Secrets of dreams - psychology of sleep - interpretation of dreams. Dream Interpretation all the secrets of dreams revealed Dream Interpretation all the secrets of dreams

All people tend to see unusual dream plots. If someone says that he did not dream of anything, he simply does not remember the picture that appears in the mind of a sleeping person for a number of subjective reasons.

For a long time, people have sought to unravel the mystery of dreams, so predictors began compiling dream books, which can be called a guide to dream interpretation. Not only predictors, but also scientists tried to explain the dreams rationally, but the mystery remained unsolved.
SLEEP PHYSIOLOGY
The science of somnology studies sleep as a process, and the science of dreams is oneirology. Sleep is necessary for people in everyday life as a physiological process. The exact reason for the need for sleep has not yet been solved, but scientists suggest that sleep is necessary for the brain to rest from the daily functioning of the body.
A person can last no more than three days without sleep, otherwise disastrous consequences cannot be avoided. To get enough sleep, a person needs at least 7-8 hours of sleep.
In the course of scientific research, scientists were able to establish that after forced insomnia for more than three days, a person suffers from the following metamorphoses:
hearing and vision impairment; impaired coordination of movements; a sharp decrease in concentration; possible appearance of hallucinations. In addition, volunteers who, under the conditions of a scientific experiment, were subjected to forced wakefulness, sharply lost weight, despite nutritious food. With insomnia, the immune system suffers, which contributes to an increase in viruses and bacteria in the blood. Night rest is necessary for the human body to restore vital processes. Sleep is necessary not only for people, but also for animals; prolonged insomnia for them ends in death.
MYSTICITY OF DREAMS
Dreams come to all healthy people, but not everyone manages to remember the plot of the night's scenario. Unusual images of night illusions are symbolic in nature, so they should not be interpreted literally; symbols can be not only unambiguous, but also multi-sign. Esotericists consider a dream to be an encrypted message from the other world, sent to a person by higher powers to warn about the future.
Black and white dreams come from the immediate subconscious; they help the owner of the dream to know himself as a person. Contemplators of black and white dreams rely on their minds in reality. Color dreams come to emotional and creative people. The more impressionable the nature, the brighter its sleepy visions. People who have fully colored dreams rest better.
It is interesting that in dreams we are more often visited by negative emotions; we experience joy in dreams much less often. This is probably why dreams are considered to be a warning to the dreamer about future events in reality.
Images of night phantasmagoria are often prophetic, although they look strange. According to psychologists, this subconscious is trying to warn the dreamer about events that will soon happen to a person. In dreams, through the transmission of pictures of the past, people receive warnings about the future that comes during the rest of the consciousness.
Esotericists consider a person to be a multidimensional being, having a special energy shell in each dimension. After falling asleep, the human soul leaves the physical shell of the manifested world (physical) and moves through the unmanifested world, where in the shell of the astral body it travels through the beyond. Here people are deprived of the ability to control their senses and consciousness; to control the astral body it is necessary to master special techniques.


POPULAR DREAMS INTERPRETERS
Dreams can be considered a person's idea of ​​himself. This is a mirror of his soul and the events of reality, when the subconscious helps relieve the stress of reality, healing the soul and improving life. Dream books compiled by famous dream interpreters will help you understand the events of an unusual illusion.
Freud's Dream Book
This is not an ordinary collection of dream interpretations, but a bestseller of the 20th century. The famous psychoanalyst, author of the theory of psychoanalysis, will help with his interpretations to reveal the dreamer’s hidden desires and fantasies, and tell him about the future. For modern people, Sigmund Freud is associated with sex, but the author was a famous doctor and scientist, researcher and innovator in the world of psychology.
The theoretical basis for the interpretation of dream images according to Freud lies in the concept of hidden sexual desires living in the subconscious of every person. During a night's rest, unsatisfied thoughts are reflected in dream pictures.
The interpretation of dreams according to Freud's dream book does not carry a mystical load and is based on the facts of scientific experiments. Symbols of night visions, considered under the auspices of erotic desires, make it possible to adjust the real future. Miller's Dream Book
The author of the treatise is the American psychologist Gustav Miller, an inquisitive and intelligent person who was interested in the human psyche. Miller's dream book contains more than 10,000 dream interpretations; his interpretations are not without a commercial streak. The treatise was incredibly popular in the last century, but has not lost its relevance today.
Miller considered dreams to be encrypted information about events - past, present, and future. To decipher important information, the subconscious sends the dreamer a hint, which the author suggests in his dream book to correctly decipher.
Vanga's Dream Book
A blind seer from a Bulgarian village had the gift of clairvoyance; many of her predictions to celebrities became public knowledge. The soothsayer considered night dreams to be an important stage in a person’s destiny, attaching special importance to prophetic dreams. Interpretations of dreams according to Vanga’s dream book may seem unusual, since the seer received her knowledge from certain invisible beings who are always next to her.
Interpretations of the meanings of dreams according to Vanga’s treatise concern not only individual human lives, they are connected with the distant future of entire states. Clairvoyant interpretations predict the fate of the planet on a global scale.
Dream Interpretation of Nostradamus
A doctor and alchemist, also an outstanding astrologer, lived more than four centuries ago. However, the predictions and dream book of the famous predictor and mysticism do not lose their relevance in the modern world. The reason is that prophecies tend to come true. It is believed that Nostradamus's dream interpreter is aimed at people with well-developed intuition, contemplators of prophetic dreams.
The author believed that the origins of versions of night scenarios are hidden deep in the past, and their influence is directed towards the distant future. In his transcripts, the mystic argued that every person can be visited by dreams related to the fate of the country or the world, and not just personal affairs. The possibility of interpreting global events makes the dream book a unique tome.
Loff's Dream Book
The motto of the collection of dreams, one of the most famous researchers of the psyche of the past century, is as follows - as many people, so many interpretations of the dreams they saw. According to the beliefs of David Loff, two identical plots of a sleep illusion that came to different people are interpreted differently. The author of the unusual dream book does not have the symbolism inherent in other dream interpreters, and to explain the dream images you will have to look into your soul, analyze your feelings and recent events, relationships with your close relatives.
Dream Interpretation of Hasse
The author of the treatise is a woman from pre-revolutionary Russia. Miss Hasse was a medium, engaged in spiritualistic seances, which made her and the books she wrote, including a dream book, super popular. The popularity of the treatise has been tested by time; it is a collection of reliable interpretations based on reliability, intertwining folk experience with ancient esoteric works. It is the magic of numbers from the dream book that will help you find out whether the dream will come true or not.
Tsvetkov's Dream Interpretation
A popular collection of dream interpretations was written by our contemporary, writer of the Russian diaspora, Evgeniy Tsvetkov. The versatility of the personality, uniting a journalist, scientist, and occultist, allowed the author to compile a dream book of interpretations in the light of modern realities based on interpretations of past centuries.
The book, based on Slavic associations, teaches not only how to correctly decipher night dreams. The author tells how to behave correctly during dream events in order to control your destiny.
Longo's Dream Interpretation
Among dream interpreters, Yuri Longo’s treatise has a special semantic meaning. The famous esotericist of the late 20th century created a unique method of dream interpretation, combining the esoteric base and the sphere of psychology. The life of a master of White Magic, but a psychologist by training, was full of mysticism, and death is still shrouded in an aura of mystery. The Traditional Healer managed to discover a formula for the interaction of the past, present and future with the symbolism of a person’s deep psychological experiences, which is reflected in dreams. Unusual interpretations of dreams according to Longo’s dream book are a combination of the postulates of official science with parapsychology.
If you remember a dream, recall its details in your memory. After this, choose the dream book of the author you trust most. However, having learned how your dream is interpreted, consult a few more particularly popular treatises to clarify the information received.

Secrets of dreams.

You can not only see dreams, but also generate them, that is, consciously induce a dream in order to solve a particular problem, make a decision, establish connections, and overcome bad habits. To do this, before going to bed, describe your problem in detail and formulate a question related to this problem. Concentrate on this question before going to bed. When you wake up, write down everything you saw in your dream. Try to analyze the dream.

Visions occur during waking hours, and some dreams are of the nature of visions. The symbols and sensations of dreams and visions indicate that these states come from a higher level of consciousness. Dreams and visions are the true expression of the self, which transforms external reality into internal experience and shapes messages.

The content of some dreams can be so exciting and terrifying that the person often wakes up with his heart pounding and sweating. Many people sometimes have nightmares, which may be a warning, literal or symbolic. Such dreams can be an expression of fear that needs to be overcome, some dreams can be a kind of preparation of emotions before exposure to stress. Thus, reality will be easier to bear.

Any conscious actions, attitudes or emotions that go too far will inevitably require a subconscious compensatory restructuring, i.e. a self-regulatory system that maintains the necessary balance in the psyche. This self-regulation often occurs through dreams. For example, a dream in which a person is overly cheerful may be compensation for being too serious about life. The dream seems to say: don’t take things too seriously, be more happy.

If you want to improve your memory for dreams, then think about dreams, talk about dreams, read about dreams. In other words, make sure that dreams become an important part of your waking state. The Indians believed that listening to their children's dreams had healing properties. They had no crime or violence as long as they followed this practice. At breakfast, all children under 12 years old talked about their dreams of the previous night.

Often dreams are the tap that releases steam. In real life, such actions may not be acceptable. A dream in which a person attacks a hated boss can be a safe release for a person filled with hostile feelings. This is a more acceptable way to extinguish aggressive emotions than to keep them inside yourself, which will negatively affect physical and spiritual health.

Don't despair if most of your dreams seem negative. Remember that dreams usually come to our aid when we have problems and tend to help us when we make mistakes. Our night pharmacist does not seem to believe in giving too many specific instructions, so when he sends us a message in the form of a hint or allegory, it must be deciphered as precisely as possible.

The first step in working with dreams is dream recall. Due to poor recall, many people complain that they do not dream. However, studies have shown that almost everyone has four to five dreams per night, at intervals of about 90 minutes. Forgetfulness can be associated with illness, fatigue, depression, etc.

One man kept having a dream in which he walked around like a zombie, completely uninterested in what was happening around him. After he realized that he needed to react more emotionally to the message and followed this advice, the dream stopped.

Keep a notebook to record your dreams. A special notebook, a pencil and a light source that can be easily turned on should be kept near your bed at all times - it is necessary to convince the subconscious of your frankness (thus ensuring the interaction of consciousness and subconscious). Write down your dreams immediately after waking up, otherwise your dreams will be distorted and you may lose an important symbol.

Before going to bed, mentally analyze your feelings, activities, and physical state of that day. Don't expect dreams to act as an oracle. Conscious attempts to get answers to questions must come first. And, if possible, wake up naturally.

Some dreams may be scenes or memories from a past life. Carefully study any dream that you think may refer to a different time period, where there is a different environment and different clothing. Such a dream can be classified as a dream from a past life. A dream from a past life is dreamed not only to help resolve present conflicts, but also to help awaken the spiritual core of the dreamer.

If you remember a dream when you wake up at night, write down a phrase or keyword that will trigger the mechanism of full recall in the morning. Mentally review the dream at this point, and then fall asleep again. If you don't work on remembering dreams, most of them will be lost. You must write down something: a fragment, a symbol, a name, a person, a scene, a feeling. Record your dream in present tense. If the dream is recalled during the day, write it down along with what was happening at the time of recall.

There are three levels within our body: physical, mental (mental) and spiritual (spiritual). Many dreams can be interpreted on several levels, and there are many types in between. For example, compensatory dreams can also be wish fulfillment dreams. Which of the three levels initiated the dream is not so important. How we use the information we receive is important.

Dreams initiated on the physical level are the easiest to understand and interpret. Some dreams indicate a physical need, such as exercise, a balanced diet, or medical care. Other dreams have no special meaning and are often simply a reaction to external influences, such as bad food combinations, overindulgence in food or drink, hormonal imbalance, bodily injury, illness or any physical sensation (such as bright light, cold, strong smell ).

The ringing of an alarm clock in a dream will sound like a telephone call; and if you dream of a snowy, frosty winter, then when you wake up, you will feel that you are cold. Drugs, medications, abuse of food and drink, difficult to digest food or a life full of haste can cause meaningless dreams, i.e. the message information may not reach the sleeper.

Daily activities also sometimes trigger dreams without meaning. For example, a person who drove a car at night for several hours dreams of a stream of headlights directed at him. And there is no point in interpreting this dream. However, do not be too quick to attribute the dream to the physical level - you may lose an important message from another level.

The largest number of dreams are caused by the subconscious, the thinking (mental) level. Dreams at this level are complex and related to a wider field of activity. Many of these dreams can be valuable tools for problem solving and self-discovery. A horse racing fan dreamed that he came to the racetrack and found it dusty and thickly overgrown with weeds. Later he regretted that he did not “listen” to his dream, as he lost it so much.

Closely related to compensatory dreams are dreams of desires. If a person finds money or valuables in a dream, this may reflect a desire to improve a difficult financial situation. A shy person may dream that he is giving an outstanding speech. But do not rush to classify such dreams only as desires. Such dreams can suggest how you can get money or learn how to give speeches. Search at different levels of dream interpretation, choosing the most suitable one.

Some dreams defy reasonable explanation, at least at this stage of dream knowledge. Such dreams contain elements of telepathy and clairvoyance. The Bible is replete with prophetic dreams. History knows many examples of people seeing themselves or their loved ones in dreams at the moment when a misfortune happened to them.

Contrary to many people's expectations, our night gurus do not tell us what to do, but give us useful information that we can accept or reject. A food lover often had a dream in which he himself was so obese that he could neither sit nor walk, but only stand. The dream did not say: “Stop overeating,” but painted a vivid picture of what awaits a person along this path.

Since many of our problems arise from a lack of inner cognition, self-discovery dreams are closely related to problem-solving dreams. Don't be afraid of what dreams may reveal. We cannot do more than we are capable of at the moment. Such dreams can be invaluable.

Dreams that come from the spiritual level have the greatest transformative effect. If you remember such a dream once, you will never forget it. Such dreams fill us with a feeling of fullness of life and harmony, they encourage, inspire and give us an understanding of the meaning of life. Famous religious figures often appear to provide enlightenment or life-saving advice. In addition, other symbols that relate to a spiritual theme may appear: a mountain top, light, a rainbow, water, any feeling of euphoria.

If we learn to correctly interpret dreams and then apply our knowledge in practice, this can become an effective means for self-improvement. Dreams can point us in the right direction for physical healing, wealth, career, and many other areas important to our lives. Be open and willing to accept dream meanings, even if it threatens current beliefs or relationships.

SECRETS OF DREAMS

Why does day follow night? What is life? What is death and what is sleep? These questions probably interested the Neanderthals, who lived about 40 thousand years ago.

The man thought, compared, persistently searched and found, as it seemed to him, the answers. He watched as each new day began with the sunrise and burned out with it. Every night, falling to the ground, interrupts people's affairs and imperiously takes them to sleep.

When the sun rises, everything repeats itself again. But not for everyone. Someone doesn't wake up and dies. But what does it mean to die? What is death? And does it even exist?

After all, every night we die, and in the morning we come to life. And how many times have you seen: a man fell, lost consciousness, and after a while came to his senses.

Or it seems that a person has died, but a day passes, a second, sometimes a week or more - and life returns. Lethargic sleep has always struck people with its similarity to death. And if a person didn’t wake up, did he really die? To which of us, in a dream, and to those who suffer from hallucinations, did not relatives, loved ones, friends, those who have already left this world come forever?

And if they come, it means they live somewhere, exist. So there is no death?

The ancients believed that death is just a long, long dream, that someone constantly lives in every person. This mysterious "someone" can leave a person's body and return again. This is how the idea of ​​a double arose.

It was believed that the double was a real being, possessing not only its own body, but also an amazing property - volatility.

When the double is in the body, the person does not sleep, works, loves, suffers; the double has left the body - the person is sleeping or losing consciousness; did not return - falls asleep in eternal sleep.

Over time, the concept of a double changed: it was no longer endowed with physical properties, but was perceived as a spirit, a soul.

Some imagined the soul as a very subtle ethereal part of the body, others - in the form of a subtle substance that cannot be seen or touched, others considered it a foggy elusive creature, a shadow that has a body (though it is different from ours). The soul can drink, eat, it can be injured and even killed.

Dreams have always been indisputable evidence of the real existence of the soul.

Beliefs have come down to us from ancient times: dreams are what the soul sees after leaving the body.

At this time, she lives according to the laws, communicates with people dear to her who have died long ago, travels, feasts, solves the most difficult problems, and overcomes obstacles.

The soul continues to live after the death of a person. The man was kind during his life; a kind soul remained to live after his death; an evil, cruel, quarrelsome person died - an evil soul toils around the world.

Meeting a good soul in a dream is a good dream; meeting the soul of an evil person portends trouble.

The ancients believed that someone else's soul could pay a visit to a sleeping person, or vice versa: with your soul you could visit someone else's body.

Night dreams sometimes amaze us with their reality, and in the beliefs of peoples one can notice that sleep and reality are absolutely real for them.

Somehow, in the last century, an African dreamed that a white traveler killed his slave. The African, waking up early in the morning, immediately demanded a ransom for the damage caused, although his slave was alive and well... The ransom had to be paid: the basis for demanding a ransom was too serious - a dream.

Dreams were considered not just reality, but material reality. In China there was a custom: if a person had a bad dream, then in order to prevent the misfortune predicted in the dream, the dream can simply... be eaten! To do this, they turned to the tapir: “O tapir, eat my dream.”

The mountain stream helped the Tajiks in such situations: they asked it to take away the bad dream.

We find an echo of ideas about the materiality of dreams in proverbs and spells: “Where the night goes, there goes the dream.”

Now we already know that there is ordinary sleep, lethargic sleep, hypnotic sleep, hallucinations. But often, even with modern knowledge, our dreams amaze us with their mystery, intricacies of plot lines and, most importantly, predictability. How difficult it can sometimes be to understand these nightly dreams.

In order to unravel their dreams, these prophetic clues of fate, people have long been trying to interpret them, to find the relationship between dream images and real life phenomena. This is how dream books were created.

The first known dream book belongs to the pen of Artemidorus of Ephesus (2nd century BC).

One of the oldest monuments of world culture dates back to the beginning of the 1st millennium BC - the Indian collection of spells "Atharvaveda". The authorship of this ancient book is attributed to the fire priest Atharvan.

Among the numerous spells collected in this book, a significant number serve to break the spell cast by bad dreams.

Of course, dreams here are also perceived as reality, but a reality that can be destroyed with the help of conspiracies.

People have strived to reveal the secrets of sleep at all times, and we must give them their due - they have achieved significant success. An analysis of myths, legends, and customs convincingly testifies: many properties of sleep and a significant amount of specifics in dreams, if not comprehended or cognized, were, in any case, noticed in ancient times.

Thus, the priests of Ancient Egypt knew and were able to use hypnosis methods.

It is not for nothing that in Ancient Greece, among the numerous gods, a place of honor belonged to the god of sleep - Hypnos. Hypnos is the son of the night, and night is his kingdom. He is the brother of Moira - the goddesses of fate and the brother of death.

The similarity between sleep and death is purely external, but how often does Thanatos - the god of death - come to a person when he is in captivity of Hypnos.

The face of Thanatos is terrible; Hypnos is quiet, beautiful and benevolent.

But the wise Greeks understood: sleep is a very complex phenomenon, and it cannot be personified by one god. Therefore, Hypnos has many children - the gods of sleep and dreams.

Perhaps the most famous is the beautiful and omnipresent god of dreams, the winged Morpheus. The gods generously endowed him: he can take on any form and visit everyone living on earth in a dream.

Hypnos and Morpheus are active assistants to Asclepius, the god of doctors, the god of medicine. Already in those distant times, healers learned the healing power of sleep, they believed that dreams in the temple of Asclepius were a hint from the gods about a person’s illness and advice on how to treat the patient.

Even the great doctors of the past, Hippocrates and Galen, drew attention to the diagnostic value of dreams. This problem was developed in the works of many doctors of antiquity, in the Middle Ages.

The knowledge about dreams and dreams accumulated over the past centuries is successfully used by modern medicine. Scientific research confirms the following:

Dreams, if deciphered correctly, can be used very effectively in diagnosing and predicting human diseases, because any changes in the body, joys, sorrows, shocks are reflected in night dreams.

An experienced specialist in the nature of dreams can not only determine the disease itself, but also find out the specific disease, its location, beginning, development and completion.

During the latent period of the disease, the frequency of dreams increases, both during one night and over many nights.

Dreams become unpleasant, restless, and sometimes turn into nightmares. Dream subjects at this stage: dirt, blood, fires, injuries, attacks, battles, doctors, medicines, falls, etc.

It has been noticed that the more severe the disease, the more terrible the dreams and their consequences: feelings of fear, anxiety, despondency.

Dreams sometimes directly, and sometimes in encrypted form, reflect the localization of the pathological process, the specifics of a particular disease.

As a rule, such dreams continue throughout the illness, often repeated “verbatim” or with changes. And when joyful motives appear in such dreams, their emotional coloring changes, which means the period of recovery has begun.

Knowing the general patterns of development in the manifestations of dreams, it is possible to explain most of the so-called prophetic dreams.

Thus, the dream described in 1908 by M. M. Popov made an indelible impression on many. The young brilliant officer Prince Vasily Vladimirovich Dolgoruky suddenly died. The death of the prince deeply affected his friend Stepan Stepanovich Apraksin.

On the first night after the tragedy, he had a dream: his deceased friend came to visit him. Friends know that they are already in different worlds, but this does not bother them. The deceased prince promises his friend a long life and says that the next time he will visit him three days before his death.

Forty years have passed. And again Stepan Stepanovich saw his friend in a dream. Three days later he died...

At first glance, it seems that there was some intervention from higher powers. But psychologists say that the forces of suggestion and self-hypnosis played a role here. Science has known such phenomena for a long time.

As we see, both sleep and dreams still contain many mysteries and secrets. In fact, we know little about simple things like snoring and yawning.

It is also incomprehensible that a disease such as the “Curse of Ondine” takes away the lives of infants during sleep who were not previously ill (the unusual name of the disease is taken from mythology: jealous gods deprived the mortal lover of a water nymph of the opportunity to breathe in his sleep).

They still cannot figure out why, in their sleep, practically healthy men suddenly experience fibrillation of the heart muscle, and then death.

The so-called “enlightened” dreams, which not only develop “to order”, but also allow interference and influence on the consciousness of a sleeping person, are also incomprehensible.

The “sense of pre-existence”, first described by Walter Scott and named by him, has also not been studied: a person sees images that really exist, but have never been seen by him - a certain area, a house, a room, etc.

Sleep hides many secrets in ghostly night dreams.

It seems that sleep and dreams can serve as the key that nature gave to man to understand the fundamental secrets of existence: consciousness, thinking, memory.

And now a few words about hallucinations - the so-called “waking dream”.

Hallucinations are a state of daydreaming; at a time when the senses are awakened, the eyes see, the ears hear, etc. Strictly speaking, this is nothing more than the delirium of one of many senses, since the imagined object has no effect on the retina of the eye, the sound does not strike hearing, then the real cause of hallucination must be sought in the sensory nervous system and attributed to the special activity of the brain.

This phenomenon does not exist only for sight and hearing; other senses can also be affected by it. Touch, smell, taste, felt without any external irritation, can also be called true hallucinations.

With such a misconception of the senses, one hears, for example, delightful melodies, while another hears a terrible noise, a creaking tearing apart the ears. One sees charming images, another sees disgusting, horrifying faces, etc. Finally, some imagine that they are being beaten or tortured, that they are gnawing on hot coals, while others think that they are eating expensive foods and drinking excellent wines .

These imaginary sensations depend on ideas and images represented by memory, supplemented and personified by habit. Books of such content, the history of magic and sorcery in all times and among all peoples, the annals of psychological medicine are filled with many examples of as many amazing, as many strange delusions of feelings.

The reasons predisposing to such a state are of two kinds: physical and moral. The first are very numerous: an increase or decrease in temperature, abuse of alcoholic beverages, strong intake of quinine sulfate, foxglove grass, mad cherry, henbane, dope, opium acapita, camphor, nitrogen fumes and especially hashish; finally, shocks to the brain from a blow, a fall, etc. Ordinary physical causes also include: a sudden impression on the senses or a too long and vivid sensation, too intense attention, remorse, fear, fright, passions, etc.

Although these delusions can occur at all hours of the day, for the most part they develop before sleep or immediately after waking up, when all objects take on some indefinite form: this moment is the most favorable, and the slightest external excitement can disrupt it.

It should be noted here that in most cases the errors of the senses are discovered at the onset of madness, and as soon as this disease breaks out, they take on a long-lasting character and ceaselessly haunt their unfortunate victim.

In other cases, hallucinations appear in full consciousness; sometimes they become intermittent and occur daily at certain hours. We encounter this phenomenon mainly in hysterical, cataleptic, hypochondriacal, melancholic and such individuals who indulge in deep thoughts or sad passions.

Let us now take a look at the misconceptions inherent in each sense separately, and begin with the misconceptions of hearing, as the most common.

1. Hearing misconceptions. Individuals belonging to this category seem to hear various kinds of sounds, quiet, loud or terrible voices that affect one or both ears, come from afar or nearby, and sometimes are internal. Those affected by this condition hear noise in the head, chest and other parts of the body. History tells of many great people who listened to the voice of their guardian genius. These inner voices were nothing more than a concussion of the brain nerves excited by continuous mental activity.

I knew one professor of philosophy, a hot-tempered and indomitable man, who in his young years indulged in bad inclinations, which were suppressed by the efforts of his mind. This professor heard different voices: one, meek and friendly, attracted him to goodness; the other, responding with a metallic sound and a rude tone, encouraged him to evil. Here the explanation is very natural: the mind fought with instinct and won the victory in this fight.

One gunner, who had been deaf for ten years, suddenly began to hear the sounds of trumpets and military music, reminding him of those days when he was under the colors. He happily told his friends that he would soon be cured of deafness, because he was beginning to hear the sounds of a trumpet and the beat of a bass drum.

In Bicetri, several years ago, there was a poor musician who, as a result of insanity, became a lycanthrope (believing himself to be a wolf); of those present in this institution, he did not want to make acquaintances with anyone, except for one medical student who gave him a bow.

Every day, in solitude, he spent hours moving the bow along his left hand, as if on a violin. At the same time, his pantomimes were very curious: he made movements now forward, now back, now to the right, now to the left, now speeding up, now slowing down the beat and signaling to the imaginary orchestra to perform the piece better; then his movements intensified and his face became covered with a large sweat, expressing annoyance that the invisible musicians were not playing as they should.

A minute later he slowly moved the bow along his hand, looked at the sky and seemed to listen to the delightful harmony, inexplicable delight was expressed in his features, and if at that moment anyone interfered with him, “Shh! Shh!” he shouted, “on your knees.” , profane! listen to these divine sounds! "

In the last years of his life, the famous Beethoven went completely deaf and listened as an invisible orchestra played his sublime symphonies. They say that for the old man this was the first consolation.

One lady, who fully possessed her mental abilities, as soon as she sat down at the toilet, heard two male voices. One extolled the whiteness of her skin, the elasticity of her form and her secret charms. “You are so beautiful that you can go crazy with love for you!” - he said. And the lady, although she was very pleased to hear such praise, closed herself off from shyness.

When she again approached the mirror to continue her interrupted toilette, suddenly another voice was heard, saying something completely opposite to the first: “Your freshness is fake, these shapes and circles are only a deception: if only those who are surprised by them would look at them naked, they would run away, frightened by your ugliness. You are so disgusting that it’s even scary to look at you!”

The poor lady blushed with shame and turned pale with annoyance, and loudly called the servant to push him out of the insolent man. But as the servant entered, she realized her mistake and ordered him to put the horses into the carriage. The next day at a certain hour the same thing was repeated; So six months passed.

Now this lady is completely cured and can attend to her toilet without any hindrance.

One abbot, whose mental abilities were below mediocrity, suddenly awoke one day as an eloquent preacher, everyone flocked to listen to him. The surprised boss asked him the reason for such an unexpected change. The abbot simply answered him that in the silence of the night he heard divine voices and wrote his sermons under the dictation of St. Mikhail.

2. Misconceptions of vision. The errors of this sense, like the errors of hearing, are almost always in more or less close connection with real ideas and activities or with past living sensations. The images that appear are either clear and sharply outlined, or dark and confusing; they last longer or shorter, then fade, seem as if disintegrating in the air and disappear.

We have already said that visual errors also occur during the day, but more often in the morning, evening and night. If they awaken on a dark night, then one ray of light instantly scatters them; on a clear day, just blinking is enough to make them disappear.

Mr. Baillarger, in his excellent essay on the fallacy of the senses, reports the following fact: in 1832, during excavations in the old Franciscan monastery in Paris, many coffins were discovered, inside of which there were still fairly well-preserved skeletons. One medical student received from the workers a fair amount of bones, which he hung on the walls of his room, and two days later, returning home at midnight, he felt fear at the sight of the disgusting skulls illuminated by the moonlight. He drove away this stupid fear, lit a cigar, drank a glass of rum and went to bed.

He had just fallen asleep when he was awakened by severe pain in his elbow, mixed with the noise of voices and groans. Looking around in fear, he saw in the light of the moon two rows of human figures who were dressed in shrouds and walked around the room in silent meditation.

“Their motionless faces,” he said, “shone like silver, their gazes fixed on me cast pale lightning. From time to time they glanced at me, wrinkled eyebrows, and their whispers denounced hostile attempts on my person.

At first I thought that I was undergoing a terrible nightmare, but I was completely awake, because I heard the sound of a carriage in the street and the striking of the clock in the bell tower of St. Severina. I felt all the slightest details of the vision, I wanted to jump out of bed, but it was as if I was being held back.

Raising my head, I noticed next to me a tall man in black clothes, with a pale face. His sparkling eyes forced me to close my eyelids; since my hand was as if in pincers and I could not jump out of bed, I felt rage, despair, and fear. Finally, the giant let go of my hand, turning to me with some kind of speech, from which I retained only these words: curiosity, immodesty, youth.

Now I jumped out of bed and opened the window, I really wanted to jump into the yard... Meanwhile, the coolness of the night again reminded me of real life, and I looked for a long time at the starry sky, illuminated by the silver rays of the moon. When I turned to look at my bed, I again saw a man dressed in black and two rows of white ghosts.

I looked at the strange scene for at least a quarter of an hour. It began to dawn. There was a lot of movement between these figures; I heard the doors of my room opening and closing; I went back to bed; my eyes were covered with a veil, and a sound sleep took possession of me. Waking up at eight o’clock, I felt severe pain in the crook of my palm and an incomprehensible melancholy, as if I had gotten rid of some terrible danger.”

An official of the War Department was for a long time subjected to a painful delusion of feelings. Waking up in the morning, he saw a spider hanging on a web in the middle of his room. The spider quickly grew in size and filled the entire room, so that the official reluctantly went out so that this gigantic and disgusting insect would not crush him.

Now this deceptive idea was replaced by another, less painful and more pleasant. Every morning, when the official woke up, he saw a table with an excellent breakfast, but, unfortunately, he can only enjoy the views, because the table disappears the very minute the official approaches him.

During my stay in Greece, I experienced a very pleasant delusion of feelings, which I attribute to mental stress, and during which my vision and hearing were strained at the same time.

On one of the beautiful and poetic evenings under the blue sky of Hellas, I lay down to rest on the green carpet of Mount Lyceum. High peaks rose in the misty distance, and the silver waves of the Gulf of Arcadia were reflected on the azure horizon, birds sang under the shadow of spring leaves, a light breeze carried the fragrance of herbs and flowers through the small valley, and the last rays of the setting sun cast their mysterious shades on this beautiful nature.

I was young, impressionable, full of enthusiasm and sweet memories, little by little transported in my mind to the heroic times of ancient Greece.

My eyes quietly turned to the banks of the Ladon River, which flowed at my feet. Corporeal life seemed to cease, and my imagination wandered through the laughing fields of mythology.

In the midst of this silent contemplation, I saw, at some distance from me, a choir of nymphs dancing to the sound of Pan’s pipe. They intertwined their arms, their feet struck the ground in rhythmic rhythm, and as soon as the breeze lifted their light tunics, my eyes admired their charming forms and luxurious outlines.

It was a sweet deception of the senses!.. Oh! How I would like to continue it!.. But, ah, just one narrowing of the eye was enough to destroy everything, scatter everything...

I could explain this phenomenon to myself as long as it concerned only the sense of vision, but what I heard remained inexplicable to me. I went down to the river bank to see a musician, whose monotonous melodies were carried to me by the wind.

After several searches, I noticed that in some places on the bank the reeds were cut to an uneven height, so that the air rushing over the open pipes produced various sounds from them, which, mixing with the noise of the leaves, produced a strange harmony that I heard. This explained everything.

3. Misconceptions of touch. When the sense of touch is lost, the subject experiences imaginary crawling of ants on his skin, general or local stabbing, a sensation of cold and warmth, varying from icy cold to burning pain, the touch of some reptile entwined around his body, a spider crawling on him; sometimes it seems to him that his body is increasing in volume, swelling enormously and finally bursting, but sometimes it gradually decreases and reaches the size of a grain of sand.

In other circumstances, he imagines that he is being hit with a stick, a whip, etc. More pleasant delusions make him think about caresses and hugs, then he considers himself happy and inexplicable pleasure is expressed in his features.

One poor woman felt like mice were running all over her body. As soon as she managed to free herself from them, she was attacked by spiders, which soon turned into beetles. An hour later this vision disappeared, and she calmed down until the next day.

Another woman felt as if her body was covered with toads and caterpillars. The third, after she once had to drink water from a stream, felt that a frog was moving in her stomach. The fourth felt hot and was covered in sweat in winter. The fifth thought she was cold and shivered on the hottest summer afternoon.

One notary allowed his wife to beat him; his wife died, and he was glad that now he would be left alone, but, ah! His hope was in vain. The body of the evil wife appeared from time to time and counted out several full blows to him with a stick, so that the poor fellow, in the middle of his studies, screamed loudly, as if he was really being beaten.

A story is told about a poor lady from Pant who was troubled for a long time by a demon who knew neither the slightest decency nor shame. This assistant of Satan appeared to her in a dream in the form of a beautiful young man and communicated with her even on the marriage bed, next to her husband. The unfortunate woman, despite the solemn words of the spellcasters, would have fallen into complete exhaustion, into which lustful pleasures plunged her during the night, if the art of medicine had not come to her aid and driven away the annoying demon, restoring her health.

4. Misconceptions of smell and taste. Misconceptions of this kind are much less common than the previous ones, but quite a lot of examples are still found that serve as confirmation of their existence.

Enthusiastic hypocrites imagine that they are surrounded by the smell of myrrh, incense, cinnamon and incense, on the contrary, the raging ones hear a fetid and disgusting smell everywhere.

One doctor, wanting to test how far a delusion of this kind could extend, brought one blindfolded to the slaughterhouse, he stayed for a whole hour and imagined that he was walking through a garden planted with fragrant flowers.

One old actress, who had gone mad, imagined herself a victim of a crowd of lovers whom she rejected in the days of her triumph. “It’s not enough that they insult me,” she said, “no, they throw such fetid uncleanness on my body that I have no peace day or night.”

5. Delusion of all senses together. Such cases are very rare and occur only among madmen or fanatics.

One girl of weak build, nervous, hysterical and frightened by the speeches and teachings of a fanatic, little by little came to a state that was not yet madness, but over time would have led to madness if love for her father and the requests of her brother had not returned her to the true path. We present her own story here.

“I spent my days in prayer, and as a result of prolonged prayers I heard heavenly sounds, divine harmonies. A sweet voice resounded in my ears and promised me eternal bliss if I became a nun, but I did not have enough spirit to leave my father, 75- a year-old elder, for whom I was his only consolation, and so I refused to join the monastery.

Then the sweet voices and divine harmonies ceased; I heard the clanking of chains, the gnashing of teeth, piercing screams, the sound of gusty winds, as if during a terrible thunderstorm, and thunderclaps that forced me to bow my head and cover my ears.

A new insanity took possession of my mind: it seemed to me that all hell was dancing around me; terrible, disgusting ghosts came to me to grab me and carry me away with them; I began to pray fervently, my good guardian angel again appeared to me and pointed his finger at the monastery, but the thought of my elderly, weak parent held me back, and I did not dare to take a vow of monasticism.

The irritated angel disappeared, but I felt that Satan’s assistants were dragging, pinching, tormenting me, I was suffocating from the smell of sulfur, I lacked air, and the dizziness intensified. My whole body was covered with fetid sweat, blood flowed from my eyes, my mouth was like a burning stove, I did not dare to swallow my saliva, it was so bitter to eat. If I coughed, the splashes falling on my body would leave traces of strong vodka on it. I again began to call on my guardian angel. He appeared again, silent, motionless; his hand was stretched out towards the monastery.

My God! How I suffered!.. For a whole six months I struggled with this terrible nightmare, which tormented me hourly during the day; Finally, I was unable to resist any longer and wanted to leave my poor father to enter a monastery, believing that this was the will of God. Then my brother arrived from the army; he burned my books, drove the people with whom I was surrounded from the house, and after a few days, with the help of a doctor, these terrible ideas disappeared.

Sanity and health returned to me again, I embraced my brother, and now I can be of use to my elderly parent."

Even today there are people in villages who believe in werewolves, brownies, ghosts and demons who came out of hell; They assure you with the greatest composure that during the dark night they heard the sounds of chains and the sound of bones, that they were haunted by terrible ghosts, terrible monsters, and they tell all this with such simplicity that leaves no doubt about the reality of their words.

It often happens that ill-intentioned people, swindlers and thieves, dress up fantastically in order to scare fearful people and more successfully fulfill their criminal plans.

In this case, of course, there is no delusion of the senses; on the contrary, it exists if chimerical phenomena are the result of horror. Unfortunately, many, who by their duty should enlighten the ignorant and gullible class of people, try for their own personal benefits to keep it in the grossest superstition; so much the worse for fools, say those who laugh at this...

Now let's talk about the so-called "transparent" dreams.

The Institute for Psychophysiological Research in Oxford had been collecting reports of what they called "transparent" and "pre-transparent" sleep for some time.

A dream is called transparent when a person understands that he is dreaming.

In prelucid sleep, a person is not sure whether he is asleep or awake, and may never come to the right decision.

Here is one of the messages stored at the institute:

"I found myself with N (the narrator's friend) in a room at the other end of the corridor. I told him about the transparent dreams I had just seen, and suddenly I said:

"Of course, this is also a dream." - “Maybe. Who knows?” – N answered with a helpless smile. “Of course, this is a dream,” I said and went to the window. “Now I’ll fly.” “It will be stupid if this is not a dream,” said K, who was still calm and seemed to be making fun of me.”

Of course, you can see anything in a dream, including waking up from sleep. Many people dream that they wake up, lie in bed, get up, start getting dressed - and suddenly discover that it is all a dream, that they are still sleeping. Even the realization that they dreamed the first awakening does not guarantee the truth of the second awakening.

Bertrand Russell reported that one day, while waking up from anesthesia, he experienced "about a hundred" false awakenings.

Distinguishing sleep from wakefulness is not easy, at least not when sleeping. Those who have transparent dreams cannot trust their sensations, since touch, taste and smell in a dream are absolutely real.

Everything that can be experienced in reality can be experienced in a dream. In dreams, events can follow each other meaningfully, taking into account previous experience. In a dream, you can see how you wake up, get up, leave the house and do ordinary daily things one after another, until suddenly a doubt arises in the reality of what is happening. At this point, a person may remember similar difficulties that other people have had and compare them with their own and still not be confident in their own condition.

Are you sleeping or have you already woken up? Or is everything that happened to you today part of a complex dream? For a while, such questions may cause a twinge of doubt, but soon you put aside your doubts because you are sure that you are awake.

This confidence that we feel at the biological level is so certain that it has nothing to do with the mind.

One of the messages collected by the Oxford Institute captures this feeling very well: “I was wondering how I would know that I was really awake. I was often puzzled by this, but still I am sure that when you are really awake, you feel something different. I cannot clearly express this difference. However, it seems to me that in a dream one of the feelings is missing, perhaps the sense of responsibility."

So, if you doubt whether you are actually awake, rest assured that you are still dreaming.

This confidence turns pre-transparent dreams into transparent ones, bringing with it the confidence of the opposite. Probably, dreams differ from each other, as well as from the waking state, in something special and elusive. Despite the similarity of sensory experience and mental processes in the states of sleep and wakefulness, we can assert that these states are completely different and that the personality can express itself with equal ease in either of them, but not in both at the same time.

When you are awake, you can remember how wonderful it is to fly out of the window in your dream and soar freely over the tiled roofs of the village below. When you have a clear dream, you may remember how unpleasant it is to run your finger along a razor blade, and you may even try to compare the two sensations. Personality development is likely to depend on both types of experiences.

When we are awake, we are at the mercy of the forces that shape our body and the mind contained in it, but in a dream, as in a game, we have the opportunity to act outside of these forces, finding ourselves in a variety of circumstances, in order to then connect them with another of ours. experience and build a comprehensive and fruitful attitude towards life.

The fact that infants spend eighty percent of their sleep time dreaming, while old people spend less than fifteen percent, supports the hypothesis that dreams play an important role in the integration of experience.

Apparently, all dream content is derived from sensations received during wakefulness.

Helen Keller, who lost her sight, hearing and smell as a result of scarlet fever shortly after birth, often dreams. At first it was a purely physical, primitive experience, for example, something heavy was falling on her. Then, when she came to an experienced teacher who described the world to her in detail, she began to see dreams in a new dimension, but they were all firmly based on the only sense that she could trust.

"Once in a dream I held a pearl in my hands. I have no visual memory of the pearl. The one I saw in the dream was probably a figment of my imagination. It was a smooth, perfectly formed crystal... dew and flame, velvety green moss in the muted white of lilies."

The dreams of congenitally blind people do not contain visual images and are not accompanied by rapid eye movements characteristic of the dreams of sighted people.

One blind and deaf patient had never heard of dreams, but he remembered waking up one day in deep sadness, reliving the shock he had experienced when, putting his hand into the cage of his bird, he discovered its dead body.

The connection between sensations experienced in the waking state and experiences in sleep was confirmed during observations of the sleep of a deaf-mute person who usually communicated in sign language. When he dreamed that he was talking to other people in the usual way, an electromyograph attached to the sleeper's body noted strong motor currents, but not in the larynx, but in the fingers.

The dependence of dreams on information received in the waking state is enormous, but not absolute.

In 1965, Australian research showed that people who slept under the influence of strong sleeping pills could learn to distinguish between two sounds of different pitches, one of which was accompanied by an electric shock. When the same two sounds were played to a patient who was already awake, the encephalograph showed that their brains responded to the shock sound rather than the neutral sound.

This conditioning has long been touted by those who sell sleep-learning machines. Most research suggests that learning occurs primarily during periods when the learner is dozing or on the verge of sleep, but it is clear that sensitivity varies at different stages of sleep.

As we fall asleep, we go through four recognizable stages of orthodox sleep, as we fall deeper into sleep.

Then, when rapid eye movement begins and we enter paradoxical sleep, sudden quantitative changes occur. Muscle tone quickly drops and the body relaxes, spinal reflexes disappear, and even snoring stops. As brain activity increases, sensitivity decreases.

Apparently, the most complete escape from physical reality occurs when transparent sleep begins.

A lucid dreamer is almost impossible to awaken, and no reports mention a lucid dream involving external stimuli, as opaque dreams often do. When you know that you are dreaming, you achieve the most complete escape from body-related limitations.

There are many reports that dreams can provide information that cannot be obtained in any other way.

In New York, at the Maimonides Sleep Laboratory, Montague Ullman and Staali Krippner attempted to objectively analyze this possibility.

They hooked up subjects to a regular electroencephalograph and, after each rapid eye movement, woke them up and asked them what kind of dream they had. While they were doing this, a third person, in a room at the other end of the building, was thinking intensely about a painting chosen at random from a whole collection of paintings.

The next morning, the subjects were shown all the pictures and asked which one most resembled what they saw in their dreams. Many surprising correlations have been found.

One day, Orozco's painting was chosen for the experiment, depicting a group of Mexican revolutionaries moving against a dark background of swirling clouds and mountains. One of the participants in the experiment saw in a dream “New Mexico,” “heavy clouds and mountains” and “colossal film production.” Even when the connection between the dream and the picture was less obvious, a group of independent experts almost always easily found the desired picture based on the reported dreams.

This success is explained more by telepathy than by the spatial movement of the sleeper, but recent research from the same laboratory puts the problem in a new light.

In 1969, a young English physicist Malcolm Bessent joined the group of subjects, who saw in a dream a “bowl of fruit” when Kokovsky’s still life “Fruits and Flowers” ​​was according to plan, and “shallow pools” and “making a collage” when the collage was going according to plan called "Human Court".

But what makes this hit particularly surprising is that there was no one in the third room at night who was thinking about the paintings, and in some cases the painting was not taken away until the next morning.

Apparently, Bessent could not only travel in space, leaving his sleeping body, but also separate in time. It would be interesting to know if he had lucid dreams, because the separation of mind and body can be intentionally controlled when you realize you are dreaming.

One participant in the experiment, working with the Oxford Institute of Psychophysical Research, reports that in a transparent dream you can move anywhere simply by closing your eyes and “mentally concentrating.”

There is an old but well-documented case that illustrates all the possibilities contained in this situation.

On October 3, 1863, the steam ship City of Limerick left Liverpool, carrying Connecticut manufacturing owner S. R. Wilmot, heading home to his wife and family in the United States.

On the night of October 13, Wilmot dreamed that his wife entered the cabin in a nightgown, stood hesitantly at the door when she saw that there was another passenger there, then approached, kissed him and disappeared.

The next morning, his neighbor, described as “a reserved and very pious man,” suddenly stopped talking to him for no apparent reason. After persistent attempts to find out what was the matter, William Tait said: “How can you allow yourself to have a woman come to you in this form.” It turned out that, lying awake, he saw in reality exactly the same scene as Wilmot in his dream.

When the ship arrived in New York on October 23, Wilmot's wife immediately asked if he had seen her ten days ago. Knowing about the storms in the Atlantic and hearing reports of the death of another ship, she went to bed in great anxiety for her husband's life.

At night she felt that she was crossing a stormy sea, found a low black ship, passed through it, saw a stranger on the next bunk looking straight at her and lingered for a minute at the door, but still entered, kissed her husband and left the cabin. After questioning, she was able to accurately describe the cabin's features.

This case was carefully examined by the staff of the American Society for Psychical Research, and we have no reason to doubt the veracity of the participants in the events, but nevertheless, it is not possible to make a judgment about it a century later.

Today this story interests us from the point of view of the possibilities it contains. If everything happened exactly as described, then Wilmot and his wife had a common experience in a dream, while maintaining their own individuality, in a dream they saw and felt the same things that they would feel in reality, in ordinary life.

But the most amazing thing is that the awake Tait also took part in this event, having his own point of view. From the fact that he likely saw - and subsequently could describe - Wilmot's wife, it follows that the energy body we postulated earlier likely retains its recognizable form even after being separated from its physical counterpart.

Here we find ourselves in the very heart of a dark world of ghosts, where science has almost no chance of getting out of the fog of uncertainty.

Trying to convince yourself that something pleasant or unpleasant is just a dream.

A dream within a dream can be interpreted as the fulfillment of the desires of the unconscious part of the self or beyond the self, while the desires of an ordinary dream are related to the it.

Dreams nested within one another can reflect the stages of the ontogenesis of the self.

Dream Interpretation - Secret Society

It’s as if you are part of some kind of secret society - the dream suggests that you are an exalted and romantic nature; Of the spiritual and material values, you, of course, will choose the first without hesitation; you are ready to give your life for an idea, and you have ideas for which you could give your life; try to engage in literary creativity - all your wonderful ideas will be in demand in this field.

A young woman dreams that she is dating someone from a secret society - this young woman is very resistant to seduction and temptation; she cannot be tempted or persuaded, she can be persuaded.

Trying to convince yourself that something pleasant or unpleasant is just a dream.

A dream within a dream can be interpreted as the fulfillment of the desires of the unconscious part of the self or beyond the self, while the desires of an ordinary dream are related to the it.

Dreams nested within one another can reflect the stages of the ontogenesis of the self.

Dream Interpretation - Secret Society

It’s as if you are part of some kind of secret society - the dream suggests that you are an exalted and romantic nature; Of the spiritual and material values, you, of course, will choose the first without hesitation; you are ready to give your life for an idea, and you have ideas for which you could give your life; try to engage in literary creativity - all your wonderful ideas will be in demand in this field.

A young woman dreams that she is dating someone from a secret society - this young woman is very resistant to seduction and temptation; she cannot be tempted or persuaded, she can be persuaded.