HOLOGRAMS ARE PHOTOGRAPHIC IMAGES that are three-dimensional and appear to have depth. You probably carry a few in your pocket, either on dollar bills or credit cards. Holograms are those shiny, metallic patterns with ghostly images floating inside of them.

Holograms work by creating an image composed of two superimposed 2-dimensional pictures of the same object seen from different reference points. In reflection holograms, the kind of holography that can be viewed in normal light, two laser beams and a photographic plate are used to take an image of the object. One beam illuminates the object from the side while the second beam, called a reference beam, travels through a photographic plate directly to the object. Both the relecting light from this reference beam and the light reflected by the object from side beam leave images on the photographic plate. That combined image is a hologram.

Holograms were science fiction before computer-generated images were born. Most people first encountered them when Princess Leia pleaded, "Help me, Obi wan Kenobi!" in the original 1977 Star Wars movie. Little did they know, they experienced this technology every night.

When we sleep, only our conscious, waking mind rests. The remainder of our consciousness goes about its cyclic work - restoring and rejuvenating the energies we used during our day's experiencing and assimilating their content. Dreams are holographic images in consciousness. They are multi-dimensional and, when interpreted, can have great depth.

In my work as project director for the Global Lucid Dreaming Experiments, I am in a position to study dreams from dreamers worldwide. Our team of researchers at the College of Metaphysics in the United States receives and catalogues hundreds of dreams each year. You may have wondered if people in the Australia, South Africa, and Oregon dream about the same things? I can tell you the answer is - "yes!"

People around the world dream about their parents and their children, their friends and business acquaintances. They dream about the place they live and the place they work. They dream about love lost and love gained, birth and death. We dream in what Swiss psychologist Carl Jung called archetypes. Archetypes are subconscious holograms.

In Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, Jung wrote "parents, wife, children, birth and death are inborn in him as virtual images, as psychic aptitudes." Jung observed that these have "individual predestinations." This means the images are both universal and personal in nature.

With hundreds of websites offering dream advice, interpreting dreams has taken on the tone of artistic license. In this pop-culture view of dreams, whatever you "feel" the dream means, it means. This self-centered approach disconnects the dreamer from the billions of dreamers on the planet. If dreaming is a universal phenomenon among human beings, then it stands to reason that there are universal elements in what we dream and what those dreams indicate.

Our research documents these elements, lending a scientific discipline to the mind's capacity to dream. The science of the mind works like a hologram. First, there is the light in the mind. This light does not have an external source. It does not come from the sun. The mind's light comes from Spirit within. It is the gleam in someone's eyes, and the radiance in their countenance. It is the bright idea you had this morning and the light bulb that went off earlier today when someone else brought you a new way of looking at things.

As the mind's light expresses, consciousness is formed. The light spreads just like the beam spreaders used in holography. In this process the light's coherence is lost, yet the light remains an exact wavelength. This splitting of the light is what enables the hologram to be made.

This property of light is also evidenced in Mind. However much we feel out of touch, are vague in beginning something new, or seem to lose our sense of purpose in life (the light lacking coherence), the exact wavelength Light of our existence is steady. When these two come together, we can see life and ourselves in a new three-dimensional reality. This potential learning is the holography of the mind.

There are three distinct forms, or divisions of consciousness, that comprise Mind. The outer two, subconscious and conscious respectively, are involved in dreaming. The subconscious mind gives you the dream message and, hopefully, your conscious mind remembers it. The message is in a holographic language researchers at the School of Metaphysics describe as the Universal Language of Mind. This is the language, I will be using as we explore the universal meaning in our dreams.

Here is a recent dream we received from a woman in the United Kingdom (DS452).

I was in an old house with leaded windows and stone bullion windows. It was dark and I was very uncomfortable there. The garden was a forecourt with walls surrounding it and trees and shrubs planted around. I was looking out of a window and didn't like the darkness. My husband, who was with me, was standing on the other side of the room almost blending into the walls which were wood-panelled. There was a log fire to my left and it was lit. I had hold of a cup and I put it on the window sill.

I turned to my husband and said, "I don't like it here. I want to go home." All of a sudden there was a crash and the cup, as I turned round, flew off the windowsill. I was aware of some symbols carved around the window. I jumped and turned to my husband and said, "Did you see that?"

He said I was "imagining things and cups can't just fly from a window sill." I felt as though he was questioning what I saw, and I begged him to take me home. I woke up confused and my heart beating. I told my husband of this dream and he thinks I'm strange. Can you please help?

Thank you, Melanie

The dream is her subconscious mind's view of her conscious state of awareness during the previous day. In other words, the dream is about her. Her husband, for instance, represents her subconscious mind, the inner part of Self whose function it is to fulfill her conscious desires. This dream concerns an internal frustration she experienced earlier in the day. Perhaps she felt she wasn't getting her point across, or that she wasn't being understood. This is an old pattern that she is only now becoming aware of as evidenced in the dream's setting of the old house and the darkness. The fire is the glimmer of a new understanding that self-doubt and fear are the culprits here, and not the man she married.

We have interpreted thousands of dreams in the Universal Language of Mind over the past four decades (the past 10 includes dreams sent to www.dreamschool.org). Many have benefited from a scholarly approach to their dreams. Melanie's marriage became less tense when she received this interpretation of her dream. To assist Melanie in understanding her "confusing" dream, our analysis follows four steps. First, details of the dream. Second, identifying outstanding symbols. Third, translating those symbols into the Universal Language of Mind. Fourth, interpreting the dream's meaning. These same four steps can be used in interpreting any dream.

Dreams are intended to make us self-reflective and self-aware. Look at it this way, some people admire Salvador Dali's art and some revile it. That's personal opinion. Opinion, based upon a personal assessment of what is pleasing or liked and what is displeasing or disliked, holds an important position in placing a dream's meaning into a workable context in your life. On that level, the dreamer is always the final authority on his or her dream. Choosing to respond to your dreams is an invaluable fifth step which enables you to complete a dream circuit. The light in your mind is then connected: subconscious mind (dream message) to conscious mind is followed by conscious mind (response in form of desire) to subconscious.

"A picture is worth a thousand words" is the wisdom saying. One dream spent in thirty seconds of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, may require a half hour to describe in words on paper. Writing those details down, immediately upon awakening, is the key to dream recall.

The benefits of remembering dreams are diverse. Author Mary Shelley received the plot of her famous book Frankenstein in a dream. Mohandas K. Gandhi significantly influenced India's quest for independence from colonial rule when he led the dream-inspired "salt march." Artist Salvatore Dali used his dreams to illustrate Sigmund Freud's theories on consciousness. Remembering dreams provided the missing piece the Periodic Chart of Elements, produced the final movement of Handel's Messiah, and gave Helen Keller the "eyes" to see. Dreams have shaped our world through inspiring invention, resolution, and creativity.

So place a pen and pad beside your bed where it will be easily accessible tomorrow morning. Once you have recorded your dream, it can be translated in the Universal Language of Mind. I will be sharing dreams and their interpretations with you in the hope that you will find the analyses helpful in your own life.

Our approach will be dual in nature. We will examine both the state and content of dreaming. From lucid dreaming to recurring dreams to nightmares, you will learn about the inner power that determines the state of your mental, emotional and physical health. You will discover the most common themes in dreams and how they can be used to understand your past, chart your destiny, and make your present more fulfilling.

We will also examine dreams for the meaning of their content. Why do certain people appear in your dreams? What difference does it make if you dream you are at home or at work? How does your inner, subconscious mind choose what appears in your dreams? How can you use your dreams to meet the challenges in your daily life?

In the next issue, we will look at how the current economic climate is reflected in our dreams. Here’s one of the dreams we will feature:

I dream the same dream at least monthly. We sold a house nine years ago and currently live in a beautiful home that my husband built (literally) and I do not miss the old house at all. In my recurring dream, we (for some reason) buy our home back from the current owners and when we go in we see the destruction and filth. The focus is always on the kitchen. (We had just refinished the kitchen when we sold the house.) When we go back and see it, it is disgusting (falling apart and dirty). I can't believe they lived like this and I am stressed at everything that we need to do again and how much it is going to cost.

Please let me know your thoughts. Female dreamer from the United States.

With a global view on dreaming, we are in a position to study and track the development of consciousness. Last year, saw a startling rise in nightmare activity. What will the coming month's dreams tell us about ourselves as human beings? We look forward to sharing our findings with you.

You are welcome to participate by contributing a dream for consideration. Send your dream to dreams@dreamschool.org and be sure to note that you are a PLW subscriber.

© 2009, Dr. Barbara Condron

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Since 1977, Barbara Condron has made guest appearances on radio and television shows and been interviewed by newspapers here and abroad. From WGN in Chicago to WGNO in New Orleans, from PBS Latenight in Detroit to BBC Radio in London, her expertise in her subjects and her ease as a public speaker have made her a media favorite especially on call-in shows. Her affection for using media to connect people was behind the National Dream Hotline®, the annual weekend of sharing dream research sponsored by the School of Metaphysics, a not-for-profit 501(c)3 organization dedicated to developing spiritual potential. She served as International Coordinator for the hotline from its inception in 1989 to 2000.

In 1997, Barbara created www.dreamschool.org to share School of Metaphysics research and answer questions from dreamers online. Now she is pioneering global dream awareness through heading the Global Lucid Dreaming Experiment at the College of Metaphysics in the Midwestern U.S. The experiments seek to collect the largest body of experiential knowledge to date concerning specifically, lucid dreaming, and to analyze the data making it widely known. Her books include The Dreamer’s Dictionary and Every Dream is about the Dreamer. She also created the documentary Ten Powers of Dreaming, a study of dreams that have changed the course of history.