‘Dreams: Are you connected?’

Various interpretations of dreams by different cultures

Eskimos, Patannis, and Tajals believe that the spirit leaves the body during sleep and goes to a special world of dreams. Hence, they consider it dangerous to awaken people who are asleep, since the person who is asleep may lose his spirit, and they even severely punish those who awaken people who are asleep.
In other cultures, things that happen in ‘dreams’ are equated with ‘reality.’ The Machushi Indians of Guyana had a dream in which the explorers, who had come from a foreign country to investigate their tribe, forced them to paddle a canoe through a dangerous waterfall. When they awoke the following morning, they argued furiously with the explorers, expressing their fatigue.
It is a tradition of Native Borneos for a husband to send his wife back to her parents’ home if she commits adultery in his dream.
In South Africa, if a person dreams about being harmed by a friend, that person will end the friendship.
In the Kamchatka Peninsula, if a man dreams about a woman being fond of him, he deems that he has the right to ask her for physical love in reality.
The Iroquoi also have an interesting take on dreams. They believe that the actions of a dream must be absolutely repeated in reality, so they carry out even things that are dangerous as it was seen in the dream.
 
The Bible contains many prophetic dreams. In addition, papyrus from ancient Egypt holds records of interpretations of dreams, Indian paleographs mention prophecies through dreams, and the remains of Assyria and Babylonia were sites for the discovery of a guidebook for interpreting dreams. In this way, people have been perceiving dreams as things that foretell the future since a long time ago.

Academic research on ‘dreams’

Though we easily and frequently experience dreams in our daily lives, dreams remain an unknown world. Freud and Jung were the first to attempt in-depth academic research about dreams. Freud concluded that experiences in reality appear distorted and altered in dreams and that the content of dreams is related to the fulfillment of desires. Hence, he believed that interpreting a person’s dreams could provide information about their desires and awareness. On the other hand, Jung asserted that the archetypes of unconsciousness, which are irrelevant to experiences in reality, also appear in dreams. He explained that an important method for understanding the meaning of a dream was to collect the common associated to all human beings as well as the dreamer’s association,and to understand the fundamental meanings of the associations.

Ik Lee, a scholar of the Realist School of Confucianism of the Chosun Dynasty, described in his Essay on Sensing Dreams that dreams are the phenomena of the mind of the dreamers being touched, thus revealing their thoughts. In his Essay on Omens of Dreams, he also explained that the omens in dreams are created by ghosts. He said that it was an effect of ‘chi,’ in which the chi of another person comes in contact with the dreamer to create various visionary images.

Definition of the world of dreams and revelations given by the Word

This week’s message explains the secret of ‘dreams’ in three ways. First, the Holy Son enlightens us by showing through dreams the ‘appropriate things’ and the ‘things that we must do,’ like showing videos. Second, He enlightens us by showing the ‘actual spiritual world.’ Third, the thoughts of our brains become phenomena in the spiritual world, which we see in dreams.

The Holy Son then clearly pointed out the four doors of revelation: the body touches, sees, hears, and smells; the ‘heart, mind, and thoughts’ feel through ‘thoughts’; the ‘soul’ relays to the ‘brain’ what it sees and feels in the spiritual world, making it come to ‘mind’ and letting you hear ‘spiritual sounds’; the ‘spirit’ conveys things of the spiritual world to the soul, which the soul then relays to the body--as a result, things come to ‘mind’ and the body hears ‘spiritual sounds,’ and subsequently comes to realize and know. He defined the world of dreams and revelations so explicitly.

He told us, therefore, that we must not consider dreams to be ordinary, for we cannot make dreams come true if we ignore them. He also said that He does not give revelations only through dreams, but also during waking hours by making things come to mind, as well as through intuitions, premonitions, spiritual feelings, inspirations, and nature.

God wants to communicate with us through these methods. If we realize and know how earnestly He wishes to connect with us, we will be filled with inspiration, awe, gratitude, love, shock, and benefit. We should remember this Word and immediately put it into action, so that we will not let a dream end merely as a dream, but use it as a precious tool for bearing the fruit of deep love with God.