How to Read Signs and Omens We are all psychic. It's part of our heritage as human beings. It is not about fortune telling. It is about looking at the world and each other with new eyes. And we all have that power. Find out how in How to Read Signs and Omens in Every Day Life.[more]

Divination with a Difference Some people call it psychic reading. Others call it intuitive reading. A lot of folks call it divination. That means finding the divine all around you. I like that one the best. But one thing is certain: it's not fortune telling....[more]

Woodstock Radio Theater Let your imagination rule. The Woodstock Radio Theater Ensemble revives the lost art of radio drama...[more]

Sarv's Newsletter Step right in. You will find Sarv's Newsletter. Provocative? I hope so.Interesting? It had better be.

Uncommon Scents NEW!! From the ancient art of perfumery and aromatherapy come two amazing products. They are truly Uncommon Scents. Sleep Drops help even chronic insomniacs drift off to sleep with just a drop or two of this blend of essential oils on the pillow. Heaven Scent is a blend of oils that come in a spray bottle and will turn the ugliest smell into a delicious fragrance. Both are made with entirely natural essential oils.

.....Going Home We would love to hear from you. If you want to get in touch simply write to sarvananda@sarvananda.com. .

The World Dream Book

A true story from Chapter 1:

The Veil Between the Worlds--Crossing the Borders between Awake and Dream

Throughout the World Dream Book are stories from experiences and cultures around the world. Here is one.

A Metaphor from Life

Her marriage was slowly falling apart. Or, as she put it, the foundation of her marriage were disintegrating. It had been a slow process. Nothing sudden. Just a gradual deterioration over the many years that she had been married.

Her first impulse was to seek counseling. After all that's the way, isn't it? Isn't the best way to deal with a problem to confront it head on? That's about as American as apple pie.

She decided to try a different approach. She and her husband had renovated their house years earlier. It was an old house to begin with. That was part of its charm. But the foundation of her house was deteriorating.

The foundation of her marriage was disintegrating. The foundation of her house was disintegrating. She decided to deal with the house. Her house was a metaphor for her marriage. In both cases the foundations were crumbling.

She was handy. After all, she had done as much of the work on the house as anybody had.

With great zeal and focus she set about repairing the foundation of her house. She poured cement, propped up sagging areas. She brought new life to the old building.

As she repaired the deteriorating foundations of her house, her marriage began to improve. With each brick replaced, with each crumbling corner made new, the marriage began to quicken, come alive, become more solid. She had begun with a metaphor and ended up changing her life.

Exploration from Chapter 1:

Using Your Dream Hands

In 1867, a French scholar named Hervey de Saint-Denys published a book on dreams. Perhaps Saint-Denys was concerned about the response of his colleagues. Or perhaps, he didn't want to be associated with the wide variety of hocus pocus that seemed to permeate the discussion of dreams then as now. For whatever reasons, he published his book anonymously.

Mr. Saint-Denys had spent many years trying to bring his waking consciousness into his dreams. He had become a master of many techniques that allowed him to do just that.

One of Saint-Denys' favorite techniques was simply to place his hands over his eyes. In his dream, he would place his hands over his eyes to blurt out the existing scenery. He then would fix his attention on whatever new objects or events that he wished.

I. Tell yourself that you will be aware in your dream.
As always, intention is the most important ingredient. Without intention nothing will happen. So we need to remind ourselves that we will be aware in our dreams. Do this as
you are falling asleep. You might say it out loud. You might write it down. Or, better still, you might write it down and say it aloud. The goal is to be aware that we are dreaming in a dream.

II. Do this for several nights.
Sometimes we achieve our results swiftly. Other times it takes longer. Remember, we have spent most of our lives with the dream state and waking states existing far apart.

III. Tell yourself that you will see your hands in your dream.
This requires a very simple act…when we are awake. But if we can look at our hands while we are dreaming, we are bringing our waking consciousness into the dream.

IV. Be modest in your goals
Simply bringing our waking consciousness into the dream conscious is a great achievement. There is no need for us to get megalomaniac-to want to fly, go through buildings, change the course of human history-in our dreams. The important thing is to keep at it.

Exploration from Chapter 8:

"A Thousand Realities"-Making Love to Your Psyche

Having Pun With Dreams-Word Metaphors

A pun is a one word metaphor. Think about it. You take a word that means one thing but the pun makes it mean something else. There is the original meaning and the meaning beyond that. A book recently had the title, Cancer: A Word Not a Sentence. Here sentence had the meaning of both a grammatical form (writing a sentence) and prison time (he served a life sentence).

Since they are metaphors, puns find their way into our dreams. For example, among some Serbs if you dream of someone called Marija or Marko trouble will come to you, your household will be upset and it will cost you plenty. There is a pun here. The Serbian word "to upset" is mariti which is very close to Marija.

I. Pick a dream.
Any dream will do. Best to have one where there are a lot of details.

II. Go through all the nouns and underline them.
Again, that's a person, place or thing.

III. Go through the list and find words that could be punned.
For example, ate and eight or even hate.

IV. Do the same thing with the verbs and feelings.
For example, from the verb write you could get right. Right?

V. Substitute some of the puns from the original words and see how it changes the meaning of the dream.
You can pick as many as you want. Pay attention to word metaphors in your dreams. They are just another reality of dream consciousness.

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Two Stories from Chapter 3:

Song and Dance, Mask and Lance: Our Sleeping Artist

The Devil Made Him Do It

It was the year 1713. Giuseppe Tartini had a checkered career. He had entered the University of Padua as a law student three years earlier. It was not long before he abandoned this for his two loves, music and fencing. He became a master of both.
His musical career lay before him. It would be eight years before he received a meaningful appointment-as solo violinist and master of the orchestra at the Cathedral of Padua.

In this evening of 1713 Giuseppe Tartini turned and turned in his bed. All was uncertainty. The field of music in Eighteenth Century Italy was highly competitive.

Tartini that night had a visitor in his sleep. It was none other than the Devil, himself, who appeared in his dream.
In the dream the Devil offered Tartini an exchange. If the young musician would give him his soul, the Devil promised to be at his service in all things.

It was an offer he could not refuse. Tartini agreed to the exchange. He then handed the Devil his violin. "Play", he told the Devil. "Let's see what kind of musician you are."

The Devil picked up the violin and played a solo. It was so beautiful and executed with such taste and precision as to be better than anything Tartini had ever heard. So great was his surprise and delight that he could not breathe.

When Tartini awoke form his dream, he seized his violin and tried to play what he had just heard in his dream. The result was the Devil's Sonata.
The young composer swore that, while he did approximate the dream sonata, that the Devil's performance had been far superior. Nevertheless, the Devil's Sonata became a keystone in the repertoire of violinists for the next four centuries.

Eagle Hears the Thunder Song

He had been afraid of thunder from the time he was a child. At the first distant sounds of rumbling he would feel faint and his stomach would roll over queasily. When he was very little he would run to his mother. She would hold him until the storm had pat and the thunder's roar had become a fading rumble.

It would pass, this fear. So they told him. His fear would disappear as he became a man. How else could it be? He was a male of the Pawnee. He would be a warrior. How could he cower at the peal of thunder and vanquish the enemies of his people? It could not be so.

As he grew older his fear did not leave him. He could not longer run to his mother when the storm appeared. He would sit terrified in his tipi and weep with fear as the thunder beat loudly across the plains. Would it never end?

Then one night he lay asleep. He heard a voice in his dream. He knew whose voice spoke to him in his dream. It was no stranger. It was the voice of Thunder.

Thunder spoke quietly and slowly to him in his dream. "Do not be afraid," said Thunder. "Do not be afraid."
He was not afraid. Thunder spoke in a quiet voice. It was powerful but quiet.
"Your father is coming," said Thunder.

…..from the Pawnee

Dream Artist, Dream Scientist

from Chapter Three: "Song and Dance, Mask and Lance: Our Sleeping Artist"

Human creativity encompasses the whole range of imagination. For it is imagination that carries us beyond the known. It is imagination that takes us beyond that which we have learned. Creativity and imagination are sisters. And the kingdom of imagination includes both art and science. The scientist as well as the artist tread in unknown territory.

Without imagination there would be no knowledge. What would there be to learn? Without imagination, we would never have seen a wheel in a log or divine power in a bush or a tree that was burning. The development of fire and the discovery of the wheel carried us out of darkness. Little wonder that the greatest scientist of our time, Albert Einstein, declared that “imagination is more important than knowledge.”

Imagination is dream consciousness. Perhaps it is, as one author has suggested, “only in sleep that true imagination ever stirs within us.” In our waking consciousness we do not imagine. We vary what we already know. We may turn the pieces of our knowledge this way and that like pieces of a kaleidoscope but only in sleep do we actually create the pieces.

We tend to equate science and technology. This is no equation. Technology is the application of science. Science is creative. And, once again, creativity exists in the domain of dream consciousness.

There is a story that Albert Einstein at the age of fourteen had a dream. In that dream he saw a train and saw the place that the train was passing. In that dream, he later asserted, was the foundation of what became the theory of relativity.

As we overdraw the line between dream and waking consciousness, so we also overdraw the line between art and science. In most cultures this line is permeable. Dreams inform both art and science. The Kiwai Papuans got new methods of spearing dugong from their dreams. The Melanesians of the Solomon Islands “reamed up” more efficient war clubs.

Dreams have been an engine of science in the West. Mathematics has been one of the greatest beneficiaries of dream consciousness. The dreams of the renowned Eighteenth Century mathematician, Renée Descartes changed his life. His dreams helped him to decide to become a mathematician and to unite Euclidian geometry with algebra. It is ironic that the very rationalism that Descartes created was born of dreams since Cartesian rationalism rejects dreams as reliable sources of knowledge. The Indian mathematician, Srinivasa Ramanujan was visited in his dreams by the Hindu goddess Namakkal who would give him formulae which he would verify upon awakening. It was in a dream that the mathematician Condorcet as able to complete the final stages of a particular difficult calculation.

At the beginning of the Twentieth Century a mathematician distributed a questionnaire to a group of other mathematicians who had been practicing their discipline for at least ten years. A total of thirty of them state specifically that their dreams had helped them in their work.

Dreams have led to leaps in the field of chemistry. In 1869, Dmitri Mendeleyev, a professor of chemistry in Saint Petersburg , Russia , dreamed up the atomic elements and the periodic chart of the elements as well as dreaming three new elements that were yet to be discovered. And, at roughly the same time, Friedrich A. von Kekule, a professor of chemistry dreamed the first model of what was to be the basis of organic chemistry. So profound was this experience on this father of organic chemistry that he declared, at a convention of scientists in 1890, “let us learn to dream, gentlemen, and then we may perhaps find the truth.”

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