Dreaming in the World's Religions
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Dreaming in the World's Religions

A Comparative History

Kelly Bulkeley

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eBook - ePub

Dreaming in the World's Religions

A Comparative History

Kelly Bulkeley

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About This Book

From Biblical stories of Joseph interpreting Pharoh’s dreams in Egypt to prayers against bad dreams in the Hindu Rg Veda, cultures all over the world have seen their dreams first and foremost as religiously meaningful experiences. In this widely shared view, dreams are a powerful medium of transpersonal guidance offering the opportunity to communicate with sacred beings, gain valuable wisdom and power, heal suffering, and explore new realms of existence. Conversely, the world’s religious and spiritual traditions provide the best source of historical information about the broad patterns of human dream life

Dreaming in the World’s Religions provides an authoritative and engaging one-volume resource for the study of dreaming and religion. It tells the story of how dreaming has shaped the religious history of humankind, from the Upanishads of Hinduism to the Qur’an of Islam, from the conception dream of Buddhas mother to the sexually tempting nightmares of St. Augustine, from the Ojibwa vision quest to Australian Aboriginal journeys in the Dreamtime. Bringing his background in psychology to bear, Kelly Bulkeley incorporates an accessible consideration of cognitive neuroscience and evolutionary psychology into this fascinating overview.

Dreaming in the World’s Religions offers a carefully researched, accessibly written portrait of dreaming as a powerful, unpredictable, often iconoclastic force in human religious life.

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Information

Publisher
NYU Press
Year
2008
ISBN
9780814791196

1

Hinduism

Have you ever had a dream so realistic that when you woke up you weren’t sure for a moment if you were actually awake or still dreaming? Have you ever woken up from a dream only to discover (after you’ve awakened for “real”) that you were still asleep and dreaming? Vivid yet confusing experiences like these grab our attention because they disrupt ordinary assumptions about the line that separates dreams from the waking world. Many people think of waking and dreaming as polar opposites, as synonymous with real and unreal, objective truth versus subjective fantasy. But this kind of sharp distinction is not a psychological given. Humans are not born with a predetermined concept of what happens when we dream. Our ideas about dreaming emerge over time as we grow older, gain experience of the world, and develop new cognitive abilities. Western psychologists have postulated a regular, universal series of conceptual stages in children’s understanding of the nature of dreams.1 This research indicates that very young children tend to believe that dreams are real material events occurring outside their bodies and are perceptible by other people. As they become older and develop greater cognitive maturity, children and their beliefs usually change so that dreams are understood as internal, nonmaterial images that only the dreamer can witness. Depending on the cultural and religious traditions in which the children are raised, a further developmental stage may be reached whereby they come to believe that most dreams are immaterial and internal to the individual but that at least some dreams are caused by external sources (God, ancestral spirits, demons, etc.), possessed of an authentic reality, and meaningful to both self and others. Whether this third stage should be considered an advance or a regression depends on your metaphysical point of view.
Whatever views you hold, you are likely to find them reflected somewhere in the multifaceted religious traditions of Hinduism. From its earliest sacred texts and rituals to its modern teachings and practices, Hinduism has much to say about the relationship between waking, dreaming, and reality. What kind(s) of reality do we experience in dreaming? How do those realities relate to waking life? Do experiences in dreams enable us to gain any kind of legitimate knowledge? How can we know if our waking reality right now is indeed real, and not a deceptive dream? I’m going to refer to these issues collectively as the ontological question of dreaming. For those of us influenced by the Western philosophical assumption that waking reality is reality and no other condition merits that term, the Hindu tradition offers an especially good introduction to the possibility that other authentic dimensions of reality may be disclosed in the natural cycles of sleeping and dreaming.

The Vedas

The Indus River flows for nearly two thousand miles from north to south through the South Asian subcontinent, drawing its original waters from the snowmelt of the Himalaya Mountains. As the Indus makes its way to the Arabian Sea, it is further swollen by the abundant rainfall of the area’s tropical climate, leading to fairly predictable patterns of seasonal storming and flooding. The earliest human settlements found along the Indus date back to the seventh millennium BCE. The rich soil of the Indus flood plain proved very hospitable to agricultural food production and thus to the development of increasingly populous and complex urban societies. Over time, several hundred towns and a few large cities arose, with common systems of language, measurement, and trading practice. By the third millennium BCE these people (known as the Dravidians, after their major language group) were at the height of their prosperity. Archeological evidence indicates that their civilization included various collective and private religious ceremonies. Most of the worship was directed at goddess figures responsible for fertility, crop growth, and the cycles of nature. Numerous terra-cotta statues and temple sculptures portray images of voluptuous divine females, along with a variety of other animals and mythical creatures.
Sometime after 2000 BCE a new group of people moved into the Indus River region. They were nomads from Central Asia who herded cattle and horses, and who brought their own complex social, cultural, and religious practices into contact with the agricultural traditions of the Dravidians. The newcomers (known as the Indo-Aryans) quickly established, by means both peaceful and violent, a vibrant new religious orientation for the people of the Indus River region. This new faith centered on ancient collections of knowledge (Vedas) that were orally transmitted through the generations, recited in poetic verses (mantras) whose spiritual potency emanated from the sacred sound (brahman) of the words themselves. Many of the Vedas revolved around a dramatic myth in which the world was created from the dismembered body of a cosmic man. An act of supreme self-sacrifice brought humans into being, and it is thus the responsibility of humans to sustain the created world by continuously repeating that primordial sacrifice. This emphasis on proper ritual practice as the essential safeguard for collective well-being naturally gave the Vedic priests (Brahmans, those who recite the verses) a great deal of power in society, and, over time, the Vedas came to include teachings governing all aspects of human life.
Between 1200 and 900 BCE, major compilations of the Vedas were written down, the foremost of which was the Rig Veda.2 With more than one thousand hymns devoted to a colorful multitude of gods and goddesses, the Rig Veda is more of a religious encyclopedia than a doctrinal statement, filled with multiple and sometimes conflicting perspectives on a vast array of topics. Many of its verses provide spells and incantations to help people with the practical concerns of their daily lives. Avoiding physical danger, protecting loved ones, gaining wealth and status, satisfying romantic desires, defeating enemies, insuring good weather and harvests—these are the immediate goals of ritual practice. The mundane, this-worldly focus of so much of the Rig Veda highlights the close connection in early Hindu tradition between transcendent religious power and the earthly challenges of human survival.
Only a handful of verses in the Rig Veda mention sleep or dreams, usually in a negative tone. This suggests that the Vedic priests did not take much interest in these phenomena. One of the few exceptions is the following prayer to Agni, the god of fire, to protect pregnant women and their fetuses:
Let Agni the killer of demons unite with this prayer and expel from here the one whose name is evil, who lies with disease upon your embryo, your womb.
The one whose name is evil, who lies with disease upon your embryo, your womb, the flesh-eater—Agni has driven him away with prayer.
The one who kills the embryo as it settles, as it rests, as it stirs, who wishes to kill it when it is born—we will drive him away from here.
The one who spreads apart your two thighs, who lies between the married pair, who licks the inside of your womb—we will drive him away from here. The one who by changing into your brother, or your husband, or your lover lies with you, who wishes to kill your offspring—we will drive him away from here.
The one who bewitches you with sleep or darkness and lies with you—we will drive him away from here.
The hymn addressed a very real source of danger to the Hindu people of that time, and indeed to all people at all times. Human pregnancy has always been filled with potentially fatal threats for the unborn fetus and gravid mother. Even in the era of modern Western medicine, pregnancy remains a perilous, unpredictable process. This Vedic verse is aimed at protecting the fetus from those perennial dangers that may occur during any of the three stages of pregnancy (settling, resting, stirring). Agni is an appropriate god to ask for such help, as the element of fire brings light to the darkness, banishing demons and foiling their malevolent plans.
A notable shift of subject occurs in the second half of the hymn, when the focus of concern moves from the fetus to the mother. The demons threaten the fetus with death, but they are threatening the woman with something rather different: sexual desire. The demons are said to have the power of deceptively changing their appearance in order to ravish the unsuspecting woman, and they may take forms that are socially legitimate (one’s husband), or incestuous and immoral (one’s brother), or stimulating and pleasurable (one’s lover). In all cases, the demons take sexual advantage of the woman’s helplessness while “bewitched” with sleep and darkness. Taken together, these qualities—sexual arousal, shape-shifting characters, loss of self-awareness and control, occurrence during sleep—lead to the conclusion that the demonic attacks described in this ancient Vedic verse are a kind of dreaming experience. It is not clear in the hymn whether the seduction is the cause of the fetus’s death, that is, whether the demons kill the fetus by having dream sex with the mother. More likely is that the two parts of the hymn are not connected in such a literal fashion but are both expressing a common concern about threats to orderly human reproduction. From the perspective of social and religious authorities like the Brahmans, promoting healthy pregnancies and controlling female sexuality were crucial factors in the cause of establishing a stable, caste-based community with clear lines of familial descent. Such a community could not thrive if fetuses died before birth or if female sexuality was overly stimulated (opening the door to the socially disruptive problems of illegitimate births and questionable paternity). The possibility that sexual dreams might actually be pleasurable for the woman, for example, in dreams of one’s husband or lover, was irrelevant. What mattered to the Brahmans was maintaining the proper order of human-divine relations. Discouraging women’s sexual dreaming was a small but necessary part of that process.
Such a hymn was recited as a means of fending off bad dreams. Another hymn from the Rig Veda was intended to cast a spell of sleep over others. It was first used, according to some sources, by the sage Vasistha when he traveled in a dream to the house of the sky god, Varuna. As Vasistha entered Varuna’s house a watchdog attacked him, and the sage spoke these verses to make him stop his frantic barking:
White and tawny son of Sarama [the ancestor of dogs], when you bare your teeth they gleam like spears in your snapping jaws. Fall fast asleep! …
Let the mother sleep; let the father sleep; let the dog sleep; let the master of the house sleep. Let all the kinsmen sleep; let our people all around sleep.
Later generations of Hindus have used these verses as bedtime lullabies for their children. Related to this hymn is another one describing Varuna’s anger when he discovers Vasistha in his home. The sage prays for the god’s forgiveness and offers this explanation of his actions: “The mischief was not done by own free will, Varuna; wine, anger, dice, or carelessness led me astray. The older shares in the mistake of the younger. Even sleep does not avert evil.” This last line is intriguing, as it expresses one of the Vedic responses to the ontological question of dreaming. If dreams can be said to have any kind of reality, it is a moral reality, a reality as a fearful arena of darkness, deceit, and temptation. The same evil forces that threaten people in waking life also threaten them in dreams. Indeed, the loss of vigilance in sleep makes people even more vulnerable to those malevolent powers. Vasistha is quick to emphasize the external nature of the evils that haunt our sleep (which conveniently absolves him of personal blame for his dreaming misbehavior). The earlier hymn about pregnancy also portrayed bad dreams as external assaults during sleep, and this seems to reflect a broader Vedic understanding. In the following verses, a prayer to a god known as the “Master of Thought,” the Rig Veda takes the notion of the externality of bad dreams to a logical, and vengeful, conclusion.
If we have done something bad on purpose or not on purpose, or with the wrong purpose, awake or asleep, let Agni place far away from us all these misdeeds that are displeasing.
We have conquered today, and we have won; we have become free of sin. The waking dream, the evil intent—let it fall upon the one we hate; let it fall upon the one who hates us.
The proper prayers and rituals not only protect us from bad dreams, but they can also redirect those dreams against our enemies. With this view of dreams as external missiles of evil, there is no reason to pay any attention to the content of dreams. No interpretation is necessary because no meanings are being conveyed. Dreams have no value as sources of information or knowledge; they may have moral reality, but they lack epistemological reality. Another prayer to Varuna for protection from various threats includes the following verse: “If someone I have met, O king, or a friend has spoken of danger to me in a dream to frighten me, or if a thief should waylay us, or a wolf—protect us from that, Varuna.” Nightmares are grouped with thieves and wolves as frightening threats to which humans are perennially vulnerable. What is striking is that even if a dream involves a friend who is warning you of danger, the content is still insignificant. It is not taken seriously as a real warning. According to this text, the frightening emotion of the dream trumps all content, proving the dream’s demonic origin and epistemological emptiness.
A different set of early Vedic collections, the Atharva Veda, includes several spells to ward off bad dreams and manipulate the sleep of others. One of these spells offers insight into the mythic origin of sleep itself:
You who are neither alive nor dead, you are the immortal child of the gods, O Sleep! Varunani is your mother, Yama [god of the dead] is your father, Araru is your name.
We know, O Sleep, of your birth, that you are the son of the divine women-folk, the instrument of Yama! You are the ender, you are death! Thus do we know you, O Sleep; Please, O Sleep, protect us from evil dreams!
As one pays off a sixteenth, an eighth, or an entire debt, thus do we transfer every evil dream upon our enemy.
The final verse repeats the idea found in the Rig Veda that bad dreams can be aimed with almost mathematical precision at our waking-life foes. The prior verses offer praise to sleep as a true god, born of death and the “divine women-folk.” The close connection between sleep and death is a recurrent theme in the Vedas, as it is in many other religious traditions. Dwelling between and beyond the opposition of life and death, the deity Sleep is believed to have the power of fending off nightmares and protecting people during the vulnerable hours of their slumber.
Unlike the Rig Veda, the Atharva Veda gives a more detailed view of what early Hindus actually did dream, beyond what they were trying not to dream.3 Even though the Rig Veda discourages people from paying attention to the content of their dreams, the Atharva Veda recognizes that people still do have dreams and are naturally curious to know what they mean. Thus the Atharva Veda includes a chapter on the interpretation of particular types of dreaming, with a lengthy catalog of images and their significance. The interpretations are framed by a Vedic teaching that human character can take three different temperamental forms (bilious/fiery, phlegmatic/watery, and sanguine/windy) which generate corresponding types of dreaming. Thus a fiery person will tend to have dreams of arid land and burning objects, a watery person will dream of cool rivers and flourishing life, and a windy person will dream of moving clouds and running animals. A strong continuity between waking and dreaming is implied in this text, with two practical implications for would-be interpreters. First, pay close attention to the waking life circumstances of the dream (e.g., what time of night it occurred). Second, look for symbols in dreams that may relate to physical disturbances within the individual’s body. Dreams may serve as a kind of early warning system for medical practitioners, providing an accurate diagnostic reflection of internal psychosomatic processes.
This medical interest in dream interpretation reveals an important strand of early Hinduism that was more favorably inclined toward the value of dreaming, particularly its prophetic power to anticipate the future. The dreams listed in the Atharva Veda are divided into two categories—auspicious (subha) and inauspicious (asubha)—that foretell either prosperity or misfortune. Many of the interpretive connections seem relatively clear and direct (for example, a dream of teeth falling out means one is going to die), whereas others are much less so (a dream of one’s head being cut off means one is going to have a long life). Although the gods are mentioned as a source of some auspicious dreams, dreaming is generally presented in this text as a natural human experience, with multiple dimensions of relevance to the individual’s personality and life circumstances. Dreams provide accurate expressions of people’s fears and desires, and, if properly interpreted, may be used as a valid source of knowledge and waking action. Remembering one’s dreams is crucial to benefiting from them (it is said a forgotten dream will not bear fruit), and authoritative guides like the Atharva Veda are aimed at helping people discern the potential significance of their dreams for their future health and well-being.
This kind of dream symbol compendium is a classic instance of the “dream book” genre of writing found in cultures all over the world. As long as humans have been writing, they have been writing about dreams—recording them, categorizing them, and trying to identify general principles by which to interpret them. Many other examples are discussed in the chapters to come.

Fiction and Reality

We should pause to consider once again a methodological question raised in the prologue. Taking the Vedas as our first example, how do we know if any of this relates to what Hindu people were actually dreaming during these periods of time? We cannot be sure if the Vedic writers were describing what people truly dreamed or, rather, what they believed other people dreamed. What, then, can we learn about dreams from the partly or entirely fictionalized accounts of ancient religious texts?
One of the many inconvenient facts of dream research is that the only direct source of information we have about the subject is our own personal experience. Everything else we know about dreaming comes from indirect observation and other people’s self-reports. That mean...

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