CREATIVE SLEEP

How free we are when we dream!

The barriers of time, the limitations of space, the laws of logic, the constraints of conscience are all swept away and we are gods of our own fleeting creations. Because what we create is uniquely ours, Freud placed central importance on our dreams. Understand a man’s dreams, he seemed to say, and you understand the man.

In Mind Control we take dreams seriously, too, but in a different way because we learn to use our minds in different ways. Freud dealt with dreams that we create spontaneously.

Not Mind Control. Our interest is in deliberately creating dreams to solve specific prob- lems. Because we program their subject matter before- hand, we interpret them differently—with spectacular results. Though this limits the spontaneity of our dream- ing experiences, we gain a significant freedom: greater control over our lives. When we interpret a dream which we preprogram, in addition to gaining insights into the pathology of our psyches, we find solutions to everyday problems. There are three steps to the Dream Control we teach, all involving a meditational level of mind. The first is to learn to recall our dreams. Many say, “I don’t dream at all,” but that is never true. We may 50 Creative Sleep I 51 not recall our dreams, but we all dream. Take away our dreams and in a few days mental and emotional troubles set in. When I began investigating the possible usefulness of dreams in problem solving back in 1949, I was not at all sure what I would find. I had heard, as you have, many stories of premonitions occurring in dreams. Caesar, as we all know, was warned in a dream about the “Ides of March,” the very day, as it turned out, when he was assassinated. And Lincoln too dreamed premonitions of his assassination. If these dreams and many others like them were unrepeatable accidents, then I was wasting my time. At one point I became strongly convinced that I was wasting my time. I had been studying psychology— Freud, Adler, Jung—for about four years, and it began to appear that the more 1 studied, the less I knew. It was about two A . M . I tossed my book to the floor and went to bed, determined to waste no more time on use- less projects like studying the giants who disagreed even among themselves. From now on it would be my elec- tronics business and nothing else. I was neglecting it and money was short. About two hours later I was awakened by a dream. It was not a series of events, like most dreams, but simply a light. My field of dream vision was filled with midday sunlight, gold, very bright. I opened my eyes and it was dark in my shadowy bedroom. I closed my eyes and it was bright again. I repeated this several times: eyes open, dark; eyes closed, bright. About the third or fourth time my eyes were closed I saw three numbers: 3-4-3. Then another set of numbers: 3-7-3. And the next time the first set came back, and the time after that the second set. I was less interested in the six numbers than in the/ inc. OIL.WA MUNJU lAJJNTKUL. ME’l’HUD light, which began to fade litde by little. I wondered if life came to an end, like an electric bulb, in a sudden flash of light. When I realized I was not dying I wanted to bring the light back to study it. I changed my breath- ing, my position in bed, my level of mind; nothing worked. It continued to fade. Altogether, the light lasted about five minutes. Perhaps the numbers had a meaning. I lay awake the rest of the night trying to recall telephone numbers, ad- dresses, license numbers—anything that might give meaning to those numbers. Today I have an effective way of finding out what dreams mean, but in those days I was still in the early stages of research. The following day, tired as I was after only two hours’ sleep, I kept trying to connect the numbers to something I already knew. Now I must recount some trivial incidents, which led to the unraveling of the mystery and thence to an im- portant part of the Mind Control course. Fifteen minutes before closing time at my electronics shop, a friend dropped in to suggest we go out for coffee. While he waited for me, my wife came by and said, “As long as you’re going for coffee, why not go over to the Mexican side and pick up some rubbing al- cohol for me?” Near the bridge there is a store where rubbing alcohol is cheaper. On the way, I told my friend about the dream, and while I was telling him, an idea occurred to me: Maybe what I saw was a lottery ticket number. We drove past a store which was headquarters for the Mexican lottery, but it was closing time and the shades were already pulled down. No matter, it was a silly idea anyway, and we drove a block farther to buy the alcohol for my wife. As the salesman wrapped the alcohol for me, my friend called from another part of the store. “What was that number you were looking for?” “Three-seven-three, three-four-three,” I said. “Come look!” There was half a ticket with 3-4-3 on it. Throughout the Republic of Mexico each of the hun- dreds of thousands of vendors, like this little store, receives tickets with the same first three numbers every month. This store was the only one in the entire nation which sold number 343. The number 373 was sold in Mexico City. A few weeks later I learned that my half of the first lottery ticket I ever bought had won $10,000, which I sorely needed. As elated as I was, I looked this gift horse carefully in the mouth, and what I found was more valuable by far than the gift itself. It was founda- tion for a solidly based conviction that my studies were worthwhile. Somehow I had made contact with Higher Intelligence. Maybe I had made contact with it many times before and not known; this time I knew. Consider the number of seemingly chance events that led to this. In a moment of despair, I dreamed of a number in so startling a way—with the light—that I had to recall it. Then a friend dropped in to invite me for coffee and, tired as I was, I accepted. My wife came by and asked me to bring rubbing alcohol, which led me to the only place in Mexico where that particular ticket was on sale. Anyone who thinks all this is just coincidence would be hard put to explain an amazing, thoroughly check- able fact: Four Mind Control graduates in the United States, using different techniques, which I developed later, also won lotteries. They are Regina M. Fornecker, of Rockford, Illinois, who won $300,000; David Sikich, of Chicago, who won $300,000; Frances Morroni, of54 Chicago, who won $50,000; and John Fleming, of Buf- falo, New York, who won $50,000. We have no objection to the word “coincidence” in Mind Control; in fact we attach special meaning to it. When a series of events that is hard to explain leads to a constructive result, we call it coincidence. When they lead to a destructive result, we call it accident In Mind Control we learn how to trigger coincidences. “Just a coincidence” is a phrase we do not use. My lottery-winning dream convinced me of the exis- tence of Higher Intelligence and of its ability to com- municate with me. That it did so while I was asleep and profoundly disturbed about my life’s work is not at all remarkable as I see it now. Thousands of others have received information in their dreams in some para- normal way when they were in despair or danger or at turning points in their lives. Many such dreams are recorded in the Bible. However, at the time, the fact that it happened to me seemed like nothing less than a miracle. I remembered from my readings that Freud said sleep creates favorable conditions for telepathy. To account for my dream I had to go further and say that sleep creates favorable conditions for receiving information from Higher Intelligence. Then I went still further and wondered if we had to be like someone waiting passively for the telephone to ring. Could we not dial the num- ber ourselves to communicate with Higher Intelligence on our own initiative? As a religious person, I reasoned that if we can reach God through prayer, surely we can develop a method for reaching Higher Intelligence. (As you will see later, in Chapter Fifteen, where I speak of God and Higher Intelligence, I am speaking of different things.) * * * Creative Sleep I 55 Yes, my experiments showed that we can reach Higher Intelligence in several ways. One of them is Dream Control, which is very simple and easily learned. You cannot count on bright lights to help you recall dreams, but you can count on the cumulative effect of programming yourself, while at your level, to remember them. While meditating just before going to sleep, say, “I want to remember a dream. I will remember a dream.” Now go to sleep with paper and pencil by your bedside. When you awaken, whether during the night or in the morning, write down what you remember of a dream. Keep practicing this night after night and your recall will be clearer, more complete. When you are satisfied with your improved skill, you are ready for step two: During meditation before going to sleep, review a problem that can be solved with information or advice. Be sure that you really care about solving it; silly ques- tions evoke silly answers. Now program yourself with these words: “I want to have a dream that will contain information to solve the problem I have in mind. I will have such a dream, remember it, and understand it.” When you awaken during the night or in the morn- ing, review the dream you recall most vividly and search it for meaning. As I mentioned earlier, our method of dream inter- pretation must be different from the Freudian one be- cause we deliberately generate dreams. Therefore, if you happen to be familiar with Freudian dream inter- pretation, forget about it for the purposes of Mind Con- trol. Imagine what Freud would make of this dream: A man was in a jungle surrounded by savages. They were coming menacingly close to him, their spears rising, then descending. Each spear had a hole in the tip. When he awoke he saw this dream as the answer to a56 problem that had had him stymied: how to design a sewing machine. He could make the needle rise and descend, but not sew—until his dream told him to put the hole at the tip. The man was Elias Howe, who in- vented the first practical sewing machine. A Mind Control graduate credits dream control with saving his life. On the eve of a seven-day motorcycle trip, he programmed a dream to warn him beforehand of any particular danger he might face. Most previous long trips had been marked by small mishaps—a flat tire once; another time dirt in the fuel line; and on his last trip, unforeseen snow. He dreamed he was at the home of a friend. For dinner he was served a heaping platter of raw string beans, while everyone else enjoyed a delicious quiche Lorraine. Did this mean he was to avoid eating raw string beans on the trip? There was little danger of this, since he dislikes string beans, particularly raw ones. Did it mean he was no longer welcome at his friend’s home? No, he was confident of their friendship; besides, that had nothing to do with his motorcycle trip. Two days later he was speeding along a New York highway at dawn. It was a beautiful morning, the high- way was in perfect condition, and there was no traffic except for a small truck ahead. As he neared the truck he saw that it was loaded with bushels of string beans. Recalling his dream, he slowed down from 65 to 25; then, as he rounded a turn at 15 miles per hour, his rear wheel skidded a little on the turn—on some string beans that had spilled from the truck! At a higher speed the skid would have been serious, possibly fatal. Only you can interpret the dreams you decide to have. With proper self-programming beforehand to un- derstand your dreams, you will have a “hunch” about their meaning. The hunch is often the way our voiceless Creative Sleep I 57 subconscious communicates with us. With practice you will develop more and more confidence in these pro- grammed hunches. The words I have suggested you use for self-pro¬ gramming are those we use in Mind Control classes. Other words will work too, but in case you ever take a Mind Control course, you will already be conditioned and will have a richer experience if you have implanted the exact words beforehand while at Alpha. If you will be patient with Dream Control and prac- tice, you will uncover one of your more priceless mental resources. You would not reasonably expect to become a lottery winner; it is in the nature of lotteries that very few win. But it is in the nature of life that everyone can win much more than lotteries offer.