Book: Our Dreaming Mind - Robert L. Van de Castle, Ph.D.

Dear AD members,

Yet another Robert shows up holding a big lamp! "Our Dreaming Mind "is written by a sixty-something year old Ph.D. named Robert L. Van de Castle who displays the character traits of a modern Carl Jung (without the long, disjointed writing style) and respects the man as much as I do. The title of his book represents his view that we all share the SAME dream mind. He was also president of the American Parapsychological Association for a few years. He's not an armchair Ph.D., he has earned his stripes in our fields of interest and he's too old to care what the naysayers might say of him. If you like Stephen LaBerge, you'll love Robert de Castle. Please, read on!

The cover calls the 547 page book, "A sweeping exploration of the role that dreams have played in politics, art, religion, and psychology, from ancient civilizations to the present day" Don't be fooled by the blandness of this cover's wording, as it's meant to appeal to a broad audience. The book actually reads like a meaty handbook written almost specifically for AD members!

Here are some tidbits:

Table of Contents:

Acknowledgments
Preface-My Personal Odyssey in the Land of Dreams

Part 1 - The Treasure Chest of Dreams

Chapter 1 - Dreams: Portals between Our Inner and Outer Worlds
Chapter 2 - Dreams That Have Changed the World

Part 2 - Early Thinking about Dreams

Chapter 3 - Dreams from the Dawn of History through Artemidoris
Chapter 4 - Dreams and Demons: The Second to the Eighteenth Centuries
Chapter 5 - A Romantic Era: The Nineteenth Century

Part 3 - Dream Theories in the Twentieth Century

Chapter 6 - Sigmund Freud: Dreams as Disguised Sexual Wishes (He says, "In my view, the contributions of Freud have been exaggerated, while those of Jung have been underappreciated.")
Chapter 7 - Carl Jung: Dreams as Many-Splendored Things
Chapter 8 - Other Twentieth-Century Dream Theorists

Part 4 - Experimental Studies of Dreaming

Chapter 9 - Early Research Approaches to Dreams
Chapter 10 - Contemporary Dream Research: The Era of REM Studies

Part 5 - The Dimensions of Dreams

Chapter 11 - What's in a Dream? The Use of Content Analysis
Chapter 12 - Dreams throughout the Life Span: The Effects of Gender, Society, Stress, and Aging

Part 6 - The Twilight Zone of Dreams (of course, I couldn't put the book down at this point)

Chapter 13 - Somatic Contributions to Dreams
Chapter 14 - Paranormal Dreams: Psychic Contributions to Dreams
Chapter 15 - Finding Our Inner Light: Lucid and Spiritual Dreams
Afterword

Appendix A - Dream Resources
Appendix B - Working with Your Own Dreams
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Phew, *pops fingers* now, to highlight some of the brilliance of the book. The book is written in chronological sequence so we can learn how early dream interpretation techniques which attempted to "explain away" the numinosity and extrasensory aspects of dreams were, over time, shown to be scientifically wrong. In fact, the author involves himself in the Dream Helper Ceremony that he and another colleague developed as a therapeutic Way. The Dream Helper Ceremony is a group of people who meet and choose a target. The group dedicates their dreams of the next night to help and assist the target. They meditate together. The next day, they reconvene and share their dreams of the target. You would think they were getting a Reiki Treatment the way the targets problems are brought systematically to the fore!!!

As we read the first half of the book we are brought up to speed in the area of modern dream therapy mostly from a psychological point of view, but the last half of the book is totally gloves off, including some sub - headings such as "Dream Network Bulletin Telepathy Project", "My Laboratory Experiences as a Telepathic Dreamer", "The Maimonides Project on Paranormal Dreams", etc.

Now, I'll quote some of my personal favorite parts. On page 35, he writes, "In 1869, Dmitri Mendeleyev, a professor of chemistry at Saint Petersburg, went to bed after trying unsuccessfully to conceptualize a way to categorize the chemical elements based upon their atomic weights. He later reported, 'I saw in a dream a table where all the elements fell into place as required. Awakening, I immediately wrote it down on a piece of paper. Only in one place did a correction later seem necessary.' As a result of this dream, the periodic table of the elements was created. It enabled Mendeleyev to predict the existence, as well as the properties, of three new elements; those elements were discovered within fifteen years." Many, many scientists' discoveries are revealed in this book to originate in dreams, many that are just as important as the periodic table of elements!!!

Here is a good part from "The Twilight Zone of Dreams." On page 366 he writes, "Bernard Siegel, a cancer surgeon at the Yale School of Medicine who has written two popular books on self-healing, described the case of a journalist who had a dream in which torturers were placing hot coals bheneath his chin. He felt the heat start to sear his throat and screamed in desperation as 'the coals grawed his larynx.' He awoke very disturbed and received a long-distance call from his girlfriend, who had just experienced a horrible dream of being with him in a bed filling with blood. In a later dream, medicine men stuck hypodermic needles into what he called his 'neck brain.' The journalist felt sure thse dreams indicated something was wrong in his throat. He had difficulty, however, persuading his physician to take seriously his concern that his dreams might mean he was developing cancer in his throat. But a physical checkup confirmed the presence of cancer in his thyroid gland, which is located near the larynx." Throat Chakra problems for the journalist?... Naah! 8)

The rest of the book just gets better. I don't have time to write out everything but this book will never leave my collection and I consider it essential. I recomment it highly, 5 of 5 stars. The author is currently writing a book exclusively about light beings and angels in dreams. I have contributed a dream to this project and I wish that any of you who may have such an experience to share, to send it to him. His website for this [has been removed as poster doesn't have enough posts for links] Admin.
Love and Light! :lol: