My head pounds as I gasp frantically for air. Running, running, running so fast through the darkness, danger in quick pursuit. I can feel the branches scratch my body as I scramble through a thicket, hoping to find protection there. I tried to hold onto my labored breath as I feel him come closer and closer to me. I feel like a small, trembling animal and he is my hunter. I close my eyes and wrap my arms and legs around my body, trying to make myself smaller. My mind focuses on being invisible, but I can hear his breath now, his nose sniffing me out, trying to locate me in the mass of branches and leaves. types of experience.

No, he mustn't find me. No. No. No! A deep breath and I awaken with a start, my body still trembling. It was just a dream, I tell myself. Just a dream, but what is a dream? Is it leftover fantasies and seeping of neurotic material from my psyche? Is it a vision, an oracle warning me about potential danger, a message from the Gods? Is it a remnant of past-life experiences?

The nature of dreams fascinates me. What are dreams and how do they impact our lives? How can they heal our psyches and provide us with oracular visions to guide us along our paths? In the course of investigating the concept of dreams, I looked deeply into the dream incubation rituals that were a primary source of healing in the Greek sanctuaries of Asclepius. That lead me to ask, how did the Greeks viewed dreams and how did this view lead to the ritualizing of dream incubation as a form of healing? How do we, who walk ancient paths, acknowledge our dreams and use them to heal? And finally, how have dreams and dream healings influenced modern and postmodern depth psychology. Where can psychology evolve so that it respects the dream world?

Dreams and waking life are two distinct types of experiences, neither one more important or significant than the other, neither one more real than the other. For the ancient Greeks, the dreamer did not have a dream, but was in fact a witness to an event, an observer of an experience (Meier iii). The figures, oneiros, and images, eidolon in dreams are independent of the dreamer, who is a passive recipient of the message (Dodds 104). It is difficult for modern people to grasp this concept. Dreams are not part of the dreamer's subconscious or leftover remnants of the day, but rather totally separate events that occur outside our waking world. Oneiros who appear as a brother-in-laws, or neighbors or bosses are not representations of these people or aspects of the self, but potentially the Gods in disguise, walking through our visions. In dreams, the soul is free to receive visions, divine messages. In dreams, the health of the dreamer is reflected. In dreams, the Gods speak to us.

As Greek thought and history evolved, so did the concept of the dream, moving from a mystical to a rationalized explanation of what dreams are and how they are used in healing. Hippocrates taught that in sleep the soul (psyche) is unrestricted and has all the psychological and physiological functions at her disposal. In this unrestricted state, the soul could perceive the causes of illness in images during sleep. Hippocrates also believed that there were two types of dreams; divinely inspired dreams that come from the Gods, and the dreams in which the soul perceives the bodily condition, Aristotle (384 - 322 cultures today. BCE) considered the dream to be the result of the affectation of the koinon aistheterion, the heart as the central seat of representations, by those minimal movements during sleep left over from the waking activities of the senses. Aristotle believed that the dream is an incentive to the future actions of the dreamer (Meier 114). Poseidonius (135 — 51 BCE) stated that the divine has three ways of acting upon man in dreams: (1) The soul may see the future by virtue of its own god-dreams; (2) the air is full of immortal souls carrying obvious signs of truth, which penetrate the sleeper's system through the channels (poroi) of the senses; and (3) the Gods themselves talk to the sleepers (Meier 115). Dreams come either from the Gods or from demons or from the activity of the soul itself.

Regardless of the source of dreams, ancient as well as modern people have always looked to dreams as a source of answers to life's problems. And, if dreams can potentially give answers, then it is natural to seek ways of stimulating the dream state. Such techniques include isolation, fasting, prayer, self-mutilation and sleeping on the skin of a sacrificed animal or in contact with a holy object. In later antiquity, oracle dream-books suggested sleeping with a branch of laurel under the pillow (Dodds 110). Laurel is a shrub sacred to Apollo and it has strong divination qualities conferring the powers of second sight. The Pythoness at Delphi delivered her prophecies in Ancient Greece after having chewed or burned laurel leaves.

Dream incubation is one of the oldest healing methods, still in use in some cultures today. To incubate comes from the Latin, incubare — to lie down on (Dictionary.com). The earliest forms of dream incubation occurred when people lay down to sleep in caves, which were holy places (Dodds 111).

Caves or caverns are symbolic of the world in Greek initiatory traditions and are a symbol of the womb and of rebirth (Chevalier 166-169). The linking of caves to the chthonic appears in many myths, where the cave is the opening to the underworld. Caves and openings in the earth are places where the Kens, small winged creatures, the angry ghosts of the underworld, could escape. The primitive Greeks believed that the Keres could cause disease including nightmares (Harrison 167). The concept of the Keres is important in understanding the role of dreams in disease and healing since in Olympic times, the Keres were the ghosts of the underworld, sprites who, in fact, brought disease. In earlier times, prior to the rationalism of the Olympic age, the Keres were also magic creatures that seemed to present fates or destiny to mankind. (Harrison 163-165). Perhaps Keres are related to the di manes of Roman belief, the spirits of the underworld that can be both demon and daimon. If that is the case, then dreams of all kinds can be caused by the Keres, both dreams that bring illness and dreams that bring health and goodness. As the more rational Olympian gods emerged, only the thunder of Zeus or the arrows of Apollo could slay the Keres (167). In a like curing like situation, the ancients sought out caves where disease and nightmare originated, in order to provoke cures. The Greeks brought the concept of dream oracles and dream healing to a new level, linking the god of healing, Asclepios to dream oracles. Asclepios is himself linked to the underworld by his mythos. The son of Apollo, the god of divination and prophecy, Asclepios, as a mortal, learns healing from the centaur Chiron and begins to heal so well that he soon begins to raise the dead. Zeus strikes Asclepius down for this affront but raises him again, conquering death to become immortal (Edelstein 140). The mythical association with death and healing is implicit in linking Asclepius to incubation cures. For who better to cure those who are afflicted by ghosts of the underworld, than a god-healer who has experienced death and the ghosts of the underworld?

The healing temples of Asclepius numbered in the hundreds, but Epidaurous held the highest distinction. The sanctuary at Epidaurous was a distance from the city, marking it as a holy place - apart from the profaneness of city life. The temple was not only sacred to Asclepius but also to Apollo, indicative of the role that divination plays in healing. High hills, unusually well wooded circle the plain. This puts the temple in a natural omphalos, at the center of the world with surround by sacred groves (Meier 68). To be truly spiritually, truly attached to the sacred, is to live as close as possible to the Center of the true world, in sacred space. In the Center, the spiritual person finds orientation and reality. Life has direction, meaning and focus. The spiritual person is called "centered," meaning well balanced and aligned. It makes sense that to find healing, one must go to the center, to the navel of die world where there is sacred space. At Epidaurous, mere was a theatre for pleasure, a gymnasium for healthy exercise, baths for rituals and cleansing, and of course, the Abaton where patient went to experience the ritual of the dream oracle. The Abaton, a special temple building means "place not to be entered unbidden" (Meier 52). Only those who are called can seek the cure. Perhaps modern psychotherapy reflects this in some way, since one needs to feel a call in order to seek out a therapist and in fact, maybe the therapist's office is a "place not to office is a "place not to be entered unbidden?"

The dream ritual was simple. The patient or a person acting in his or her behalf came in quest of the god's help, bathed and offered sacrifices. If a sign or a vision called them, the patient went to the Abaton, dressed in their usual apparel. The patient then proceeded to a ritual bath whose purpose was to free "... the soul from the contamination of the body and thus set the soul free for communion with the god" (Meier 50). Entering the Abaton the patient laid down on a kline or couch, a foreshadowing of the Freudian use of the couch in analysis (Meier 51). The healing dreams did not need to be interpreted, so there were no interpreters in the Temple. But often the patient would dream of a snake or dog (sacred to Asclepius) or would dream of the god himself. In the morning they would wake and tell the priests what dreams occurred. If they did not dream of the god or a cure in the first nights, they were often deemed incurable (Meier 54). Once they had experienced a cure, they were expected to make a sacrifice to Asclepius in gratitude. Burkert, in writing about mystery traditions, seems to have summed up the experience of Asclepian cures:

There is an agonizing experience of distress, the search for some escape or help, the decision of faith; not rarely, votive inscriptions refer to supernatural intervention in decision making to dreams, visions, or divine command; and after all there is the experience of success. (13)

Despite the medical world's need for scientific rationality, this above description is not unlike what analysands sometimes experience in psychotherapy. The concept of dream and miraculous cures, the whole realm of theurgic medicine slowly began to fall away from the medical community with the Enlightenment, as the medical establishment moved away from the mystical to the scientific (Ellenberger 197). Becoming skeptical of any kind of miraculous cure, scholars around the middle of the eighteenth century no longer accepted the omnipotence of the Gods or the interference of demons. Miraculous healings could be explained in rational terms. Dreams became something to analyze and interpret by breaking them down into residues of the day or repressions or wish fulfillments (Freud) or by examining them as one-sided compensations (Jung) or an opposite looking to waking life for it's counterpart (Hillman 77-79).

The concept of a dream experience in of itself as a significant event that does not need interpretation or dissecting to become valid has been missing in modern life and in psychology. It is in James Hillman's work with archetypal psychology, that we begin to see once more how dream experiences can somehow enrich our lives and cure our ills.

We work on the dream, not to unravel it as Freud said, to undo the dream-work's undoing, but to respond to its work with the likeness of our work, all the while aiming to speak like the dream, imagine like the dream (Hillman 130).

Hillman says we can have analysis without deconstructing and tearing apart a dream (130), without losing the depth of this chthonic experience (140). Imagine a scenario in which a patient approaches a healing place. Perhaps it is the therapist's office.

Perhaps it is a healing resort. Perhaps it is a hospice. He or she finds himself or herself in a place of exquisite beauty. There is music and incense, lovely trees and flowering plants. "Sanctuary," comes into ones mind, sacred space. The patient finds a place to lay down in the sacred space: safe and serene, ready to receive a dream or a daydream or a vision of hope, a vision of cure, a vision of promise. No one breaks it apart. No one tells the patient about repression or compensation. The point of the dream is the experience. And the experience of the dream is in fact the cure.

Dreams are important experiences, ones that we should pay attention to with the equal devotion we pay to waking life. They bring us insight and knowledge, wisdom and forewarning. Dr. Skafte, a noted psychotherapist, author, and professor has developed a modern version of the dream oracle experience, utilizing ancient methods. Her process divides the experience into distinct phases:

Decision: Having a clear question or need in mind.

Preparation: Separating from the normal routine by ceasing daily activities, including eating for 12 hours before going to sleep, and then bathing in salt water. Dr. Skafte suggests sleeping somewhere besides your own bed, outdoors in a sacred space if possible and utilizing bedding that might have some spiritual meaning.

Sacrifice: Providing offerings to the unseen forces as a way of establishing reciprocity.

Asking: Using tones of sound and letting the words resonate.

Dreaming: Allowing the dream to happen and then recording it immediately upon wakening. As in ancient times, don't try to interpret the dream, experience it for its message.

Thank Offering: An extremely important act of reciprocity, which completes the experience (Skafte 123-133).

It is important to remember that as Jung says, we do not have dreams, dreams have us. These nightly events are deep experiences that enrich our waking lives.

Though we seem to be sleeping

There is an inner wakefulness,

That directs the dreams,

And that will eventually startle us back,

To the truth of who we are. - Rumi

References:

The Encyclopedia of Religion. ED. Mircea Eliade. Vol 1.4 York: Macmillian, 1987.

Chevalier, Jean and Alain Gheerbrant. A Dictionary of Symbols. Trans. John Buchanan-Brown. Oxford: Penguin. 1996. Trans. of Dictionnaire des symboles. Paris: Editions Robert Laffont S. A. et Editions Jupiter. 1969

Dodds. E.R. The Greeks and the Irrational. Berkley: U of California Press, 1951.

Edelsrein, Emma J. and Ludwig Edelstem. Ascleptus Collection and Interpretation of the Testimonies. Baltimore: John Hopkins UP 1998.

Hamiliton, Mary. Incubation or The Cure of Disease in Pagan Temples and Christian Churches. London: W.C. Henderson & Son, 1906

Hillman, James, The Dream and the Underworld. New York: Harper, 1979

Meier, C.A. Healing Dream and Ritual: Ancient Incubation and Modern Psychology. Einsiedln, Switzerland: Daimon, 1989

Skafte, Dianne. Listening to the Oracle: The Ancient Art of Finding Guidance in the Signs and Symbols All Around Us. San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1997.