Light Revisioned Through
the Prism of Dreams
O Light eternal, alone in Being,
Alone with your Aloneness, you know,
And in knowing, smile with love!1
– Dante Alighieri
What kind of light illuminates our dreams? Imagine a dream as a prism through which shines the light of consciousness. Through dreams you observe ‘the colours of your mind’, expressed in images that convey thoughts and feelings. Exploring the properties of natural light, colours and shadows, the physicist Arthur Zajonc observes: ‘Light falling on the eye provokes sight. Until that moment, light lives in a universe of its own.’2 Drawing on more poetic language, the German writer Goethe reflects on the properties of natural light and the ‘inner light’, concluding that ‘the eye is formed by the light, for the light, so that the inner light may meet the outer.’3 The ‘inner light’ illuminates our dreams and our path in life.
To understand better the nature of light in dreams, we must first grasp a key attribute of light – that pure light appears invisible, or ‘black’ like space. If you were to take part in a physics experiment in which a researcher asks you to peer through a peephole into a box full of light in a vacuum, what would you see?
The light contained in the box would appear as black emptiness, because to human eyes light in a vacuum is invisible. However, if a metal wand was inserted into one side of the box and spun around, flashes of the metal would become visible. Yet the light itself remains unseen. We see only the illuminated wand.4 Thus, to the naked eye the apparently empty reaches of outer space appear black. Light fills interstellar space, but we only see the light when an object like the moon occupies space and so reflects it back to us. To be seen, the so-called ‘visible light spectrum’ requires the interpenetration of light with matter, the reflected light then being received by our eyes.
What we call ‘light’ consists only of a small fraction of the full electromagnetic spectrum, which encompasses a wide range of wavelengths, invisible to our perception – radio waves, microwaves, infrared radiation and ultraviolet rays, X-rays and gamma rays.
Various technologies, both natural and created, enable us to harvest the wavelengths of the electromagnetic field to different ends. For example, cells in our bodies and in plants use light to enact processes requisite for life; solar panels absorb sunlight to generate electricity; laser light allows surgeons to perform finely tuned operations; fibre-optics transmit wavelengths as a form of communication; X-rays allow us to see deep into matter; radar uses radio waves to track objects at a distance; infrared telescopes enable physicists to peer through galactic dust, revealing previously unseen galaxies. Astrophysicists use colour as a code for matter, assisting them to identify properties of distant stars and planets that may contain life.
Yet even with all the scientific instruments available, only 5 per cent of the ‘matter’ comprising the universe can be observed, 95 per cent being invisible ‘dark matter’ and ‘dark energy’. This has led NASA to point out that the matter we can perceive ‘shouldn’t be called normal “matter” at all since it makes up such a small fraction of the universe’.5
Comparably, the inner light of dreams spans the visible and invisible wavelengths that comprise the electromagnetic spectrum. Much as the spectral properties of visible light arise from within a continuum of wavelengths possessing differing scope and function, so the inner light of our dreams can also enable us to extend the ‘wavelength’ of our perceptual faculties by revealing the capacities of what has been called the ‘extended mind’,6 unbounded by the normal limitations of time and space.7
In this sense, ‘the stuff that dreams are made on’8 is composed of not only the light and colours ‘seen’ in dream imagery, but also the extended mind that encompasses the mysteries of the cosmos. Pure light in a dream can leave an indelible impression, as in this report from the archive of the Alister Hardy Religious Experience Research Centre. An English man in his sixties, who described himself as reckless in his youth, recounted an experience he had in his twenties when he crashed his car while driving under the influence of alcohol. After being diagnosed with a mild concussion, he was sent home to rest. There he fell asleep and had a moving experience, the account of which follows:
...I was one with eternally pulsing light, not a dazzling but a peaceful light, ‘such as never was on sea or land’; a light which was also love and safety. Yet I was not conscious of being safe so much as of there being no longer anything to fear. There seemed to be a completeness about everything and everything went on for ever: there was no birth or death, beginning or end. There was no need to be, because in that moment was eternity, it always had been and always would be. Nor was I by any means alone: I was communicating with infinite wisdom, not as an individual but as an entity; this wisdom was in me and flowed through me and yet was also outside me. I had no need for companionship because I was, in a sense, companionship. I seemed to be part of some mighty essence, some ultimate, unknowable reality, to describe which I knew would be impossible, because no earthly analogy could be applied to it. This was the ultimate truth of which all other realities were poor reflections.9
Describing what happened, he insisted that it was more than a dream, and that ‘all waking life, in comparison with it, was mere illusion’. He added that the experience helped to strengthen his faith in ‘the reality of the unseen world of spiritual values.’
Such a spiritual revelation would not have surprised medieval alchemists, who understood this inner light to be comprised of scintillae or sparks from the animating principle of the ‘world soul’, which they viewed as being akin to the Holy Spirit. They called this light the lumen naturae, the inner light of nature – one that imparts wisdom and serves as the guiding ‘star’ in each of us.10 The great alchemist Paracelsus tells us that we learn of the light of nature through dreams.11
As the moon reflects the light of the sun, so light of our dreams mirrors our inner states of consciousness, revealing how these influence our lives. The following dream of my own, from my early forties, illuminates how I was blocking my ‘light’:
I find myself in a meeting room distracted by an intense circular beam of round white light about four inches in diameter that appears on the walls and bookshelves wherever I look. The light disturbs me. I think, ‘My boss will notice that I’m too sensitive to the light.’ This concerns me, so I get up to turn the dimmer switch down. I move back to my seat, thinking the ‘problem’ has been solved, but notice that my boss has a chagrined look on his face. Suddenly, I realise that’s what I do in waking life: dim the light that comes from myself. Then, I wake up.
When I understood the significance of this dream, I resolved in future to speak out or take action – a resolve that lit up my world in unexpected ways!
Through our dreams and dreamwork, we may learn to recognise self-defeating thought processes or negative life patterns that can literally clutter our dreams. A dream that parallels this idea was had by a woman named Angela, with whom I had been working for a few months. She longed to declutter and simplify her life in order to free up her unrealised creativity. As she relates:
I am in a room that is cluttered with all sorts of objects and debris. Things are piled up in untidy, dusty and rusty heaps sprawling all over so that moving around is extremely hard. It looks like one of those rooms builders use to throw things in while they work next door.
Then the scene changes, and I find myself in another room. There’s a female friend with me. I turn to my friend, telling her that my project is to get the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel painted right here on this ceiling, but I wonder if it wouldn’t look too garish. What does she think? My friend assures me that it would look beautiful. At that precise moment we both look up and there it is ... the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in all its glory and splendour. It takes our breath away; we look at it, ecstatic.
Working with me on the dream, Angela saw the cluttered room as representing familiar and unhelpful patterns of thought that blocked her creativity. It felt important for her to ‘look up’ to gain a broader perspective on her situation. Overcoming her fears that the painting might look ‘garish’ or stand out in an unpleasant way, she discovered that the artwork radiates splendour. Psychologically, this dream illuminates how Angela’s creative energy was entangled in her negative, cluttered thinking and fear of standing out. However, as she came to realise, when she ‘looked up’ from negative thought patterns, she could then move out of the stasis in her life.
Such dreams share characteristics with waking life, blurring the distinction between our dreams and the waking world. For instance, in the summer of 1992, I was working in Riga, Latvia. During that time, most of the Russian Orthodox churches that the Soviets had previously turned into museums, offices or gymnasiums were undergoing restoration. Throughout the summer, workers painstakingly replaced the golden skin of the onion domes gracing the Russian Orthodox Cathedral of the Nativity of Christ (the golden covering had been peeled off and pillaged during the Second World War). Walking past this church, a friend and I noticed that the workers had left the door ajar, so we took the chance to enter. We expected to see the Cathedral’s ornate orthodox design. Instead of a richly decorated sanctuary, we found ourselves encased in a Soviet-style concrete office!
I felt physically sick when, instead of looking up to see what should have been an expansive dome, I could only see the office’s low ceiling. I could hear workers dismantling the office but couldn’t see them. Suddenly, a terrible wrenching noise resounded through the building as a crane dislodged a heavy panel from the ceiling. Jumping back, I watched as the ceiling panel was lifted away, clearing a space through which I could see into the dome of the church. Peering through the dusty light, I could make out the abstract-patterned and goldflecked dome as its hidden beauty shone forth.
For me, what happened that day provides a waking-world analogy for what can happen in a dream when we learn to recognise the constructs of the conditioned mind that block our essential nature. When this occurs, the constructs fall away, dissolve, lift or are torn asunder, so that a fundamental realisation of our true nature can be revealed and more fully actualised in life.
Working therapeutically with dreams, I have found that negative or nightmarish dreams veil the clear light of the inner world and our capacity for deeply felt, positive emotions such as joy and serenity. Often in such dreams, depictions of darkness fill the dreamer with a sense of dread at what they perceive as a threat, whether known or unknown. Yet an understanding of the relationship between absolute light and, apparently, absolute darkness suggests that what we perceive as darkness invariably contains light.12
This is important to remember when our everyday sense of who we are is challenged by the loss of a loved one. At such times, our human capacity to find light in the midst of darkness often comes to the fore in dreams that feature extra-sensory perception (ESP), including pre-cognition and telepathic communication with those who have died13 – faculties of the extended mind. A study of three archives of ESP accounts found that a significant number take place when we dream.14 Of these, the majority relate to a close friend or family member who has died or who, shortly after the dream, becomes injured or dies in waking life.
In my own dream life, I have had many ‘visitation’ dreams of my mother who died many years ago. I had been able to spend her last three months with her before she died. The following dream, which I had a few months after her death, initiated my delayed grieving process by enabling me to cry for the first time since her passing:
I dream that I am back near the street where I grew up. A woman invites me into one of the houses. Her skin appears a luminescent sky-blue. This seems strange and lovely at the same time. The house is white, but when we open the door, everything inside has a sky-blue hue, the walls, the objects, etc.
We enter another room where my mother rests, sitting up on a blue bed with the bedspread over her legs. She looks radiant and joyful, surrounded by family members and friends who have died. They stand to either side of the bed and extend in great numbers behind it. I am aware that I see her in a world beyond this one. I run up to her and place my head in her lap, crying out how much I love her and how sorry I am for whatever I may have done to hurt her. She pats me lovingly and patiently. For the first time since her death, I begin to cry, and then I awake. I mourn for many hours.
This dream gave me the chance to tell my mother what I had wanted to say before her death but hadn’t done so, initiating my grieving process. The visitation felt more real than real, taking place in a radiant, non-temporal, non-spatial, transcendent dimension. This reassured me greatly.
In contrast, my father’s death happened suddenly. When the family first heard he had become unwell, the doctors didn’t know he had cancer. At the time, I worked in London, and so I wasn’t sure when to leave for the US, as I had many responsibilities at work. Then I had a dream that prompted me to leave as soon as possible. On the night of the dream, I had spent time in prayer for my father:
In the dream, I am climbing down a steep rocky slope on a bright, sunny day in the Sierra Nevadas of California. An unseen man takes my hand to help me down. With surprise, I realise it is my father’s hand. Suddenly, the reality of his presence strikes me deeply. I feel it as his hand touches mine – the familiarity of his way of being, his character. He sits down silently next to me. It all feels so vivid and real that I become lucid. I say to him, ‘I know this is a dream, but I do not want to leave your side.’ It feels as if I am really with him, so I stay with him and tell him how much I love him, how he must know that, and how I know he loves me. He remains silent, looking at me with deep concentration and love. As I speak, I begin to cry and awake from the dream in tears.
Upon awakening, I felt certain that my father was near death or may even have died and that I had to get to the US straight away. I left early the next day. Luckily, I managed to arrive a few days before he died. He could not speak or open his eyes, but when I sat with him that first night and told him I loved him, a large tear fell down his cheek. I was the first time my father and I had ever cried together. I was grateful to be with him when he died two nights later.
In each of these dreams, the light manifests differently. In the dream of my deceased mother, the light appeared in the brightness of the blue environs and in the radiance. In the dream of my father, the light had a sharp clarity and intensity that brought lucidity.
Dreams of the deceased and of pre-cognition can help us to comprehend how the thoughts and feelings had in dreams may reach beyond the everyday world of sense perception to the infinite reach of the extended mind, potentially bringing healing to events of the past and future. In such dreams, the inner light appears to contain information for the recipient. An Australian woman, who contributed to the Alister Hardy Archive, shared her own thoughts on the revelation of what she called ‘Cosmic Light’ as follows:
If you have experienced it, you never forget, and it changes your life. But if you talk about it, people would think one insane. I have seen it and would have to say that it smiles! And how can light smile?! I think it is a symbol from the deep unconscious that Jung writes about, one of those that integrate and change people’s lives. And if, as the Quakers say, there ‘is that of God in everyman’, then that’s probably where it originates. Perhaps the little spark of divinity we each hold is like a transformer power station for electricity and steps down the divine power until it is something we can understand and use.15
This woman was understandably hesitant to share what had happened to her with others. Nevertheless, similar accounts of light phenomena have been reported through-out history and are well documented. A study published in 2013 by Annekatrin Puhle analyses over 800 such cases of what she describes as ‘transforming light’.16 Of these, 71 occur in dreams and 22 in lucid dreams. Thirty-five take place ‘at night’ and 31 ‘in bed’.17 According to this research, the light encounters brought people ‘comfort’ and ‘meaningfulness’.18
The English writer J.B. Priestley gives a poetic evocation of how a dream revealed to him light’s ‘flame of life’, one he shares in his autobiography. He had the dream at the age of 42, during a time when he felt life had lost all sense. In the dream, he watches from a tower as countless birds of all kinds fill the sky. But then their wings break, they become ill, and suddenly die. He begins to despair that the endless repetition of life and death seems meaningless. As he looks upon ‘an enormous plain sown with feathers’, the dream begins to shift:
...But along this plan, flickering through the bodies themselves, there now passed a sort of white flame, trembling, dancing, then hurrying on; and as soon as I saw it I knew that this white flame was life itself, the very quintessence of being, and then it came to me in a rocket-burst of ecstasy, that nothing mattered, nothing could ever matter, because nothing else was real, but this quivering and hurrying lambency of being. Birds, men or creatures not yet shaped and coloured, all were of no account except so far as this flame of life travelled through them. It left nothing to mourn over behind it; what I had thought was tragedy was mere emptiness or a shadow show; for now all real feeling was caught and purified and danced on ecstatically with the white flame of life...19
Of his dream, Priestley remarked that he had never felt such deep happiness as he knew at the end of it, and noted that he had not been ‘quite the same man since.’20 The dream broke through his scepticism, giving him an abiding sense of life’s meaningfulness.
In our dreams, we can know ourselves not only as dependent upon light for our existence but also sharing in light’s qualities, as I was moved to realise one night in this lucid dream:
...I find myself carried a long way down a tunnel illuminated with black light. Finally, the movement stops, and it feels as if my ‘body’ rests on holy ground in a foetal position on my right side, curled up on the floor. The black lays heavy over me like a thick blanket. The position has the feel of total and complete surrender. A part of me thinks, ‘I guess life knows I need this.’
Then a morning light surrounds me. It feels like pure light but somehow full of life’s forms and contains the sky, trees, birds, the earth and my being. The light has the musicality of water and air. I think for a brief moment I’ve awakened to a bright spring day and that I must be hearing sounds from outside. But then I understand the experience to be an actual awakening to what light truly is, and all that it contains. I feel like an apple on a grassy field, a creation of light. I rest like this in the lucid space until the alarm wakes me up.
In the following chapters, as we explore the prismatic effects between light, colour and darkness in dreams, we will continue to discover that when we work through the psychological complexes that confuse our lives, both our dream life and waking life become more lucid.
As we become aware of how the inner light of dreams provides us with deeper intuition and insight, we can more fully appreciate the healing power of our dreams. We can be heartened by the words of the Persian poet Hafiz:
‘I wish I could show you,
When you are lonely or in darkness,
The Astonishing Light
Of your own Being!’21