Electric Dreams

Sex and Sustenance in Dreamwork

Kurt Forrer


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Forrer, Kurt. (2007 May). Sex and Sustenance in Dreamwork. Electric Dreams 14(5).





"Can basic beliefs dreamers don't know about coerce them into actions against their better judgment?"

Dream Sight News is a site on the Internet. This month the editor, Jane Teresa Anderson, offered some dream samples furnishing apparent evidence that demonstrate that certain basic "beliefs" dreamers may hold will force them to act on them blindly with consequences that often are, in the editor's opinion, "failing to reach the goals the dreamers have set themselves". Such beliefs, she suggests, take root in our unconscious mind often in early childhood. They often may be the result of traumatic experiences. She then continues by saying that when it comes to "beliefs you don’t know about, your actions are automatic, with no chance of being vetoed by your wiser judgment". In the end she asks the question, "if an unconscious belief is not creating the results you want, how can you change it?"

There are two presumptions and one inaccuracy in what the author is saying in all this. I have printed these three contentious points that need to be questioned in bold letters.

I want to begin this questioning with the inaccuracy. When you check the word "belief" in the Collins’ dictionary for instance, you find that it is defined in this way: '1. a principle, idea, etc., accepted as true or real, esp. without positive proof'. I have written the word "accepted" in italics in order to highlight the fact that belief hinges upon this very word. It hinges on it because "acceptance" is an indispensable prerequisite of a belief. Put another way we can only say that we believe something if we are fully aware of what it is about. It is therefore by definition impossible to have "beliefs you don’t know about". That being so, it is not making any sense to say, as the editor does, after having listed the various dreams, "Dreams reveal your unconscious beliefs". Clearly, "unconscious beliefs" is a contradiction in terms. From this follows that we must look for a term in place of "belief" that withstands the test of the dictionary and at the same time fulfils the functions of "unconscious motivation".

The two presumptions are 1. That our wisdom may be greater than the dream's, and 2. That we can change what the editor calls "unconscious beliefs". Since the latter is a misnomer it is perhaps best if we begin by proposing a more appropriate term for it. We know from what has been said so far that by this is meant a motivational force the source of which we do not know. Because of the fact that the source of it remains hidden from our eyes, psychology has adopted the nineteenth century concept of the "Unconscious". This is wholly unfortunate since it may suggest that this realm is utterly devoid of consciousness. If that were the case, terms like the "unconscious mind" which the editor has adopted, would be sheer nonsense, for anything that is devoid of consciousness is simply non-existent. What psychology means to highlight here is of course the fact that there could be something in our consciousness of which we are not directly aware because of our focus being temporarily directed elsewhere. "Unaware", being the operative word in this context, it would be more appropriate to speak of "incognisance" than of "unconsciousness". Thus the term "unconscious belief" that forces us to act upon it blindly would best be replaced by "incognisant promptings".

Whether or not we can actually change such incognisant promptings by means of "dream alchemy", as the writer suggests, and thus replace them by means of wiser motivations than the dream can offer, will be examined in course of and subsequent to the discussion of the dreams the author has listed for us. Each of those dreams hides what she has called an unconscious belief which term I have now substituted with "incognisant promptings".

Jim's Dream:

I was waiting in line to buy a theatre ticket, but people kept pushing in front of me. Finally I got to the front, but then the ticket office closed and I was directed to join a long queue at another counter.

The author comments by saying that this dream reveals the belief of "my needs are less important than other people's." While this summary has a certain substance to it, it does not ring absolutely true in the context of the dream. To be fair, she offers some alternative answers we might consider in this case such as: "I always seem to be kept waiting"; "just when I think I have made it, I'm right back to where I started, or worse"; "patience doesn’t pay"; "you’ve got to be pushy to get what you want in life".

The writer also sees this dream as an example of a possible belief complex that might make Jim act in a similar way in similar situations. That might well be true, but since I have no evidence of this I will have to treat this dream like the rest on the writer's list as a one off case. Thus I shall confine myself to demonstrating that this dream is actually nothing more serious than a classic example of a very common occurrence within every relationship with a female partner.

You will wonder where I saw a possible wife or a definite female companion in Jim's life at the time of this dream. Dreams speak in symbols which may be translated into associative items and parallel plots. In the present case we detect an object that is decidedly female. It is the ticket office. Another word for ticket office is box office. A box is a distinctly feminine object, thus it stands for a wife or sexual partner. Under such circumstances it is clear that the dreamer, in order to attend the show, must first obtain the OK from that very "feminine office". Without this permission he won’t gain entrance to that nocturnal play he covets so much. From the dreamer’s strenuous efforts to obtain this permission we may infer that he will be equally determined in his waking hours to do the very same. The fact that Jim is prepared to pay for the entertainment suggests that he may even cajole his partner with some kind of present. Maybe even a ticket to the theatre. But that does not need to be so. What is certain from the word theatre is that he wants to perform and have his partner in on the act! Alas, she rejects him. Perhaps she even elbows him back into his place. Incidentally "many people" in dreams need not manifest as many people in waking, but simply as many rebuffs from one single person as in this case. Jim's burning libido is not allowing him to give up easily. He is given sufficient patience to keep his hopes alive. But just as he finally gets to the front, the ticket office closes. As I have said, a more telling word would be box office. Yet he persists. His hormones are giving him the patience, tenacity and humility to join a new queue. Now this is interesting. First it is a frontal attack, now he tries to come in the back door. How did I extract that? Well, queue is a French word for tail or butt. So the dream with its image acrobatics manages to put him in a waiting queue while at the same time teasing him with his partners "queue". Oh God, this is such a common bedroom scenario, what married partner could miss its meaning? No doubt, the last words that poor Jim probably heard on the night that followed his dream were: "I've got a headache". But the rebuff could have been quite physical, for after all his dream tells us that he was being constantly pushed to the back. Again, the dream shows its genius for double entendres: it says that Jim was being pushed to the back when it was really his dearest wish to do the pushing.

The Freudian interpretation of the dream is of course not the only one. There is also a non-sexual meaning and manifestation or indeed several of them that are as valid as the sexual one. Indeed, from my perspective there are invariably no less than two waking outcomes of one single dream story: one is sexual while the other is "innocent" as Freud used to put it. This innocent version, as I have suggested, could actually have had something to do with the intention of buying a theatre ticket or more generally, going out for the night. But that version or versions would not be as compelling as the sexual interpretation when it comes to demonstrating the power of incognisant promptings. The sexual context makes it far more convincing that there is a force at play in a dream scenario that is well outside the dreamer's control. It does so because it is known to all sexual beings just how powerful their libido can be. It is for this very reason that I shall examine all the other dreams that this writer offered for spotting the "unconscious beliefs" of the dreamers from the sexual point of view, although there is always also the non-sexual one.

Incidentally it would be of interest to know what Jim's partner had dreamt on that same night or early morning. If we had access to such a dream, we could then obtain a truly scientific verification or falsification of my interpretation. It would then become clear if it was really Jim’s belief that made him fail, or if it was nature herself. Only by means of such double checks can a dream interpretation be regarded as more scientific than speculative.

Here I have of course speculated in the same way as Freud used to do it. But unlike Freud I am never satisfied to leave it at that. I always seek confirmation for my interpretation whenever possible. The questions I would ask in this case would be: 1. Does Jim have a wife or sexual partner? 2. Did the wife or partner reject Jim's advances on the day that followed the dream?

Greta's dream:

I was climbing a hill and decided I wanted to go back down again, but there were too many rocks and precipices below where I was standing. I thought that if I walked along one of the precipices I would eventually find an easy way down. The trouble was, even the precipice path led upwards, so in my endeavor to find an easy way back down I just kept climbing higher and higher. I ended up feeling stranded with no way back down.

The writer epitomises this dream by saying it expresses the belief that "backing down is not an option". She has picked up the dream's language nicely for it ends "with no way back down". There obviously wasn't an option as she writes. To me this is a splendid example that shows that we, as the ego, want to go in one direction, while some stronger force nudges us in another direction; in this case in the direct opposite. Put another way it pictures the battle of wills, the will of the individual against the will of nature in a classic manner. It does this to perfection since this inability to surrender to the greater forces always engenders a conflict that will leave us, as it did Greta, "feeling stranded with no way back".

Freud would have seen in this dream a substantial sexual conflict; one that leaves a dreamer stranded on the shores of social mores and nature's urges. This very imagery I have just used to describe the location of Greta's conflict shows that we readily project our feelings into the outside world. The shore I had in mind is the embankment that borders on the ocean of libidinous urges which is held in check by the ethics of social taboos. The dream, as are poetry and everyday metaphor, is doing exactly the same thing. While in everyday language the metaphors are often veiled to a greater or lesser degree due to the fact that they are presented to us in a code of sound, the dream's metaphors loom large because of their energetic pictorial imagery. But curiously enough it is this very intensity of expression and often realistic imagery that prevents us from seeing the metaphor and its meaning just as we miss the forest for trees. The important thing in Greta's case is to realise that the dream projects not only her feelings into the mountainous landscape, but also some of her own anatomy.

This projection of the body and or some of its parts follows the same principle that is called "as above so below". Within the framework of the dream this means that our physical body is projected into the landscape. Twin hills out there for instance may refer to a woman's breasts. In poetry this is an easily recognised "device", but when it comes to dreams, most of us miss the meaning. We find such poetical projections of erotica even in Songs of Solomon which has been modeled on the ancient Sumerian poetic cycle of the "Sacred Marriage Rite". Thus in Solomon 8:10 the beloved says of herself” "I am a wall, and my breasts like towers." In 7:7 the lover exclaims: "This thy structure is like to a palm tree and thy breasts to clusters of grapes." In 7:3 he says: "Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins." And in 4:12 we get as close to dream language as is possible: "A garden enclosed is my sister, my spouse, a spring shut up, a fountain sealed."

We need not call for Dr. Freud to help us see the meaning of such projections into the landscape. Water is clearly feminine and consequently women dream far more of water than men, so far as I can assess; after all they are the ocean of life, they carry the amniotic fluid and thus whenever the dream wants to feature things feminine, water will often play a part. The womb of a woman could well be presented as an indoor swimming pool. But that is more likely to happen when there is a pregnancy underfoot or an impending illness of the womb because such a pool is more a reference to the internal reproductive organs than the attached exterior anatomy. With respect to the latter an outdoor pool is featured, a lake, the ocean or a river, or a flood plane.

I realise that it would be far more appropriate now to deal with Nelson's or Bronwyn's dreams that feature water very strongly than returning to Greta's mountaineering feat which is devoid of water. Indeed, her dream seems to contradict what I have just said about women's dreams. We shall see that it does not. The first thing I felt about Greta's dream was that there is no male entity around. There is a hill, a path, rocks and precipices, but no forms that would suggest the presence of the opposite sex. Earlier I have suggested that hills may refer to breasts. But there is only one hill in this dream, so it can’t mean that. This one hill, if it is a projection of Greta's physique, can only be Mons Veneris. Pathways, streets etc. according to Freud are a reference to the anatomy of the vulva and so would be the precipices. Looking down a precipice in a mountainous region engenders vertigo and great anxiety. The higher we climb, the greater will be this feeling. There are two kinds of anxiety: unpleasant and pleasant. The unpleasant one is shunned as much as possible while the pleasant one is sought fervently and frequently. Climbing a mountain clearly engenders increased anxiety and thus Greta climbing her dream hill becomes a perfect analogy to increased "anxiety" of the libidinous kind.

But in Greta’s case things go awry. She gets herself into a situation where climbing the hill suddenly becomes unacceptable. She wants to return. But the forces of nature push her onwards and upwards. But because she isn’t comfortable any more with what she had begun probably willingly, the journey ends with her feelings of being stranded with no chance of redress.

Stranded is a telling expression. The literal meaning of "strand" is the shore of the sea, the sands and the rocks. It shows that Greta was left high and dry on her hill climb and for this reason there are no water features in the dream. Her erotic encounter was one of total frustration and regret. And indeed backing down in the sense of getting out of the dilemma was no option. Nature takes its course whether we are with her or against her.

Nelson's dream:

I am standing waist deep in water when I notice a shark coming towards me. I am so terrified, I freeze. I close my eyes and hope it will go away. All is quiet for a while and I think the shark has gone, but when I open my eyes I see several more sharks lurking in the water.

The writer maintains that this dream expresses the belief that "ignoring my fears and hoping for the best works for a while and then things go from bad to worse."

Although this is a man's dream, water is most prominent in it. It is there not because it refers to the dreamer himself, but to his sexual partner. I suggest this because if a man dreams that he is standing in water it refers to him being sexually connected with a woman. But in this case there are problems as is all too obvious. The water is not warm and inviting, it is not welcoming as the dreamer would expect, on the contrary. It houses that almost universal icon of terror, the shark. This icon is so widespread and common that it must be seen as something of an archetype of terror. No doubt it was because of this that Jaws was such a huge success that it spawned Jaws II. Yet the story is still about sex, about the man wanting it, but unable to obtain it. I can almost guarantee that this man had an almighty "domestic" with his partner on the dreamday. This domestic may not have revolved around the subject of sex explicitly, but most definitely implicitly. When the dream says that Nelson shut his eyes hoping the shark would go away, it simply means that he did not want to acknowledge that he was no longer in friendly waters, but that his relationship had deteriorated dangerously. The fact that he would possibly be in an ear-shattering row the next day - my assertion based on personal experience after such a dream - instead of in his partner's loving arms is not something that he would want to contemplate. So he closes his eyes hoping that his assessment is wrong. He closes his eyes clinging to the hope that things will not fall on a heap, but will get back to the way they were at the beginning of the relationship. Alas, when he opens his eyes to the stark and unadorned reality of things, he sees that there is little hope of improvement since the waters are swarming with sharks. He could have dealt with one of them, but not a whole school.

So the author of Dream Sight is quite right in her assessment that things could only go from bad to worse. But the reason for this is not the fact that Nelson did not face his fears. Closing his eyes meant that he did not want to believe that his sexual relationship was on the rocks, or more precisely, that it would be devoured by the predators lurking in the waters. It meant that once he was courageous enough to look the matter in the eyes he would realise at last that forces greater than his would swallow up the last vestiges of his sexual relationship. Nelson might stay in this relationship for years yet, but it will never get back to where it was and in the end the sharks will rip the bond of the two lovers to shreds.

Bronwyn’s dream:

I am standing waist deep in water when I notice a shark coming towards me. I am terrified but try to make friends with the shark to stop it from biting me. I look into the eye and begin to talk and, amazingly, as I do this it changes from a shark into a huge playful fish. We end up playing swimming games. I am aware it is strong and powerful, but it doesn’t frighten me any more.

The author of Dream Sight extracts from this the belief that "when I face my fears I overcome them". Obviously Jim's and Bronwyn's dreams have much in common. Interesting is that in both cases the dreamers stand in water up to their waist. It means that their genitals are immersed in water thus demonstrating that here too the dream centres on the sexual relationship of a couple. Bronwyn is luckier than Jim for her efforts to defuse an obviously explosive situation succeed. But was this happy outcome due to the fact that Bronwyn "faced her fears"? After all Nelson too opened his eyes in the end which could be interpreted as "facing his fears". But that was to no avail. So did Bronwyn win over her angry partner by facing her fears or because the dream would have gone that way in any case?

To me the plot suggests the latter. Again I see in the opening scenario of "the shark coming towards Bronwyn" a sure sign of an impending domestic upheaval. If it wasn"t a full-blown row that resulted from this dream on the dreamday, there was at least a distinct and unmistakable threat of one. But I go for the full-blown thing which, as it subsided, had the typical "making it up" in its train. The "making it up" was of course full-blown sex as the swimming games clearly intimate. The terror of the shark ended up becoming a strong and powerful connection with a fish which latter in this case firmly manifested as the partner"s penis. Fish and fishiness are generally well recognised sexual symbols which have been incorporated of old in the iconography of myths and religions. Isis for instance, the Egyptian goddess as the swallower of Osiris's penis became Abtu, the Great Fish of the Abyss while Kali, the Indian goddess changed to the fish-eyed Minaksi after swallowing the penis of Siva.

Karen's dream:
I keep having dreams involving babies aged about one year old. The dreams are different, but it always turns out that the babies fail to thrive after their first birthday. They become weak, or sick, or I lose sight of them.

The author comments like this: "Things go well for about a year, and then they stop thriving". This is of course absolutely correct. Babies are after all personifications of projects, of new ventures and of new jobs. We have many metaphors that are about babies like "I was left holding the baby", or "don’t throw the baby out with the bath" and so on. But here again we have to ask if Karen fails because it is her belief that things will go awry after one year or if there is a factor at work that has nothing to do with belief? As you will notice I have not yet committed myself to a sexual interpretation. If you were inclined to coerce me into such an interpretation I would say it was possibly connected with Karen’s inability to hold onto a partner with whom she could "make a baby". She said these baby dreams were all different. It would be most interesting to know in just what way they presented themselves. With that sort of knowledge it might be easier to determine whether or not this was really about failing relationships or just about jobs or both.

Be that as it may. I would now like to look at the differences and congruencies between author's view of these dreams and my own. There is no doubt that we concur totally in regard with the dream’s influence on the waking life. In short we agree that the dream is a kind of blueprint of the future. But the writer of the article obviously holds to the Jungian notion that our dreams are more about reconnoitering the future than determining it. This Jungian perspective leaves the possibility open for the dreamers to change those dreams that threaten the goals they have set for themselves.

I am surprised that Jung never realised that he often said at the end of an unsuccessful treatment of a patient things like: "The fate depicted by the dream ran its course". (C.G. Jung, The Practice of Psychotherapy 142; Bollingen Series XX, Pantheon Books, Tran. R.F.C Hull). Had he done so he might well have revised his view of the dream as a prognostic tool in the medical sense and considered that it might be more like a prophetic instrument in the Josephian sense. We shall see at the end that Jung had an experience that must have made him change his long held view ultimately realigning himself to the ancients who saw the dream as an unalterable prediction of things to come.

Before coming to that I would like to quote and discuss a line from the author's article I have already cited at the beginning of this review. Here it is: "when it comes to beliefs you don't know about, your actions are automatic, with no chance of being vetoed by your wiser judgment". Apart from the word 'belief' this sentence might well serve as the perfect basis to my argument that dreams cannot be changed for the 'better' and that our 'wiser judgment' is nothing more than self-deception.

There is a perfect experiment that will demonstrate this. It is called 'post-hypnotic suggestion'. For this a subject is put under deep hypnosis. I would like to point out at this very juncture that true deep hypnosis evidences REM exactly as does the dream state. Furthermore I want to add to this that the brain frequency in the dream state produces theta waves of 4-8 cycles per second or 4-8 Hz, which is also the case in the state of deep hypnosis. As well as that this same frequency is also observed when the channels are opened to intuition and past memories, including dream memories (!) that are stored in the so called subconscious mind.

The post-hypnotic experiment is simple. After the subject has been put under deep hypnosis he or she is told to perform a certain task at a given time after waking up from the trance. Added to this command is another, namely that he or she will not be able to recall what happened during the trance state.

Thus the hypnotist might suggest to his subject that he was to get up off his chair five minutes after waking up from the trance, go to the table and grab the vase of flowers on it and tip it over the hypnotist. Five minutes precisely after waking up the subject that has no memory whatever of the given command will get up and do exactly as he was told. He will think that his actions were his own idea. When asked why he did this strange deed he will find several good excuses. Yet they are nothing but rationalisations. He might say: "You looked feverish and I felt I needed to cool you down." Just as in the case of our dreams that prompt us to act in a certain way although we have forgotten them upon waking and thus believe that our doings were our own idea, he too will never know that he was prompted by an incognisant memory.

Clearly the dream is no different to a post hypnotic command which we will promptly execute it in much the same way as the writer of Dream Sight suggests we as the dreamers do with regard to our "beliefs we don’t know about". It is plain to see that what she calls "beliefs you don’t know about" fits perfectly into the framework of the post-hypnotic suggestion given to the subject with the added command that the suggestion be forgotten.

And speaking of forgetting: do we not forget most of our dreams? How many minutes, if we are lucky, do we remember of two hours or more of dreaming of one night? How can we step in and profess that we know better than our dreaming when we at best snatch a tiny fragment of countless hours of dreaming in course of our life? Is this not like some layman remarking on procedures of genetic engineering of which he knows no more than that there are test tubes and Petri dishes involved? And yes, isn’t it interesting that Freud who claimed to have cured the neuroses of many patients wrote: "The actions we ascribe to coincidence or free choice are in reality subject to unconscious mechanisms implying a determinism that rules both the conscious and unconscious life absolutely." (Freud, Octave Mannoni, Rohwolt’s Monographien, August 1975, Rohwolt Taschenbuch Verlag GmbH, page 80-1; my translation).

And no less interesting is Jung's experience of the mysterium coniunctionis of which he says: "I can describe the experience only as the ecstasy of a non-temporal state in which present, past, and future are one. Everything that happens in time had been brought together into a concrete whole. Nothing was distributed over time; nothing could be measured by temporal concepts. The experience might best be defined as a state of feeling, but one that can't be produced by imagination. How can I imagine that I exist simultaneously the day before yesterday, today, and the day after tomorrow? There would be things which would not yet have begun, other things which would be indubitably present, and others again which would already be finished and yet all this would be one." (C.G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, 327, Collins, the Fontana Library, 9th Impression, 1971, recorded and edited by Aniela Jaffe, translated from the German by Richard and Clara Winston.) In view of this Jung must have changed his mind about his understanding of the dream as a mere reconnaissance flight or medical prognosis with possible input from the dreamer. When all exists now, how can we add or subtract anything?

POST SCRIPT

Freud was right when he maintained that absolutely every conceivable object and situation could be used as a stand-in for your sexual organs and their encounters. This fact alone is massive evidence of the all-pervasiveness of sex. But the dream has some favourites as it were, images which occur more often than others, and so are more typical. This sort of thing is socially conditioned. In a culture where there are no stairs people won't dream of going up stairs, and in a society where there are no locks and keys such as among the natives of Australia before white man's arrival, there will be no dreams of locks and keys. Locks and keys however, as Freud had pointed out one hundred years ago, occur very frequently in dreams of people of our own culture. With regard to such regular images it pays to take notice of their occurrence in your everyday speech. As I have said elsewhere, the dream's metaphors are also our waking metaphors. In fact I argue that the metaphors in everyday speech are copied from the dream. In view of the fact that the dream is a pregram of waking, it could hardly be any other way. The difference between waking and dream metaphor is merely one of presentation. While one is pictographic, or made of dream pictures, the other is abstract sound, or acoustic code, spoken language that refers to pictorial images in other words.

You may be aware that it was the sexual interpretation of the dream that rent the association and friendship between Jung and Freud apart. Freud insisted that the deeper one delved into the dream, the clearer it became that its bedrock was pure sexuality. Jung on the other hand objected saying that it was not justifiable to take the sexual language of dreams absolutely concretely. Indeed, Jung believed Freud was obsessed with sex, regarding it as something numinous. If Jung meant this to be a reproach it failed miserably. It failed because "numinous" really relates to something "divine, to something mysterious, arousing religious or spiritual emotions". And that is precisely the way our ancient forebears, the bedrock of later generations, saw sex.

For them it was not something that should be hidden, something to be ashamed of and denied, but something to be venerated (this word comes from Venus and is related to venereal), for after all it forms the basis of our earthly existence. Indeed, if it were not for the fact that our parents and their parents back to Adam and Eve had sexual congress, we would not be here to discuss this.

Survival on this planet depends first and foremost on the s-twins: sustenance and sex. The formula is simple s + s = S: sustenance plus sex equals Survival. The two S's are as inseparable as Siamese twins. Indeed if one of them should die, the other would follow on its heels. This of course has to be understood in the larger context of life in general where sex is also the fertilisation of plants.

http://tinyurl.com/3b84s6

If dreams are about life, about survival, then an interpretation without the sexual facet is nothing short of castrating the dream. Only the dual interpretation of the dream will yield a precursor of life perpetual. Our ancient forebears were only too conscious of this simple fact of earthly existence. They realised that the earth by itself was like a woman without a husband. If the earth was to be "Mother" Earth and thus capable of bearing and nurturing mankind and other life, impregnation was paramount. This boon would come from the sky which was also heaven where "Father" God was at home. In their eyes he rode at times in the storm clouds, struck the earth with orgasmic lightning bolts and impregnated it with gigantic ejaculations.

In Sumeria, the cradle of human civilisation, rain was not just water, but it was also "strong water" which meant semen. We need go no further to see what our forebears did when they spoke in such terms. It is all too obvious that they projected the human condition into their surroundings. When they saw in the thunderstorm the same phenomenon as in sexual intercourse, they did exactly what the dream does every night. Indeed, if we observe the dream attentively, we will see that it constantly identifies the human body with the body of the earth. For example it will feature twin hills when it wants to draw attention to a woman's breasts. A minaret or the steeple of the church will be an unmistakable reference to the penis. On the other hand a terrestrial cleft, a hole in the ground, a pit, a cracked rock will just as surely point to the female genitals. And so does the door. And why not? After all the vagina is the door into this world for most of us, the exception being those lifted from the womb as the babe in Macbeth by Caesarean birth.

For the ancients there was no distinction between the sacred and the secular, between the physical body and spiritual realities. Indeed the body was the icon for things spiritual just as the sky was the icon for heaven beyond the sky. For our forebears the bodies of their women were no less sacred than their temples. Indeed in the Near East all temples were modelled on a woman's reproductive system. The lower end of the vagina up to the hymen was the template for the porch of the temple. The hall was fashioned after the vagina proper, and the uterus provided the pattern for the holy of holies, the inner sanctum. (See Allegro, The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross page 25).

When you reflect on this you suddenly realise that as a foetus you developed in the inner sanctum of a living temple. At the same time you realise that modelling the temple on the vagina does not vulgarise this sacred structure, but instead ennobles its fleshly counterpart.

It is only through the separation of the sexual from the sacred that sex becomes something other than a divine union, something other than the two aspects of one and the same divinity finding reunion in the heavens of ecstasy.


From Kurt:

When I moved to the present domicile I was approached by one of the local ladies who discovered that she was in possession of my dream book entitled DREAMS, Pre-grams of Tomorrow, a Path to a New World Perspective. Being a prolific dreamer she suggested that we run a dream group here. This became a reality in May 2003. Ever since then we met on the last Sunday of the month. We begin at 10:00 a.m. with a cup of coffee and small talk. Then from 10:30 on to midday I give a talk about a particular subject.

The last one was centered around the [article above]. We have lunch on the premises and then, at 1:00 p.m. we have a session of interpretation of everyone's dreams. At the beginning of these workshops I was the one who did most of that, by today all members have become proficient and they all offer their view of the dreams to be analysed.

My book had been published in 1991. I wrote it twenty-one years after an experience that shook the foundation of my very existence. I could see from then on how dreams would translate to waking experiences. One of the most fascinating things of that experience was that I saw that the Freudian interpretation was as valid as the Jungian one. Both interpreters have a point, but where they both miss out is in the fact that dreams are of the 4th dimension and are able to foresee tomorrow and beyond. In my book I show how this fact can be realised by anyone who can recall their dreams and has sufficient diligence and stamina to follow my instructions and record their dreams meticulously and watch for their waking manifestations.

Kurt Forrer
forrerk@bigpond.net.au