Interpret a dream . com

LITERATURE & THE ARTS

Modern folklore shares stories about dreams that led to masterpieces in Literature and the Arts. Not as well known are dreams that inspired innovations in Science, Math, and Commerce. Dreams expert and author Stase Michaels knows the mechanics of how the unconscious problem-solves with the mind. You can mobilize the innovative insights that happen spontaneously as you sleep. In a one-of-a-kind seminar, Michaels shows how to mobilize the sleeping mind’s problem solving abilities.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Coleridge documented many literary dream inspirations including the poetic masterpieces Kubla Khan and The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner.

Giuseppe Tartini wrote his masterpiece for the violin, the Devil's Sonata, after hearing it performed in a dream. Mozart is reputed to have done the same.

THE STORY OF DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE WAS BASED ON A DREAM

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON (1850-1894), (1850-1894), author of many favorites such as Treasure Island and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, wrote that he got many of his best stories from dreams. He described how his classic novel of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was "conceived, written, re-written, and printed within ten weeks" in 1886, from the following dream:

For two days I racked my brains for a plot of any sort. On the second night I dreamed the scene at the window, and the scene afterward split in two, in which Hyde, pursued for some crime, took powder and underwent the change in the presence of his pursuers.

His wife relates how one night Louis cried out horror-stricken, so she woke him. He protested: "Why did you waken me? I was dreaming a fine tale!" She also described how he appeared the next morning excitedly exclaiming: "I have got my chilling shocker, I have got my chilling shocker!"

Stevenson wrote that his passion for writing interacted regularly with remarkable dreams. Having vivid dreams from an early age, he discovered he could dream complete stories and go back into the same dream on succeeding nights. He trained himself to remember his dreams as plots for his books.

A Chapter on Dreams by Robert Louis Stevenson, Across the Plains, 1892, Chattus & Windus
Robert Louis Stevenson, A Critical Biography Vol. 2, John Stuart, 2005, Kessinger Publishing

PAUL MCCARTNEY DREAMS A NEW SONG, CALLED "Yesterday"    

McCartney heard the lyrics of Yesterday in a dream. As noted in the Guinness Book of Records, this Beatles' song has the most versions of any song ever written and was performed more than seven million times in the 20th century. The tune came to Paul while the Beatles were in London. Staying at his family's house on Wimpole Street, one morning in a dream he heard a classical string ensemble playing.

As McCartney described the dream:

I woke up with a lovely tune in my head. I thought, 'That's great, I wonder what that is?' There was a piano to the right of the bed by the window. I got out of bed, and sat at the piano. I liked the melody a lot, but because I had dreamed it, I couldn't believe I had written it. I thought, 'I've never written anything like this before.'  I had the tune, which was the most magic thing! Paul McCartney, Many Years From Now, Barry Miles. NY, Henry Holt, 1997.

SCIENCE, MATH & COMMERCE

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. Albert Einstein

Chemistry - The Periodic Table

Nineteenth-century Chemist Dimitri Mendeleyev fell asleep while chamber music was being played in the next room. He understood in a dream that the basic chemical elements are all related to each other in a manner similar to the themes and phrases in music. When he awakened, he was able to write out for the first time the entire periodic table, which forms the basis of modern chemistry.

Albert Einstein's Theory of Relativity

A young Albert Einstein conceived the theory of relativity in a dream. He dreamed that he was sledding down a steep mountainside, going faster and faster, approaching the speed of light, which caused the stars in his dream to change their appearance. Meditating upon that dream, Einstein eventually worked out his extraordinary scientific achievement, the principle of relativity.

Celebrated Mathematician Henri Poincare tried day after day to discover some general method by which a whole group of equations could be solved. He related that one night he retired to rest, after thinking deeply on the problem for a long time, and on getting up the next morning discovered to his intense surprise on his table several sheets of paper on which he had worked out a complete solution to the problem.  

In 1932, the famous Naturalist Professor Agassiz was busy with his monumental study of fossil fishes. In one case he could not reconstruct the fish from the imprint left on the slab. At this juncture he experienced three dreams of the fish on succeeding nights. In the third dream the entire fish stood reconstructed before him. He then drew on paper in the dark a copy of his vision and on consulting the slab in the morning found that the dream reconstruction was correct.

Scientist & Philosopher Goethe solved many scientific problems in his dreams.

Only he who can see the invisible can do the impossible. Frank L. Gaines

NOBEL PRIZE WINNER OTTO LOEWI

The Chemical Transmission of an Electron

Otto Loewi (1873-1961) was a German physiologist who won the Nobel Prize for medicine in 1936 for his work on the chemical transmission of nerve impulses. In 1903, Loewi had the idea that there might be a chemical transmission of the nervous impulse rather than an electrical one, which was the common held belief, but he was at a loss on how to prove it. He let the idea slip to the back of his mind until 17 years later he had the following dream:

The night before Easter Sunday, I awoke, turned on the light, and jotted down a few notes on a tiny slip of paper. Then I fell asleep again. It occurred to me at 6 o'clock in the morning that during the night I had written down something most important, but I was unable to decipher the scrawl. The next night, at 3 a.m. the idea returned. It was the design of an experiment to determine whether or not the hypothesis of chemical transmission that I had uttered 17 years ago was correct. I got up immediately, went to the lab, and performed a single experiment on a frog's heart according to the nocturnal design.

It took Loewi a decade to carry out a decisive series of tests to satisfy his critics, but ultimately the result of his dream delineated experiment became the foundation for the theory of chemical transmission of nerve impulses and led to a Nobel Prize! LOEWI NOTED:

Most so called 'intuitive' discoveries are such associations made in the subconscious.

The Discovery of Neurotransmitters, Elliot S Valenstein; Otto Loewi, An Autobiographical Sketch, Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, Fall 1960.

FRIEDRICH A. KEKULE MAKESTWODISCOVERIES IN DREAMS

The Structure Theory of Molecules

In a speech given to the German Chemistry Society, Kekule described the dream that led him to the Structure Theory:

I fell into a reverie, and lo, the atoms were gamboling before my eyes! Whenever, hitherto, these diminutive beings had appeared to me, they had always been in motion; but up to that time, I had never been able to discern the nature of their motion. Now, however, I saw how, frequently, two smaller atoms united to form a pair; how a larger one embraced the two smaller ones; how still larger ones kept hold of three or even four of the smaller; whilst the whole kept whirling in a giddy dance. I saw how the larger ones formed a chain, dragging the smaller ones after them, but only at the ends of the chain. The cry of the conductor - Clapham Road - wakened me. I spent part of the night putting sketches of these dream forms on paper. This was the origin of the Structural Theory.

The Benzene Structure

One of the most revolutionary findings in organic chemistry was the discovery of the structure of the Benzene molecule. Kekule worked for years to discover the atomic structure of benzene as a closed carbon ring. In a dream, he discovered that unlike other known organic compounds, Benzene had a circular rather than a linear structure. One night he dreamed of many snakes flitting about together. They finally coalesced into a ring of six snakes chasing each others' tails, whirling around in a circle. When he awoke, he correctly interpreted the snake hexagon as the elusive structure of the benzene ring. As he described it:

I was sitting writing in my notebook, but the work did not progress; my thoughts were elsewhere. I turned my chair toward the fire, fell asleep and dreamed of atoms gamboling before my eyes. This time the smaller groups kept modestly in the background. My mental eye, rendered more acute by the repeated sequences, could now distinguish larger structures of manifold conformation; long rows sometimes more closely fitted together all twining and twisting in snake-like motion. But look! What was that? One of the snakes had seized hold of its own tail, and the form whirled mockingly before my eyes. As if by a flash of lightning I awoke. And this time also I spent the rest of the night in working out the consequences of the hypothesis.

The snake seizing its own tail gave Kekule the circular structure idea he needed to solve the Benzene problem!   Serendipity, Accidental Discoveries in Science, by R.M. Robert

An excited Kekule said to his colleagues: "Let us learn to dream!"

C.J. WALKER - FROM DREAM TO MILLIONAIRE

Madame C.J. Walker (1867-1919) is cited by the Guinness Book of Records as the first female American self-made millionaire. She was also the first member of her family born free. Walker founded and built a highly successful African-American cosmetic company that made her a millionaire many times over. She suffered from a scalp infection that caused her to lose her hair and began to experiment with what patented medicines and hair-care products were available at the time. None helped. Then, she had a dream that solved her problems:  

He answered my prayer, for one night I had a dream, and in that dream a big, black man appeared to me and told me what to mix up for my hair. Some of the remedy was grown in Africa. I sent for it, mixed it, put it on my scalp, and in a few weeks my hair was coming in faster than it had ever fallen out. I tried it on my friends; it helped them. I made up my mind to begin to sell it.

Walker was an entrepreneur, philanthropist and social activist. She sums up her rise from a childhood of poverty to being the head of an international, multimillion dollar corporation in the following quote:

I am a woman who came from the cotton fields of the South. From there I was promoted to the washtub. From there I was promoted to the cook kitchen. And from there I promoted myself into the business of manufacturing hair goods and preparations. I built my own factory on my own ground.

On Her Own Ground: the Life and Times of Madam C.J. Walker, Lelia P. Bundles, 2001
Hope in a Jar: The Making of America's Beauty Culture, Kathy Peiss, 1999, Owl Books

ELIAS HOWE INVENTS THE SEWING MACHINE

Elias Howe had been trying for years to invent an automated sewing machine that could revolutionize the sewing industry. He first tried using a needle that was pointed at both ends, with an eye in the middle, but it was a failure. Exhausted by his work, he fell asleep one night and   dreamed he had been captured by a tribe of savages who demanded that he produce a working sewing machine. He failed, so they decided to cut off his head. He managed to escape. The natives pursued him, lobbing spears at him as they ran. In the dream, Howe noticed that each of the spears contained a hole in the spearhead. When he woke up he realized

When he woke up he realized the dream had brought the solution to his problem. The hole should not be in the dull end of the needle as it was for sewing by hand, but in the sharp end, so that it could draw thread downward through the fabric resting on the table. He changed his design to incorporate the idea and found it worked! Before long, he developed a working model of a sewing machine. His 1845 patent remained the working model for over one hundred and fifty years. The rest is corporate history.

A Popular History of American Invention, W. Kaempffert, Ed. Vol. II, New York: Scribner's Sons, 1924.    

Nothing happens unless first a dream.   Carl Sandburg

Jack Nicklaus Finds New Golf Swing

Jack Nicklaus on the cover Golf Magazine - January 1964.

Jack Nicklaus told a friend that he improved his golf swing after dreaming of new way of holding his club, which he credits to improving his golf game. In 1964, Nicklaus was having a bad slump and routinely shooting in the high seventies. After suddenly regaining top scores he reported:

Wednesday night I had a dream and it was about my golf swing. I was hitting them pretty good in the dream and all at once I realized I wasn't holding the club the way I've actually been holding it lately. I've been having trouble collapsing my right arm taking the club head away from the ball, but I was doing it perfectly in my sleep. So when I came to the course yesterday morning I tried it the way I did in my dream and it worked. I shot a sixty-eight yesterday and a sixty-five today.     Jack Nicklaus, as told to a San Francisco Chronicle reporter, 27 June 1964

Mathematical Genius, Ramanujan

Analytic Theory. Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887-1920) was one of India's greatest mathematical geniuses. He made substantial contributions to analytical theory of numbers and worked on elliptical functions, continued fractions, and infinite series. In 1914, he was invited in to Cambridge University by the English mathematician G. H. Hardy who recognized his unconventional genius. He worked there for five years producing startling results and proved over 3,000 theorems in his lifetime.

Infinite series for π. Example of formulae Ramanujan developed that led to new directions of research in mathematics.

According to Ramanujan, Insight came many times in dreams. A Hindu goddess would appear and present mathematical formulae which he would verify after waking. Such dreams often recurred and this connection of dreams as a source was constant throughout his life. Here is a description of one mathematical discovery that came in a dream:

While asleep I had an unusual experience. There was a red screen formed by flowing blood as it were. I was observing it. Suddenly a hand began to write on the screen. It got my attention. The hand wrote a number of results in elliptic integrals. They stuck in my mind. As soon as I woke up, I wrote them down.

A friend noted how common this dream experience was, explaining:

"Ramanujan was staying with my father in Madras. Both of them often worked on math problems till 11:30 pm. Often Ramanujan would get up at about 2 a.m. and write something down. When asked about this, he explained that he worked out math solutions in his dreams and was jotting down the results to remember them."

Ramanujan, the Man and the Mathematician, S. R. Ranganathan, 1967