SECRET

of the universe dreams Writers commonly quote the experience of William James who, while under anaesthetic, dreamt he found the secret of the universe. What he was left with was the doggerel ‘Higamus Hogumus women are mo­nogamous—Hogumus Higamus, men are polygamous’ The conclusion is that dreams cannot be truly revelatory. While it may be true to say that some such dreams contain little which adds to the dreamer’s understanding, some dreams give in­sights which profoundly alter the dreamer’s future attitudes or actions.

Revelatory dreams are more common to men than women. This may be because more men concern themselves with questions of what the universe is.

If the dreamer creates a mental or emotional tension in themselves through the inten­sity with which they pursue such questions—and we need to accept that often such intensity anses out of anxiety regarding death and one’s identity—then the self-regulatory process of dreaming might well produce an apparent revelation to ease the tension. On the opposite tack, research into mental func­tioning during dreaming, or in a dreamlike state as in research using LSD, shows that there is an enormously increased abil­ity to access associated ideas, allow feeling responses and achieve novel viewpoints. Freud pointed out that dreams have access to greater memory resources and associated ideas. P H. Stafford and B.H. Golightly, in their book dealing with LSD as an aid to problem solving, say that this dreamlike state en­ables subjects to ‘form and keep in mind a much broader picture . . . imagine what is needed—for the problem—or not possible . . . diminish fear of making mistakes*. One subject says ‘1 had almost total recall of a course I did in thermodynamics; something I had not given any thought to in years.’

Although humans have such power to scan enormous blocks of information or experience, look at it from new an­gles, sift it with particular questions in mind and so discover new connections in old information, there are problems, oth­erwise we would all be doing it.

The nature of dream con­sciousness, and the faculties described, is fundamentally dif­ferent to waking awareness, which limits, edits, looks for specifics, avoids views conflicting with its accepted norm, and uses verbalisation.

A nonverbal, symbolic scan of massive in­formation is largely lost when translated to waking conscious­ness.

My experience is that the content of revelatory dreams is almost wholly lost on waking.

If the individual explores the dream while awake, however, and dares to take consciousness into the realm of the dream, then the enormous waves of emotional impact, the massive collection of details, the per­sonality changing influence of major new insights, can be met.

The reason most of us do not touch this creative process is in fact the same reason most of us do not attempt other daring activities—it takes guts.

See creativity and problem solving in dreams.

If you are sharing or keeping a secret to yourself in your dream, this means there is something about your private thoughts and feelings of which others need to be aware. Are you hiding something from both yourself and others? Are you too secretive? If you are actually keeping a secret in real life and you dream of sharing it with a friend and immediately feel as if a burden has been lifted from your shoulders, your unconscious may be encouraging you to be more open during your waking hours. Or did you dream of betraying someone’s confidence in your dream and discover that this leads to unhappy or terrible consequences? If you did, your dreaming mind may be urging you to keep an important secret to yourself because there may be terrible repercussions if you revealed what you know.

Symbols of secrets and deception in dreams may be offering you a warning.

If you were cheating or someone cheated at your expense in your dream, this was certainly a warning. For example, if you cheated in a race, in a game or in a relationship in your dream, are you willingly involved in some kind of deception in waking life? If you are, your dream is urging you to mend your ways; on the other hand, the dream may also be suggesting that someone is cheating on you. Any hint of counterfeit goods, fakes or forgery in your dream also suggests that you are not being true to yourself or honest with others in waking life.

If the fake is an antique of some kind, this may be referring to a deceit that happened in the past.

If you are caught cheating or deceiving somebody in your dream, perhaps you are in danger of being

A secret (or being asked to keep a secret) can represent: An issue of trust or trustworthiness.

An attempt to withhold the truth, hide something, or lie.

The idea of “protecting” someone from the truth.

Using secrecy as a strategy to accomplish something you couldn’t accomplish otherwise (such as throwing a surprise party).

Secret or stealthy actions can represent a feeling or fear of someone gaining power or control using stealth, or of you doing so yourself.

See Confiding, Privacy, Cover, Hiding, Quiet, Code, Password, Investigator, Underground, Trickery