The songwriters, Sammy Fain and Paul Francis Webster, portray Love as a many-splendored thing. Love, after all, is elusive, beautiful, and a source of many etiological theories and psychological interpretations. I would suggest that Dreams are just as splendid as Love—being just as elusive, beautiful, etymologically diverse, and subject to as many psychological interpretations.
In the first of two essays, I consider two different perspectives regarding the nature of dreams. I then turn to consideration of a fundamental distinction to be drawn between dreams that are transactional in nature (addressing issues in the current world) and those that are transformational (addressing issues regarding the future). Our exploration of dreams begins with the consideration of whether dreams are simply natural occurrences or if there is something special—even transcendent—about dreams. In other words, how splendored are dreams?
Natural or Transcendent Approach to Dreams
To begin with, there is a full spectrum of approaches concerning the most fundamental question: are dreams merely an element of our regular bodily functioning? Or are dreams somehow unique and not fully based on our regular biological functions?
Transcendent
At one extreme is the belief that dreams are fully transcendent. They are somehow a “gift from the gods” or a manifestation of some second level of existence. Human beings are to be distinguished from animals in that we have the gift of dreaming. This gift may, in turn, be a representation of the soul which only human beings possess. We are homo sanctus and must approach our dreams with reverence and with gratitude. They serve as God’s guide to eternal life.
This spiritual, transcendent approach to dreams is a bit hard to affirm, given that many animals also seem to be dreamers (or at least exhibit the manifestations of REM sleep, which is where most dreams occur in human beings). However, there are certainly many aspects of dream reality that are quite different from the reality in which we live when we are awake. Dreams offer a collateral view of reality that complements rather than emulates the activities and events of our waking life. Some cultures of ancient times operated with the assumption that we actually live two different lives. Our dream life may operate in the sacred or spiritual realm, while our waking life operates in the secular or mundane realm (Eliade, 1959).
