Chapter 15

Who Are All Those People?

There they are, nightly, throughout almost all your dreams: people. People from your distant past, people from your daily life, the lady who cuts sandwiches at the deli and the man who smiled at you on the bus. An old boyfriend kisses you, a deceased friend has a lengthy philosophical discussion and the man who used to read the six o’clock television news ten years ago offers you a cuppa and a chat. Then there are all those strangers, some of whom feel so familiar, the tiny baby you nestled in the crook of your arm all night, the angel who parted the seas for you and the destitute old man who asked you for a dollar.

We often cry with laughter in the morning as we recall how our staid and sensible neighbour climbed out onto her roof and sang with the alley cats in our dreams! Or about how normal it seemed in dreamland to see the boss conducting a business meeting wearing his pyjamas and cuddling a pink teddy bear!

Why, out of all the people you have come into contact with throughout your life, out of all the people you have noticed from the corner of your eye, did you dream about those particular people last night? Why did you need to bring in a whole bunch of strangers? Were they just ‘extras’ needed for your dream drama, or did they have a specific purpose which could help you to unravel the meaning behind your dream?

Who do people dream of most?

Check your questionnaire answers for Section S.

First:
Themselves 79.4%

Second:
Close relatives 30%
Other people in their life now 21.3%
People from the past 10%
People known, now dead 3.8%
Middle-aged strangers 3.8%

The overall responses in the survey showed:

1.  Self 95%
2.  Close relatives 83.8%
3.  Other people in their lives 79.4%
4.  People from the past 70%
5.  People known, now dead 58.1%
6.  Young strangers 49.4%
7.  Middle-aged strangers 48.1%
8.  Child strangers 38.8%
9.  Other relatives 38.1%
10. Baby strangers 31.3%
11. Adolescent strangers 26.9%
12. Elderly strangers 24.4%
13. Mostly men 23.1%
14. Spirits 20.6%
15. Mostly women 18.1%
16. Dead strangers 10.6%
17. Extraterrestrials 6.9%

Ah, But Who Are All These People Really?

In can be helpful to regard all the people in your dreams as representing different aspects of yourself. Some of the dreams related earlier in this book have been interpreted according to this idea, so if you are reading this book chapter by chapter, the way it has been designed for maximum understanding, you will already have an idea of how this concept works.

Sometimes, though, the people in your dreams are simply being themselves, and are there to illustrate how you relate to them, or to give you an insight into who they really are. They may be there symbolically to give you a time or place reference. They may be there in ‘thought’ through a telepathic link-up, a connection with a deceased person, alien or other entity, or perhaps you are tuned into someone you are yet to meet in your future, as in a precognitive dream. If that’s all too much to take in at once, let’s move on swiftly to look at these possibilities individually and to discover practical approaches to sorting the sheep from the goats.

Dreaming of People Known To You

It is not surprising to discover that most people dream of themselves. If you have any confusion here, refer back to Chapter 14, All in the Action.

Dreaming of yourself when you were you were younger is a way of comparing how you were then to how you are now. Events in your present life have probably brought up old issues which will make more sense to you if you consider how you behaved and what was going on around you at the age you were in your dream. Often we go back in time but stay our present age, as commonly experienced in the ‘back to school’ dreams, where you attend, as a 35 year old, your old school where everyone else is still 11. This also serves the purpose of questioning how you act and think now compared to then. Note your dream observations about school, the other kids and the teachers, and ask yourself how much you’ve changed and how much you’ve stayed the same. Is there a part of yourself still stuck in the past, ‘lost’, waiting to be found again and given new life?

Dreaming of yourself as older than your present age is the dream’s way of projecting your present lifestyle or thoughts about the future forward. This is a great opportunity, albeit in a dream, to experience older age, with the bonus of being able to come back and make appropriate changes to your diet, health, relationships and so on. This type of dream is also helpful for being able to see things from an older person’s perspective, which may have a bearing with your present-day relationship with older folk.

Dreaming of yourself acting out a role, like a queen, bishop, world leader or road sweeper is the dream’s way of showing you roles you tend to play in life, or in relationship with whoever else is in your dream, or in given circumstances such as those the dream portrays.

So much of this book concerns the experiences of the dreamer in his or her own dreams that I feel this section needs no further explanation.

This is probably one of the most debatable areas of dream interpretation. When is your husband in your dream representing himself, and when is he representing the ‘male-side’ of yourself?

In Stacey’s case, she understood that the dreams were a reflection of the domestic violence that was occurring in her waking life and she took the best action in moving interstate. On a deeper level, it could be argued that all was not well with Stacey’s inner male (male-side), the part of herself that relates to her outer world. How did she get herself into a relationship with this man in the first place? If his violence grew after her marriage, why did she allow it to continue to such a terrifying stage?

Looking at Stacey’s male side and how she deals with the challenge of the outer world might have helped her to understand why all of this was happening and what her real options were. Did she run away as an escape or did she also make changes in her life to strengthen her male side and prevent herself from falling into a similar relationship later? As well as physically saving her children in waking life, did Stacey save her own ‘inner child’? Was she able to understand why she had allowed her inner child to be neglected and abused rather than be nurtured towards growth? I know Stacey has spent several years looking at all these issues to her great advantage.

The important thing here is to note that the dream may be applicable on two levels. We see Stacey’s ex-husband both as representing himself, and as representing the self-torturing aspects of her inner male (male side).

Consider Michealla’s comment:

Michealla is well respected as a spiritual healer. Like most of us, she dreams about her work, but she is also perceptive enough, both on a day-to-day basis and also on a telepathic and spiritual level, to continue her work while she sleeps. While she accepts this and is happy to work this way, she is wise to also consider whether the people she meets both in her dreams and in her waking life are also teaching her something about herself. I know she does look at life in this way. Again, dream people can be themselves and yet they can also represent parts of ourselves.

As a general rule, consider close relatives to be themselves first, and take what you can from the dream by looking at it from this angle. If it makes sense, go with it. If the sense is confused, try looking at your close relative as an aspect of yourself. If you are brave, try both: sometimes it takes courage to view life that way.

The further away from close relationship the people in your dream are, the less likely it is that they represent themselves. This is only a rule of thumb, but it is probably safe to interpret these characteristics as representing aspects of yourself first. If the dream does not make sense that way, try again, allowing the people to be themselves.

OTHER PEOPLE AS ASPECTS OF YOU

Get a piece of paper and write down the names of all the people in your dream. Next to their names, write down three words which describe each individual’s personality. Then add a sentence to summarise their approach to life. Your notes might read:

Now, if your dream showed you kissing Peter after murdering Andrew, what conclusions would you draw? The dream perhaps suggests that you should kill (put an end to) the more serious, distrusting side of yourself, and take on more of the Peter-type characteristics of being more openly trusting. Have a look at the background situation in your dream to make your interpretation more precise. If the backdrop was work, try being more open at work, but if you found yourself by the sea in your dream (water: emotions), try being more trusting in your emotional relationships or with yourself.

Chiron’s observation holds true for many dreamers. Interpret according to who you know the dream character to be. Consider their physical differences in the dream as symbolic to add to your interpretation. For example, since hair tends to represent ideas, you might expect people’s hair to be a different colour or style to their ‘real’ hair. They may be bigger than usual if they are overbearing, a tower of strength, a father figure or simply trying to make an impact on you, the dreamer. They may be tiny in your dream to symbolise their lesser significance or to underline their meek attitudes.

OTHER PEOPLE AS THEMSELVES

Look at how you act towards them and how you react to them, since their role will be to shine a light on your own behaviour when confronted by such personality types. You may experiment, in your dream, with different ways of relating to these people, and you may, on waking, decide to try out some of these new approaches in waking life.

Perhaps you are a psychic dreamer, very much tuned in to these other people’s lives or their dreams, so that you can wake and decide whether to enlighten them as to what you’ve learned about them in your dream, or whether to keep it to yourself. It is best to be extremely cautious if you feel you have messages for others from your dreams, and wisest of all to say nothing unless the occasion arises and the person comes to you seeking advice. This area of dreaming is addressed in Chapters 19 and 20.

Well, Jayne, you shouldn’t be puzzled any longer after reading the last section. Apply the same principles to these people as you would to those from your present life who make dream appearances. Get out the piece of paper, make the lists as described above, and take it from there.

Sometimes we go back into the past to search for the person who best describes the personality or approach to life that fits the needs of our dream. On other occasions, though, the person is more symbolic of a place or a time in our past. The appearance of your ex-wife in your dream may be symbolic of who you were and how you acted in those days. The dream may also highlight how much you’ve changed in the intervening years, making this a ‘progress report’ dream. Look in the dream for anything that might connect your present relationships and challenges to the past, to the years when your ex-wife was more prominent in your life.

Old Mrs Smythe-Jones who used to shout abuse at you over the garden wall when your childhood games interrupted her afternoon sleep might reappear in your dreams to remind you of those days for some particular reason. Interpret the dream according to her personality, and if that is not revealing, spend time imagining being a child again during those years and try to connect those feelings and the events around that time to what is happening in your life now.

We can find people from our past rearing their heads in our dreams when we need to make peace with them, or when we need to ‘go back’ to sort things out and make peace with ourselves.

Does Brendan bring these people into his dream symbolically, so that each is there to represent a particular way of thinking which he can apply to his present life? Or are these spiritually advanced people making contact with him (or is he making contact with them) through his dream state? Again, Brendan can investigate this through applying the same practical guidelines outlined above, and can then draw his own conclusions.

Psychic dreamers are often faced with the dilemma of whether to treat a dream on a symbolic level or on a psychic level. In the end, the intuitional approach is probably best, although the dreamer will frequently find meaning by considering the dream from both angles. As this book clearly illustrates, people can and do make contact with others through the dream state, and we should not lose sight of this possibility by being dogmatic or rigid in applying dream interpretation ‘rules’.

People You Know To Be Dead

By now you will have a clear understanding of the alternatives. Look at each of the following dreams, and think about the possibilities. Are the deceased people in the dreams symbolic of a personality type? Are they symbolic of an approach to life? Are they representative of a time or place in the dreamer’s past? Can we be comforted by and seek advice from our deceased friends and relatives by consulting them symbolically in our dreams, so that we speak with the memory of who they were and what they might say to us? Or are they truly contacting us in spirit?

Across all of these possibilities is the very real opportunity of making peace with our past.

In this last dream, Fiona’s experience more clearly points to the symbolic where she sees similarities between her husband and her late parents. When her waking life relationship with her husband (who is a fair bit older than her) has shades of her previous relationship with her parents, her dream confusion may draw her awareness to her tendency to sometimes ‘act the child’ in relationship.

Dreaming of People Unknown to You

Are our dream strangers just extras or fantasy characters? How many times have you had the experience of waking up to recall the exact details of a person’s face, even though you have only met them in a dream? Our dream strangers can feel so real:

Do we feel as though we know these dream strangers because we have indeed met them and forgotten, because we know them on the spirit plane, or because we have known them intimately in past lives? Any of these cases may be so, but these dream strangers are often more symbolic. They may be walking, talking symbols of other aspects of ourselves, or they may represent different personality types for us to bounce off and react to as we try out various dream roles and relationships.

Annie gives a clue when she reveals that she is a stranger in strange places, but is someone familiar in known places. To find ourselves in strange or foreign places in a dream is often symbolic of looking at unknown aspects of our lives: emotions, events or attitudes that seem ‘foreign’ or ‘strange’ to us. When Annie’s dreams deal with unknown quantities, she appears as an unknown quantity too. She doesn’t recognise herself in relationship to this ‘foreign’ theme.

Perhaps we use strangers instead of known people in our dreams when we are dealing with aspects of ourselves that seem quite foreign to us.

Obviously we cannot apply the same practical methods of listing personality and approach to life as we can for people known to us in our dreams. Instead, give your dream strangers names and write these down on paper. You may find it helpful to give them ‘role’ names (like nurse, healer, baddie, etc) rather than real names. Think about how they appeared in your dream, and write three words to describe their dream personality. Project ahead from your dream experiences with these characters and imagine what their approach to life might be. Write this down too. Then stand back, exactly as described earlier in this chapter, and see if these dream strangers seem to be aspects of yourself, or whether they have anything they can teach you about your life.

The descriptions are mine, not Joe’s, but I have discussed this dream with Joe who was able to recognise the two strangers as aspects of his sexuality. Joe and his wife differed in their perception of ‘normal’ sex, and the dream showed Joe’s fear of his strong, instinctual sexuality which he had come to perceive as ‘evil’. In the dream, the blonde man stands close to him, showing that Joe identifies more closely with ‘hesitant sexuality’ in his relationship with his wife, feeling that it is right to be ‘good and to hold back’. After a series of dreams focussing on instinctual sexuality, Joe moved towards acknowledging his ‘dark’ side as ‘normal’ and started a more open communication with his wife about this area of their marriage.

Stuart met an ‘ugly’ female (witch) aspect of himself which he had been disowning, and his dream clearly advised him to acknowledge this disowned, female-side to give more balance to his life:

Several of Stuart’s other dreams reflected this need to express, rather than repress, parts of his make-up which he considered ‘ugly’. Once his dreams had been interpreted, Stuart wrote:

Lucy was able to see the ‘bad presence’ in her dream as a part of herself: ‘a bad side’. She realises that she will be haunted by this dream character until she fixes up the ‘bad parts’ of herself and finds peace. Presence dreams are often, although not always, disowned aspects of ourselves: the parts we feel are too negative to belong to us.

Lucy, Joe and Stuart all had aspects of themselves they needed to own. Some aspects, once known, were worth hanging into and developing. The only way to get rid of the more negative aspects of ourselves that we try to ignore (such as jealousy, for example) is to own it first, feel it, then, in understanding it, let it go. This process is like getting rid of an abscess by lancing it, letting all the poison come to the surface, and then letting it go.

Carolyn noted that the stranger’s eyes were the same colour as her own. Was she a spiritual guide or did Carolyn come face to face with herself in this dream? Was this an aspect of her Higher Self compelling her to draw out and acknowledge every emotion and feeling that she had ever experienced? Perhaps Carolyn needed to ask why it was important, at this time in her life, to let her deepest feelings flow, to connect with her heart.

I am in a crowded place with dream people, that is, people who I recognise from past dreams but who do not resemble anyone on real life. I know that I have dreamed about them before and even though I cannot remember the dreams, they are familiar. Not everyone in the crowd is known to me, just the ones standing close to me. We are very close, moving around with our arms above our heads because we are so close together. I feel we are in a school, or part school, part cafeteria. [This was part of a very long afternoon dream: Joe had been asleep for 45 minutes.]
(Joe, catering attendant)

This dream is a beautiful example of a progress report dream. Joe meets familiar strangers (aspects of himself) from previous dreams, but experiences a closeness that binds them tight. Over the years he has gradually come to know these once unrecognised aspects of himself, and the dream shows him about to integrate them into one person. They move as one, about to become one. The school setting suggests the learning that Joe has undergone while the cafeteria represents the ‘food for thought’ inspired by the dream.

We have many complex aspects to our personalities, but it is helpful to recognise the following ones:

INNER MALE

Whether man or woman, we all have an inner male (also referred to as the male-side). He represents the qualities of rational thought, intellect, work and the challenge of our outer world. According to Chinese philosophy he is our Yang. In the Western world, Carl Jung refers to him as our animus. Any male in our dreams may symbolise our inner male. Men in your dreams may therefore represent your outer world.

INNER FEMALE

Whether man or woman we all have an inner female (also referred to as the female-side). She represents the qualities of nurturing, creativity, emotions and our inner world. In Chinese philosophy she is our Yin, and according to Jung she is our anima. Women in your dreams may therefore represent your inner world.

THE ELDERLY

We all have an inner wisdom that exceeds our waking grip on life! This Higher Self may appear in our dreams as a wise old man or wise old woman. Of course, elderly people may also symbolise other qualities such as frailty or heritage, but if your elderly dream character exudes a steady wisdom, or gives you advice, then he or she may represent your wiser Higher Self.

INNER CHILD

We all carry a part of ourselves that is still learning, growing and needing loving care. This is our inner child or baby.

A baby or child boy in our dreams may represent the part of ourself which needs further growth in our outer world, or world of work. A baby or child girl may represent the part of ourself which needs further growth in creativity or our inner world.

We commonly put our children’s faces on our dream inner child which can make interpretation confusing. Always consider your children as representative of your inner child first, before looking at any possible meaning for your children. See ‘Close Relatives’, earlier in this chapter for further advice.

Dream spirits may be deceased strangers or other entities and this subject is well covered elsewhere in this book. In dream interpretation terms, spirits may represent ‘disembodied’ and therefore disowned parts of ourselves. Lucy’s earlier example illustrated this phenomenon. Scotty describes the same phenomenon after consulting a psychiatrist about his own dream spirit experiences:

Robyn describes the very simple, if courageous, process of reabsorbing her own disowned aspects:

Dreaming of spirits or entities on a symbolic level may also be reflective of your philosophy of life and your needs or fears concerning your relationship with the ‘other side’. Practical advice for dealing with distressing spirit experiences is given in Chapter 20.

Our dreams may show how one aspect of ourselves can be changed into another, or how attitudes may change. Perhaps we see the similarities between people we know, and see this represented in the dream by their interchangeable faces.

Like Kerry, we may ‘try out’ standing in other people’s shoes, or see things from other points of view.

Look at the role characters you meet in your dreams, examine whether you know them in waking life or whether they are dream strangers. You may meet kings, teachers, politicians, doctors, priests, fathers, arsonists .. the list is endless. Sometimes these roles are symbolic of aspects of yourself: holding up a mirror to reflect the teacher in you, or the politician in you and so on. Easy! Here are a few examples to illustrate the point:

And so on.

Take a second look at the names of all the people in your dreams, whether you know them or not. (The same goes for place names.) A stranger named dawn, for example, may tell you something which ‘dawns’ on you. Tom Cruise may simply be there to symbolise a need to ‘cruise’ along for a while. Mrs Waters may signal something very emotional (water as symbolising emotions) and Dr Feelgood may not represent the musician or radio personality of the same name, but may be advising you to cure yourself through doing something that makes you ‘feel good’ for a change. These examples may sound silly, but that’s the way our minds work when they search for symbols to capture a concept, to illustrate a point, or to paint a word picture.

Practical Summary

Never be rigid in your use of dream interpretation. Select the right tools to do the right job. Follow the checklist below to look at the people in your dreams, and then use clues derived from using your other dream interpretation tools, such as looking at the actions, emotions, universal symbols, personal symbols, clichés and so on. Settle on an interpretation only when it feels right to you, and be open to the idea that one dream may be interpreted in several different ways which, occasionally, can all be relevant to your situation. They simply reflect different levels of meaning.

Checklist

From the above list, wherever you can, imagining the stranger’s personality, approach to life and so on from what they did and said in your dream.

Realise strangers may be parts of yourself which foreign to you.

Above all, never throw away the characters in your dreams, for, as Krishnamurti observes in waking life:

In waking or in dreaming we learn about ourselves through looking into the eyes of others, for they are the mirrors which reflect our own souls.

* Quoted in A Guide for the Advanced Soul, Susan Hayward, In-Tune Books, quoted from ‘Krishnamurti’s Journal’, copyright 1982, Krishnamurti Foundtion Trust Ltd, Kent, UK.