Description
Book SynopsisBig dreams are rare but highly memorable dream experiences that make a strong and lasting impact on the dreamer''s waking awareness. Such dreams can include vivid imagery, intense emotions, fantastic characters, bizarre elements of form and content, and an uncanny sense of being connected to forces beyond one''s ordinary dreaming mind. These types of dreams have played significant roles in religious and cultural history, and even today people still experience them and find them intriguing and thought-provoking. Because of their infrequent occurrence and fantastical tendencies, however, big dreams have rarely been studied in light of modern science. While we know a great deal about the religious manifestations of big dreams through history and around the world, we have not yet integrated that cross-cultural knowledge with new scientific research on their psychological roots in the brain-mind system.In this volume, Kelly Bulkeley provides the first full-scale cognitive scientific analysi
Trade Reviewthis book offers so many other insights into psychology, neurology and dream content analysis, it is well worth your money. * Drs. Susanne van Doorn, Mindfunda *
Table of ContentsIntroduction Section I. Sleep 1. The evolution of sleep 2. The brain's paradoxical activities in sleep 3. The role of sleep in human health and development 4. Cultural practices of sleep through history Section II. Ordinary Dreaming 5. Dream recall 6. Patterns in form and content 7. Continuities between dreaming and waking life 8. Discontinuities and metaphors Section III. Big Dreams 9. Aggressive 10. Sexual 11. Gravitational 12. Mystical Section IV. Religious Experiences 13. Demonic attack 14. Prophetic vision 15. Ritual healing 16. Contemplative practice Conclusion Appendix: Word search methods in the study of dreams Index
