tenzin Wangyal states:
They show us how we can compensate
for our deficiencies. When they need our “Most Tibetans — high spiritual masters and
attention, they dramatise and exaggerate. simple, ordinary people — consider dreams
When they want us to follow our hunch, to be a potential source of both the most
parallel dreams corroborate our hunches. profound spiritual knowledge and of guidance
The animus and shadows show up in our for everyday life. Dreams are consulted to
dreams asking us to integrate them. The diagnose illness, for indications that practices
ancients respected the diagnoses and cures of purification or clarification are needed, and
suggested by the unconscious. Johnson goes for indications that relationships to deities and
a step further and states that the healing guardians need attention(11).”
we receive from the unconscious heals
not just our own individual psyche, but Dream yoga in Indian spiritual traditions
all those around us and the natural habitat
we live in: we find that the unconscious In the Integral Yoga laid down by the
connects us to other people and to our entire spiritual masters, Sri Aurobindo and the
environment; therefore, when we focus a Mother, dreaming is an important aspect of
great deal of energy within the inner world, saadhanaa, the yogic practice. In the Mother’s
a parallel energy often arises in the people conversations, as recorded by her disciples
or situations around us. In this way we can over decades, often she describes her dream
heal through our inner work that we never experiences. She does not call them dreams,
could have done through external means (9). to distinguish between her conscious
experiences and unconscious dreams. After
The question is: can we cultivate faith in the Sri Aurobindo’s passing in 1950, the Mother
unconscious healer? Placebo research has would report how he talked to her about their
helped to demonstrate that, “Finally it is Faith yoga in her dream experiences. She recounts
that cures (10)”. This was the message given one of her dream experiences in 1970 where
by the Mother of Sri Aurobindo Ashram to a dream event indicated a profound change
the Ashram Dispensary. Our ancestors knew in the real world:
this well. Faith works irrespective of our
religious inclinations. “Not last night but the night before, for the

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