As the experts tell it and us, there is a shortage of credit available to people. It must be no accident that one can broaden the concept and say there is a shortage of credibility available to the people around the world in their leaders.

It is interesting that the finance ministers of the great nations are compelled to meet to do something to allay fears and to alleviate the problems suddenly before them.

However, why should we as a people of any country believe in what the finance ministers say? After all it was their policies which brought us this disaster.

It is also striking that the experts talk banalities over and over. Certainly they must believe in the magic of their words. Psychoanalysts are quite familiar with this kind of thinking. Saying something does not, unfortunately, bring it into being. Again, analysts are quite aware that saying things to patients may have no impact at all, especially if the patient is in a negative transference or has reason to distrust the analyst. Here the patient is the people.

In real life when a patient has a crisis; i.e. septicemia or kidney failure or even a heart attack, we as physicians do emergency things to prevent a death. Even as we do this we are already at work attempting to discern the cause of the crisis.

What is notable about the political community is that their mantra contains slogans for the future. However, there is little attempt to explain the cause of the breakdown to the people suffering the “illness”.

Lack of credit is no satisfactory answer anymore than pumping billions into the pipeline is really a satisfactory solution without explaining exactly how all this came about.

The fact that it came at us like the tsunami in Asia a few years ago indicates the immaturity of the leadership. I think it would be safe to say on a smaller scale that the mother and father of the family failed the children miserably in their responsibilities to the children and are still failing them.

What we need to hear as a body politic is exactly the cause of the breakdown. We do not need a variety of financial wizards to give us diverse opinions as to the cause. In a like way the family might doubt the physician. If a number of experts gave different explanations of the crisis the sick family member finds himself in, how could anyone trust the method of cure? So far nothing like a scientific course of action or discourse has been taken.

It has always been the way of leaders to try and calm an upset body politic. However, with a depression quite close upon us in the United States -- following in Europe and elsewhere -- the fears of the electorate have already broken through their normal repression. It is not enough to say to the people “We will take care of the problem and look, we have gathered the world’s leaders to do exactly that”. Again the reply would be “Why should we trust you? We are already in great trouble. Where were you when it should have been stopped or seen coming from afar, and what was done to stop it then?”

I understand that no scientist would argue what astronomers hold to be true: after billions of years since the universe came into being, nine tenths of it is unknown to us. Scientists say dark matter and dark energy comprise ninety percent of the universe. I have put forward that, likewise, we as human beings have minds that in parallel fashion have ninety percent of the mind unknown to us. We call it the unconscious. What is known about the unconscious and accepted as fact by experts in the field is that it really rules our lives. The ten percent that is conscious gives only the illusion that it is in control. Our unconscious is in control of our autonomic system, therefore, we do not have to think about the regulation of our heart, our kidneys, our liver function, and our endocrine system. Indeed it is when these regulatory bodies go awry and the organ breaks down that there is an unconscious alarm and it consciously ignites the need for help. The unconscious is also an infinite vessel from which our feelings flow.

It is very difficult for people to think their lives are essentially controlled by their unconscious. For example, I had a patient who had been in very good health all his life. Now, over seventy-five, he had a gastro-intestinal crisis. This was investigated thoroughly with colonoscopy, gastroscopy, blood work, and scan. Nothing of significance was discovered. Leading physicians were consulted and nothing physical could be said to be the cause.

However, there were several emotional events that were indeed involved and these were worked on by dream analysis. Further, his dreams predicted good times were ahead for him, even as the emotional reasons for the crisis were addressed. My point in telling this story is that my patient is an intelligent man, well read, still working in his field, and yet he tells me, “I do not believe the doctors. They must have missed something; a parasite, a virus, a yeast. Maybe I will go to the Mayo Clinic. I said, besides making my interpretation, that he should go to satisfy his discontent.

I knew that the Mayo Clinic would find nothing and only repeat what already had been done. Finally he said, “Well, I will allow the unconscious to play a fifty percent part in this and that is all.” I laughed but thought how proud we are of our own intelligence, especially when it has worked for us in the past. It doesn’t matter whether this man says his unconscious has only contributed fifty percent to his crisis when the fact is that the involvement is certainly ninety percent if not more. As an aside, it wouldn’t have mattered if someone in Galileo’s time would have said to him, “To me the earth is the center of the universe and not the sun.” The parallel is the same. It makes no difference what people think. The scientific fact is the fact and it is the fact on which more science and more information is built.

As a postscript this man is very lucky for having had a mother who gave him the slightest of imprints and a joy for life; in my experience very rare.

Another example I would like to give is one of recently giving a lecture at a Congress in Heidelberg, Germany, in which I explained my discoveries of the mother’s imprint on the fetus. There was an older physician in the audience who became increasingly agitated and needed to question my theory about the mother and fetus. He delivered a very knowledgeable two-minute talk on the chorionic hormones and the placental hormones, saying they had their way of physically protecting the fetus. I am sure they do, but I was specifically speaking of the unconscious of the mother projecting her painful unwanted feelings into the fetus -- the big bang of fetal life in which ill effects are carried on through adult life with deleterious consequences. This gentleman had difficulty accepting the idea of the power of the unconscious to do as it feels it has to do, completely outside the conscious awareness of the mother. In reality, our only tool to thwart its malicious effects is to make the events known to the pregnant mother. Awareness is all, even if it is only a beginning.

My contention is that despite the fact that we are all marked by an imprint and all of us suffer in some small or big way from it and compensate in some way for it, we cannot do away with it. No one can other than by undergoing a thorough analysis of its origin and effects.

Now if what I say and believe is true, then our unconscious rules all of our lives and it is through our dreams that we can lift the curtain on areas of darkness. Thus, we have a tool that enables us to shed light, to shed truth and awareness that stands equal with any science.

If we consider this fact, it seems unforgivable not to bring to the table of humanity -- now increasingly full of problems -- the one sure beam of light that can provide a glimmer of right thinking and right action.

The history of mankind is again proving that rational thought alone does not work. Bringing the best minds to sit in the same room gleaning their thoughts and solutions does not work in the long run for the human race.

For us to rely on ten percent of our minds for solutions to the problems of our country, indeed to the problems of the world, is simply unethical and immoral.

We have a great mass of both energy and knowledge in our unconscious available to the entire world. We must not argue. We must not dismiss the probable only source of information that in the long run can be found reliable and eminently trustworthy.

By now the fears of the people are sufficiently aroused so that they will not be conveniently put back into repression. The genie of fear has come out of the bottle and we will have to contend with it. Knowledge of the where and how these fears arose is essential to understand, as is the means to combat them in a way to really quiet them. Think of the world as a squalling, fretful unhappy baby who twists and arches his back as the mother tries to hold it. There is no trust in this mother for the baby. There is no trust in any of the leaders of the world either.

Heidelberg, October 2008

CASE ONE

Elizabeth is in her mid forties. She came to analysis because she felt she was not achieving her potentialities. Having a first rate intelligence, confirmed by high academic excellence in an Eastern university with majors in business and advertising, she settled into a middle management job in a leading advertising agency.

Her personal life was equally devoid of great achievement or passion. There were a number of love affairs of varying duration that ended suddenly or just withered away in disinterest.

More recently, after she had engaged in superficial liaisons with a variety of men, she decided to go celibate until she found the right man. She felt sure that she would as a matter of conviction.

She is an attractive, brown eyed, dark wavy-haired woman. She has no problem in drawing men to her. Before she entered analysis with me, she had a variety of therapies none of which satisfied her quick intelligence and what I found to be a deep intuitive capacity to grasp essentials beneath the glitter. She was somewhat weary and discouraged that there would be no help available. She had tried the analytic people in New York and she felt, paraphrasing the old song, “if you don’t make it there you won’t make it anywhere.”

Her background was that of a middle class family, a father who was a lawyer and successful, a mother who although a credentialed teacher decided to devote her life to her children, the patient and a boy older than her by 4 years. The older brother derided and devalued the patient with the implicit consent of the mother. As we worked, and had been working for five years, her mother’s message unconsciously was that she was not first rate, that she was not to entertain high ambition, that she was not to attain anything of a superior nature.

She was in short living out, unknowingly, her mother’s unconscious imprint and was quietly and desperately unhappy wondering whether she could make it through a lifetime in this fashion.

She had moved to Los Angeles years ago as a choice thinking to change her luck. Unknowingly she had. A friend said to her, “You ought to check this man out. See if he suits you.” So it was she had read my essays on my website and found herself intrigued enough to see what I was like in person.

She saw and decided to stay. Now, years after that beginning, she ascended to her position in the agency and was just about to get a partnership.

Having broken through the unconscious restraint of a powerful imprint, her versatility and intuitiveness was natural for the work she was doing.

I had just come back from meetings in Europe. She vaguely knew I was talking about my theory there. She had no doubt that I was right about my theory. Her current life was proof of it in contrast to the prior many years of lassitude and mediocrity.

She said, “I must have been following you in my unconscious. I had this dream last night.” The following is her dream.

DREAM

I was in a European city but I do not know which. It could be Paris or Rome, any big European city. It is dusk and there are hundreds of people in the street, overflowing. Suddenly there was a cloud that began to engulf the people. They fell either unconscious or dead. I didn’t know which. I was so scared that the cloud would engulf me but it didn’t. I see a young woman begin to fall. She was about to be swept under when an older man sweeps her up to rush her to the hospital. I could see that he wanted to run but could not. He was about 65. I ran over and took the woman from his arms and began to run with her. Somehow I could. I felt it was really urgent to get her to the hospital. I didn’t know how I knew where to go.

Associations

Patient: I woke up knowing what the dream meant.

Dr. B: What did you think?

Patient: The man is you. I worry about your dying. Christ, you are so old and you haven’t got the strength to carry the young woman, the “unconscious”, to safety quickly. I guess you must have had the usual experience that is over there as well as here that people are not paying attention to the most important part of the mind – the unconscious.

Interpretation

Dr. B: I can understand your anxiety about my age. But the fact is that there is no way to run with the unconscious. You just have to interpret it as often as you can, which is why it is better to come to analysis three to four times a week to save you from anxiety and pain. That’s indeed what I found.

Speaking of urgency, one cannot cajole or threaten the unconscious the way King Canute the Great commanded the tides to cease. Of course they didn’t. That being the case, King Canute allowed that there was only a king of kings and never wore his crown again, so the story goes. In a like way, we cannot command the unconscious.

Though I acknowledge your effort, it is not your burden to carry the mass unconscious to safety. That would really be more than any of us individually can do. We have to take care of ourselves first of all. That is burden enough.

Now let me say it more specifically. Despite my age, your dream shows I am capable of carrying the young woman, who represents the mass unconscious. Your dream says further that the mass unconscious is asleep or dead. I am doing what I have to do. You are sensing my urgency of what I feel is most pressing -- the need to rush to carry the mass unconscious to the hospital for resuscitation.

That is, in fact, how I feel. The mass unconscious has to wake up everywhere. We cannot leave our fate in the hands of equally asleep leaders. They can only devise clever intellectual strategies that may work for a time but, again, ultimately fail. Then there is the problem of great distrust. The solution to this has to be in consultation with the unconscious.

COMMENTARY

Patients quite often have dreams and awaken with a sure knowledge of their meaning. Obviously they have worked through a considerable amount of resistance in order to know unpleasant truths about themselves and their families.

This dream verifies for me the thesis I have laid out above, that it is now more important than ever to bring the unconscious into the domain of everyday life – especially at the highest levels of government.

It is clear that the recent events of the Wall Street collapse involving the rest of the world, for which the leaders had hoped to inject billions to restore confidence, has not worked. Unfortunately the genie of fear has been let out of the bottle. It will not easily be put back. This fear harkens back to the earliest infantile time when the baby is seized by a paralyzing fear and distress that it must set aside for it to continue to live. When this level is reopened, human beings can no longer resort to rational thinking. All events are viscerally determined and at this level of functioning people are easily led to irrational thought as well as behavior. (Note: The baby splits off the pathologic imprint of the mother in order to survive. It then has to deny the trauma and idealize the mother. If the idealization breaks down, all the distrust of the mother surfaces. This is where mankind is now.)

The fact that markets have continued to fall despite monetary aid reveals the deep distrust of people in charge. It has already been commented, “Why should the people trust those in charge when those in charge are responsible for the great collapse through incompetence or corruption?” That remains to be seen.

At any rate it would appear that the fox is still in charge of the hen house. As far as the people are concerned, all the chickens are worried. Who will be eaten next?

It is also clear that economic theories are fictions that happen to work just so long until the unconscious of men get in the way and break the illusion of knowledge. What do these learned men think and do if their theories do not work? What do they really think and what do they really feel?

In this context it is interesting and noteworthy to hear what Alan Greenspan says to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on October 23, 2008.

The longtime Fed chief acknowledged under questioning that he had made a "mistake" in believing that banks in operating in their self-interest would be sufficient to protect their shareholders and the equity in their institutions. Greenspan called it "a flaw in the model that I perceived is the critical functioning structure that defines how the world works."

What Mr. Greenspan doesn’t understand is that people have an unconscious and that they are not aware of what lies in their unconscious. It may very well be that the CEO’s in charge served their own self interests and didn’t particularly care about anyone else’s. Mr. Greenspan’s comment is a good example of what we in psychoanalysis call “the omnipotence of thought”, that is believing something or saying something doesn’t necessarily make it true. According to the chaos in the country, a lot of people, our leaders, were thinking “omnipotently”, not in touch with reality. In a similar way parents who are not in touch with reality do not serve their children well. What is further disturbing is that these children are being taught to do the same with their children. Thus illness and lack of responsibility goes on from generation to generation, unknowingly, unconsciously.

However, to continue with Mr. Greenspan's questioning at the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, he acknowledged he made mistakes. He then continued and said, "If all those extraordinarily capable people were unable to see the development of this critical problem, I think we have to ask ourselves why is that?" Greenspan said, "And the answer is that we are not smart enough as people. We just cannot see events that far in advance and unless we can, it is very difficult to look back and say 'Why didn't we catch something?'."

In the end Greenspan said, "FED economists - himself included - were not perfect. If we are right sixty percent of the time in forecasting, we are doing exceptionally well. That means we are wrong forty percent of the time. We can try to do better, but forecasting...never gets to the point where it is one hundred percent accurate."

The answer to his own question of “Why is this?” Any psychoanalyst would say he and those in similar positions were guilty of the "omnipotence of thought”. This is a state of mind in which the person believes a certain fact to be true. Sometimes he can put figures on a board to give it the semblance of truth. Obviously that is what happened. The fact ultimately is what Greenspan and Mr. Snow and many other "extraordinarily capable people" thought was true was not true.

In this way the "maestro", this name given to Greenspan, fell immediately into the dustbin of history. This is a cautionary tale for all who would let themselves be idealized, because the adoring crowds who once fawned will now savagely attack, which is what the Congressional panel did. It would seem the purity of the "maestro" was only the thin whitewash over a clay statue that crumbled, disintegrated and dissolved into dust, which the wind blew away. Thus history repeats itself endlessly – history that our leaders do not read or feel, and if they do, they are not to be so fated.

"Hubris" is what the Greeks called this and wrote plays about which are read and acted to this very day. In the nineteenth century Shelley summed it up in a powerful and beautiful poem of fourteen lines called "Ozymandias". One other thing about Greenspan: he gave his advice as to what measures to undertake at this time but then, according to his own estimates, why should he be believed? He and the others were not sixty percent right, as he avers the chances are, but one hundred percent wrong.

I have another answer to this question and that is consulting the unconscious through dreams. This consultation will give a ninety-five to one hundred percent accuracy about any event because the unconscious always works with Universal Law and the law of cause and effect that is simply and pitilessly true. A financial reporter for the Wall Street Journal commented on October 24, 2008, that the dirty little secret about the seven hundred billion dollar bailout is that the money will be given to banks to buy other banks and will not be available for loans to businesses that are starved for capital. Mr. Paulson has a plan to revamp the financial system and the way banks work. This he did not tell Congress. He lied. Obviously other people besides Paulson are aware of this. There seems to be no end to the betrayal of the people.

One notes a great weariness in the faces of all the leaders of the Western world. Their faces betray their alarm and their fear. What I have said of the emotional breakdown of the masses must also be true for those at the top. They, too, have had a childhood and infancy and a mother and an imprint.

As it is with the individual, when the defenses are pierced and the unconscious breaks through, desperation ensues. Foolish thoughts and foolish actions may follow.

No financial system is reflected in Universal Law but Universal Law holds sway in every financial theory and in every human life. Whatever theory that particular human may hold, the fundamental law that he and everyone must answer to is the law of cause and effect.

Our lives stand and fall on the basis of this law. As I understand it the human race stands a better chance of surviving if it gets in line with Universal Law rather than man-made law.

Finally this is not a time for clever rational thinking alone. Rational thinking is what has brought us to this point. Now is the urgent time to bring the wealth and the ingenuity and the truth that the unconscious has to bear on the great problems that face us all…. and there will be more.

A long look backward shows us that humanity has been evolving though it has continually stumbled over its own feet with foolish wars, foolish nationalism.

Consider the stars, consider the elements therein, and consider the very same elements lie in the Black, White and Yellow races. We all come from the womb burst by the big bang of 13.7 billion years ago, all made of hydrogen, helium, nitrogen, oxygen and so on. Again, the same, but in addition, only man has a mind and that mind has an unconscious that contains our dreams, and we have the key to access them.

John Donne’s bell is ringing -- for all of us.

***************************************************************************************

AFTER THOUGHTS

On considering the above essay, I thought it might be of interest at this epic moment in the history of the country and the world - for now all of us are involved - to consider what would people's unconscious be saying about these times.

So I turned to my patients who were willing to have their dreams written about and discussed. I express my gratitude to them for their generosity.

CASE TWO

I want to talk about Frank, a 53 year-old man who is a writer and a director of commercials. He speaks of a friend, Tim, whom he recently saw at a high school reunion and who he helped to make a film. This man did not graduate with his class, having been expelled for some infraction. The dream is as follows.

DREAM

There is a large bus filled with people. It is going down the hill. My friend Tim and I run after the bus and try to guide it. I in particular wanted to steer the bus to the right where there was a grassy knoll or hill that would stop the bus. It doesn't go right but left and further downward until it comes to rest deeper in the valley. Tim and I look inside the bus and we see our class is inside. All are asleep. Then Tim and I try to push the bus up and it is in this arduous effort that I wake up.

Associations

Having been in analysis a considerable time, he talks about his friend who came to the reunion and showed his movie, following which he asked the class to sign the class book. Though he did not graduate with the class, he felt a part of it. "It was a very moving moment for me and everyone," he said.

The patient went on to say, in terms of his work, that it was strange to see that his classmates were asleep, that indeed he felt the people of America and probably the world are asleep. Here in this room he realized that he could not really push the bus even with Tim helping and felt everyone in the bus would have to wake up, come out of the bus and help.

Interpretation

I agreed and put it specifically in terms of being awake to their unconscious where there is so much information ready for use. There are other associations that linked him to me so that we were both attempting to do this enormous job.

The patient said he had another dream.

DREAM

Here I found my Blackberry. It was enlarged and full of mud and water. I wondered if it could be rescued. I began to clean it and did get it clean. When I did I saw lights blinking and I knew that it was working again.

Associations

Patient: As I was doing this I recalled an old girlfriend with whom I lived for many years before I married. It was a difficult relationship, painful and deleterious to me. It took me a long time to separate from this woman, which I did, but not without a good deal of pain. What was strange was that in the dream, as I was cleaning the Blackberry, I began to have nostalgic feelings for this woman. I wake up at this point for I also recalled the pain as I was awakening. I thought, "What the hell. I thought I was finished with that."

Interpretation

Dr. B: Obviously, as you have already guessed, the Blackberry is your mind and that when you were with this woman you had sacrificed your mind to be with her. You were remembering the many painful times you suffered, especially the loss of your mind. But the dream ends well, for in the end you do have your mind. It works very well and you even say, "What the hell", as if to say, "What was I thinking?"

But I want you to know here that the idealization of this woman, the denial of pain, and the eroticizing of the whole experience, is not infrequent. Indeed it is exactly this way for many people and, for the patient, it was another edition of what he went through with his mother.

COMMENTARY

The dynamic of idealization, denial, and eroticization has an importance for the body politic. Thus, if we consider it as an entity and as the child, then we can see that when the leaders of the country cause undue pain and suffering to the body politic (the child), the mass unconscious knows how to respond -- which is how everyone responded in infancy -- and that is to deny the truth, to idealize the person, and to eroticize the situation.

In this way the body politic forgives the cruelty of the incompetence of the leader (parent) and the body politic forgives -- and keeps forgiving until the time when denial cannot suffice and the defense of denial and idealization break down. Then we get what the Congressional Committee was doing with Mr. Greenspan, the "Maestro". They denigrated him and devalued him. This is indeed the scenario when mobs kill their leaders.

CASE THREE

Here is another recent dream of a 60 year-old man of whom I have talked before in an essay "Lifeline" as well as others. He has been in analysis for a very long time. Though he never paid attention to what I interpreted from his dreams, he never considered stopping his work with me. He would go into one devastating marriage after another even when his dreams told him it would be a disaster. Finally he found a woman who wanted to destroy him. He had at last found the woman who would impose the sentence of his imprint given to him by his mother.

Already an alcoholic sister was dead and the youngest sibling of the family has recently died of an autoimmune disease called amyloidosis. This was the physical expression of the mother wanting this child to die as well. It is what she wanted unconsciously for all of her children whom she and the father abused in terrible ways.

Much has happened that I have recounted in other essays, including Why Mr. Dombrowski Doesn’t Have a Life, (2005), and The Mother’s Signature – The Silent Struggle, (2006), until the current time when he comes in with this dream.

DREAMS

I live in my house and I am apparently in an airplane, maybe a helicopter, for I see the estate of my neighbor. He is apparently a billionaire, B not M. His estate stretches over acres. I see horses and a huge mansion and I think, "How could I have lived here so many years and not know my neighbor is this incredibly rich man?" I find myself in my house thinking about this question.

I had a second dream in which I wanted to fix my chandelier in my dining room. I thought I needed two or three arms on the chandelier and I was thinking how should I replace them. Finally I thought I will call Baccarat. That is what I have so it would be best to have them complete the chandelier. I know it is going to be very expensive but I was willing to do it.

Associations

Patient: I am very absorbed with the financial crisis and I am very determined to get to understand it. I feel that no one in Washington would really tell the truth and the politicians of both parties as well as the financial community contributed to it. All would lie and disclaim responsibility. I really need to understand the root cause.

I thought my neighbor was so rich that even if he loses one half of his fortune he would still be very rich.

Dr. B: Did you know this neighbor or see this neighbor?

Patient: No.

I asked the question he really asked himself, "How could you live next door to the neighbor all these years and not know him?"

The patient was puzzled. He said, "I don't understand but I do want to understand what happened."

I said I thought that was a good idea. It is what we do as physicians. In order to treat physical disorders we must know the root cause. And further I know that he knew we could even come to the root cause of emotional illness. In fact we had done that with him.

The patient agreed.

Interpretations

I thought that the neighbor was myself but as representing the riches of the Divine, and I want to make it clear that I am not saying I have any special or supernatural powers. I simply tell him what I know about his dreams which have revealed the nature of his life. Further this ignorance of who the neighbor is represents the many years in which he ignored the information I was giving him all the time. Again it was something he had to do out of deference to his imprint and his fear that if he did listen to me his mother would kill him. The dream says the information (the riches) was there all the time. It was important that he not know it.

As for the second dream, again I think the chandelier is the light of God and it seems now he is willing to add the two or three missing arms to that picture even though he fears the price may be very high. The good thing about it is that he was willing to pay the high price.

Whatever the price, it will be cheap in comparison to what he has paid in the past years of his life, both in suffering and in actual money.

The patient said, "I was thinking along those lines, though I didn't say or think exactly as you have put it."

CASE FOUR

My last example is that of a 51 year-old woman, an architect, who came to see me two years ago, unhappy and depressed in a dysfunctional sadomasochistic marriage. Neither party wants to let the marriage go and yet not a week goes by without each inflicting pain unknowingly or consciously on the other. Now she is pretty exhausted from the constant torment. She doesn't see a good solution. She has gastro-intestinal symptoms and takes a variety of medicines to quiet this and other organ systems. Most of all she wants to quiet her mind and heart, which offer her nothing but pain. She tells me this dream.

DREAM

I am in a dance class, sitting on the floor leaning to my left side. Then I lean to my right side. There is the master teacher who I do not see. He is giving instructions that I hear. There is another man, the instructor, who is carrying out the directions of the master teacher.

This man, the instructor, still dances. He has a dancer's body. He comes close to me and says he wants me to dance with him. I think this is an honor but I am not a very good dancer, but no matter. He leans in to my face. His lips touch mine and he blows air into my mouth gently. When he blows his breath into mine softly, I am suddenly exhilarated.

Associations

She says, "I know what that means."

I ask, "What do you think it means?"

She says, "It is death. I want to die. It is all too much. There is too much pain I have to take."

The patient enumerated the medicines she was taking for her stomach, her headaches, and for sleeping at night. I let her go on for awhile for she has a tendency to obsess, to be distracted, and then I asked if it were death why would she be exhilarated?

Patient: Because I will be so glad it is over.

Interpretation

Dr. B: I don't think it is about your dying. I think the master is God and that your soul, His agent, is breathing life into you like the Bible story of Adam, the breath of life - Aleph – in the Hebrew alphabet.

As I spoke she began to heave and cry.

Patient: I left God. I turned away.

Dr. B: The dream says He has not left you. Remember this dream and remember the feeling. Not many people ever have this kind of experience.

COMMENTARY

I write this dream last because it expresses the unconscious knowledge people have and that knowledge says whatever the travail, whatever the suffering -- and there promises to be a lot -- God will be there to give us all the life and strength we need to fulfill our purpose. This is a very encouraging dream despite the current pain the patient has to contain.

On a greater scale I think it contains a message for the world and it is saying the same thing. Whatever the people are suffering, lying prostate on the ground, feeling betrayed, impoverished, enraged, or hopeless, the Divine will infuse all of mankind with a breath of strength to a new vision and a new way of life for all of us.

However, it must be understood it is a vision of the future and we must live in the chaos of the present until it is sorted out.

Beverly Hills, October 2008

Ozymandias by: Percy Bysshe Shelley

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: `Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear --
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.'

Reflections on the Global Financial Crisis

or

Why the leaders (parents) always betray the people (children) and why the people tolerate the betrayal

Reflections on the
Global Financial Crisis

Why the leaders (parents) always betray
the people (children) and why the
people tolerate the betrayal