The Power of Dreams

Why do we dream? How have dreams helped inspire creative artists? How useful are they in daily problem solving? What evidence is there for second sight in dreaming? How much can dreams tell us about the future? In this wide ranging and immensely stimulating account, Brian Inglis first sifts the historical evidence and then describes recent scientific research, before proclaiming the empirical evidence both for a psychic element in dreams and for their frequently beneficial value in our day-to-day lives. He refers to the influences of ‘visions of the night’ on writers like Robert Louis Stevenson, Edgar Allen Poe, Sir Walter Scott, WB Yeats and Graham Greene. He quotes the testimony of scientists like Nils Bohr, Henri Fabre, and Frederick Kekulé (who remarked: ‘Let us learn to dream, gentlemen, and then perhaps we’ll discover the truth’); and he cites instances of how specific dreams have served as ‘memory joggers’ or solved working problems in the case of inventors like Elias Howe (who invented the sewing machine) and sportsmen like Jack Nicklaus. The evidence for extra sensory communication in dreams is rich and enthralling - much of it derived from the contemporary archives of the Koestler Foundation. Precognition of dreams (as in ‘disaster’ or ‘farewell’ dreams), prophetic dreams, warning dreams and ‘lucid’ dreams are all indications that the mind in sleep can pick up useful information not ordinarily available to us when we are awake. ’To sleep, perchance to dream’: the evolutionary potential of dreams has barely been tapped. Brian Inglis shows that it is we who can be the explorers now.