D ISCUSIÓN Y CONCLUSIONES GENERALES

Several times now we have heard stories of people perform-ing rituals of dream incubation, and readers may be wonderperform-ing if these practices actually work. Can the right combination of prayer, sacrifi ce, and sleep posture really produce a revelatory dream? Is there some kind of naturalistic explanation for the eff ectiveness of dream incubation, or is it just a superstitious fantasy with no basis in fact?

If we assume that incubation is an automatic process by which humans mechanically force a divine dream to appear, then we would have to say no, there is very little evidence to support that (if nothing else, recall Gil-gamesh’s miserably failed incubation in the previous chapter). But if in-cubation is regarded as a conscious attempt to infl uence the likelihood of experiencing a powerful dream, then yes, we can fi nd good reasons for taking it seriously. As discussed in the prologue, modern research has shown that dream recall is responsive to waking attention. If you simply formulate the conscious intention to remember more dreams, you will be surprised at how easily your recall rate increases. It is no great leap from that to a more focused kind of intention relating to a specifi c, emotionally salient topic. Th is, too, is well grounded in research showing that dream content accurately refl ects the most important emotional concerns in a person’s life. For example, if you are in the midst of a painful and messy divorce, you will be highly primed each night to dream about that wak-ing life situation. In that settwak-ing, any extra eff ort you make to remember dreams relating to the divorce will very likely succeed.

So far, it sounds like dream incubation is an extended exercise in self-suggestion. But the rituals we are discussing push the boundaries of the

“self ” well beyond its ordinary usage, to the point where psychological language seems inadequate to the descriptive task. Th e power of these rituals derives not simply from their conscious intentionality but, more

important, from the ways in which they create a space during sleep for heightened receptivity to extraordinary energies emanating from outside the usual sphere of waking awareness. Th is is why dream incubation re-quires more than just an emotional concern; it also rere-quires a change in a person’s physical sleeping conditions, a reorientation of body and soul within the broader meaning-structures of the cosmos. Whether prac-ticed in a cave, a temple, a mountain, a desert, or a graveyard, the un-derlying logic of dream incubation always involves a dramatic shift away from one’s normal sleep patterns and toward an unusual place where the powers of whatever the individual holds sacred are gathered in especially concentrated form. To see an extraordinary dream, you should sleep in an extraordinary place. When combined with additional activities like fast-ing, sacrifi ce, purifi cation, chantfast-ing, and so on, the mind-alterfast-ing, dream-stimulating eff ects of these rituals become all the stronger, and we can begin to appreciate why people have practiced them in so many diff erent cultures and historical eras. Dream incubation is a species-wide spiritual practice, a naturally appealing and easily accomplished extension of the insights that emerge in spontaneous dream experience.1

One of history’s most striking traditions of dream incubation was the cult of the Greek healing god Asclepius. For many centuries, thousands upon thousands of Greek and Roman people made sacred pilgrimages to the temples of Asclepius and slept there in hopes of a divine dream.

Th ese time-honored practices brought together dreaming, healing, proph-ecy, and wisdom and wove them into a seamless, spiritually rejuvenating whole. Th e widespread popularity of the Asclepian cult testifi es to the high public regard of dreams in Graeco-Roman civilization, even though many philosophers and poets of this era expressed a deep skepticism to-ward dreaming and contrasted it with the superior power of reason as a guide to truth and knowledge. By now we are familiar with this tension between revelation and doubt in dreaming, having seen it in every culture considered so far. In the case of the Greeks and Romans, we fi nd it ar-ticulated with a vivid intelligence and stirring clarity that has rarely been surpassed.

Myth and History

One hundred thousand years ago, bands of Homo sapiens from Africa were migrating along the Mediterranean coast and into Europe, and by

40,000 BCE they were leaving unmistakable evidence of symbolic ex-pression and death-related rituals performed in caves (e.g., in Lascaux, France).2 We do not know if dream incubation occurred in the caves, or if any of the spectacular wall paintings of animals, hands, geometric patterns, half-human creatures, and so forth, were directly inspired by dreams. Ar-cheology is, and will probably forever be, mute on those questions. But everything we know from dream research, both historical and contempo-rary, strongly suggests that yes, the experience of seeing the paintings or sleeping in the caves very likely stimulated actual dreams of extraordinary power and memorability, and these dreams may well have served in turn as a visionary resource for new cave paintings. Some scholars have called what happened in these caves a “creative explosion,” a revolutionary leap in human cognitive and cultural development. From our perspective, it looks like the natural outgrowth of a species that has learned how to in-tensify its psychospiritual capacity to dream big dreams.

Th e caves of mainland Greece were occupied by humans as far back as thirty thousand years ago. Over time these people built larger settlements, learned how to use metal, developed seafaring skills, and interacted both commercially and militarily with the great civilizations of the Fertile Cres-cent. Th e origins of their language are uncertain, but we know that by the second millennium BCE the people of Greece had built a powerful and sophisticated network of fortifi ed cities (the fi rst was discovered at Myce-nae, hence the whole era is known as the Mycenaean period). Th e surviv-ing evidence of their culture indicates that it revolved around huntsurviv-ing, war, and seafaring. At its height, the Mycenaean network spread across the islands of the Aegean and as far east as the Turkish coast. When this civilization collapsed around 1100 BCE (for reasons still unknown) sev-eral centuries of social fragmentation ensued, and the written form of the Greek language was eff ectively abandoned. During these “dark ages,”

stories began to circulate about the mighty exploits of heroic warriors who braved fantastic dangers and fought glorious battles. Two particular cycles of these stories (originally sung at public festivals and much later recorded in writing) became associated with a poet named Homer, tradi-tionally believed to be a blind man who lived early in the fi rst millennium BCE. Th e Iliad and the Odyssey recounted the adventures of an army from Greece who attacked the distant city of Troy (the Iliad) and then embarked upon a perilous journey home (the Odyssey). Whether or not the Trojan War actually occurred, the stories sung by bards like Homer were immensely popular, testifying to a growing sense of historical and

cosmic self-awareness among the Greeks of this era. A close reading of the dreams in these two epics provides us with the best foundation for understanding later Greek and Roman dream discussions.3

Th e Iliad opened with a bitter argument between Agamemnon (the leader of the Greek armies fi ghting against Troy) and Achilles (the great-est warrior in the Greek ranks) because Agamemnon had just seized from Achilles a girl whom Achilles had won as a prize in an earlier battle.4 Furious at this disrespectful treatment, Achilles withdrew from the Greek army and prayed to the gods for justice. In response Zeus, the mightiest of the Olympian deities, decided to help Achilles by sending down an “evil dream” to deceive and mislead Agamemnon. Th e dream took the shape of Agamemnon’s most trustworthy counselor, the aged Nestor, who stood at Agamemnon’s head to deliver a rousing message of heavenly encourage-ment for the next day’s battle. In the morning, “Agamemnon awoke from sleep, the divine voice drift ing around him,” and immediately launched his troops in a new assault on the Trojans — a battle that Zeus had already decided the Greeks would lose, to prove how badly they needed Achilles back on their side.

Th e deception worked so well because of the expectation (familiar to anyone infl uenced by Fertile Crescent cultures) that kings and military leaders were regularly blessed with pre-battle dreams of divine reassur-ance. Agamemnon was an easy mark for this kind of deceptive dream, though it is hard to imagine that anyone could resist such a compellingly presented message. Th ese early verses of the Iliad boldly expressed the Greek perception of a deeply troubling existential vulnerability in dreams.

What if the gods really do come to us in our dreams, but to harm us rather than help us? What if both the doubters and the believers are wrong?

Th at might seem like more signifi cance than should be drawn from a dream fabricated by a god and sent to a fi ctional character in a myth. We cannot forget that the Iliad was a literary creation meant to entertain an audience, and not necessarily a historical record providing objective in-formation about actual people. Yet, we must also grant that Homer fre-quently described scenes using remarkably accurate details about the ac-tivities in question (e.g., combat techniques, sailing skills, religious rituals, and domestic customs). His fi ctional narrative was fi rmly grounded in the experiential life-world of the ancient Greeks, and this was true of dream-ing as well. In Book 22, Achilles returned at last to the battlefi eld (aft er the death of his best friend Patroklos) and chased the Trojan champion Hektor around the city’s mighty walls. In describing the scene Homer

said, “As in a dream a man is not able to follow one who runs from him, nor can the runner escape, nor the other pursue him, so he [Achilles]

could not run him [Hektor] down in his speed, nor the other get clear.”

Th is was a direct and, in the context, quite appropriate simile based on the pervasive human experience of chasing nightmares. Similarly, in Book 23, Homer presented a type of dream (a visitation from the dead) that we know is widely reported by people in virtually all places and times. “Th e ghost of unhappy Patroklos,” looking exactly as he did in waking, came to Achilles in a dream to chide him for failing to attend to his burial rites:

Th e ghost came and stood over his head and spoke a word to him: ‘You sleep, Achilles, you have forgotten me; but you were not careless of me when I lived, but only in death. Bury me as quickly as may be, let me pass through the gates of Hades.

In the dream Achilles promised he would do so, and he asked Patroklos to stay:

“But stand closer to me, and let us, if only for a little, embrace, and take full satisfaction from the dirge of sorrow.” So he [Achilles] spoke, and with his own arms reached for him [Patroklos], but could not take him, but the spirit went underground, like vapour, with a thin cry, and Achil-les started awake, staring, and drove his hands together, and spoke, and his words were sorrowful: “Oh, wonder! Even in the house of Hades there is left something, a soul and an image, but there is no real heart of life in it.”

Th is is a classic visitation dream in terms of its perceptual intensity, emotional arousal, and carryover impact on waking consciousness. Th e pattern we have identifi ed in other cultural and historical contexts is dis-played here in full fl ower, indicating that at least by the time of Homer (and probably much earlier than that) the ancient Greeks were familiar with the experience of dream visitations from the dead. Th e message Achilles received was more reliable than Agamemnon’s, although it re-vealed a much bleaker vision of reality that only intensifi ed his sadness and despair. Yet, it was not an evil dream. On the contrary, it became a turning point in Achilles’ mourning process, honestly expressing the awful depth of his feelings of loss, feelings that a fame-seeking, honor- conscious warrior might not otherwise want to acknowledge.

Th e dreams presented in the Odyssey were also notable for some in-teresting features of psychological verisimilitude that enhanced their ef-fectiveness as literary devices.5 Early in the story Telemachus, Odysseus’s son, secretly left home to seek news of his father. Penelope, his mother and Odysseus’s wife, was terrifi ed when she discovered that Telemachus had left . But in her sleep that night her divine patron, the goddess Athena, sent a dream in the trustworthy form (eidolon) of Penelope’s sister, who stood at her head and told her that Telemachus was protected by the gods and would return home safely. “ ‘Courage!’ the shadowy phantom reas-sured her. ‘Don’t be overwhelmed by all your direst fears.’ ” In its hope-ful and uplift ing prophetic message Penelope’s dream could fairly, and without embarrassment, be called a wish-fulfi llment — “Icarios’s daughter [Penelope] started up from sleep, her spirit warmed now that a dream so clear had come to her in darkest night.” More than any other character in either epic, Penelope drew deeply from the well of dreaming, where she found the emotional strength and intellectual resourcefulness to face the challenges of her exceedingly dire waking-life situation. Odysseus had been gone for twenty years, she was the captive of a horde of men (the

“suitors”) who were demanding she choose one of them as her new hus-band, and she had discovered they were secretly plotting to murder her son. When Odysseus returned in the disguise of a beggar, Penelope re-quested a private audience with the old wanderer to see if he had any news of her husband. Th e ensuing dialogue between the long-suff ering queen and the beggar-in-disguise was in many ways the most dramatic scene of the whole story, and at its heart was a dream. Before parting for the evening, Penelope said,

My friend, I have only one more question for you . . . [P]lease, read this dream for me, won’t you? Listen closely . . . I kept twenty geese in the house, from the water trough Th ey come and peck their wheat — I love to watch them all.

But down from a mountain swooped this great hook-beaked eagle, Yes, and he snapped their necks and killed them one and all And they lay in heaps throughout the hall while he, Back to the clear blue sky he soared at once.

But I wept and wailed — only a dream, of course —

And our well-groomed ladies came and clustered round me, Sobbing, stricken: the eagle killed my geese. But down He swooped again and settling onto a jutting raft er

Called out in a human voice that dried my tears,

“Courage, daughter of famous King Icarius!

Th is is no dream but a happy waking vision, Real as day, that will come true for you.

Th e geese were your suitors — I was once the eagle But now I am your husband, back again at last, About to launch a terrible fate against them all!”

So he vowed, and the soothing sleep released me.

[Odysseus replied] “Dear woman, . . . twist it however you like, Your dream can mean only one thing. Odysseus

Told you himself — he’ll make it come to pass, Destruction is clear for each and every suitor;

Not a soul escapes his death and doom . . .”

[Penelope responded] “Ah my friend, . . .

Dreams are hard to unravel, wayward, drift ing things — Not all we glimpse in them will come to pass . . . Two gates there are for our evanescent dreams, One is made of ivory, the other made of horn.

Th ose that pass through the ivory cleanly carved Are will-o’-the-wisps, their message bears no fruit.

Th e dreams that pass through the gates of polished horn Are fraught with truth, for the dreamer who can see them.

But I can’t believe my strange dream has come that way, Much as my son and I would love to have it so.

Here as elsewhere in the story, Odysseus displayed a remarkable abil-ity to create his own destiny, bending fate to his purposes. His confi dent interpretation of the positive prophetic symbolism of Penelope’s dream (the mountain eagle killing the geese meaning that Odysseus will kill the suitors) came true because he made it come true. A short time later he did indeed destroy the suitors, thereby reclaiming his throne, his honor, and his wife. Modern scholars have traditionally regarded this scene as another example of Odysseus’s cunning intelligence, in contrast to the queen’s hapless confusion. I prefer a diff erent reading, however, one that credits Penelope with an equally cunning awareness of the beggar’s true identity. In my view, Penelope knew perfectly well that it was Odysseus standing before her, refusing to reveal himself to her. She fabricated the dream of the twenty geese in order to test her husband’s understanding of what she had endured on his behalf, and he failed the test (there were not

20 suitors, but 108; the number 20 more likely referred to the number of years of their marital separation). Odysseus may have gone on to defeat the suitors, but only by placing his desire for vengeance higher than his love and regard for Penelope.

Either way, Penelope’s speech about the “two gates” of dreams stands as a brilliant sentinel in the history of Greek dream speculation. Although we still do not fully understand the signifi cance of horn and ivory as con-trasting dream substances (perhaps ivory is more opaque than horn, so horn is easier to see through), the mysterious image of the two gates il-luminated a fundamental duality of oneiric experience: some dreams are nonsense and have no consequence in our lives, whereas others have the potential to reveal meaningful truths, but only “for the dreamer who can see them.” As a theory of dreaming, this refl ected a cautious, well-con-sidered balance between skepticism and hope, vain fantasy and genuine insight. Th e haunting spirit of Penelope’s words echoed throughout clas-sical Greek philosophy and literature, where the revelation vs. deception dichotomy branched out in several creative directions.

Th e fi nal chapter of the Odyssey made a brief reference to a diff erent vi-sion of the geography of dreaming, when the ghosts of the suitors slaugh-tered by Odysseus were led by the god Hermes on their fi nal journey:

Th e fi nal chapter of the Odyssey made a brief reference to a diff erent vi-sion of the geography of dreaming, when the ghosts of the suitors slaugh-tered by Odysseus were led by the god Hermes on their fi nal journey: