dream

1.    View, goal, or purpose in life.

2.    Sleeping consciousness.

3.    Awaken to the numinous powers ever present in the phenomenal world about us and whose powers possess us in our high creative moments

(See also: Dream, Body Mind and Soul)

Lucid Dreaming

The term "lucid dreaming" refers to dreaming while knowing that you are dreaming. The "lucid" part refers to the clarity of consciousness rather than the vividness of the dream.

It generally happens when you realize during the course of a dream that you are dreaming, perhaps because something weird occurs.

Most people who remember their dreams have experienced this at some time, often waking up immediately after the realization. However, it is possible to continue in the dream while remaining fully aware that you are dreaming. (See Lucid Dreaming)

(See also: Lucid Dreaming, New Age Spirituality, Body Mind and Soul)

Aboriginal Dreaming

An English expression adopted by Australian Aborigines to convey ideas that, though related in their thought, are not usually denoted by a single word in any of their languages.

One sense is that of a primordial epoch, the Dreaming or Dreamtime, when beings with remarkable powers arose from the ground, descended from the sky, or appeared from over the horizon. They gave the earth its shape by creating physical features (often from parts of their own bodies), fixed life in species form, established human culture, and gave everything its name.

These creative beings, who in their totality are the ultimate explanation of all things, are themselves called Dreamings (roughly equivalent to the anthropological term totems).

Their significance to the Aborigines is not merely historical but personal and social, for each individual and group gains a distinctive identity through its association with one or more Dreamings. In many regions it is held that such beings reincarnate themselves as humans, or that they left relics behind that, to this day, are sufficiently potent to impregnate women.

This sense of oneness, in which past and present, spirit being and human being, are somehow fused, is also seen in ceremonies in which the actors wear designs and make movements symbolic or mimetic of what the Dreamings did in the Dreamtime. By extension, from these two senses of Dreaming, the Aborigines form other expressions, such as Dreaming-place (a site at which a Dreaming was active and left something of itself) and Dreaming-track (an imagined path along which a Dreaming traveled from place to place in the primordial epoch).

Contrary to what is sometimes suggested, the term has no necessary connection with the verb to dream, even though present-day revelations to humans by Dreamings normally occur while the recipient is in a dream or trance state.

See Astral World.

(See also: Aboriginal Dreaming, New Age Spirituality, Body Mind and Soul)

Dream Commonly applied to the chaotic impressions which memory transmits to our consciousness at the moment of waking, which are but a small part of the dreaming which goes on during the sleeping period and which is not recollected.

To a large extent dreams are a reflex of our sensory impressions and of our thoughts during the waking state; the principles concerned in these cases being kama and the lower aspect of manas, which act and react with the various nerve centers and the organs at the base of the brain.

But if the word dream is to be distinguished from dreamless sleep on the one hand and waking consciousness on the other, it must include a far higher kind of dream which is the experiences of the higher aspect of manas. These experiences, being so different from those of the waking state, cannot be transmitted to the latter except symbolically or in distorted form.

The astral light also plays an enormous part in most dreams. We may witness scenes which cannot have formed part of our waking experience, and evidently in this case are seeing pictures in the astral light which we correctly or erroneously connect with our own personality. Again, with prophetic dreams our vision, untrammeled by physical senses, perceives in the astral light the image of what will later happen on the physical plane, and we may occasionally carry a recollection of what has been seen into the waking state.

The Sanskrit term for this state of sleeping consciousness is svapna.

(See also: Dream, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

nudity dreams

Dreams that tell the dreamer that they are unprepared in some phase of their life, often relating to honesty

(See also: Nudity dreams, Body Mind and Soul)

objective dream

A dream where the dream symbol means the same thing in a dream as it does in daytime living

(See also: Objective dream, Body Mind and Soul)

prophetic dream

A prophecy or precognition achieved during state of sleep

(See also: Prophetic dream, Body Mind and Soul)

prelucid dream

Dream in which the subject debates whether he or she is dreaming; false awakening

(See also: Prelucid dream, Body Mind and Soul)

realistic dream

A dream, when asleep or awake, of a scene in an uncolored, matter-of-fact-viewing, as of a photograph. Later, when in waking state, a re-experiencing of the dream is a literal reenactment of the dream

(See also: Realistic dream, Body Mind and Soul)

recurring dreams

Dreams that occur periodically without changing in content

(See also: Recurring dreams, Body Mind and Soul)

shared dreams

1.    Identical dreamstuff dreamt by two people the same night.

2.    Visions of one another seen by two people dreaming at the same time

(See also: Shared dreams, Body Mind and Soul)

dream journal

Diary in which dreams are recorded or analyzed

(See also: Dream journal, Body Mind and Soul)

veridical dream

Psychic experience during sleep that later becomes a real event

(See also: Veridical dream, Body Mind and Soul)

A dream dictionary with dream-symbols and their meanings.

A spiritual view on dreams and the meaning of dreams by Sri Swami Sivananda, an authority in the vedic sciences and traditions.

looking glass dream

Dream involving messages or subjective reactions to people and events in the external world

(See also: Looking glass dream, Body Mind and Soul)

looking inward dream

Dream showing us a picture of our feelings in our private, inner world

(See also: Looking inward dream, Body Mind and Soul)

looking outward dream

Dream providing valid information about people or situations in the external world

(See also: Looking outward dream, Body Mind and Soul)

proper name dream

Dream symbol that puns on a proper name

(See also: Proper name dream, Body Mind and Soul)

release type dreams

Symbolic visionary scenes during REM sleep releasing physical and emotional tensions and inner anxiety while the sleeper is having the dream

(See also: Release type dreams, Body Mind and Soul)

serial time (dreams)

Multidimensional time indicated by images from past, present and future, flowing at the same frequency during sleep

(See also: Serial time (dreams) , Body Mind and Soul)