Contributors
Rachel Aubrey, Umberto Barcaro, Mark Blagrove, Ed Bonapartian, Wanda Burch, Jean Campbell, Laurel Clark, Beverly D'Urso, Rita Dwyer, Dale Graff, Jody Grundy, Isoke Raquelle Holmes, Jianulla, David Kahn, Ed Kellogg, Lynn Larned, Nicole Lemelin, Teresa MacColl, Maia, Madeline McMurray, Domenec Mendez, Dolores Nurss, Carol Oschmann, pasQuale Ourtane, Cynthia Pearson, Ralf Penderak, Valley Reed, Christiane Riedel, Margery Runyan, Massimo Schinco, Patricia Schmieg, Misa Tsuruta, Kathy Turner, Robert Van de Castle, Robert Waggoner, Richard Wilkerson. |
Robert Van de Castle, Ph.D.
Virginia, USA
 A conference will be held in Utrecht, the Netherlands from October 16 to October 18 entitled Utrecht II: Charting the Future of Parapsychology. It will be jointly sponsored by the Parapsychology Foundation and the Dutch foundation Het Johan Borgman Fonds (HJ BF). It has been fifty-five years since Parapsychology Foundation sponsored the groundbreaking First International Conference of Parapsychological Studies held in Utrecht in 1953. Most of the leading contemporary parapsychologists of that time were present, and the current organizers felt that now was an appropriate time to take an overview of where the field currently stands and where the potentially promising areas for future development are likely to reside.
Among the 12 paper presentations will be Dr. Jeanne Achterberg from Saybrook Graduate School and Research Center on Distant Healing, Dr. Roger Nelson from the Global Consciousness Project will present on Can Consciousness Be Real? and our own Dr Bob Van de Castle will present on ESP and Dreams. Many other topics such as spirituality, personality variables, poltergeists, Neuronal Markers of Psi, etc. will also be covered.
It seems fitting that with this being the 25th year of the founding of ASD, attention is being given to the topic of Dreams and ESP by giving it a prominent place at this international conference where the information will be shared by "invitation only" attendees from all over the world. I will be interested in seeing whatever comments PDC participants come up with that they feel would be promising future areas for investigating the topic I'm covering. I hope to be able to summarize their ideas and share them at the Utrecht conference.
The following are some possible areas for future research that could potentially help us to better understand some of the conditions which appear to facilitate the psi functioning in dreams:
Subjects who have developed the ability to fairly frequently enter the state of lucid dreaming could be utilized to better understand what types of target stimuli might be more suitable in efforts to demonstrate clairvoyant dreams.
Comparing the dreams of identical twins who are ego-syntonic with each other and who enjoy the status of being identified as one half of a unique partnership has been a very neglected research area. Individuals who are romantically or spiritually linked would similarly be likely to display impressive correspondences in their dream imagery when their intention during dreaming is to strengthen their interpersonal or transpersonal connections to the other partner.
Several informal studies have strongly suggested that dream sharing or mutual dreaming is possible among various members of a dream group who have developed a strong intention to co-experience being with another dreamer in the same physical locale and engage in a similar range of activities.
An impressive body of anecdotal material has accumulated to demonstrate that "dream helpers" who collectively offer to share their dream experiences to facilitate a better understanding of an emotional conflict being experienced by a targeted dreamer can succeed in such a task. Shifting from an emphasis upon the influence that participation in a shared social setting can have upon individual psi dreaming helps develop a better appreciation of the quantum level of fused experience within which dreams are enmeshed or entangled.
Research has also been published to document that geomagnetic factors such as the presence or absence of sunspot activity can play a facilitating role for the expression of psi material in dreams.
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Rachel Aubrey, CSW
New York, USA
Dreaming the Future of Dreaming
Some Thoughts on the 25th Anniversary of IASD
I hope that, within the next few years, the medical and mental health professions will more readily accept the importance of dreams in working with their patients. Freud tried to do so, but with the growing rejection of Freudian theory in the United States there has been little recent emphasis on dreams. Sweden has more active dream groups than New York City. Research in "developing countries", such as China and Turkey, suggests an ongoing and active interest in dreams, though not always shared with Western visitors who might consider it "backward".
The field of Complementary and Alternative medicine, or CAM, in some ways has had a similar history. Acupuncture is now successfully used at leading medical centers in treating a number of conditions, though Western medicine cannot yet fully explain how it works. Hopefully dream work will soon be offered as a CAM treatment, along with massage, herbal treatments and acupuncture, at American Medical Centers and community clinics.
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Umberto Barcaro
Italy
Very conjectural hypotheses about the developments of the study of dreams in next years might be the following:
- Further connections will be found between dreaming and other activities/properties of the human mind.
- Further interesting studies about turning-point dreams and problem-solving dreams will be performed.
- Differences and similarities will be more precisely defined between hypnagogic hallucinations, nightmares causing awakening, elementary sleep mentation with no narrative, and proper dreams.
- The gap will be bridged, at least partially, between the approach aiming at statistical analyses of features extracted from sets of dreams and the approach aiming at the interpretation of single dreams.
- Advancements in the knowledge of the psychological process of dreaming will be closely related to advancements in the therapeutic use of dream analysis.
- Dreamers believing in precognitive and telepathic phenomena during dreaming will interestingly interact with skeptical people.
- The central role of IASD for the study of dreams will even be enhanced.
- Group sharing and group analysis of dreams will be increasingly diffused.
- Interesting investigations will be performed about the social and political significance of dreams.
- With regard to the neurophysiologic approach, analysis of polygraphic data and neuroimage processing will be increasingly combined. New methods for signal/image acquisition and processing will be introduced.
- Research will be carried out to discover detailed correspondences between results provided by psychological analyses and results provided by neurophysiologic investigations.
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Mark Blagrove
Professor of Psychology, Swansea University
Wales
In the next 25 years of dream research there are two questions, two old questions in fact, that we hope to answer.
The first is whether dreams can give us insight into our wishes, desires and fears. With Solms' linking of dream formation to frontal brain areas involved in motivation it might seem that this question is settled, but it isn't, the problem being that dreams might only tell us what we know already, albeit in a metaphorical way. We have a problem of investigating whether the dream is saying something that we really didn't know. The second problem here is how much of the information that we claim to get from dreams is due to the process of interpretation, rather than the dream itself? After all, we can obtain insight from shuffling Tarot cards, because the juxtaposition of images can shake up our normal thinking, and the problem for dream research is to what extent are dreams like interpretable Tarot cards, and how much of a hidden meaning is behind the images, before interpretation takes place, acting as a source of the images?
The second question is whether dreaming serves a purpose. If it does it would mean that we have evolved to dream, humans (and some other animals) who dream have a biological advantage for some reason over those who dream less, an advantage such as that we process emotions in our sleep, or practice overcoming threats, or for some other reason. This question goes beyond the first question, because dreams could have meanings, even discoverable hidden meanings leading to insight, but not have a function beyond that which we humans give them. For example, Freud saw dreams as being able to give us insight, but to him having dreams did nothing more than keep us asleep; the question of function is beyond the question of meaning. What this question mainly refers to is unrecalled dreams, does an unrecalled dream have any lasting effect on us, or on our memories or emotions or other processing? If dreaming has a function then it would be true for unrecalled dreams. The main possibility that we can see at the moment is to link dreaming with the memory processing functions that are being proposed for REM and non-REM sleep. Over the coming 25 years we may discover whether dreams provide a window into how memories are being processed in the different stages of sleep, they may even be part of that processing. If dreams don't have a function it would seem odd that we can produce such intricate plots, or indeed that such plots form themselves. However, the contrary view is that much memory processing occurs in stages of sleep from which dream recall is rare, so maybe dreaming is not part of sleep's memory processing.
These two questions link the study of dreaming to psychotherapy and neuroscience respectively. The hypotheses that dreams can provide insight and have a function are very plausible. Over the next 25 years we should be able to test these hypotheses.
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 Ed Bonapartian
IntuitiveDreams.com
Lessons In Mind, Body, and Spirit
For me, the future of dreaming in the next twenty-five years revolves around the word potential. As dreams and intuition become a more mainstream topic in today's society, our increasing awareness of the intuitive nature of dreams will lead us to remove the boundaries between the metaphysical and the world of our daily consciousness. In the future, we will not look outside ourselves for answers; instead we will tap into the intuitive potential which resides in our DNA. Rather than just being an intellectual exercise, answers will arrive through dreams and intuitive experiences as the limitless world of the dream continues to unlock our true potential.
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Wanda Burch
Fultonville, New York
Era of Hope - Science and Dreams finding Common Ground
I participated in science workshops hosted by the National Breast Cancer Coalition in the year 2000, and from 2006 to the present have served as a peer advocate reviewer for science grant review for the Department of Defense Breast Cancer Research Program (BCRP). As a peer reviewer, I attended my first Era of Hope conference in Baltimore, Maryland, in June, 2008, where more than 1,500 successfully funded Department of Defense researchers, clinicians, cancer survivors, and advocates gathered in a unique forum to come together and discuss the latest findings in breast cancer research and future directions to eradicate this disease. Important - from my perspective - was the focus on High Risk/High Gain proposals from researchers who are willing to think outside the box. High risk places the research well into the realm of not knowing if the new mechanism or research will work. High gain means that if it works, it could not only change the course of treatment for breast cancer or change the quality of life aspects of treatment, but could even provide the pathway to a cure or provide an avenue for a future in which breast cancer is considered a chronic condition, not a killer.
Proposals focusing on the quality of life and complementary therapies ranged from diet and stress to exercise, aromatherapy and dreams. One proposal, funded by the Department of Defense in 2006, presented an interactive personal conversation, framed within a dream, as a dramatic production for heath care providers. The performance, based on a physician's dream, told the story of a doctor who fell asleep and dreamt of his last three patients of the day. Each of the patients shared a personal experience that became tool for healing for themselves and a tool for learning for the physician. The program was shared only with health care providers at the time of its funding.
The role of dreamers in the balance between science and medical technology and surviving chronic illness is important. We are living examples of the work that needs to be accomplished and continued in work with traditional medicine and complementary therapies. We provide a face for inspiration to these hundreds of scientists who respond with passion and appear to be truly grateful for real faces and real stories. In my personal role, as a dreamer and as a breast cancer survivor, it is exciting to be part of a forum that allows perspectives to join, interact, and blossom. One of the young scientists, interviewing me in my role as advocacy reviewer wrote: "What a lesson it was to hear such a story [of using dream imagery in healing] in a scientific environment. It reminded me that our dreams and intuition often lead our intellect. It also demonstrated how help often comes to us in many and sometimes unusual ways."
If this success story plays out in other venues, we will be well on our way to a dreaming society where dreaming and healing are an inseparable part of our life journey.
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Jean Campbell
Chair, IASD Board of Directors
Virginia, USA
I would like to use the same logic I used with precognitive dreamers following the attacks on the World Trade Center towers in September of 2001. Many visitors to the IASD Online Bulletin Board were highly irate at that time, having warned others of an impending disaster only to be scoffed at as dreamers.
In the invitation I sent to fifty people that October, I said to them, "If you believe that it is possible to dream the future, and you believe that the future you dream can be changed, then how would you like to dream up a future filled with world peace? The result was the World Dreams Peace Bridge, still going strong after seven years, and still dreaming the world toward peace www.worlddreamspeacebridge.org.
The trouble is, I believe this philosophy quite deeply. I wasn't joking when I suggested to other dreamers that we attempt to dream ourselves forward consciously. Particularly in the context on daily dream sharing, it is imminently possible to allow the spirit of the group, the spirit of the group dream, guide the life of the community.
Do I see this type of dream work as the wave of the future? It's hard to tell. Serious attention to one's dreams, serious attention to the group's dream, to the planet's dream, is a challenge, requiring dedication and courage. My dream though is that for the sake of the children, for the sake of the young dreamers who look to us for guidance, we will learn to truly listen and to act upon our dreams.
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 Laurel Clark, D.M., D.D.
President, School of Metaphysics
Missouri, USA
Dreaming the Future of Dreaming
I have asked this question several times and am dreaming of going to conferences, being in college dorms, presenting lucid dreaming research at conferences, and being in school settings.
This tells me that we will experience a great increase in dream education in traditional higher education programs in the next 25 years. I envision dream education moving into mainstream programs in colleges and universities, influencing all disciplines. I also envision a great increase in the recognition of psi phenomena such as lucid dreaming, visitations, and precognition. This is already gaining recognition, but in the future this will become more popularly accepted and respected in the field of higher education.
I also envision dreams being used for health and healing, not only by counselors for mental and emotional healing, but by nurses and other health care practitioners for physical healing. My hope is that health practitioners will rely upon dreams first as a source of healing, empowering people to take charge of their own healing through understanding the mental and emotional causes for disease, rather than relying so heavily upon medications which actually inhibit dreaming.
I also envision more people recognizing the importance of dreams, so that keeping a daily dream journal becomes a regular practice for most of society. This will enable people to become more self aware, to improve their personal relationships, and to live with guidance from an inner compass. I see the future of dreaming incorporating a greater use of "dream incubation"; that is, people individually and collectively asking for guidance from dreams for personal decisions, business decisions, political decisions, and leadership decisions.
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Beverly (Kedzierski Heart) D'Urso, Ph.D.
California, USA
My Dream of "Dreaming the Future of Dreaming"
 In my dream of the future, everyone will realize that they dream while asleep and while awake. We will recognize every experience in time and space as a dream. In other words, we will all act with full lucidity all of the time. Eventually, we may no longer have any experiences, and merely reunite with our true self.
Dream workers will apply their techniques on all of our experiences, and not only on what we report happened while we slept. Understanding how dreams work and what lucid dreaming implies will help us have a clearer understanding of life.
As many lucid dreamers have already done in their sleeping dreams, we will realize that we co-create all of our experiences, and that everyone and everything represents a part of a "higher-self." We will recognize that we have limitless possibilities, and that anything we care to imagine can happen. Finally, we will know that we consist of more than just our body, let go of fear, and no longer view sleeping or waking nightmares as real.
All of our experiences while awake or asleep will become full of peace, joy, and love. Perhaps, at some point, we will cease to have any experiences in time and space. However, I think that the ability will remain to once again experience, or dream, hopefully without losing lucidity. I have a personal dream to help everyone/myself to realize the above dream (which I created in a dream) within the next twenty-five years.
Copyright 2008
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Rita Dwyer
USA
My dreams for the future of dreaming are as broad and deep as the dreamworld itself, creating webs, much like the networks of our magnificent brains, sending messages that are personal and transpersonal, human and divine, physical and psychical, to those who will inhabit this dimension and those in others yet unexplored within our culture. Sound like sci-fi stories? Perhaps, but much of that literature presaged actual occurrences in our lifetimes: rocket ships traveling to the moon, television, lasers as weapons and healing devices, and advances of all sorts that once were judged fantastical are used quite matter-of-factly today. So it will be with dreams and what they will bring in the future.
 I foresee dreams used from the time of our conception, when parents will dream of/with their children, through youth and adolescence as we learn the basics for survival and begin to question our own soul's purpose, which will unfold gradually as we become adults with open minds and hearts. Even when we enter into our later years, we will not be "retired" or "retiring"; we will be actively following the path that dreams will illuminate for us, finding comfort and solace in dream memories and visits from those who are no longer physically with us on this planet, but who will help our passage to a new existence elsewhere. No longer will there be the disclaimer, "Oh, it's nothing but a dream," but rather, "Oh, tell me your dream," will be heard at home, in schools, at our workplaces, in our hospitals and nursing homes, everywhere, for dreams will eventually be respected as vital an indicator of our well-being as the pulsebeats of our hearts.
Dreams will not only assist us humans as we wend our way through life, but will also link us to all of creation, to all living beings and organisms and even those we consider "lifeless", but which still have substance and energy - rocks, sea, air, etc. If we pay attention to our dreams, we cannot wound others nor ignore their plight, for their hurts are ours, and we will feel them in a newly heightened consciousness that blends into a collective consciousness demanding our response as Dream Activists, working for the good of all.
This shift in consciousness from one which is ego-centric to one which is eco-centric and even cosmo-centric was foretold years ago by theologian Teilhard de Chardin when he described the Omega Point at which our hearts and minds will be open to the real energy of the universe, love, which binds and bonds us, not in knots but in strings of energy that are pliable and ever-changing as we make reconnection with Spirit which is always the bridge to peace, joy and fulfillment. Though challenges may arise we will meet them together as a unified force field, waking and sleeping, for together we can dream the future we wish to create. Thought has form, and dreams can flower into reality, conjoining inner space and outer space into a perfect Whole. Science fiction? Maybe so, but then again, maybe no. Dare to dream big dreams. I have and I do, and the results can be seen in IASD's growing international dream community touching the lives of thousands in just 25 years! Not scientifically verifiable, but who cares? Not I!
"You can call me a dreamer, but I'm not the only one." Join us!
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Dale E. Graff
Pennsylvania, USA
I have been pondering the Dreaming the Future of Dreaming for several weeks and have several brief dreams with themes that relate.
Some of the dreams suggest that dream journaling will increase as more people become aware of the practical value of recording personal dreams. They will learn how dream journaling helps in exercising memory and in maintaining mental alertness in general, particularly as they age, similar to the benefit derived from physical exercise. My dreams about journaling also focused on reading in dreams which suggests an increased left-right hemisphere communication process, and hints of the future role that dreams will have in helping to better understand neuronetwork connectivity. This may provide insight into how dreams are created, how we learn and how memory is stored.
 Some of these recent dreams also hinted of the role of art for all areas of life, in science and especially physics where new concepts are difficult to explain in language terms. Other dreams hinted of dream journaling's future role in medical and counseling fields where individuals with serious physical or psychological issues can, through monitoring and recording their own dreams, achieve inner help that assists in their recovery. The act of writing is a creative process that links with physical creativity (healing). My dreams about journaling also hinted of future dream healing teams that focus on interacting, via psi dreams, with the physical and psychological issues of others to help resolve or mitigate the underlying cause of the illness. For example, dream healing teams could dream-share the trauma of those suffering from post traumatic stress to diffuse an event's emotional impact on the victim. This is similar to a Shaman taking on the affliction of others to help them achieve healing. Lucid dreaming interaction would have a significant role for such healing applications. Psi dreaming for diagnostics and healing will become generally acceptable as part of traditional medical practice during the next 25 years.
Another future of psi dreaming activity that will emerge within the next 25 years is anticipating approaching tragedies and criminal/terrorist activities before they occur. As more psi dreamers focus on this potential, accuracy and reliability of psi dreaming for alerts and warnings will increase, both for the individual dreamer and for society in general. Psi dream alert teams will be organized in various geographical areas, worldwide. With the aid of data compilation and analysis techniques, reliable alert information will result. Psi dream teams will also develop strategies for relating to the general public and will find ways to communicate the alerts to various action organizations.
One of my recent dreams had imagery of . . . "a dream journal locked in a safe in the back seat of a car. Something forces open the car door, removes the safe and opens it." I had the feeling that the "force" that opened the car door was creative, and not a destructive thief. This dream could be a personal reminder for me to do more dream sharing and creative work with dreams. It conveyed a very strong sense that there is something in the "Zeitgeist," in the collective unconscious, that wants the dream box opened.
This suggests that more dreamers will "move out" and communicate their knowledge, their discoveries with others. IASD, as an organization, is certainly promoting this concept of interdisciplinary communication. But more will be done. Effectively communicating the value of dreams, especially psi dreams, is in the future for the next 25 years and beyond!
September 10, 2008
Dale E. Graff
PSI-SEMINARS-INITIATIVES
Email: mtnviewer@dalegraff.com
Web Site: www.dalegraff.com
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Jody Grundy
Ohio, USA
Telepathic, clairvoyant, mutual, precognitive and healing dreams for ourselves and our planet supported by the amazing potential of the internet takes us to a whole other quantum level of possibility for our dreaming minds to link up and create the community we and our world need. Add the healing and spiritual dimensions and there is much to envision and feel very excited about the future of dreaming. I can think of no better way to describe that future of dreaming, which is also the "eternal now" of our linked psyches, than to share an extraordinary "out of the blue" letter from Debbie Seiler who I'd never met. She followed her clairvoyant and telepathic dream and found a mutual dream of mine and me via the internet. Her dream which she shared with me and I share with you with her permission is entitled: "I dream of Pacifica…." When she followed her dream she discovered I too had dreamed of Pacifica, the actual place, which I subsequently visited and there made my connections to the International Association for the Study of Dreams. Here is her letter and the dream story:
Dear Ms. Grundy,
 Last night I had a dream about a beautiful green valley of rolling hills that rose up to mountains to the north and south and down to the ocean on the west. I was sort of flying over the place looking at the roads and buildings and noticing some hotels and swimming pools. I thought it would be a place I would like to visit and wondered if a place like that really exists anymore considering how much growth there has been on the west coast. I remember thinking that such a landscape couldn't exist in real life – I live in FLAT Florida and it makes such a place hard to imagine. My brother-in-law popped into the dream and told me the name of the place was Pacifica and I remember thinking "No – that's the name of a car – not a town". I had never heard of a town called Pacifica. So, today I decided to follow my dream on the internet to see where it would lead me. I Googled "Pacifica" on the odd chance that there actually was such a place and found pictures of the area that are exactly the same as the images in my dream. I was absolutely floored! I Googled the phrase, "I dreamt about pacifica" to see if by some chance there was something relating and see where that would lead me, and your webpage ( http://dreamtalk.hypermart.net/member/files/jody_grundy.html) in the IASD Website Member Pages) was the 2nd one that resulted. I read there that you had a dream about Pacifica Graduate Institute so I Googled that and found Stephen Aisenstadt's Dream Work Seminar (I have never heard of him or the institute before). Then I found your website on web.mac.com and read all about what you do. It's hard to describe how floored I am by all of this. I have been on a journey of self-awareness for 2 years now (since a terminal diagnosis that I have since completely been cured of) and my
whole life has been irreversibly changed. I had been a catholic for 20 years and then a non-spiritual atheist for 20 years. Now I believe in chakras and angels for crying out loud! My family thinks I've been invaded by body snatchers. I have been keeping a dream journal (very sporadically) since January and I think you would find the dreams fascinating. I witnessed the explosion of a star or planet or something and played soccer with little brown natives on top of a mountain. Most of the time though I dream about being on boats/ships in extremely shallow, crystal clear water – rivers, lakes, oceans – but we always seem to sail along without any problems. What the heck does all of this mean? Why have I been led to you and Pacifica? What are your thoughts? Debbie Seiler 8/29/08
As I told my new soul sister Debbie: our dreaming leads us to the connections we need to make if we follow it. And now with the amazing vessel and navigation tool of the internet we can literally travel to those places, people and experiences to realize our dreams' visions.
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Isoke Raquelle Holmes
 I only had one short dream which seemed more like a message than an actual dream.
My question I asked before sleeping was "What is the future of dreaming?" Upon awakening I heard "Money won't be as important in the future. What will be important is the work you are doing."
I also dreamt of substitute teachers who had been subbing for a long time like me. They were overweight and unhappy and then lost the weight and became very happy. All of them were VERY needed by the respective schools where they were working.
I was hoping for something meatier, but I have been experiencing a bit of dream drought. I am happy that I can, at least, contribute something.
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 Jianulla
I am a new member and love the idea of communicating with other "dreamers".
We dream when we are asleep and when we are awake. Our "sleeping" dreams seem to come from a deep place inside, from our soul or spirit. My dreams and dream pictures help me to see myself in a more authentic light, so I wish "sweet dreams" for all the people on our planet.
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David Kahn
Massachusets, USA
What will dreams discover and what will dreamers accomplish over the next 25 years?
When awake I plan my activities, I think about what I am going to do, and I sometimes indulge in fantasy and reverie. When I indulge in fantasy I am usually aware that I am so doing. When I dream I don't simply indulge in fantasy and reverie, I experience it as if I were actively participating in the activity no matter how unusual the activity may be. I do not usually plan my activities during the dream and rarely plan ahead. And yet many of my thoughts and feelings in the dream are not very different than the thoughts and feelings I have when awake despite the unusual or even bizarre activity in which I may be engaged.
One of the major undertakings of the next quarter of a century will be to understand this conundrum. My thinking and feelings are similar to those when I am awake but in the dream I engage in an activity that would reside in pure fantasy had I been awake, but is not recognized as fantasy during the dream. For example, while I may act towards my son, friend or Dad similarly to when awake, in the dream my son may be at a different age than he is now, my friend may be in an entirely inappropriate setting and my deceased Dad my be alive and healthy. It is true that these dream experiences may help me see things in new ways that are closed off by patterned ways of thinking when awake.
But, in addition to that, I am hopeful that we will learn more about the brain-mind when we solve the conundrum of how, when dreaming the brain-mind thinks and feels as it would when awake and yet not recognize improbable and impossible wake occurring events. We can get this understanding through the creation of studies on the subjective experience of dreaming combined with measures of selective brain activity and chemistry. We will, thereby, also obtain a clearer understanding of our neuropsychological nature. We will better understand our different brain-mind states, including those classified as mental illness. We will learn about the ways in which brain activity influences mind activity and the ways in which mind activity influences brain activity.
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Ed Kellogg, Ph.D.
USA
VR Dreaming: Wave of the Future?
Our dreaming lives reflect and incorporate elements of our waking lives - so much so that our dreams today differ greatly from that of earlier generations. The formats and special effects of movies and television have profoundly impacted our dreams, and it does not take long for new technological innovations, from computer games to the latest generation of cell phones, to show up in our dreams and to play important roles. 
In The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology, Ray Kurzweil argues that the current exponential rate of information growth will continue, and that in a mere twenty years or so the world will have changed in unimaginable ways. After "the Singularity", virtual realities will likely become perceptually indistinguishable from 'physical reality', and may even credibly simulate the experiences of our most fantastic dreams.
Once realistic VR becomes a fact of life, what impact will it have on our dreams? In 2001 I had one of the most incredible dreams of my life, a possible precognitive preview of just such a VR dream, which to my dreaming self took place around 2025. (To read this dream, go to: http://www.dreamgate.com/pomo/kellogg_virtual.htm) Although not a lucid dream in a technical sense, my ability to critically think and perceive in fact seemed more acute than in all but a few of my most lucid dreams. This experience, brought to light interesting speculations on relationships between lucidity, memory, and personal identity, which future dreamworkers will increasingly need to ponder. Although rare now, I consider this a new type of dream that will eventually become commonplace, and "the shape of dreams to come."
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Lynn Larned
I was intrigued by your question of where dreams will be taking us in the next 25 years. Two years ago I attended Goddard College to get my master's degree. I wrote my thesis on using dreams as a tool for healing and self-growth. During my two years at Goddard my reading and dreams brought me to a most unexpected and exciting realization.
 While there, I had a dream that a large black woman was lovingly helping me to express breast milk. This milk was flowing easily and we were saving it for someone or something but I did not know why. Attempting to understand the meaning of this dream, as well as many others, has brought me to the realization that the divine feminine is entering the world. And that it needs to flow through us as human beings. The idea or words of "divine feminine" had never even entered my consciousness until attending Goddard. It is through the reading that I did there that sparked the dream. Thank goodness for the help of such authors as Marion Woodman, Gayle Owens, Sue Monk Kidd and Jean Shinola Bolen to assist my understanding of what the feminine principle means to the world.
After reading your question, I dreamt that my grandmother was flying from the west to come to visit me. I was thrilled that she was well enough to make the trip. It felt like she was recoverint returning from the dead.
To me, this dream seems to confirm that the feminine principle is awakening in the world. But what does this mean? To me it means that we will learn to honor the earth as a living being. We will come to understand that we are a part of it. We will come to value such things as intuition, the creative abilities of ourselves that we have not allowed to come forth from our unconscious, and we will value living more authentic lives. I believe our dreams will help people to wake up to the feminine principle in the world. They will learn that we are one.
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Nicole Lemelin
Montreal, Quebec
Canada
Through its history humanity has used dreams to announce the future. The antique narratives among others well demonstrate that dreams occupy a central place in the destiny of nations. The oracles interpreted these night visions as so many signs sent by the gods to guide man and to inspire his behavior through his crossing of life.
 Today, the gurus replaced the oracles. The gods whose leniency we could implore do not hear us any more, buried by the din of the world. Maintained and fed religiously by a troop of new gods, the despair is everywhere. How could it be otherwise, in a world where to be a human being - in all its humanity - is not enough? The new gods have all the powers! They dream. They dream to dethrone God, they dream about a superman or about the ultimate war-tool, or the super money-making-tool, or another super-duper something. And they are in a way very successful. Why? What is their secret? Simply stated: they are big dreamers! They dream whereas the rest of the humanity drowns itself into despair. Into that dark conception of the world, where no future can be seen and that is reflected toward them every day. Some will become so anxious and worried that they end up being paralyzed, feeling so powerless, convinced that nothing can be changed anymore.
But here is exactly where the future of the dream has to take root: in this humus of "despairs"! There, where grows the dramatic destiny of mankind. Because at the same moment that the worst threats smother the planet and our own survival: here is outlined on the horizon an incredible chance of evolution for the humanity. This new consciousness of our collective interdependence will engender a solidarity still never seen before and will provide the energy to shape "the big collective dream" - fed by thousands of dreamers throughout the world.
With meditation, dream will become one of the essential elements of the development of this universal consciousness. Its integration in the day to day life will not only be taught and valued as an instrument of personal awareness and evolution but also as a powerful tool capable of creating a better world; a world where human beings will have found their place in the fragile balance of things. Putting in place a universal web of awareness may be what will provoke the alteration of human beings. So much is needed for his evolution toward a sustainable peace and wisdom. May this collective dream take form! And what seems to us today out of reach, become possible. How about dreaming of it?
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Teresa MacColl
California USA
I envision people re-connecting with the ancient symbols of their dreams and tribes, and becoming more symbolically literate via the dream. I can see dreamers studying and observing the way lunar, solar and planetary cycles influence the dreams. I imagine people re-creating tribal dream communities, where we are able to gather up and perceive patterns, themes, and messages from Spirit and the ancestors, that which may only come to a group of people because it might be too much for one person to hold. I pray for the return of indigenous elders guiding and teaching the people how to understand and interpret dream messages from the ancestors and the spiritual world. My hope is for inter-tribal dreaming, creating a global dream community.
Mother Earth needs healing. Our ancestors dreamed together and dreamed a future for us. They used their dreams to help maintain balance and harmony in their communities. It is time to remember our ancestors future, dream the future, and participate in co-creating positive and sustainable physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, ecological, and ancestral well-being.
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Maia
What will dreams discover and what will dreamers accomplish over the next 25 years?
I don't know what dreaming will be up to in the next 25 years. All I have is a thought experiment - not answers, questions, not predictions, possibilities - about dreaming's evolution toward Dreaming, about dreamers evolving into Dreamers. My thought experiment takes the form of a monologue in the mouth of a fictional character, Teri Donoghue (born from an ongoing series of dreams that began in 2005). And now I'll take me off and let Teri speak for herself.
"Maybe you've heard of those multiple universes cosmological mathematicians came up with to explain unruly infinities in their equations, infinities that won't lie down and behave? In one universe, there's me and this Cork Beetle here on its stalk. I snap it up, pop it into my mouth, chew, swallow. Delicious. In another, it staggers over the hairs of my arm and I decide to paint Starry Night on its back. I chloroform it and pin it to a board. In another bubble-world, I cringe at the prick of its legs across my skin, tasting, testing... then I feel its life. Suddenly I have no choice but to bless it. And let it go? Or not. Depending on how hungry I am. Imagine these alternate worlds and many many more, much stranger than these three - every one of them equally real and every one of them happening now. More universes every nano-second, foaming out of the void! What's the catch? These mathematically possible universes are eternally ignorant of each other - they can never communicate. Not enough time - even at the speed of light - for anything at all to pass between them.
"What kind of mind comes up with multiplying, forever-out-of-touch worlds? Isn't there a mode of communication that takes no time at all? Life everywhere, all the universes pulsing, singing, dreaming each other? Oh I know how grim, how barren the scene here is. The human catastrophe. Wars. Our tormented planet. Cork beetles - uncountable rare beings - going extinct so fast we can't even keep track. And what does all this have to do with dreaming, anyway? I'm getting there... Take Dr. X. An internationally-known and respected theoretical physicist. Brilliant. But. The guy ignores his dreams - daydreams, visions, night dreams - spends his life in front of a screen stringing dots together, scrolling numbers, building computer models, describing the universe for publication in the right journals. Dividing this from that, splitting people from trees and trees from water on down to atoms and quarks and sub-quarks whizzing furiously... nobody really knows how far down the dance goes. Dr. X knows everything about breaking things apart into smaller and smaller pieces, analyzing the pieces, recording the results. But he doesn't have a clue about the missing half of the experiment - I mean melting the walls down. Dream-thinking.
"Dreaming is the other half of knowing. Dreaming awake: Be still. Listen. Do nothing. Receive. Let images, sensations, ideas, let dreams come and go on their own. Alien or beautiful, let them weave their pattern inside you. Let the dream dance you, let it change you, show you the ravel and unravel too! Wake up inside the dream - day dream/night dream - see how the dream is put together even while it's rolling. See into the living moment unfolding where time slips the rails, turns super-abundant, multi-dimensional, symmetrical, frictionless, fractal - experience everything for the first time and see where it leaps into being, changing, re-arranging, disappearing. Each smile, each cloud flickers by, real, fresh as a baby's bottom - while you know for sure it's an on-going creation. A dream. Your dream. Just yours? Yours and more. What if you could learn to dream the threads of a Dream running through all other dreams... meshing, luminous through dark flesh, dark matter, dark energy - dark time? Dream time. Everything communicating with everything else, everywhere and everywhen? What if we sit down and ask ourselves how Dreaming might change the way we eat and breathe, do politics, medicine, art, family, religion? How might Dreaming re-imagine relations with our oldest kin - animals and plants, water, air, fire, land? What if we get in the habit of asking such questions? Dreaming on such questions? Snap off the screens, take a walk with our friends, our neighbors, and ask each other these questions? What if we - more and more of us - discover the courage to come out as Dreamers?"
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Madeline McMurray, Ph.D., MFT
The discoveries of the future are unlimited and surely dreams will play their part in bringing the next 25 years into being. The psychological shift that holds enormous potential for the future of dream work is the movement away from understanding dreams from only a personal perspective. In some areas of psychology we are presently seeing a movement towards acknowledging the collective possibility of dreams. The growing field of "Eco-psychology," as well as the addition of the "World Unconscious" to the theories of depth psychology reveals the movement towards a larger methodology for the exploration of dreams.
 Historically this is not a completely new approach. Indigenous people around the world understood the collective meaning of dreaming long before Freud and the present day epidemic of psychology. No doubt today's interest and commitment towards preserving these traditional world views reflects an awareness of what has been lost, as well as a possible reflection of a desire for connection to a more than personal interpretation of dreams.
The value of dreams being seen with an eye to the collective is that dreams can heal the broken connection between human and world that has been the outcome of our rational, scientific development. Today we see the planetary stressors of pollution, over population, war, and global warming (to name only a few) and we either try to deny the wounding that is our shared condition, or we feel so overwhelmed by what we experience that we are unable to respond. In the future we will realize that dreams can guide us in response to not only the needs of our own psyches, but to the needs of the world.
Just as personal dreams offer new potentials and possibilities for our own healing there is also dream knowledge available for guiding our planetary healing. Historically we know that dreams have solved problems and inspired creative and spiritual developments that have had profound influence on the world in which we live. Had not Einstein, Blake and Joseph listened to their dreams our collective inheritance would have been diminished. Why, then, would we not assume that dreams for the future hold responses and answers to creating a healthier world and addressing our present planetary uncertainty. Dreams are the doorway into deeper planetary awareness and reconnection of human soul to world soul and thus dreams are our future.
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Domenec Mendez
Spain
www.galeon.com/livescripts-2
livescripts.blogspot.com
It will not be long before neurologists map out all altered states of mind - dreams, lucid dreams, meditation, trance, rapture, orgasm, epilepsy... - and relate them not only to the mystic and religious revelations of prophets and shamans from the beginning of mankind but also, on one hand, to artistic and scientific creativity and, on the other hand, to our everyday and everybody's divine intuition.
Dream research will also show that these states of illumination can be accomplished by sheer true desire and love as well as traditional fasting, prayer, music and dancing - or yoga. Science and the media will make this phenomenon so obvious that any religious leader or therapist will never ever again claim to have any monopoly of a Truth that belongs to all of us - just like dreaming.
Dream research will branch out into as many categories as fields of expertise, with groups of specialists working and dreaming together old and new solutions, particularly in social sciences and economy. Dreaming diaries will display a standard design, and after being used - preferably with cinematographic language - their pages could be stamped and legalized for interchange among scholars.
Dreaming cruises will still be more popular than they are today. There will be Dreaming Temples again. People will still celebrate Christmas, the 4th of July, Saint John's Eve, being totally aware they are actually celebrating the solstices and our connection to Mother Earth. Rituals of birth, coming of age, marriage and death will be experienced in another richer way and a 'good night' expression will become a particularly meaningful kind of farewell: Happy dreams!
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Dolores Nurss (dreamdeer)
Arizona, USA
Three interrelated dreams that were incubated for IASD's "Dreaming the Future":
1. Cannon
Men setting up for the future, in hard hats and grayish white coveralls, show me the cannon with which we shall be shot into the future, human-cannonball style. (While writing this half-asleep, I kept spelling it "canon".)
2. Grandma's Photo
I scrutinize a photo of Grandma, taken now, right before her pending launch in the cannon of the last dream. I worry about her: How will a 92 year old woman hold up, being shot out of a cannon like that? Then I notice someone barely visible, peering over her shoulder–someone with larger-than-human eyes. I realize that a fairy watches over Grandma and will see to her safety.
3. Our Home-To-Be
 The S. Family have added a story to their house (just a little ways down the street from Grandma's) and have agreed to rent or sell it to my husband and me. I feel really excited about this! We will have more rooms, which we really need, for one thing. But I feel especially eager to show my husband the back yard, which goes downslope a little into The Canyon, into a lush and relaxing garden with a duck pond! In the dream it seems especially important that my husband live near a body of water. He's thrilled when he sees it; I know that it will relax him, whenever he returns from work, to sit and watch the antics of the ducks. I harbor only one regret about this place: that the pond, and the vegetation-overgrown chainlink fence beyond it, cuts off the view of and access to the wild part of The Canyon beyond it. However, the S. Family lives really close to the alley that opens a way into The Canyon, so that's okay. I can even picture myself growing food in The Canyon near that entrance, where in this dream I know of a suitable clearing for food-gardening.
Notes
CANNON: In a crucial dream in childhood, and a few subsequent ones, oaths were sworn on a beautifully eroded and patina'd cannon, once a weapon of war, transformed by time and nature to become incapable of war, in the hopes that this would be humanity's fate.
GRANDMA: I recently spent a month caregiving as she recovered from surgery. The hardest part was her adjusting to still living when she had prepared herself to die, with ensuing discussions about strengthening herself to prepare for whatever future purpose God might be keeping her alive for.
THE CANYON: Personal sacred space. In waking life, just a small branch of the Tecolote Canyon in San Diego, behind Grandma's house where I grew up, but in my dreams a Nexus of All Worlds, where one may enter in one world and exit in any other, with many offshoots, caverns and tunnels that open out in other places, routes to beach and ocean voyages, cliffs to climb, trees of power, etc. In general, also, I view the many canyons of San Diego as places where the real world, the natural world, reveals itself through the rips in the artificial skin of human civilization.
THE S. FAMILY: Family friends in the same neighborhood, ivory-trailer intellectuals, with a front yard full of junk in progress to becoming marvelous things, can make anything out of nothing, rough around the edges folk, generous-hearted. The current matriarch, as her trade, built fascinating things for museum displays before an industrial accident partially blinded her; she was once a little girl that I played with in The Canyon--very artistic, intelligent, self-educated, tough, and blunt.
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 Carol Oschmann
Florida, USA
After my book Prison Dreams comes out, people will see the value of group dream work in prisons, the real benefit of taking a look at what their higher self is telling them and the internal help they can get in making life changes. It's the only sure-fire way to stop repeat offenders, to get going on a better life path.
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pasQuale Ourtane, M.A.
Founder and creator of LD4all.com,The Lucid Dreamers Community
Amsterdam, Netherlands
The night of august 9, 2008 I dreamt the following:
 I walk through cobblestoned streets and while I walk I write too. I write with thick, black ink, painting almost, on the streets and on the walls. I write poems about dreams. The streets are covered in my words, and the walls too. I come to a house, where I see Jean Campbell watching me. I now realize that what I have been doing has somehow to do with the future of dreaming. Jean wordlessly asks me a Question about what I'm doing, and won't the words decay over time?. I nod to her and say:"Yes, these words will decay, the longer they stay up here, eventually they will decay." Somehow the word "decay" was very important. EOD
The next morning I resisted the urge to send this dream to Jean immediately, along the lines of "look, you were in my dreams last night". Instead, I have been pondering on the meaning of this dream. And from this dream, I got that the future of dreaming lies in getting the word out on the streets. The word of dreaming out on the streets, not hidden anymore, talk about dreams should be as normal as talking about the weather. Dreaming will have to become common knowledge, children will be taught about how to dream, what they can do with their dreams. In schools, dreaming will be part of the learning curriculum. This also explains why Jean would feature in this dream, since she is one of the people I know who is working on making this happen.
Now, the word decay, that was somehow so important in this dream. Words will fleet, as thoughts, and dreams. But the words themselves are not important, it is what you learn from them. It is what you may be inspired to do, because of reading the words. It may be needed to flood the streets with words on dreams, but eventually that won' t be needed anymore, as the words will decay, the knowledge will remain.
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Cynthia Pearson
Pennsylvania, USA
Three Dreams for the Future of Dreaming
 Dream #1: A Dream Journal Repository (a Night Repository?) -- that is, a resting place for our records, sometimes lifelong records, to be stored and, if stipulations are met, accessed for scholarly research. Before this can happen, we dreamers need to envision how this can be implemented. During the Long Term Journal Keeping panel in Montreal, discussion covered such issues as: the prospective costs of conserving dream records, such as scanning, storage and administration; whether those who leave their records would also need to provide funding to cover these costs; and, whether we could partner with a university such as JFKU.
Dream #2: The development of a web-wide compendium of dream symbols, based on the actual dreams of actual journal keepers. What did that CLOCK mean in that dream of yours? How about that CAT or that COP or that CAR? You could enter as much or as little as you like, and contribute to a pool of searchable possibilities for all dreamers with inquiring minds.
Dream #3: Members and friends of IASD make plans to contribute to IASD's Heritage Fund -- which can accept many different types of property -- so that it becomes a source for projects. "Perennial Dream Works," for example, could ensure conservation of works on dreaming by having authors bequeath the rights to their books to IASD, whereupon, thanks to the print-on-demand revolution in publishing, the organization could assure that these titles never go out of print and are always available to scholars, journal keepers and dream aficionados everywhere.
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Ralf Penderak
Germany
Dreaming the Future of my Dreaming
I am lucid and recalling the current exercise, experiment, incubation. I recall my waking life experiences to my wish and my mind is crystal-clear. I am aware I'm connected now to my group members in our shared effort to create peace, peaceful solutions, given this is intentional group dreaming. I'm aware this is my dream, nonetheless I may be connected to physical distant beings and events. I know inside the dream how to discern "true perception" from my projections.
 This is my dream, and I may encounter aspects of myself needing attention or healing, there may be something to learn for me. I'm aware, that I'm in the presence of the Highest and that guidance and help comes to me on my heartfelt request. I am aware that my perception and actions may be limited now by my state and form of consciousness. I have learned how to get into other/ higher states. I have learned how to interact with dream-persons in a loving and respectful way, including healthy boundaries. I feel the fundamental unity I'm part of.
I have learned a bunch of techniques of navigation, so I can reach my desired goal. I'm also ready to be guided in unexpected ways and receive new knowledge, surprising solutions. I know that my dream-body, my dreaming has a reality of its own and interacts with universe. I can direct loving/healing energy deliberately. I know that my dreaming creates reality. I am creating reality together with all sentient beings. I'm aware of the role my intention plays in all this and I have learned to direct my intention.
Returning from the dream I have a good recall and all I need to integrate and critically evaluate my experience, including feedback from waking physical world, group members, the goal we dreamt on. I'm ready to live my waking physical life in essentially the same way, as my dreaming life. I experience the intricate weaving of day and dream in universe. I know that now, too, I'm creating (my) reality, entangled with all beings, with all there is.
That surely is a dream of the future of my dreaming, of the future of my existence. But some of the elements I have experienced sometimes. What would happen, if they all come together in the way described above on a regular basis?
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Valley Reed
Texas, USA
www.chrysalishealingarts.org
Remembering how to dream the future beyond the time continuum
In the darkness of night awaits our deepest fears of cataclysmic earth changes, threats of world wars, and visions of nuclear Apocalypse. Within the problems we face today as a global community are the seeds of a dreaming community that were planted 25 years ago. These seeds are growing into a vibrant international dreaming community and in the next 25 years we will know not only how to dream with the each other globally, but with the earth itself.
In the next 25 years of dreaming we will open the portals of time and space and learn to travel the time continuum into the future and through the past to reconnect us with not only what we have lost, but also what we are in danger of losing. Lost, has been the earth centered wisdom of indigenous cultures across the globe through imperialism and globalization. Now we are in danger of losing our humanity itself, with our continued pursuit of materialism while we destroy each other and our environment.
We will evolve past our reptilian brain centered pursuits and create a sustainable mutual dream that supports our planet, and the wholeness of our humanity. Through our actions we will co-create a new paradigm that we dreamt together. The Internet has brought us all closer together as a global community, and we will remember how to be connected collectively through the ancient technology of dreaming. We will transcend the world wide web and reconnect with the web of life and the energy that interconnects us all, and psychic abilities will be seen as a common experience instead of extra sensory. We will grow dreaming pods where can pool our collective dreaming gifts toward the task of invention, scientific exploration, as well as social and environmental repair.
Families will reconnect with their dreaming traditions and share them with their children and their grandchildren, and these children will be well versed at dreaming the future. They will know how to change the weather and avert disaster through dreaming. Dreaming to meet the global changes facing the next quarter century is something our ancestors have done successfully for a millennium. We carry it in our DNA and it is our birthright. We will remember not only how to dream the future but travel beyond the time continuum.
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Christiane Riedel
France
The dream of a woman, 1992
I am in Lourdes, at a conference. The topic is: How to cure the illnesses of the modern society, particularly AIDS. I am listening, when a voice suddenly says: "In a fairly near future," - and I know it means in twenty to thirty years - "the dream will be a very good therapy to heal the illnesses of the modern society. Dream will even be an excellent therapy."
And the voice proclaims: "And it will be recognized !"
Interpretation
Lourdes is the sanctuary of the Lady, "the Immaculate Conception", who gave birth to the Saviour. Symbolically, the Lady represents the feminine soul, permitting the Holy Spirit to fecundate her. This "conception" takes place without any contact with the masculine external conscious mind. Thus, in the unconscious, a child is formed, divine and human, who is an inspiration, a DREAM, the healing emanation of the Spirit. It is in this very city, which celebrates the conception of the divine child (the dream), that the 1992 dream expressly chooses to explain how to cure illnesses of our society, particularly AIDS.
AIDS is symbolically the illness of modern people, choosing the opposite attitude to the Lady. Unfaithful to the inner personal guidance of the dream, they embrace on the contrary general systems, elaborated by the mind - psychological theories, all kind of therapies, religious movements. They become unable to live their own spiritual way with integrity, unable to defend themselves against any factor of disintegration. One attitude is healing, the other kills the soul.
The end of the dream prophesies that people, becoming soon aware of the therapeutic nature of dreams, will follow their guidance. I believe this indicates the urgent need for dedicated people to learn and practise the art of dream interpretation, as the priests and physicians have done in other time and societies
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Margery Runyan, LCSW
USA
The Future of Dreamwork
In 25 years, dreamwork will have penetrated the medical sciences. Physicians will ask their patients to bring their dreams from the last few months and will review them in order to make the diagnosis of a disease state. The frequency and content of nightmares will indicate the presence of bacteria, viruses, cancer cells, or hormonal imbalances.
 All people will consequently keep a record of their dreams in journals that they keep safe with check books and other important information. They will understand intuitively how significant dream material can be for an understanding of their spiritual, emotional and physical health.
People will routinely use their dreams to predict the future and make major life decisions. They will become attuned to the symbols that reappear in their dreams and use them as indicators of fortuitous circumstances or risk. Rationalism in decision-making will wane as intuitive influences prevail. Families will meet at the breakfast table and recount their dreams so that their cumulative effect can be assessed and decisions made for the welfare of the family. The children's input will be particularly valued because their insights are less constrained by culture and formal education.
Communities will assess the power of dream messages by the number of persons who share the dream and its interpretation. The most influential persons will be the ones who can link their dreams to the dreams of others and to their waking lives. This integration of the dream and waking life will be a valuable and indispensable proficiency.
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Massimo Schinco
Italy
Dreams reveal women and men as they are, good and bad, and how they can become, and especially how they would like to become, even though they might not be aware of it.
So, for the future of dreamworking I hope that two directions of study and research will be encouraged and followed:
- Dreams are valuable in discovering meaningful frames to one's existence, resources, problems. They can often indicate the way to the solution, and sometimes reveal the solution itself. Further, they reveal that we are never alone, that even our own consciousness participates in consciousness of others, as much as other's consciousness participates in our own. This is working with the "sunny side" of dreaming.
- I used to say that "the solution comes before" the problem, and is attracting us. Problems are like paths we are going through to get the solutions, and, as if they were the solution in disguise, we all experience that sometimes we don't find the way to lift up the veil. Working with dreams helps to bring to the light of consciousness those inner deceits that can make the challenging task of problem solving and discovering meaning wearisome, frustrating, ineffective, negative. This is working with the "shady side" of dreaming.
So I propose that we go beyond unilateral considerations of dreams: both the one "with rose-colored glasses", where dreams are always seen as a great source of solutions, enlightenment, life meaning, etc., and the darker one, where dreams always reveal nothing but the worst of our unconscious.
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Patricia Schmieg
The interaction of electromagnetic fields (EMFs) and dreaming. At a sleep study in August, the technician places electrodes on the head above my brain, meridian points on the face and neck, and EKG leads below the collarbone. As I twitch through that restless, dreamless night, I wonder, how do EMFs inside and outside workplaces, dwellings, and bedrooms affect dreamers?
Honor children's dreams. Let their dreams teach us. Many children dream of the future, the past, or in kairos time. Teach dream work in the schools.
Make dream work accessible and affordable for all people.
So many veterans return from Iraq with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Many "disorders" are repeated reactions to unbearable reality. Dream work mitigates the effects of trauma. Use energy psychology to release the pain of emerging dreams.
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Misa Tsuruta
Japan
As IASD becomes truly international, dream tradition in each culture is more honored. Collectively we become more knowledgeable about history and tradition in different cultures, which enriches our contemporary dreaming. We will inspire people to keep dreaming and cultivate dream resources.
Our increasingly cyber way of living and connecting will also help globalization of IASD. Dream works will be done across the oceans (which is already happening, anyway). Ullman kind of approach is really effective here, because each person can relate to other's dream from their own perspective, regardless of culture.
Similarly, because of the effect of computerization we will have more accumulation of dream data, whateer the form. We will promote understanding of dreams by this way and by analyzing these data systematically.
Finally, because of these international interactions our collective minds will be more international and borderless. We will generate dreams that are strongly connected to personal roots as well as collective roots as human kind.
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Kathy Turner
Australia
Two processes are at work which will most probably lead to a very rapid development of dreaming as an area of human knowledge. First is the internet, bringing together experienced dreamers from all cultures, creating an unprecedented pool of rich knowledge and innovative ideas. Second is the increasing expansion of technological possibilities of understanding what is occurring in the brain. The combination is immensely powerful. However, human nature stays the same. So I'd expect the developments in dreaming over the next 25 years to be quite spectacular but also to be divided by the different value systems we are familiar with today. I'd expect to see the following developments and battles over understandings and actions:
How to benefit from dreams
- the development of drugs/medications to create different types of dream states, especially aimed at using dreaming possibilities to enhance competitive advantages in the waking world (a sort of dream Viagra or Stay Dreaming Longer for Success);
- the development of drugs/medications to regulate dream states, especially aimed at minimising those dream states that appear to be problematic from a waking perspective on the world (a sort of dream valium or Numb Nightmares);
- the development of "scientifically based street drugs to manipulate dream states to create profound experiences and the consequent development of an underground culture of Dream-Drop-Outs (or more favourably as Dream-Drop-Ins) with its accompanying poverty, problems, creativity, police etc;
- the development of the arts and philosophy along dream possibilities - endless mirroring of possibility inscribed in writing, art, etc.
- the development of theories about, and/or medications for regulating that which enables us to distinguish dream reality from waking reality - and with that also the cure for a number of diseases that seem to be based on an inability to move around these distinctions e.g. schizophrenia.
New metaphors for "religious" ideas
- the development of theories that all spiritual experience is merely the result of biological processes in the brain ( a slightly more scientifically based materialism);
- the development of theories that, despite the evidence for the biological basis for spiritual experience, that the spiritual experiences indicate a type of "internet" connection between all humans and/or all living things (a more "internet-like" metaphor for spiritual experiences). This probably won't need a God, viewed as a separate entity but a GOoGle;
- the development of religious groups dedicated to seeking the "internet like" connection available through dreams - both as cult groups (some of which will try to sleep and dream non-stop; and as more open groups;
- the development of the battle over the dichotomy dream/waking, in which either dreaming OR waking is seen as the superior state (the battle of the Dreamers and the Wakers);
- the development of the concept that both dreaming and waking are similar states with similar problems and possibilities, although they are distinguishable (known as either the Clueless or the Adepts, depending on one's point of view).
Uses of dreams
- the use of dreams by governments and/or corporations to manipulate actions by expanding advertising techniques into a more distinctly dream territory (from research which has indicated the day triggers of particular types of dreams) (Dream Advertising);
- Esoteric Schools that use dreams to access "the muse" - in much the same way the Bon (Tibet) find 'treasures" in dreams (the Musers).
- the expansion of the occupation of dream interpreters whose role will be mainly aiming at interpretation to maintain the status quo accompanied with the use of medications to calm a dreaming mind) - Neurodreamologists sometimes known as neurodamnologists;
- the development of an occupation of dream listeners, whose role will be to develop dream awareness (the Listeners and their society the DEAR: Dream Early Awareness Readiness).
We'll see - well, I won't I suppose!!
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Robert Waggoner
USA
Looking forward to the Future of Dreaming, I see a greater acceptance of lucid dreaming. As we learn to set aside various mis-conceptions about lucid dreaming, and see its potential as a revolutionary psychological tool to explore the state of dreaming, the nature of the subconscious mind, and our greater identity, a new flowering of insight and understanding will occur.
Some lucid dreamers will take on the role of the dream-art scientists (a concept suggested by Jane Roberts) in which they use their lucid consciousness to uncover solutions to real world problems of a practical and theoretical nature. Some will specialize in getting information on physics, some in mathematics, some in electronics, others in health and spirituality, but collectively, they will underscore the existence of accessible knowledge and information in the human psyche.
Some lucid dreamers will explore the nature of time and space to assist science in understanding the complexities of these apparent facts, which will be seen to have a psychological basis. Some lucid dreamers will explore the connecting linkages of the psyche to try to grasp the inherent complexity of the mind and identity. Others will move into the mysteries of awareness, seeking its source.
In many regards, the Future of Dreaming seems tied to the future of man. For without the creativity and knowledge accessible at deeper levels, mankind will be severely challenged to meet the needs of the larger society. Exploring those deeper levels consciously in the dream state provides one tool of assistance, and offers revolutionary potential.
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Richard Wilkerson
California, USA
The Evening Gazette: Man Sued for Dreaming Copyrighted Material.
Kevin was upset and confused after opening a letter from a law firm.
"I'm being sued!"
"What for?" his brother Chris asked.
"Something about a symbol in my dream I had during a mutual dreaming event."
"Oh, I know what that is, that's the PHSS, the Post-Human Society of Signs."
Kevin scrunched his eyebrows together, as if he was having a hard time hearing. "The Post. . . Society. . . what?"
Chris worked as a back-end data loader for a low tech social services organization, but kept up with 21st Century trends of development in Internet virtual reality societies that developed after the late 20th Century, and explained to his confused brother:
"This is the legal arm of the Post-Human Society of Signs," Chris elaborated, "It's kind of a long story, but basically they are patenting unique signs and claiming that dreaming is public space, not private space, much like the way that Meerck or Inicyte patent new genes."
"Oh my God! Who are these people?"
"Well, that's the interesting thing, they aren't people at all, they are signs themselves, or swarms of signs, nobody can really pin them down since they aren't human, nor are they really objects either. So they see sign-patents as kind of like gathering together of their own kind," Chris chuckled and explained.
"How can this be, how can a rowdy bunch of signs get an attorney to sue me over sharing my own dream?"
"Well, part of the problem was in the 20th century, they decided to make corporations individuals and give them the rights of individuals. But I personally think it was Carl Jung's fault, who got most dreamworkers focused on symbols and ignored signs, thinking they were just references to known objects, while symbols obtained the status among dreamworkers of semi-autonomous beings. But signs have had their own revenge. Since they more dynamically exist as differentials in our virtual sign systems (using us as their sex organs to reproduce), they have access to our systems and have now really separated themselves from our control.
"How did we let this all happen?" asked Kevin, who was starting to feel sick, and wondering how he missed out again on these current trends that surrounded him.
"It kind of went like this," said Chris. "For the longest time, signs were tied closely to single meanings and people were punished for any variation of interpretation. . . [middle of this story cut to keep in the 250 word parameters of the 2008 PDC requirements -- see the middle of this document at http://dreamgate.com/pomo/phss.htm]. . . and so the signs got out and have been setting up corporate fronts as platforms for their activities over the last century."
"And now they are suing us for dreaming?" Kevin reacted somewhat hysterically, and his brother was of little help, saying "Oh it get's worse that than. Our very subjectivity seems to be dependent upon the language we use, and the PHSS are also copyrighting new forms of subjectivity faster than humans can produce them. So in a sense, we will be paying rent for being who we are, or become mired in law suits."
"So we are all going to become. . .?"
"Yes, that's right. "
"Sure gives a new meaning to the phrase 'Sign of the times!' "
Thanks to Charles Stross, Jean Baudrillard, Philip K Dick, Gilles Deleuze and Robert Riech for many of these ideas.
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