Page 20 - NAMAH-Oct-2024

Namah Vol. 32, Issue 3, 15th October 2024

psychological. Dreams use various means to modern science and the faith of our ancestors:
bring our healing into focus. They show us
how we can compensate for our deficiencies. “The strong likelihood that certain dreams can
When they need our attention, they dramatise prompt a placebo response gives us a way of
and exaggerate. When they want us to follow psychologically accounting for the prevalence
our hunch, parallel dreams corroborate our of incubation rituals and dream healing practices
hunches. The animus and shadows show up throughout the world. For Aristides, the
in our dreams asking us to integrate them. powerful and trusted authority trying to help
The ancients respected the diagnoses and him was Asclepius. For a Christian it might be
cures suggested by the unconscious. Jesus, a saint, or an angel. For a Muslim it might
be a special teacher or Imam. For an Australian
In Big Dreams, while describing the healing Aborigine it might be a mythic ancestor. The
centre at Pergamon, which was a temple rituals may involve sleeping on the right side
dedicated to the Greek god of healing, or the left side, high on a mountain top or deep
Asclepius, where dreams were incubated, within a cave — these are all means to the same
Bulkeley states, “The roots of modern Western basic end of stimulating a mystically charged
medicine may truly be said to lie among the dream that gives experiential power to the
slithering snakes of the temples of Asclepius individual’s belief in the active presence of a
(11).” Johnson goes a step further and states that benevolent caregiver (13).”
the healing we receive from the unconscious
heals not just our own individual psyche, Spiritual guidance from dreams
but all around us and the natural habitat we
live in: The third function of dreams is their
transcendent function. Dreams become our
“We find that the unconscious connects us to spiritual guides. A person who has reached
other people and to our entire environment; a level of consciousness where she can tap
therefore, when we focus a great deal of energy into dreams for spiritual guidance will also
within the inner world, a parallel energy often see survival and healing dreams. For her,
arises in the people or situations around us. In dreaming will become as important as waking
this way we can heal through our inner work life, or perhaps even more. Some cultures
that we never could have done through external have given primacy to dreamlife, such as the
means (12).” Tibetan culture. Tenzin Wangyal says:

The question is: can we cultivate faith in the “Most Tibetans — high spiritual masters and
unconscious healer? Placebo research has simple, ordinary people — consider dreams
helped to demonstrate that, “Finally it is faith to be a potential source of both the most
that cures”. This was the message given by profound spiritual knowledge and of guidance
the Mother of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram to for everyday life. Dreams are consulted to
the Ashram Nursing Home. Our ancestors diagnose illness, for indications that practices
knew this well. Faith works irrespective of of purification or clarification are needed, and
our religious inclinations. Here is a passage for indications that relationships to deities and
from Big Dreams that binds the knowledge of guardians need attention (14).”

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