Dreaming of Death
Tony Crisp
In every moment of our life we face the possibility of death. It is not surprising therefore that the subject of death figures in many dreams. As with any major life event, in our dreams we meet death in various forms as part of our attempt to develop a working relationship with it. Such dreams enable us to become aware of what our deepest fears or feelings are regarding our own death, or the death of someone we love or know. But they also have the possibility of showing us what our fullest inner wisdom or intuitions are about what it means to die.
If we cannot meet the spectre of death, then our ability to live a full life will be diminished. At every turn death faces us in one way or another, and if we have not met and transformed fear into wonder, then we will be paralysed in expressing freely and lovingly to what life offers.
We have to remember though that what we first meet in dreams about death are the family and culturally inherited images and ideas of what death is. For instance Western culture gradually developed a view of the world based on early scientific theories. Namely that life is purely physical, and so there can be no survival of ones personal awareness at death. It is a view gradually being eroded by findings in quantum physics, and is not shared by many other cultures. The skelton in the image below typifies this Western view of death. But the view in older cultures is that life continually flows through birth and death, as in the second illustration. (See: the book The Field, that examines latest findings in quantum physics in an understandable way).
In the example below the dreamer does not face any great fear of death itself. The strongest feelings are of loss. Over a period of time the dreamer may move beyond such feelings of loss into exploring other possibilities of death.
This theme of facing death is quite frequently met, and it often leads to confronting what we really want to do before the end of this present life; what we want to express, say or give to those we love or are involved with; and what we want to achieve. So such a dream may wake us up from spending too much time in trivialities. Examining many dreams dealing with death, it is noticeable that some dreamers are stuck in fearful or grief laden feelings, while others move on into a positive relationship with the ending of life. The difference appears to be centred on what level of emotion the dreamer can tolerate and accept, and how daring they are. Many people, on meeting death in their dream, awake with feelings of pain, fear, or dread. If they could fully meet those feelings they would pass on to develop a very different experience of death in their dreams. The following dreams illustrate this. |
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A young woman told me she had experienced a recurring nightmare of a piece of cloth touching her face. She would scream and scream and wake her family. One night her brother sat with her and made her meet those feelings depicted by the cloth. When she did so she realised it was her grandmother’s funeral shroud. She cried about the loss of her grandmother, felt her feelings about death, and was never troubled again by the nightmare.
The dreamer in the following example meets her feelings through the actual events of the dream.
My mother in law died of cancer. I had watched the whole progression of her illness, and was very upset by her death. Shortly after she died the relatives gathered and began to sort through her belongings to share them out. That was the climax of my upset and distress, and I didn’t want any part of this sorting and taking her things. That night I dreamt I was in a room with all the relatives. They were sorting her things, and I felt my waking distress. Then my mother in law came into the room. She was very real and seemed happy. She said for me not to be upset as she didn’t at all mind her relatives taking her things. When I woke from the dream all the anxiety and upset had disappeared. It never returned.
Each of us meet our feelings and fears in different ways, and the next waking dream shows a very full meeting with death and its possibilities.
I knew I was dying and it was incredibly real. So real I wept deeply because I knew this was the end of everything and I would lose my children. All that I had created in life would be at an end too. But there was nothing I could do about that and I died. Then I seemed to be at a slight distance watching my dead body, and I saw my father, who had died some years before, come and carry the body over a threshold into a heavenly meadow. There a resurrection took place. My dead being was given new life. And the new life came from all that I had given to others, and all I had received from others, during my life. That was my spiritual life that survived death. A.C.
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As can be seen from this beautiful experience, the dreamer meets the depth of feeling connected with the final ending of life, and then moves beyond it. So the last part of the dream is not an avoidance of pain, but an acceptance of the finality of death and how it is transcended by giving ourselves away to others, and receiving from them. Because dreaming about death is a very frequent theme, and has many aspects, you must look at any death dream you have had and see each part of it in context with the other parts of the dream. For instance the context of death in the first example is connected with hanging and final loss. In the second it starts similarly but ends quite differently. |
There is yet another level connected with dreams about people we have known in life. This next dream and exploration of the dream shows how we can continue contact with the dead.
Yesterday my wife told me I had been calling out in my sleep, obviously dreaming. She said I had been calling my mother. She described it not as a cry of pain or anger, but as if urgently trying to get my mother’s attention.
My mother had died shortly before this dream, so I tried to explore the feeling of calling to my mother and experienced a spontaneous waking dream of my mother being in something like an old people’s home. She was very withdrawn and non communicative, and as I explored the feeling of this I sensed she felt as if she had been abandoned and felt resentful and angry about this.
She had died from multiple strokes and so was not aware of her process of death. I could see that in fact she had not been abandoned, but was in a place where she was creating her own environment through her emotions and attitudes. I attempted to communicate with her but she refused to respond at all, and I was unsure if she really was withdrawn to a point where she couldn’t hear me, or if she was angry and so not responding. So I called to her aloud and said she must realise she was dead, not abandoned. She had failed to realise her new condition and so through resentment from feeling we had all left her, had created a growing isolation and barrier to being with others. I explained that if she remembered something of the love she had given and received in life, this would release her from the bondage of her loneliness, and bring her into contact with many people who wanted to be with her who were dead.
Dreaming of death is often not about the end of your or someone else's life, but a means of showing how some aspect of your outer or inner life is fading, lost, or being superseded by a changed approach, so may be shown as dying.
Other possibilities are that your love or drive to achieve something might die, and be shown as death in your dreams. The change from adolescence to puberty, or maturity to old age, is also often depicted in a dream as oneself dying. In this case it is a past way of life and identity that is passing away.
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Dreaming of a dead body: This shows another aspect of death in dreams. Lost opportunities or unexpressed potentials in you are frequently shown in this way. All of us unconsciously learn attitudes or survival skills from parents and others, or we have a talent or gift that has got buried, denied or even killed out by events. If these or other facets of our personality are unrecognised or 'buried' they may be shown as dead. Sometimes we have killed the child or teenager in us because of difficulties or trauma at those ages, and these may be seen as a dead person in your dream, or even a corpse you find buried. Some death dreams may show the awakening of new life in the dreamer. For instance, Sue explored a dream in which she was told her baby had died. She woke shaking with grief and tears. When she explored the dream she felt it showed her becoming alive enough to feel the grief of past pain, and the death of her hopes and love in a relationship that had just ended. She had suppressed her pain for so long. In now coming alive enough to feel her emotions, she was feeling at last that something she previously loved had died in her. |
If the death is someone we know: Sometimes, as in the example below, this shows a desire to be free of someone; or unexpressed aggression; perhaps one’s love for that person has ‘died’. We often ‘kill’ our parents in dreams as we move toward independence. Or we may want someone ‘out of the way’ so we do not have to compete for attention and love.
During my teens I was engaged to be married when I found a more attractive partner and was in considerable conflict. Consistently I dreamt I was at my fiancé’s funeral until it dawned on me the dream was telling me I wanted to be free of him. When I gave him up the dreams ceased. Mrs D.
