Chapter 26

Levels of Dreaming:
The Body, Mind and Soul of It All!

Was That a Physical, Psychological or Spiritual Dream?

Now for the thunderbolt! Having spent the last three chapters individually appraising the physical, psychological and spiritual causes of dreams, I don’t believe it is valid to consider these as separate from each other at all.

It was necessary to examine dreams from each angle, to acknowledge the contribution of science, psychology, history, religion, mysticism and philosophy. However, this can be likened to an extra-terrestrial visitor trying to understand the earth with only a telescope, a microscope, a subatomic particle accelerator, a stethoscope, an EEG print out of a frog’s brain waves, a volume of Chaucer, an astrology chart, a scratched record of an operatic performance and a fossilised termite nest. Gradually, if we examine something from a sufficient number of angles, we begin to see the pieces fitting together to form a whole picture.

So it is with life and dreams. There comes a point where the physical body, through the nervous system and the brain, seems to overlap with the mind: yet the mind, with its power to affect changes in the physical world, becomes confused with the physical body, or even with physical matter itself. Is it the mind that transcends time, or is that the soul? And is that the spirit which breathes life into the baby, that inspires the suicidal to decide to live, that speaks through dreams, or is that the mind? The distinctions are blurred because the body, mind and soul are all part, in my opinion, of the human whole.

A Personal View

This is my view, largely based on my dreams:

I believe we are part of a greater and timeless reality, one which we experience vividly while we sleep, but of which we bring back only a tiny, distorted fragment recorded in our memory as a dream. Our waking life binds us, in my belief, within the constraint of time and space, possibly because this enables us to experience cause and effect. With practice and dedication I believe it is possible to break through the illusion of waking life and see the greater reality beyond, not only through our dreams but also with our eyes open. My personal experience tells me that human life is not a remarkably chancy quirk of physics, but that it does have ultimate meaning. My brain and intellect is still trying to catch up with this intuitive knowledge! If I keep it open, it may surprise me one day.

My experience tells me that I am probably not a distinct and different individual to you, but that we overlap and influence each other all the time. I am as much a part of you as you are a part of me, since we probably share the full range of human and spiritual experience through an infinite number of parallel waking realities, each individually bound by time and space, but each accessible through our timeless, spaceless dreams. While I may express that paragraph in a different way in another parallel reality, in yet another I may fail to gather the courage to write the book at all. In another I may be making a far better job of it! Whatever I have done, am doing or will do on whichever level, I believe my every action reverberates and influences all the others. Somehow, on all these levels, my ultimate mission, like yours, is to liberate my soul through the learning experience created by time-space restrictions.

I see the power of the human mind as an incredible moulding force that interacts with everything that appears to be physical. I believe that the mind, once it releases its hold on rationality, frees the soul to return to its timeless dimension.

I see the body, mind and soul in waking life as closely bound and interacting. Our thoughts about ourselves shape the way we hold our bodies, the way we grow, our health or lack of it, how tall or short, how beautiful, how plain, how charismatic we appear or how and when we age. The state of the body reflects the state of the mind. I wish I had more control over mine!

I believe that every experience is recorded at a physical mental and spiritual level, and, since I see our dreams as experience of a wider reality, I believe our dream experiences filter through at each level too. Thus, in my opinion, what we see as the physical, psychological or spiritual causes of dreams are just different manifestations of the same experience.

For example, I may have the misfortune to find myself in a disagreement with someone. I may feel angry (psychological) which makes my skin flush (physical), yet some truth about myself may evolve because of the anger, in which case I may experience a spiritual learning.

Accessing the Body, Mind and Soul through Dream Interpretation

The same philosophy can be applied to a dream. If a dream is a memory of an experience in a greater reality, it too will carry physical, psychological and spiritual imprints into my waking human memory. The dream experience may be a bit garbled, but once I have applied my dream interpretation techniques, I should begin to see its meaning. It is most likely that I will perceive its meaning as being physical one day, psychological the next, and maybe spiritual the following week, depending on my attitude and clarity. However, if I were to examine the dream closely, I might see that the dream applied to each of these areas of my waking life at the same time.

When I am asked to interpret someone else’s dream, I find this much clearer. It’s always much easier to see in from a distance! I can usually see physical, psychological and spiritual meaning captured in the one dream, as if the true meaning hangs, suspended at three levels, inextricably entwined. In order to offer an interpretation that makes sense to the dreamer, I usually choose to help them interpret on one level only.

In interpreting your dream I might see that you will understand your dream better today if I explain it to you on a physical level and suggest you get your blood pressure checked. On another day I might have interpreted the same dream on a psychological level and showed you why you get angry in certain situations. At another time I might have illustrated the spiritual aspects of the same dream, pointing you in a direction which might enlighten your learning about the purpose of experiencing anger in your life, and how to use this to break through into new ground. These interpretations of the same dream might all be correct, but you might understand one explanation more than another, or you might see more clearly how to take effective action from the psychological point of view rather than the spiritual.

So it is with your own dream interpretations. Look at each dream and try out the interpretation techniques given in this book. Then stand back and see the physical, psychological and spiritual connotations according to your personal understanding of life. Go for the one that makes most sense to you, and then consider how you can take action on it to improve your life.