Secret of the universe dreams

Tony Crisp

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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.' Their conclusion was that dreams cannot be truly revelatory. While it may be true to say that some such dreams contain little which adds to the dreamers understanding, many dreams give insights which profoundly alter the dreamers future attitudes or actions.

Revelatory dreams are more common to men than women. This may be that more men concern themselves with questions of what the universe is. If the dreamer creates a mental or emotion tension in themselves through the intensity with which they pursue such questions - and we need to accept that often such intensity arises out of anxiety regarding death and ones 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 dream like state as in research using LSD, show that there is an enormously increased ability to access associated ideas, allow feeling responses, and achieve novel viewpoints and creativity. 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 dream like 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 'I had almost total recall of a course I did in thermo dynamics; something I had not given any thought to in years.'

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