The human brain has always fascinated me. This mass of jellylike tissue jammed into the skull sends and receives a phenomenal amount of information and enables us to transcend both time and space. It weighs only 51 oz at maturity but is probably the most complex machine in the known universe.
The human brain has evolved to the stage where it can create breathtaking music, beautiful art, stunning literature, amazing scientific insights, and mystical revelations. But it can also break down easily.
That's where Sigmund Freud came in. Born in what is now the Czech Republic one hundred years ago, his family soon moved to Vienna, and it was there that Freud grew up, married, and trained in neurology. During his many years of practice, he gained keen insights into the workings of the unconscious.
Freud's greatest discovery was that human beings can keep no secrets. We cannot help but reveal our innermost selves with the clothes we wear, the songs we hum, the tone of our voice, and everything else that we do. He was amazed to find that people are constantly expressing their unconscious thoughts, and they're totally unaware that they are doing so. To understand what they're saying, you only need to have eyes to see and ears to hear.
Freud also believed that lay buried in the unconscious were traumas that people suffered when they were infants or children. For example, Freud thought that many of his patients' symptoms stemmed from long-repressed memories of being sexually abused. And he believed that if people could draw those experiences out of their unconscious mind and into their consciousness, they could be cured.
He discovered that when patients talk about themselves while awake -- saying everything that came to mind, however unimportant or unpleasant it seemed - healing could come. Using this method of free association, Freud believed that the deepest and often darkest truths of the unconscious could be glimpsed. Psychoanalysis, as Freud called it, became a popular, though expensive, way for people to treat their psychological problems.
You might remember the scene from the film, Annie Hall, where Woody Allen says to Diane Keaton: I got time. I've got nothing 'til my analyst appointment. She says, Oh? You see an analyst? Just for 15 years. Says Woody ... I'm going to give him one more year and then I'm going to Lourdes. Actually, I think Woody could have used another 15 years easy.
Freud did a great service to humanity by helping us to come face to face with the unconscious. But he also slipped. I'm sure you all know what a Freudian slip is: it's when you mean one thing but say your mother - I mean, another.
Freud's slip was that he portrayed the unconscious as a subterranean world of primitive urges and desires, repressed during childhood and relentlessly clamoring for expression and fulfillment through dreams, mistakes, and symptoms. To him the human psyche was a cesspool of psychological and sexual perversity. What we're finding now however is that there are also great creative possibilities that await us just beneath the surface of our consciousness.
This year I've been doing a series of sermons on ways that modern science has transformed our modern day spirituality. It was Freud who gave me the idea when he proclaimed that humanity had been deeply wounded by three supreme events in our history.
- The first event, said Freud, is the cosmological wound. It came about when Copernicus and Galileo discovered that the Earth was not at the center of the cosmos. In fact, we are far off on the distant edge of the universe, a small and insignificant planet.
- The second wound is the biological wound. Charles Darwin revealed to us that God did not create us or endow us with a sacred mission. Instead of being earthly angels we are descendants of amoebas and apes and the snout.
- The third wound is the psychological wound brought by Freud himself. He showed us that the unconscious was filled with dark sexual desires and a primeval urge for power and violence.
There is no doubt that each of these major revelations have caused much pain and confusion to the human race, causing many people feel spiritually lost and alone. Some close their eyes to this new reality and pretend that they still live in a world where humanity will always be at the center of the universe, where God created us in the garden, and where our consciousness is pristine and innocent.
But, as the contemporary psychologist Jean Houston points out, Freud slipped when he forgot that for every great wound there is a great healing. That's the purpose of truth: not to defeat us, not to diminish our being, but to sustain us, to give us new dreams to reach for, to heal the wounds that threaten our existence, to knock out walls that imprison us.
- We are not the center of the cosmos but by recognizing our place in the universe we can join ourselves with the cosmos, feeling our unity with the stars, being at one with a world much grander than we can ever imagine.
- In discovering our lineage from amoeba and apes we can now affirm our kinship with all life on this planet and to the Earth itself.
- And finally, our psyche does contain dark and dangerous desires, but we also know that there are regions of the mind that are so vast that we cannot come to the end of our possibilities as human beings. Our inner world, like the outer space we are just beginning to explore, is filled with wonders and mysteries.
Scott Peck tells us that When beginning to work with a new patient I will frequently draw a large circle. Then at the circumference I will draw a small niche. Pointing to the inside of the niche, I say, "That represents your conscious mind. All the rest of the circle, 95 percent or more, represents your unconscious. If you work long enough and hard enough to understand yourself, you will come to discover that this vast part of your mind, of which you now have little awareness, contains riches beyond imagination."
There is a boundless hidden continent within every human being, a continent most of us are barely aware of. This continent of the unconscious rises up in the silent times of our lives, when we listen to music or contemplate art, but most especially in the middle of the night when we sleep. And then when we open our eyes and resume our daily activities, it slips beneath the sea like the lost island of Atlantis, usually not even remembered.
Freud believed that dreams were the primary gateway to the unconscious, but what he didn't understand was that the purpose of dreams is to sustain, support, reveal and teach. His assumption was that dreams were the portal where the demons escaped.
There's a Peanut's cartoon that shows the eternally inadequate Charlie Brown visiting his favorite psychiatrist, Lucy. He gives her seven cents and then asks her about the function of dreams, what are they for? Lucy, without batting an eye, replies, "The dreams of the night prepare you for the day that follows...it's at night when you're sleeping that your brain is really working...trying to sort our everything for you...trying to make you see yourself as you really are." After that enlightening statement, Charlie Brown turns away with a depressed look on his face, saying, "Even my brain is against me."
Sorry Charlie Brown; Lucy is right. But as usual your conclusion is wrong. The best reason to work with dreams, to listen to what they have to say about us, is to get the brain on our side, to create a whole human being who can grow and find meaning in life.
I've found that one of the most effective ways for me to unlock the vast treasures within the unconscious is to try and understand my dreams. I've done dream work for many years now, and for me, the dream world is the greatest of all mysteries, the very home of imagination, where I might be a hero at one moment and a demon the next. In my dreams I have found gifts that have helped to transform me as a human being.
Most of us don't recall many of their dreams, but research has shown that each and every one of us has over a thousand dreams a year. Why do we recall so few of these dreams? The answer is simple: what determines whether you recall dreams or not is our willingness to confront the unconscious mind. If we take dreams seriously, if we listen to their messages and use their insights to improve our lives, then our dreamworld opens its gates for us.
One reason we give for ignoring our dreamworld is that it's so difficult to understand. Such strange and unreal images float through our dreams, such grotesque and incomprehensible events take place, that we would just as soon drink our coffee and be off to the so-called "real" world of work or school than struggle with the meaning of our dreams.
Where do these demons and angels, these freaks and fantasies, come from? Why do they visit us when our guard is down, when we are helpless to avoid their invasion?
The reason these images come to us in the night is precisely because our guard is down, and there is nothing we can do to keep them out. The sleeping brain is able to reveal these truths to us because it's not having to pay attention to the outside world. In fact, brain wave records indicate that the dreaming brain is even more active than the waking brain.
Dreams are like a Spielberg movie director who uses pictures to focus on events that need more reflection. The director takes certain feelings and tries to express them through images. The images may come from childhood or from something that happened during that particular day or they may be images that are so unbelievable that they cannot be attached to any event in one's life.
Our dream director takes these images and creates a montage or a drama that will help us to integrate the conscious and unconscious minds, the day with the night. Our brain is reflecting on various events that occurred during our day that we did not have time to reflect on or to resolve.
Dream Power realizes that these events and emotions are important in our becoming a better human being, and so during the dream state our brain takes the time to reflect on the events and to teach us their meaning. Did you listen to the Three Dreams by Willis Harman in our meditation this morning? Those dreams are beautiful creations of the unconscious that seek to bring understanding and unity to the dreamer.
There are symbols in dreams for the same reason that images are used in poetry and art. We want to express our thoughts and feelings as clearly as possible. We want to convey meaning as precisely and economically as we can. And we want to clothe our concepts in beauty. You've heard the saying that a picture is worth a thousand words; our dreams use pictures to express what we are feeling deep down about ourselves and our world.
Religions use symbols and myths for the same purpose: by relating to images and stories of the past we are able to better know ourselves and develop sustaining relationships with our environment. Joseph Campbell wrote that, Mythologies are in fact the public dreams that move and shape societies; and conversely, one's own dreams are the little myths of the private gods, antigods and guardian powers that are moving and shaping oneself.
When another mythologist asked a hunter in the Kalahari Desert to tell his story of the Beginning of Time, the man replied, "Well, that's a very difficult thing because, you must know, there's a dream dreaming us." The Aboriginals of Australia believe that we have always lived in the Dreamtime. And it was Shakespeare who wrote, "We are the stuff/As dreams are made of."
We do live in a dreamworld in the sense that it is up to each of us to find meaning in life as we find meaning in our dreams. We fear the unconscious, like Charlie Brown, because it is the unknown. But the purpose of the unconscious is to do what is best for us, giving us gifts of insight, healing our wounds, and working to make us better human beings. The catch is that to gain this insight, to be healed, to grow, we need to immerse ourselves in the unconscious.
One of the purposes of our worship is to help us to open ourselves to the power of the unconscious. Through music, meditation and prayer we give that creative and healing energy the opportunity to touch us.
In our worship and in our dreams we are seeking a balance between the yin and yang of the conscious and unconscious. Dreams cry out for our consciousness to listen to the messages they have for us. If we refuse to listen, then the dreams will cry out louder and louder until we have nightmares or life crises.
The primal peoples brought their dreams into consciousness by acting and dancing them out. They took dreams seriously, believing that dream figures were spirits. By paying special attention to dreams, they enjoyed a depth and richness in life unknown to us in the modern West.
One such primal tribe which still exists today is the Senoi of the Malay Peninsula. The Senoi claim there has not been a violent crime or an intercommunal conflict in their tribal society for two to three hundred years. The reason is partly because dreams are such a vital part of their lives.
For the Senoi their dream life is just as real as their conscious life, and they work hard to become masters of it. Every morning they share their dreams with each other and with their children, working together to find the messages in their dreams and to find ways to live out the messages in their conscious lives.
The Senoi children learn that when they are fearful of some dark force in a dream they should always advance and attack it. Nothing in the dreamworld can hurt you, they are taught, and so they become the bravest of internal warriors who seek to transform their enemies into allies and to sprout wings and fly when they are thrown off of a cliff.
Thus they're able to learn one of the essential lessons of personal growth: that we must have the courage and willingness to confront and embrace the forces we fear in ourselves. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could encourage our children to have the same courage?
A major obstacle Westerners must overcome in our search for spirituality is that we tend to see the conscious world as being superior to the subconscious. In Hindu and Buddhist traditions, dream-mind and sleep-mind share equally with waking-mind in the composition of human identity.
For instance, the chant of AUM symbolizes all three modes of consciousness so that by chanting that sacred sound you are able to intertwine them together into one. The A of AUM symbolizes wakefulness; the U symbolizes the dream-mind; and the M symbolizes deep sleep. AUM as a whole represents the all-encompassing cosmic consciousness which exists beyond words and consciousness. Unfortunately, our Western psychology and religion is greatly limited in comparison.
Freud brought about many advances in dream theory but also some major obstacles. One of Freud's inventions was the Disguise Theory which stated in essence that dreams are out to deceive us with disguises that can only be penetrated by an expert who will force the dreamer to accept the unpleasant truths that are being avoided.
Carl Jung, a disenchanted disciple of Freud's, reversed that theory. He claimed that symbols in dreams reveal rather than conceal the truth from the dreamer. Jung went on to say that, In each of us there is another whom we do not know. He speaks to us in dreams and tells us how differently each of us are from the way we see ourselves. When, therefore, we find ourselves in a difficult situation to which there is no solution, he can sometimes kindle a light that radically alters our attitudeBthe very attitude that led us into the difficult situation.
That one-we-do-not-know Jung called the unconscious, and he claimed that when the conscious and unconscious learn to live at peace and to complement one another we finally become whole and happy and at peace with ourselves. In the same spirit, the poet, Kabir, wrote that: Between the conscious and the unconscious, the mind has put up a swing: all earth creatures, even the supernovas, sway between these two trees, and it never winds down.
I encourage you to sway on that swing, listening to your dreams and daydreams, seeking balance in meditation, playing music, creating art, moving freely between the conscious and unconscious. When we sway on that swing, we are soul-making; we are fashioning meaning and purpose and spirit. And we are on the journey to a fuller life.
RESOURCES:
Dream Power by Ann Faraday, Berkley Publishing Group.
An Intimate History of Humanity by Theodore Zeldin, Harper Perennial.
A Mythic Life by Jean Houston, Harper Collins.
A Search for the Beloved by Jean Houston, Harper Collings
