People in ancient times – perhaps because they were more superstitious and ignorant, perhaps because their simple lives were much closer to the verities – placed far more importance on dreams than we do today.
True, our modern world has its volumes of dream interpretation by modern soothsayer and modern psychiatrist alike; it has its scientists probing into the mechanics of dreams; it has its psychologists connecting dreams to the subconscious mind. But it is a rare modern man who seriously wonders if some dreams might not be simple, uncluttered communications with the psychic world.
We know that the royal courts of Babylon and Nineveh employed men whose sole job was to interpret dreams; and we read in Acts 16:9 of a divinely inspired dream – “And a vision appeared to Paul in the night: There stood a man of Macedonia, and prayed him, saying, Come over into Macedonia, and help us.” – which changed St. Paul’s life.
Are not some dreams psychic experiences in themselves? Few Americans are unfamiliar with the death dreams of Abraham Lincoln. This realistic, practical American repeatedly dreamed of attending his own funeral, the last time only a few days before his tragic assassination. In early April of 1865 the tall, bearded President told guests at a White House party of his previous night’s dream. He was walking in the White House, he said, and suddenly became aware of the sound of weeping. He traced the voice to the East Room, where he saw mourners and guards surrounding a casket. “Who is dead?” Lincoln asked a soldier. “The President is dead,” the soldier replied. “Killed by an assassin.”
A few days later, on Good Friday, April 14, the President and Mrs. Lincoln sat in a private box in Ford’s Theater in Washington watching Our American Cousin. And it was then, during intermission, that John Wilkes Booth made Lincoln’s dream of death come true.
Benjamin Franklin told friends that often his dreams had foretold the outcome of events that were of great concern to him. And Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the great English poet, composed several hundred lines of his famous poem “Kubla Khan” while dreaming during an afternoon nap. Upon awakening he immediately began to record the wonderful imagery – now not composing poetry but merely writing it from memory. He was interrupted in this task, and when he returned, the unrecorded verses had vanished, as had his dream. I have had a somewhat similar experience, although the three verses which resulted were not written by me, nor are they of the same literary quality as “Kubla Khan.”
Howard Arnold Walter is dead now – perhaps he would prefer me to say “gone to the other side” – stricken while serving as a missionary in Lahore, India. His wife and my sister Anna had been roommates in a New York City training school for Christian workers, and Howard and I became close friends. His interest in psychic forces equaled mine, and we spent long hours together in serious discussion of this subject, for both he and his wife were extremely sensitive to psychic phenomena. Howard Walter was a friend who touched my innermost being, who understood and felt my unspoken thoughts, a remarkable man, one of those rare persons to whom you really feel close in both mind and spirit.
A few years after Howard’s death in India, Marion and I attended a student conference in Northfield, Massachusetts, staying in the same hotel where we had often met the Walters during similar conferences.
One night, after a particularly satisfying day of accomplishment, I dreamed of Howard Walter. In the dream he sat comfortably and talked with me, and then he began to recite a poem, one that was much like those he had written when he had been alive. When the dream faded and I woke I could remember only the first line: “Who is so low that I am not his brother?” I blinked my eyes in the darkness, attempting to bring back the forgotten lines, but I failed and I fell into dreamless sleep.
The following night Howard again appeared, again recited the poem, and then said, “Get up and write the words on paper.”
I responded immediately. I awoke and went to the desk, rustling through the drawer for a sheet of hotel stationery. Glancing at my watch I noted it was exactly two o’clock in the morning. Marion continued to sleep as I recorded the twelve lines of verse. They flowed from my mind as easily as the ink from my fountain pen; I was not composing, I was merely recording, recalling his words from my memory and setting them down on paper. Like Coleridge with his “Kubla Khan,” my writing took no mental effort.
Here are the dictated words of Howard Arnold Walter:
Who is so low that I am not his brother?
Who is so high that I’ve no path to him?
Who is so poor I may not feel his hunger?
Who is so rich I may not pity him?
Who is so hurt I may not know his heartache?
Who sings for joy my heart may never share?
Who in God’s heaven has passed beyond my vision?
Who to Hell’s depths where I may never fare?
May none, then, call on me for understanding,
May none, then, turn to me for help in pain,
And drain alone his bitter cup of sorrow,
Or find he knocked upon my heart in vain.
This untitled “dream” poem expressed exactly the point of view that Howard held on earth; it is in the same meter as one of his life-composed poems, “I Would Be True for There Are Those Who Trust Me,” an inspirational verse that is well known around the world. I am sure that this dream poem was not written by S. Ralph Harlow, even half asleep, even by my subconscious in a half-dream world. I cannot help thinking that it was the personality of Harold Arnold Walter, surviving death, that gave to my mind these lines.
If dreams, or at least some of them, are indeed psychic experiences, perhaps we approach an explanation to the “I’ve been here before” experience that almost all of us have felt at one time or another in our lives. You are exploring a wooded path on a gentle slope in New Hampshire, and you have never been to New Hampshire before. It is pleasant and quiet, and a sense of peace lulls you into wonderful tranquility. Your senses somehow seem sharpened, and although there is not the excitement of new awareness you begin to feel that you can see more and feel more in a new perspective. Then, dimly, you begin to know that this path, this forest, this day is a timeless place and a timeless time; that you have been here before.
You are not surprised to find the split birch or the bole of the beech around the next curve of the path; you have seen them before, although you have never been there before. Do all forest paths have split birches or smooth-skinned beeches? you ask yourself in some elated confusion. And you answer: Perhaps, only perhaps, and if they do, are they always in this precise position, and would I know the pattern of the ancient lichen spattered green on the glacial boulder to my right? Yet I do; for these things I know: I have been here before, I have walked this path; yet I know that I have not. A tiny, shining facet of our minds reflects the memories of things unseen but seen, unknown but known; and somehow we are struck momentarily with a fleeting sense of the eternal.
It goes quickly, this glimpse of greater glory, but most of us have had it, regretting when it is taken back from us – sometimes snatched suddenly as if the giver changed his mind; sometimes drained slowly from our senses and leaving us again with unsatisfying reality.
Have we dreamed these experiences, these times when we recognize rooms and faces and strange places which we have never seen before, and then stored them into our subconscious for later recall? And if we have indeed dreamed them just how can we explain the precise accuracy of our dreams in foretelling what we are yet to see?
I remember a student – let’s call her Anne – telling me of such a dream, a recurrent, serial-story dream, with each chapter of the experience connected to the last installment. Always the scene opened on a street corner in a small New England town. There were white-painted clapboard houses with shutters the color of ancient weathered copper. There were green lawns and lilacs and forsythia. And in each dream a young girl was waiting for her. She and Anne would chat on the corner for a moment and then stroll a hundred yards to a large old house with a huge veranda. Inside, in the big living room, a group of young people would already be gathered, and Anne and her dream companion would join them, singing around the piano, playing parlor games, and spending endless hours in young people’s discussions.
Each dream was essentially a repetition of the first one; the circumstances of meeting were identical – always on the same street corner – and the stroll to the house, up the long walk to the veranda and into the living room to see the same young people gather. As the dream sequence progressed, Anne became acquainted with the other youth in the house, learned their names and characteristics, their likes and dislikes, and she became very fond of them.
And then one night, when the dream had run for perhaps a dozen nights, Anne met her friend on the comer and found her depressed and sad. “This is our last meeting,” her dream friend said, “I will see you but you will not see me.” Anne brushed aside the words of her friend, saying, “Of course we shall meet again.” But they never did; the dreams stopped suddenly and never recurred.
A few months later, with her father and sister, who had come from Michigan for her graduation, Anne was driving up the New England coast. None of the family had ever seen the Atlantic shore, and they toured from Boston into Maine, enjoying the early summer beauty and exploring the small seacoast colonial towns.
Then suddenly in one small coastal village Anne recognized the street comer where she had met her dream friend so many times. Excitedly she said, “Father, turn left here. Turn left at this comer.” And her father was obedient to his daughter’s request.
“Four more houses,” Anne said as they drove slowly up the street. “Three more. It’s on the right just on the other side of that lilac hedge. Now. Stop here, Father. Right here. In front of this house.”
Anne got out of the car. It was the house. Identical with that in her dreams. The same lilac hedge, the same four wide wooden steps to the veranda, the same huge door with tarnished brass knocker and with small rectangular panes set on each side of it. But now the lawn needed mowing and a black and white sign near the walk said “For Rent.” She walked up the steps and peered into the empty building. She looked in through the bay window, past the window seat where she had sat in so many of her dreams; she saw the fireplace, empty and black now instead of dancing with flames as she had known it; and the staircase once used in her dreams as a sort of choir loft for singing youngsters. It was the house she had known, but it was empty now, its furniture gone, its floors bare and dusty, its youthful voices transferred to some other place – or to some other dreams.
In one definition of the word, Anne’s dreams were consecutive; but a series of dreams would be a more accurate description, because in the literature of psychic phenomena there is a consecutive dream that involves two or more persons. In such dreams one person experiences the first part of the incident, and another takes up the dream where the first leaves off. One example of this was supplied by a former student of mine who frequently shared consecutive dreams with her mother.
The daughter reported that she dreamed she and her mother were canoeing in a swift river above a waterfall. They lost control of the canoe, and in spite of their desperate paddling they were drawn to the edge of the falls. The canoe teetered and they were swept away into the rapids below. At this point she woke, her hands clenched, her breathing heavy, her night clothing damp with perspiration. Then she returned to sleep and spent the rest of the night in peaceful, dreamless sleep.
Next morning she told her mother, who slept in the adjoining bedroom, about her dream and was told that her mother had continued the event. Her dream had begun as she and her daughter struggled in the water at the foot of the falls, and had continued until they reached the shore, bedraggled and exhausted.
Some people have identical dreams during the same night and apparently at the same time. Dr. Hornell Hart, formerly a member of the Duke University faculty and a man who has made an exhaustive study of dreams, records one identical dream he shared with his wife. Both dreamed they walked together in the garden; he discovered their dreams were the same while describing his dream to her. He incorrectly named a flower in the dream garden, and she corrected him; then they knew that they were sharing not only their waking lives but also their dream world.
There is always the possibility that a dream can be a psychic communication with someone we have known in this life and who has gone on to the next one. Only recently my wife Marion reported to me an experience that strengthens this possibility. Marion, recovering from a broken hip, shared her hospital room with Ruth, the elderly widow of a musician.
One morning after their early hospital breakfast Ruth said, “Marion, last night I saw my husband.” Marion was immediately alert because of her interest in psychic phenomena.
“It was a dream,” Ruth said, “but it was so vivid. He was carrying his cornet and he played for me.” Her voice softened and grew lower. “I’ve heard him play it many times. I recognized it. It was Chopin’s ‘Funeral March.’ And when he’d finished he said, ‘Ruth, I need you over here. Come to me.’” And that evening Ruth, who was expected to be discharged from the hospital in a few days, did go over to her husband. She died quietly in her sleep.
I was attending a meeting in a neighboring town when I was informed of her death, and on the way home I thought of her previous night’s dream and of the request made by her dead husband. At home I switched on the hall light; it burned steadily for a few minutes and then suddenly went out. It was a fairly new bulb and I remembered inserting it only a short time before. Therefore I tested it in a floor lamp. It burned brightly, and I knew I would need to call an electrician the next day to repair the hall switch, for there, obviously, was the trouble.
Then I thought, of Ruth’s death and our previous flashlight experience after the death of Helen, and I returned the bulb to its socket in the hall ceiling. It burned brightly and steadily. Only six hours previously I had held Ruth’s hand and she had said to me in a strong voice, “I will be all right.” Was the erratic light bulb just that – a manufacturer’s error that escaped detection and was brought back to life by my handling of it? Or was its behavior some signal from Ruth that there is life after death – that there is survival of personality?
Excerpt from A Life After Death