The weight dreams carry in our lives is largely a factor of culture and upbringing, the events and ideas which affected and shaped our thought patterns and our perceptions with respect to dreams and their interpretive value. These same ideas, though seemingly insignificant, have actively influenced mankind’s history as well as its future since the dawn of dreams. When dreams are repressed, most creative endeavors go out the window with them, as was the case during the “Dark Ages” and Nazi Germany. When the dreamer is free to dream without reservation, the arts and sciences flourish, as they did during the Renaissance for example. So the question begs to be asked: what comes first, the dream or the reality? When does a dream become self-fulfilling prophecy for a believer and does it matter? What dreams across history shaped our world and what can we learn from these experiences?

Most Biblical dreams serve as either prophecy or instruction. Dreams played an integral role in the decisions people made, which explains why a good interpreter was a highly valued commodity. Joseph, the man who was sold into Egyptian slavery by his jealous brothers, was sold because he dreamed he and his brothers were in a field binding sheaves when his sheaf stood upright and his brothers’ sheaves gathered around him and bowed down. His brothers, not liking this dream too much, and thinking Joseph was getting to big for his britches, sold him into Egyptian slavery. But the story doesn’t end here; Joseph subsequently wisely interprets the Pharaoh’s dream, saving Egypt from the destitution of an impending seven-year famine. His interpretation was so salient, it gave him favor in the eyes of the Pharaoh who subsequently made him a ruler. The story swings full circle when his brothers come to Egypt to seek refuge from the famine and encounter their young brother, now a ruler of Egypt, and in fulfillment of the original dream, bow at his feet.

Moses, the champion of the Israeli cause to free itself from the clutches of Egyptian tyranny, is moved to action by his vision of God speaking to him through a burning bush. He is instructed to confront the Pharaoh with an ultimatum from God to “let His people go” and in so doing changes the destiny of a whole nation of people.

Figure 1



Image source.

The most important icon of the Christian faith had his young life saved three times by dreams, a ripple effect so far-reaching, its significance cannot be measured. First Joseph, engaged to a pregnant Mary and seeking to quietly put her away for her promiscuity, is met in a dream by an angel who tells him that the baby inside Mary is the Son of God and that he is to marry her and raise Jesus, as he is to be called, as his own son. Then at his birth or shortly thereafter, Jesus is saved by another instructional dream given to the Magi who come to worship him from the East. The dream warns that the King of Judea has less than honorable intentions toward the young Jesus and they therefore must return home on an alternate route. Then Jesus is saved a third time when his father Joseph once again has a dream, this time to flee with his family from Judea. They escape in the night to Egypt, and Herod subsequently massacres every male less than two years of age residing in Judea at the time.

We are still being affected by ancient Biblical dreams, an excellent example being that of the Apostle John in the book of Revelation when he describes the “end times” and the tragedy and terror which will accompany it. This apocalyptic vision by a sick and possibly delusional old man culminating in the Battle of Armageddon and the destruction of the earth and its inhabitants has had vast effects, from the early Christian days to Hollywood to the churches of today. So in this manner dreams can be considered quite significant and as real as anything else. My grandmother is a strict interpreter of the Bible, there is no telling her that it is highly unlikely Jesus is going to come down from the sky with an army from heaven and fight the enemies of Israel in a final battle. John’s dream is as real to her and as sure to happen as the sun rising in the East in the morning.

Finding meaning and direction from dreams is not limited to ancient and Biblical peoples however. Paul McCartney received the inspiration for his song Yesterday in a dream. This song became so renowned that it remains the most covered song ever written. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was also inspired by a dream. Abraham Lincoln dreamed of his assassination just a few nights before he was so tragically shot. Had he put more emphasis and importance on the dream, we may have had a very different outcome. Madame C.J. Walker, the first in her family born free, became the first female African-American self-made millionaire because of a dream in which she was given a secret formula to manage black hair. She decided to try it, it worked, and she built an international cosmetics empire off of it. Elias Howe dreamed up the workings of the sewing machine in 1845 (see figure 2). Many of Stephen King’s novels come to him in dreams, like his famous novel turned into a movie: Misery. “I’ve always used dreams the way you’d use mirrors to look at something you couldn’t see head-on, the way that you use a mirror to look at your hair in the back. To me that’s what dreams are supposed to do. I think that dreams are a way that people’s minds illustrate the nature of their problems. Or maybe even illustrate the answers to their problems in symbolic language.”

Figure 2



Image source.

This is a picture of Elias Howe’s original sewing machine.

Through the limited examples shown above, we can see the effects dreams have had on human history and thought have been quite significant. We can see that our waking life and dream consciousness are intricately intertwined, with few clues as to where one begins and the other ends. They complement and supplement each other, each playing a role in the human experience equally important to the survival of the other. In the end, maybe it doesn’t matter if the dream spawns the reality or if reality reflects itself in one’s dreams. Freud’s successor, Karl Jung, among others, had the idea that there is a collective consciousness. That there are these ideas “out there” and one can just pull on this collective knowledge when needed. Dreams, according to Jung, were a great medium through which one could accomplish this feat. I would have to agree and I think history testifies to this.

Reference

www.jstor.org.libweb.lib.utsa.edu

www.brilliantdreams.com/product/famous-dreams.htm