Dreams and the miraculous have been part of our psyche since human beings evolved into creatures with inner vision and an imagination which continues to inspire and haunt us to this day for as long as our species continues.
In a recent episode of Ballykissangel Brian Quigley, the risk taking entrepreneur has a dream which upon waking during the night whose message affects me so much that he gets up for paper and feels he has to try and draw, a tree, because he had had a conversation with the tree which suggested his recent precarious financial situation would change. A practical man he sets off to try and find the tree in the morning as he has a memory of having seen such a tree somewhere and while conducting the search around his community he encounters the free spirit sister of the new priest who explains that talking to trees has been part of human nature from the earliest of time because of their longevity beyond the lifespan of humankind. She suggests that he relaxes and enjoys the nature around him and perhaps he will remember where he has seen the tree. This works and they go off to the golf course to check and there he meets the wife of the owner who discloses that her husband has died and she cannot wait to sell up and move on. Brian realises that this was the meaning of the sign.
In the second of the In Our Time programmes I listened late on Good Friday evening to a discussion led by Lord Bragg between Martin Palmer, Director of the International Consultancy on Religion, Education and Culture, Janet Soskice, Reader in Philosophical Theology Cambridge University and Justin Champion, Professor of the History of Early Modern Ideas at Royal Holloway, University of London about Miracles. The point is made that when the New Testaments were written, the word miracle is not included and the stories are intended to be understood as signs, omens, portents and indicators of the power and authority of Jesus as the promised one and marking a new era in the relationship between humans and God. Indeed today the Catholic church and many branches of Protestantism tend to concentrate on the insights and truths which the stories in the New Testament reveal especially messages of love, compassion and sharing. The miracle of the five loaves and fishers being regarded no more than Jesus leading the way in asking everyone to share what they had brought with them with those who had not. There are those, myself included, who take the view that the whole point of crucifixion was never the resurrection but the sacrifice for everyone’s redemption. It was after Paul, who was not there and understandably wanted to become an accepted member of the chosen club who decided to emphasise a resurrection, again my view because acceptance that Christ had survived death in a physical sense reinforced his wish to convince everyone that Christ had appeared to him and that he had been chosen in addition to the original disciples.
The programme did not discuss the extent to which dreams and miracles existed prior to Judaism or the relationship between miracles and magic except that there was a time when after the reformation the Catholic Church moved away from miracles and began to emphasise that magic, the unexplained, was more likely to be the work of the devil than of God.
The programme discussion commenced with what miracles had meant in Judaism, using the famous parting of the waves as the Israelites escaped from the control of Pharaohs of Egypt. Modernists like to suggest that in fact this may have a work of nature, a Tsunami, as first the sea retreated before returning and swamping everyone and everything in its path. At the time the story was used to emphasis the power of God and his intervention on behalf of an oppressed and enslaved people.
Given the reported idolatry and frequent accounts of the limitations of the Jewish race, there is no explanation offered why one race was selected at one point in time for intervention when countless others were not or have been since and whose plight has been just as challenging. Such a belief in an interventionist God has also been part of Islam where the emphasis was said to be on intervention as a consequence of prayer, devotion, leading a good life and as an encouragement to continue such a life further, as well as to encourage others to follow suit. In Hinduism and other religions there is no attempt to explain or draw significance from amazing and inexplicable events except to celebrate their wonder and as an example of the complexity of human awareness and that such events serve to remind of the many layers or dimensions which there are to human existence.
The programme led to me to sort out what I believed from what I understand and know. The physical and natural world and human existence is all one amazing, wondrous and miraculous experience, whether it is sunrise or sun set, the birth of a child or the way some humans are able to face and accept death with a smile of contentment. As declared yesterday when considering the nature and consequence of the latest brave new world, the quality and intensity of pleasure is increased exponentially when the individual has also experienced the horror, the loss and the constant awareness of the impact of tragedy and deprivation upon themselves and others.
Secondly most if not all “ miraculous” phenomena has a rational explanation and is the product of a complex chain of previous occurrences and interactions. An earthquake, volcanic eruption, tidal wave, hurricane and tornado, periods of drought or torrential rain all have their cause in the construction of the planet and its interaction with terrestrial objects and forces. The human brain with its capacity to create dreams with the force of reality and ‘supernatural’ abilities and experiences, with its memory and which in my view is transmitted generational and accumulatively throughout time can not only exert tremendous force on the physical body as well as individual thought and behaviour, but effect the movement of objects externally, exert exceptionally influence over others and create phenomenon which in exceptional circumstances can be shared with others. Within this area I include the power of belief and faith and this includes belief and faith in oneself as well as others and can achieve faith healing, unexpected recoveries.
Of course throughout the ages there have been the magician tricksters and those who have discovered and used the power of natural substances when mixed, smoked, inhaled, drunk or injected and which are often used in association of periods of isolation or prolonged communal activity, intense concentration and meditation or uncontrolled wildness.
Whether caused by the experience of watching Ballykissangel or listening to In Our Time on Good Friday, I experienced two interesting waking dreams in which I understood the background and the significance. One was about the wish to have the power and the authority to change things for the better. I had walked into a government department in Whitehall and demanded to see the top man and presented him with the information that I was in possession of several nuclear devices, I think the total was six and that if demands what not met then there would be horror unleashed. The reaction of the individual was not to believe me and when he left I expressed concern to others in the room that I hope I was being taken seriously and was not going to be locked up and that I represented a large group of individuals representing interests throughout society, numbering 10000. The stimulus for the dream is obviously the current series for 24 in which biological weapons have been created in a rogue state helped by one man in the USA who with government help has developed a large military equipped force which undertakes missions for the government which cannot be achieved through normal government action. The idea that I would threaten, let alone consider using such means is counter to everything I have believed in and worked for during my life, but it is also part of the paradox of the closeness and similarities between polarities. Much else that happened in this dream I remembered although similar to Brian Quigley I was tempted to rise and makes notes and reflect further. However I did not need to get up and it was clear to me that I had been expressing hopes and fears, frustrations and failures, triggered by thinking about Brave New World and 1984, the Borg in Star Trek, the Joker in Batman and such like over recent days. However it was an important reminder that I had to keep focussed on my present mission, given that the sense of having a mission has been there from the earliest of years.
This morning there was a similar level of prolonged dreaming experience and which I tried to stay with in the dimension for as long as I could after being half aware of the waking state. It was of interest but not of the same significance as the previous morning.
