Rev. ed. of: Dreams and the growth of personality. 2nd ed. c1985.

"Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty . . . weaves a brilliant analysis of the complex role of dreams and dreaming in Indian religion, philosophy, literature, and art. . . . In her creative hands, enchanting Indian myths and stories illuminate and are illuminated by authors as different as Aeschylus, Plato, Freud, Jung, Kurl Gödel, Thomas Kuhn, Borges, Picasso, Sir Ernst Gombrich, and many others. This richly suggestive book challenges many of our fundamental assumptions about ourselves and our world."—Mark C. Taylor, New York Times Book Review "Dazzling analysis. . . . The book is firm and convincing once you appreciate its central point, which is that in traditional Hindu thought the dream isn't an accident or byway of experience, but rather the locus of epistemology. In its willful confusion of categories, its teasing readiness to blur the line between the imagined and the real, the dream actually embodies the whole problem of knowledge. . . . [O'Flaherty] wants to make your mental flesh creep, and she succeeds."—Mark Caldwell, Village Voice

The psychedelic rock poster is one of the most explosively inventive, instantly recognisable, and profoundly influential aesthetic movements of the last century. The poster art that gave visual life to the amazing music that sprang up across the Bay Area from 1965 to 1970 lives on in 'Dreams Unreal'.

Dreaming is a universal phenomenon. Nearly everybody dreams and is anxious to know what it means. Perhaps no other human experience has aroused so much interest and curiosity as this alien visitation that forces itself upon us without warning during the dead of sleep. Since antiquity, thousands of books and articles have been written to shed some light on this mysterious, and often unwelcome nightly visitor. Despite tremendous work in this field, the riddle remains unsolved. Still no satisfactory answers have been provided to these basic questions: Why do we dream? What are dreams about? Where do they come from? How can we understand them? This book is significantly different from those of others in this area, as the answers presented are not the author's own views; they are largely his dreams' answers to the questions just posed. Instead of speculation, this author, a psychologist by profession, has put forward what his own dreams have consistently and persistently revealed to him over the past thirty years. Since 1973, he has recorded over 100, 000 dreams, filling some 230 journals of 200 pages each. The length of the dreams varies greatly; some consist of a single word or phrase, others fill a page or more. This book is written to share with others what the author has gained from his journey into the dreamworld and from his long and patient analysis of this vast number of dreams. Three conclusions have been drawn from this investigation: 1) Dreams are not caused by repressed sexual wishes, somatic sources, impressions of the preceding days, or other mundane instigators, as claimed by Freud and his followers; 2) Dreams do have a supernatural source, as pronounced by many writers through the ages; and 3) Through dreams this supernatural source reveals to us who we really are, brings to light who He is, and invites us to lead our own lives sensibly and purposefully. Using his own dreams as illustrations, the author addresses a wide variety of topics relating to the domain of dreams, including: Are dreams a source of creativity? Why do some of us have frequent nightmares? Can we control the content of our dreams? Why are dreams so cryptic? How can we decipher our dream symbols to understand their meanings? Do characters in our dreams refer to persons we know of, or do they stand for components of our own identity? How should we understand the verbal contents of our dreams? Can dreams guide us as to how we should conduct our lives? Is the reality we experience during our dreams more dependable or the one we experience in waking life? The main purpose of the book is to elucidate that dreams are trustworthy teachers. In the realm of growth and self-discovery, we must regard as suspect whatever we learn from others, however wise and well-meaning. But whatever is conveyed to us directly, through dreams, is credible since it emanates from within us and is free from inconsistencies and adulterations. Our major challenge is to understand the symbolic language used by the wise guide we have within.

We have puzzled over dreams for centuries. From ancient societies, believing dreams to be messages from the gods, Freud's theory of dreams revealing our unconscious minds to modern day experiments in psychology and neuroscience, dreams continue to fascinate but also be a source of mystery. Are dreams just mental froth or do they have a purpose? This book argues that, originally, we dreamed to survive. Dreaming brains identify non-obvious associations, taking people, places, and events out of their waking-life context to uncover complex and, seemingly, unrelated connections. In our evolutionary past, survival depended on being able to detect these divergent, associative patterns to anticipate what predators and other humans might do, as we moved around to secure food and water and meet potential mates. Making associations drives many, if not all, brain functions. In the present day, dream associations may support memory, emotional stability, creativity, unconscious decision-making and prediction, while also contributing to mental illness. Written in a lively and accessible style, and showing the reader how to identify patterns in their own dreams, this book presents a highly original theory of dreaming and will be a compelling read for anyone interested in psychology, consciousness, and the arts, as well as those involved in dream research.