PHYSICAL DREAMS

Prognosis of disease at times might be called precognition, if the psychic element is added to conscious knowledge.  Several instances in which dreams added this psychic content occurred among our patients.

One of Gladys' patients was due to have her first baby.  Early in the morning of the day she went into labor she had a dream.  In it, as had actually happened, a friend of hers gave her a teddy bear.  But in the dream the teddy bear had been cut open in the tummy - not a midline incision, but a suprapubic kind of opening such as would be done in a Caesarean section operation.  She sewed up the opening; the dream ended.  In the hospital her labor did not progress.  She told Gladys the dream, wondering if it meant she would have to have an operation.  Judging from the x-rays that there was enough room for a normal delivery, Gladys discounted the implications of the dream.  However, at 1 a.m. it became obvious that labor was not going to progress and surgery became mandatory, as the dreamer's psychic sense had in fact predicted.  In retrospect, Gladys realized that she had really felt the same probability of surgery after hearing the dream, and was trying to avoid it with positive input to the patient.  Such dreams as this one are really more common than one would suspect.

    Death is often predicted when it hardly seems reasonable to the conscious mind.  This happened to a family who are both friends and patients of mine.  The husband, with a long history of heart disease, had refused to come in for an evaluation of his condition, insisting to his wife on the very night of his demise that "this is thy heart." About a week prior to the attack that brought about his death, his wife had a dream.  The two of them were walking down a road that stretched out a long way.  A little ahead, another road branched off to the left, and before it a bridge with a little building beside it crossed over a stream.  The two disagreed: he wanted to cross over the bridge; she wanted to take the road to the left.  This road was straight, well paved, and seemed obviously the correct route.  She went into the little building and found a jolly, heavy-set woman who volunteered the information that the road chosen by the dreamer was the correct one.  She looked then at the bridge and saw wispy, wavy, ill-defined figures, weaving and moving in the middle of the bridge.  She felt apprehensive about her husband and went to look for him but could not find him.  The dream ended there.

    Less than a week later the heart attack came.  The wife understands the spiritual implications and importance of dreams, and it was helpful to her to be given the understanding that it was by his own choice that her husband took the path he did.

    Another case concerns Julie, a beautiful young woman, who developed a malignant melanoma.  She was just about convinced that she wanted to use meditation, visualization, prayer, and the laying on of hands from many of her friends as assurance that there would be no further spread of the cancer into the axilla of her right arm.  After we talked, she said that she would probably come out to the Clinic soon for some treatment and instructions about diet and general care.  She wasn't sure whether or not she would take her surgeon's advice to have further surgery as a preventative, but she thought she would not.

    About two years later Julie arrived at the Clinic.  She had had a dream, after which she decided on having the surgery.  Here's what Julie dreamed:

    "It was morning and I was walking to the top of a hill.  There was a house there that had been inhabited by thieves.  It was empty and freshly painted.  There were no windows or doors - just the cut-out places where they should have been.  Sun was streaming in. I went across the fields around the house, and, as far as the eye could see, there were dead rodents (rats, squirrels, mice, chipmunks, etc.). In the dream I knew they were the melanoma cells.  Finally, I came upon a pool of water with the one living animal left standing there at the edge of the pool - a beaver.  We looked at each other and then he reached up and quickly scratched my right arm twice and then fell into the pool of water.  I knew that if I looked into the water I would know the outcome of my cancer case.  I looked over the edge and saw the beaver disappear and the water turn to a crystal clear blue.  I rubbed my arm but the long and short scratches would not disappear."

    It was interesting in light of the dream that on Julie's back and right axilla, there are two surgical scars - one long, one short.  Isn't it fascinating - the kind of symbology the unconscious mind will present when an important message needs to be delivered to the dreamer?  Reminds me of a statement that is found in the Kabala - a dream not interpreted is like a letter unopened.

[Note: The preceding case reports were written by William McGarey, M. D. and is excerpted from The A.R.E. Journal, November, 1978, Volume 13, No. 6, page 266, Copyright © 1978 by the Edgar Cayce Foundation, Virginia Beach, VA.]