It has been said that psychoanalysis is not about God, religion, or spirituality. At one time I agreed with that. Now I believe that using analysis to access the unconscious through dream interpretation is the way to access spirituality and heal not just the individual, but humankind as well.

PROLOGUE

I have known for some time that I have been “in service” and I have known that my apprenticeship has been long and hard. I used to complain. I do not anymore. I no longer question the mysterious ways of the Lord. Certainly I, when left to my limited intellectual ways, have limited and unsatisfactory answers.

I began my apprenticeship when I was ten. I was awakened early on Sunday morning. I dressed while my family was asleep, as they were wont to do of a Sunday morning. I found myself walking to the Sunday school a mile away.

I do not know how I knew it was there, but it was. I began to learn the history of my people, those of the Book. Those people became my early heroes. Though I had many heroes later on, I realized these latter ones were superimposed on the archetypes of the “elders.” For courage there was Moses, the breaker of servitude to man (the pharaoh after all was but a man); then Solomon for his wisdom, and how I yearned to be wise if only I knew how. There was Daniel in the lion’s den and Daniel in the king’s palace reading the king’s ill-fated prophecy. Joseph in his brightly colored coat, which gained him slavery and later fame and fortune, and later still the capacity for forgiveness.

There was David, beloved of God and his wondrous psalms. Where did the words come from, the poetry? Abraham, Isaac, Jacob all came later and Jesus later still. All of these were the giants on the earth of my being. I did not know that I had begun my apprenticeship, but so I had.

At twenty-one I was a navigator in a World War II B-24 bomber, heading from Goose Bay, Labrador to Iceland. We flew at night ascending into the dark, raging skies over the cold, unforgiving Atlantic. Somewhere toward the end of that journey the wings of the plane iced up and my brave pilots rode the plane down yeeing and yawing, breaking the ice off the wings; certain death awaited in this behemoth of steel with its newly invented radar designed to shorten the war. Twelve men were on this plane. Only the pilots, the engineer and I knew the grave danger we were in: sudden precipitous death or at best to survive in the icy water but within a few minutes be overcome and gone.

Where were we? With the breaking gray dawn came the pilot’s question and command, “Give me a heading, navigator.” In order to keep the Leviathan alive with us in it I responded almost immediately, as if I were never more sure of anything in my life; yet common sense would have asked, “How do you know, having been all over the sky, twisting and diving and turning?” But the answer came. Only God could really know on what course to set the compass. Soon a speck of land came into view and soon, ashen-faced, all of us were walking on the ground. It was the beginning of my revelation.

In combat all of us had figured out that the chances of surviving a tour were very small. In all our minds each mission survived seemed to increase the diminished hope of living.

On one mission my pilot was killed; the colonel beside me had his foot blown away. One word—pandemonium. I stayed on the plane and saved this stranger’s life at a great risk to my own. I seemed oblivious of the danger. I felt the angels held the engine-silent plane aloft. It was as if they knew what to do to protect him and me.

And so it was until the last mission about which I had a dark foreboding. My misgivings were accurate. Over enemy territory six men were killed by enemy fighters. I was wounded in the head and neck; my pain cannot be described. I lost consciousness for a moment and then, once again, floated down, landing on enemy soil, now a prisoner of war.

I survived and met the young German nurse who took care of me. She nurtured my spiritual education by her gentleness, by her wisdom, by her letters to me tucked under my pillow at night, unseen by anyone else. I memorialized her in my book Irmgard’s Flute, A Memoir (2007), for Irmgard was her name.

The apprenticeship continued for many years. I studied medicine and then ultimately became a student of the mind—psychoanalysis. I was still on course. “Physicians are in service.” Later came a great altercation with the authorities about academic freedom, and soon I knew the impact of isolation and ostracism by an angry group of colleagues whom I could hardly believe had descended into being a mob with mob mentality.

These were the four years of the dark night, fearing for the welfare of my family as I saw the thin veneer of civilization disintegrate. How quickly people can descend to “the arrogance of ignorance.”

All of that passed but I recorded the history of this chapter in my book The Freud-Klein Controversies (1973-1977) Los Angeles: The Testing Ground and Final Solution, (1991) and my videotape “The History of Object Relations in Los Angeles,” (1990). I felt it was important to keep a record. How else do we pass on our experience?

For some time I was beginning to feel like Job: “How long, oh Lord?” Or was I to be like Moses, never to enter the Promised Land?

I continued my work in the study of the mind, not being content with where the field was. I felt the methods did not find their mark on me. My discontent led me to further and deeper investigation of the dream in the unconscious mind until I came to understand what the meaning of dreams was really about.

How did one learn or know the meaning of dreams? There were so many years that passed before I knew how. In a way, I think that the Divine wants them understood—as a conduit to Him, as a reminder of Him and as a connection to Him that is ever present in each of us.

Dreams are about the truth of a person’s life, for there is a record in the unconscious mind that contains a registration of every single event that occurs in one’s lifetime. It is there to be recovered when the right method is applied. This method is evidenced by the science of genetics. (see The Mother’s Signature: “The Silent Struggle” 2006 on the web site: holisticpsychoanalysis.com)

It is accurate because the truth brought to the patient is curative. The truth is gained when one has wiped away the accumulated dirt of a lifetime: the dirt of misunderstanding, of false assumptions, of harmful actions, of denial of reality. As more of these stultifying and constricting states of mind are wiped away, there comes a dream by the patient that acknowledges the existence of the Divine. This is not strange. If we hold that there is something called Divine mind that is the origin of all things, that entity has nothing but the truth in it. One understands, therefore, the English poet John Keats who writes in “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” “Beauty is truth, truth beauty. That is all ye know on Earth, and all ye need to know.”

This is a description of the Divine mind. When a flake of Divinity invests a person’s dream, there will be a truth revealed and when it is spoken the patient will say, “You are right. I know that is right” or “I feel that is right,” pointing to the abdomen.

It is clear to me that however our planet and all in it has come about, it is the invention and purpose of the hand of God that guided me and protected me from long ago. I think that the dream is one way that, if properly understood, connects us to the Divine; the dream is always there to remind us of Him.

I am still in service and in a way still an apprentice with more patients. I think I understand, “Not in my time but in Yours.”

It has been a long time since I was ten, being eighty-seven now, but I recall the first dream I ever had as a child of six or seven. It was simple. “I was falling, one endless fall, and a seemingly endless sky, falling.” I take it I was falling into service, falling to my birth and to my destiny, a fallen angel. How interesting that I was born in the City of Brotherly Love and shall probably die in the City of Angels. Dante described the angelic chorus in “Paradiso.” I do not believe anyone has equaled this poetry, this transcendence. When the time comes, I will ask God one question, “Did I do as you wished?” and I hope that I will listen to the angelic chorus as Dante describes. Only God’s love truly quiets the soul.

It is my wish to bring this knowledge to everyone on earth, whatever the color of one’s skin, north or south of the equator, the knowledge that everyone has the capacity to reach their higher consciousness, their higher self and thus everyone is able to have the Divine touch them.

It is my belief that all scientific endeavors that end in the advance of truth are a journey of spirituality, whether the person acknowledges it or not. It is my belief that many branches of science, seemingly disparate and different, are really in the end closely related and following Divine law, which we at this time cannot see. Our instrument is still too imperfect.

It is not a vain and foolish idea to think that one day humankind will look a lot different than it does today. The time is slowly coming when people will not allow the desecration and devastation that exists today, pursuing humanity’s foolish follies.

It seems to me all the pieces are slowly coming to light for that great time when people will indeed live according to the few laws of the Divine by which the universe exists and evolves, and there will be peace on earth.

INTRODUCTION

My Religious/Spiritual Background

I have never had the urge to find God. I never thought I needed to. My family came to the United States before 1910, and was divided between believers and those of the secular persuasion. During my early life I had no religious or spiritual training—though I was an adept observer. My paternal grandfather quietly did his weekly prayers with all the accoutrements of Jewry. Watching him perform the rituals, I gathered it was a singular enterprise. It was between him and God and required neither other people nor a temple. It was a holy day and he spent hours walking back and forth, oblivious to anyone in the house, notably my grandmother and myself. His name was Jacob.

My grandmother’s devotions were also solitary. I would watch her pray, shawl on her head, the candles lit, whispering her words, which I never understood (nor was I curious enough to ask). Her name was Mary. The message I received from observing my grandparents’ praying was, “This is a very private affair. You can watch, but it is between the Great Other and Thee.”

All of my grandfather’s sons repudiated God. Instead there were Marx, Lenin and then Stalin (until that illusion was shattered). My father and my three uncles were devoted, though, to the welfare of mankind, especially my two college-educated uncles, one of whom was a physician and the other a communist, a labor organizer, and a high official in a very powerful union that supported civil rights early on before it became a fashionable enterprise in this country. Alex, this favorite uncle—for he was the most fun—often took me to the movies and, a high point in my life, to Yankee Stadium to see the Yankees play Detroit in a doubleheader with Babe Ruth, Hank Greenberg, Lou Gehrig, and the other greats of that era. Much later, after a life of hard sacrifice, he was presented an award by President Johnson not only for services to the labor movement but for supporting the civil rights movement. Uncle Alex had come a long way from the Jewish boy born in the Ukraine.

My grandparents’ religious devotion, my father and uncles’ secular altruism: these created the crucible that formed my early years.

Patients’ Spiritual Dreams

It was not until 1999 when I sat down to write my memoir of World War II that I began to examine my life in a way that I had not before, and re-think religion and spirituality. I had never discussed religion or spirituality in my analyses. I had read, though, about spiritual leaders, spiritual centers and “journeys to the East,” and I had no quarrel with the point of view put forward by these people.

However, when I began to pursue my past, especially my war years—years of anguish, fear and indeed terror, all of which was pushed deep within—and examined incidents that befell me, I began to make out a pattern that I was reluctant to believe. It became apparent that anyone who experiences danger and gets through it is apt to come to a religious or spiritual explanation for their survival. If you get out alive, you will know there was something Divine that spared you when all around you people were being killed, people were being maimed. If you have survived, God is there, ready to be accepted as a force in your life.

Soon after I began to write my memoir, I was struck by dreams my patients were having. I listened for a number of years before I put on paper a different view of the mental and emotional life of a human being. It was different from the orthodoxies I had been taught and from everything I had studied; different from the theories that were embraced by psychoanalytic institutes or put forth in the published literature.

Except for a brief acknowledgement of the Divine in my seminal and fundamental paper, “The Mother’s Signature” (2001), I did not mention to the psychoanalytic community at large this strand of spirituality that was becoming increasingly apparent in my patients. After all, analysis is not about spirituality; it is supposed to be about neurosis or character problems or psychosomatic illness. So how would a discussion of spirituality in analysis play in the psychoanalytic world? Today I find these issues are more imperative; I am already an old man and the time to speak is now. And there is some consolation in being old and being an emeritus training analyst. One can say what one thinks and what one has observed, though it runs counter to established orthodoxies.

That I am able to run counter to established orthodoxies is certainly in part the result of my family history. I am grateful for the courage of my uncles that enabled them to break away from a long tradition of Jewish suffering and to break away from an orthodoxy that did not work, that enslaved, that punished, that murdered. And I am equally grateful to my grandparents, who showed me in a painless way, without so much as a word spoken, the God they worshiped alone in their silent splendor.

CASE HISTORIES

Here are dreams of three patients, all of which contain spiritual themes. The second and third of these patients (“Dr. Dombrowski” and “Charles Cohen”) have appeared in my book, The Mother’s Signature – a Journal of Dreams (2007), and in essays published on my Web site, www.bernardbailmd.net as noted in the reference section of this paper. (See the essays and/or book for more information.) The first patient is new to these writings and I will provide a brief background for her case. The dreams, interpretations, and commentaries that follow are each self-contained; they can be understood without the reader knowing the person’s complete clinical history.

The first two dreams introduce the theme of spirituality. Note that these patients have worked through a considerable amount of personal “struggles.” In the third dream the unconscious comes forward in all its glory and shows its capability for revelation.

My thesis is that the unconscious holds a striation of spiritual intent with which it is essential for all people to be in touch. I think certain people have been given the gift to feel and to see, that the spiritual state exists -- a state, in part, that has been considered as derived from dreams via our unconscious, our true psychic reality.

Among many examples, Hebrews saw dreams as “gifts from God.” and the early Christians claimed that dreams are the “work of God” “Throughout the centuries and in vastly different cultures, dreams were considered important, if not sacred, sources of essential truths” (Koch-Sheras, and Lemley, 1995, pgs. 26-27, 23-24 respectively).

I would hope that what I have discovered is a confirmation of God in our life. It would seem that man has repudiated God, not God man. In this repudiation all connection has apparently been lost. Instead, in all cultures, East and West, North and South, some men have taken on the status of a God and abused this sacred trust, putting power, greed, dominion and lust above noble and altruistic qualities. Moreover, these men have mistaken their status as being ordained by God. I do not think God ordains anything except peace and fruitfulness.

Such men have had a long run—successful in their positions, especially when implying that God is responsible for the troubles of man. That is not true. Man and man alone is responsible for all the trouble we have on this earth. Our actions are ours. No one else’s. The third dream makes this very clear. There are no exceptions, not for leaders, for religious figures, for anybody.

I think that the world is sitting on a deck of cards. It gives the illusion of foundation and stability. The third dream makes it clear where the concept of Maya comes from—illusion. And the state of illusion is due to end.

History is a cup spilling over with the folly of cleaver men plotting to increase their power or wealth by aggression. Even, if in the short run, successful, ultimately these “victories” end up as disasters. The universe seems to have a will unseen by men, measured in a different time frame of our own: a will to restore balance. It is known as a law of action and reaction. History also takes note of this. It seems to be absolutely true that in the long run if it is not built on the Divine, it will fail.

“except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain.”

(Psalms 127:1)

When Belshazar challenged Daniel to interpret God’s writing on the wall, “Mene, Mene, Tekel,” the prophet said, “God has numbered your kingdom and finished it. You have been weighed in the balance and found wanting.” We have had many “kings” since then and all, up to the present day, have fallen ultimately to the name of Behshazar. (Book of Daniel, Chapter Five).

INTRODUCTION TO DREAM ONE

This first patient, “Margaret,” is a mature woman; her dream and her associations have a relevancy for the greater conclusion later on. Before this session, Margaret had been away in another state looking after her mother. She visited close friends there, especially one family with whom there was a friendship of over 30 years. “Mary” is a very successful businesswoman. Her husband, “Roger,” though moderately successful, is a dreamer, which oftentimes irks Mary.

The close friends have two children; the younger who is now almost 30 years old is a procrastinator. He has not, for example, finished his thesis for the PhD that would be given him and with it a better opportunity for his future than just working for his father.

Mary told my patient, Margaret, that she had decided to help her son write a grant proposal, saying, “I am going to take him in hand and teach him.”

Dr. B. laughed: A little late to take her son in hand, don’t you think?

The patient laughed as well, then continued her narration.

It was funny but I said nothing. Mary is strictly nuts and bolts and bottom line even many years ago during our hippy era fling. It never went to her head. Mary was never a lost flower child. I had a dream that I would like to tell you.

DREAM ONE

I had brought some food over to Mary and Roger. We do things like that in real life. There was a strange man sitting opposite me and a big, strange looking dog. He went over to the man and sat in his lap. After awhile he came to me and sat in my lap.

I did not know where Roger and Mary were. I was not bothered. I had known them so many years, I was not worried about this strange man. I suppose he was a friend.

(The patient was quiet.)

Associations

Dr. B: What kind of food did you bring?

Patient: I remember a plate of red peppers chopped up and a plate of hummus.

Dr. B: Is that what you would bring over in reality?

Patient: More or less. We tried to eat clean and organic, you know.

Dr. B: Why hummus? That is not a food you would know about as a child.

Patient: True. We ate it years ago when I was in a commune with Mary. It’s chickpea unprocessed and very satisfying to me and I like it with red peppers.

Dr. B: Is there anything else about hummus?

Patient: Well, it is a food that comes from Israel and the Middle East and the commune and everybody trying to be spiritual, everybody trying to own Jerusalem. As if they can own Christ.

Dr. B: It’s as if you are talking about spiritual food. So was there another problem in the dream?

Patient: There was none except the dog looked strange.

Dr. B: What kind of dog and how strange?

Patient: It was a Russian wolfhound, big, young, playful but it seemed to have roots and branches of bushes intertwined with his skin, and flowers. It was very gentle in the man’s lap and then in mine.

Dr. B: Why a Russian wolfhound? Is that a dog you have some experience with?

Patient: I saw a movie with a friend about an English royal family and they had lots of Russian wolfhounds.

Dr. B: So it is the dog of kings? And the man?

Patient: I just did not know him but I was not afraid. Obviously he must have been a friend of Mary and Roger. There was nothing more.

Interpretation

Dr. B: I think the man is your husband. Does he know Mary and Roger?

Patient: Yes, we all know each other for a long time but I know Mary longer.

Dr. B: If I were to say the dog represents the unconscious, what would you think about that?

Patient: (laughs) I think that is great but why the branches, the leaves and the flowers?

Dr. B: I would say they certainly represent nature and we talk of animals being closer to nature, closer to their instincts and we know people say, some people, many people, “I don’t believe in God but I believe in the wonder of nature.” In short, pantheism.

Patient: Well, I can see that. I don’t have a quarrel with that.

Dr. B: I think there is another issue, though you are not in the field, you are not a therapist. I can say the dog represents the unconscious and that you are seeing it as friendly, playful and spiritual.

Patient: I don’t know about all the technical stuff but looking back over the years I know I am in a much better place, quieter, more peaceful, more content with my life, though it might be nice to get a job now and then. (then she laughed)

Dr. B: I think you feel your life is much better than Mary and Roger’s and it is your unconscious that has become gentle and loving.

Patient: That’s true. It was a bit jarring to be at their house and hear the frustration and the turmoil and the anger beneath the surface. That is really not my life today.

(Footnote: “Margaret” knows I am of Russian extraction).

COMMENTARY

Although I feel the session explains itself, it may be worth noting the linking of the unconscious with spirituality and to be aware that this is not an unconscious of which one has to be afraid. It is friendly and open to what I feel are more secrets of the Divine.

“Margaret” is the same patient, described at the end of the essay on my Web site entitled, “The Mysterious Leap from the Mind to the Body” (2007), who told me her dream of being in a long, long line of people waiting. When I asked her, “What are you waiting for?” she replied, “Love.” It seems that the only time we are able to receive the pure deep love of the Divine is when we pass on. We humans are not very good at loving; if we closely observe the unmistakable reality, so few people feel truly loved.

Another patient, after a long and painful analysis to come to her truth, has a dream...

“I am on a boat. I am with an incredibly handsome man with grey-black hair. I think, ‘Can it be he loves me?’ Then he kisses me. I have never in all my life felt so profoundly satisfied and happy.”

She already guessed the interpretation. It was a representation of the Divine who kissed her. No human being can equal that kind of deep satisfaction and contentment.

INTRODUCTION TO DREAM TWO

Here I present a session with “Dr. D,” whom we have met before in the Web site essays, “Why Dr. Dombrowski Doesn’t Have a Life” (2005), “Living in Two Realities” (2005), and “The Mother’s Signature, The Silent Struggle,”(2006), as well as in my book The Mother’s Signature-A Journal of Dreams, Chapter 7, Case 2, pgs. 71-78.

DREAM TWO

I am in my car going north on the 215 freeway. I find myself taking an exit which I did not ever notice before, between two exits that I had used frequently in the past. Taking this previously unnoticed exit, I find myself on a wide, nearly empty street in the middle of a strange city. I am with a male companion who is to my left and slightly behind me. There are only a very few people in evidence on the streets of what seems to be a very nice, clean, wealthy city. I am trying to find the residence of “the bishop” and do not know where it is (I know its approximate location but not its exact whereabouts). I think about asking one of the few people I see on the street where the bishop lives. Somehow, I think they may well know and be able to direct me to his residence. I then wonder whether it is the bishop or the archbishop that I will be visiting. I arrive at a huge, sumptuous mansion which is the bishop or the archbishop’s residence with my male companion and I ask someone who appears to be a servant of the bishop to announce our arrival, he says he will do so and disappears into the interior of the mansion, leaving us in the very spacious and ornate entryway of the mansion.

The following is patient’s own memory of this particular session:

The previously unnoticed street which leads to the sparsely populated, clean, wealthy city was a way of representing the new world opened up to me by the analysis. The sparse population signifies the fact that only a few people have yet ventured into this mental world. Looking for the bishop or archbishop, Dr. Bail said, is a way of talking about seeking God. The fact that I do find his mansion and a servant goes to announce my arrival seems to be a good sign (that I am making progress in the analysis and in my life).

INTERPRETATION

Dr. B: This dream is a summing up of what we have talked about a number of times, but first let me remind you of what has come out in the last few weeks. And here I just remind you of your night terrors, being unable to sleep unless with your grandmother. There was also your hatred of religion [patient was raised a Catholic], for you felt it did nothing to help you with your nighttime anxiety.

We have come a long way between your old ways of functioning in life and in your marriages which have all been a disaster, the old way bringing you to the very edge of financial catastrophe. Even you wondered if you could ever get out of that hole.

Please recall your long-held conviction that to listen to me, that is my interpretations, would be the death of you, that all I wanted was to get you in my power and do monstrous things to you.

Certainly since you have begun to believe in the truth of your analysis and have followed the information contained in your dreams, there has been a noticeable shift in your life. You see here maybe another chance, another woman, another life that may be possible.

This dream is saying that you get off the freeway you have used before, but get off at an exit you never noticed. The freeway is the analysis. That is a highway you have much traveled and now in view of the recent miracles of your life, saved from financial disaster, a new job, great compliments there and the future seems bright. You are acknowledging by looking for the bishop or archbishop not so much the Catholic Church, not the edifice with all the ritual and symbolism, but simply the spirituality that you feel is coming into your life or at least you are searching for it. Note that the exit on this highway never existed before and neither for you did the existence of such an entity or the prospect of your ever finding it. You see not many people on this street or crowding in to see the archbishop.

COMMENTARY

Again, I refer further background reading of this patient, Dr. D, to a chapter in The Mother’s Signature – a Journal of Dreams, as well as on my Web site Here adds another piece of pertinent information.

Since I previously wrote about Dr. D, some very important facts have been revealed. We knew his grandmother was always important to him. Now he could go deeper and reveal that his nighttime anxiety was so great he could not sleep except with his grandmother, a very religious woman. As he could not sleep, she reviewed the cards of the saints which sometimes would quiet him enough to sleep. This was the nightly ritual.

Later he connected it up with his enormous appetite for sexuality (usually satisfied by paying for it) so it was clear that this kind of driven sexuality was an antidote to the terror he felt on trying to go to sleep. It was in grown-up life a replacement for the turning of the cards of the saints (much like fingering the prayer beads).

All of this information was a tremendous push to his analysis as well as toward his realization that psychoanalysis would not kill him and that I did not want to enslave him. These absolutely held ideas were of course displaced from his mother and father and more suitable when referred to them in terms of his experiences as a child.

I think the dream indicates the existence of a spiritual tract in every human being which may not be accessed easily. Working through the various layers, deeper and deeper, this stratum of the personality always reveals itself. It adds another dimension to life, a dimension of depth and color not hitherto experienced.

INTRODUCTION TO DREAM THREE

I want to present “Mr. Charles Cohen,” a man we have met before in an earlier essay on my web site, “Mankind: For Whom the Truth Tolls” (2008), and in my book The Mother’s Signature – A Journal of Dreams, Chapter 13, Case 8, pgs. 177-262. He is a man I admire for his courage in ever pressing forward to further his search for how he got to be the way he is and to find a solution to the feelings - much attenuated - with which he still grapples. And what I say of him, I say about all my patients who continue on a path that has never been explored, a path that begins in utero and the first experience of their mothers shaking them to the core of their new and fragile existence.

DREAM THREE

It’s night. I’m cruising downtown in a European city. Being the age I am now, looking a little younger maybe, I don’t have much hope of finding anyone. Carrying a small wooden antique Japanese chest of drawers elegantly wrapped in a silk scarf, as I pass the stairs leading up to a brightly lit public building (cathedral? theater?) a man murmurs a sophisticated comment to me about what I’m carrying. In a phrase I joke back as I move on. We spoke in French maybe but not in the language of the country we’re in.

Next to the public building I walk down an alley which is a cruising ground—a couple of gay men lounging around. I lay down in the alley, placing my parcel, unwrapped, near my head. The guy I spoke with in front of the cathedral walks slowly down the alley toward me. I see him hesitate and know what’s going through his head: “He’s attractive but will he reject me? If he doesn’t reject me, maybe he’s not so attractive and I ought to reject him.” When he reaches me, the man asks, “Do you have a place to go?”

In an earlier part of the dream I met my friend Ben in Times Square after not seeing him for many years—he’s been living a life parallel to mine as a successful businessman. Ben gave me the key to his family’s house in case I need a place to stay.

“I live too far,” I tell the man. “But we could go to my friend’s house for a few hours if we’re quiet.” We invite a couple of middle-class gays in the alley and the four of us go to Ben’s family house.

There, in a bedroom with a big bed, we undress. I put down the keys to Ben’s house and the Japanese chest. We have a good time. One of the guys showers singing an aria loudly and off-key. I glimpse a short man in a bathrobe in the small corridor next to the bedroom, Ben’s brother. He’s shaking his head ruefully as if indicating that the singing is horrible.

I tell the guy who picked me up, “We have to get dressed and out of here.” I look around for the Japanese box and the keys. Where are they?

I dash into the hall. There’s Ben’s sister. I apologize for bringing rowdy strangers into her family’s beautiful house. She shakes her head, sighing. I ask about her mother. “She’s upstairs. I think you should go up and apologize to her yourself.”

I get dressed, get my things together. There should be a key in the front hallway but though a key ring is on the little table next to the stairs, the key isn’t. Ben gave me four keys. Where are they? There are two ways up to the mother’s bedroom, through the front door with a key, and up the front stairs.

The house is elegantly appointed and furnished. At the top of the stairs is a mirrored wall. Embedded in it is a small double door, also mirrored. It leads to the mother’s bedroom. She must be very old now, I think. For some reason I don’t go in. I don’t feel scared, though what could I possibly say to her? From her point of view, there’s no excuse for what I did. All I could do is apologize. Would she forgive me? I wake oddly calm, not panicked. I haven’t gone in.

Dr. B: Where are you—what country?

Me: France maybe. You know, Paris—City of Light.

Dr. B: Where are you cruising?

Me: At night in front of a well-lit official building of some sort. Maybe a cathedral or a theater.

Dr. B: What is this Japanese box you’re carrying?

Me: I own several small Japanese chests of drawers. Some were meant as sewing kits, some to keep writing implements. I use them as drawers on a writing table

Dr. B: Very old?

Me: 19th Century.

Dr. B: What’s the language you talk with the man in front of the building?

Me: I want to say French but we may be in France, yet it’s not the language of the country we’re in.

Dr. B: You pick him up?

Me: More the other way around. I see him hesitate as cruising gay men hesitate. He’s thinking, “He’s attractive so he may reject me. But if he doesn’t reject me, maybe he’s not attractive and I should reject him.” Anyway he picks me up and asks if I have somewhere to go. I tell him I have the key to a friend’s house.

Dr. B: Who gave you the key?

Me: My best friend Ben.

Dr. B: But Ben’s dead, isn’t he? Why have you revived him?

Me: Yes, in reality Ben killed himself forty years ago. But earlier in this dream after not seeing him for many years, I saw Ben on Times Square. He’d been living as a successful businessman. In some ways Ben may be me—as if we’d been living parallel lives. Also in life Ben was always kind. In the dream he trusts me with the key to his house.

Dr. B: How did you live parallel lives?

Me: We were born in the same country in Europe, though in different cities. We met as college roommates freshman year. Both Ben’s parents and mine were bourgeois Jewish immigrants living in the U.S. They didn’t like each other, though. My parents thought his were nouveau riche, and his thought mine denied their Jewishness. Ben and I felt both were right. Our lives may also have been parallel in the sense that though he died and I didn’t, though in a way I died too.

Dr. B: In what way?

Me: Neither of us lived out our potential.

Dr. B: Why did Ben kill himself?

Me: The inner or the outer reasons?

Dr. B: Inner. Was he actually a businessman?

Me: No, he was a highly successful book editor. He killed himself because he was tired of being “a good boy,” of living merely to fulfill his parents’ expectations. He wanted to be a novelist but hadn’t yet written a novel. He began periodically taking acid and amphetamine, walked into his mother’s Park Avenue apartment one night and said to her, “Ma, I’m homosexual.” She replied, “You think I don’t know that?” Then he broke up her Louis XV armchairs. A few months later he came back to her apartment to kill himself.

Dr. B: How did he do that?

Me: Sleeping pills. His mother had told him previously that she kept some in the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. I know this because I spoke with Ben’s therapist after Ben’s death. At three in the morning his mother heard him opening her medicine cabinet. At six she went to see what was the matter but by that time he was dead.

Dr. B: So she killed him?

Me: Yes. That’s what his therapist said. The day Ben died, his mother said to me on the phone, “I don’t know if you’ll understand this but I’m relieved. I won’t have to lie about him anymore.” I have a theory that some gifted Jewish gay sons make a tacit pact with their mother when the sons are infants.

Dr. B: What’s the pact?

Me: If the son ever grows out of the emotional bond with the mother, either the mother or the son must die. In my case, my mother died. In Ben’s case, he died.

Dr. B: Did you ever visit Ben’s mother after Ben died?

Me: His parents moved back to Europe.

Dr. B: They were more comfortable there, I guess.

Me: I visited them once five years after Ben died. Since then I haven’t seen them.

Dr. B: Ben’s mother must be quite old now.

Me: My mother would be ninety-five, so Ben’s would be about that too, if she’s alive.

Dr. B: You use the key to Ben’s house?

Me: Yes. The guy who picked me up, and I, we invite two middle-class gays hanging around the alley to go with us there. In a bedroom with a big bed, we play around. One guy takes a shower singing an aria loudly and not well. In life Ben liked to sing opera loudly in the shower. Those were some of his freest moments.

When I was just out of college Andy Warhol, who wasn’t famous yet, invited me to Philadelphia for a weekend a rich queen was giving a big party on Saturday night. Friday night we stayed in the suburban family house of a friend of Andy’s who cavorted around in his mother’s fur coat. Every man in the house except me acted and spoke “queeny.” Young and uptight, I was tongue-tied, turned off. I spent the night in a room with Andy (we didn’t make love). In the morning I smelled rot and rushed to open the window. Later I made my escape from Philadelphia, never went to the big Saturday night party.

Dr. B: Do you think the smell of rot came from Andy?

Me: I thought at the time it might. He was older than I was, wore a wig, spoke in a Jackie Kennedy whisper. I felt him desiccated, like a scarecrow. I didn’t admire his art though later I admired and envied his ability to hype it into huge money. Still, he generously praised a short 16 MM movie I made which hardly anyone else saw or noticed.

Dr. B: You see someone in the hallway?

Me: Ben’s brother in a bathrobe shaking his head. In life Ben didn’t have a brother. But Ben’s father—I’ll never forget the stricken look on his face as he was shoveling dirt onto Ben’s coffin.

Dr. B: You see Ben’s sister too?

Me: Yes. In life Ben did have a sister though I don’t remember meeting her. In the dream when she shakes her head ruefully, I realize the mess I’ve made bringing these loud guys to party in Ben’s family house.

Dr. B: You realize you’ve destroyed your mother’s Louis XV armchairs.

Me: Ben’s sister suggests I go upstairs and apologize to Ben’s mother. I look around for the Japanese box and for the keys—four keys. On the hallway table by the stairs there’s a key ring but no key. I go up the stairs.

Dr. B: Describe again the door to the mother’s room.

Me: A mirrored double door set in a mirrored wall. The beautiful look of the house reminds me of a family house in Europe.

Dr. Bail: What do you make of the fact that the door is mirrored?

Me: I’m face to face with myself. But I don’t go in. When the dream ends, I’m standing there. It’s not that I’m so afraid to go in. I just don’t. I’m not even sure anyone’s behind that door.

Dr. B: Oh, someone’s behind it alright.

Me: Who? My mother?

Dr. B: The Divine Feminine.

Me: I don’t go through the door because ...

Dr. B: Because you’re not ready. It’s not your time yet.

Me: Oh. You mean...

Dr. B: You’ll go through it some time. We all do. Why do you think you dreamed this now?

Me: I knew you’d ask that.

Dr. B: Well, wouldn’t you ask it, given this dream? I think it’s a spiritual dream about humanity. Humanity has created a big mess. We’re in deep man-made trouble. In the house of the Divine Mother, they’re shaking their heads over it.

Me: So Ben’s sister, his brother who is really his father —

Dr. B: Parents, children —we play different roles for each other, but in the eyes of the Divine, aren’t we all brothers and sisters?

Me: I see. Why four keys to the house?

Dr. B: Four is the number of the Emperor in the Tarot.

Me: The masculine principle, the earth, solidity... So that’s also why there are four of us in the bedroom?

Dr. B: Yes.

Me: Why do I lose the keys?

Dr. B: Apparently you’re not ready yet to do what you’re meant to do.

Me: The Japanese box?

Dr. B: You associated it with writing. It’s your ability to write, to turn what you see into art. You had a dream about humanity in deep trouble. I’m not making it up. I’m getting it from your dream. You’re the writer. Write it down. I’ll put it in my book on dreams and spirituality.

COMMENTARY

This is one of the most beautiful dreams I have ever heard, in its exquisite message to us all though the dream refers in intimate detail to the patient’s life, as it should. The dream contains in it a larger theme, which I will develop below.

It is clear that the patient is struggling with his homosexuality and that he is struggling to be in control of his life and his sexuality. He has chosen the symbol of four keys in the dream, which in esoteric wisdom represents the emperor, and the emperor represents the journey of worldly development to maturity. We see in the dream the cruising in the gay world and then the rowdiness, more like children or adolescents or frat boys, the rampant drugging and drinking. There is the acknowledgement of the rot that sets in. Note here the idealization of the talent, the readiness of the masses to join in that effort but the rot in the artist is more or less ignored. The dream says it cannot be ignored.

The story is that of the vandalization of a work of art, the 16th century armchair, a Louis XV, immensely valuable in its own right and representing a symbol of a life that was smashed piece by piece until the denouement—confrontation between mortal mother and son and a time to pay on the unknown bargain—bought in utero where all the events begin.

What to me is wonderful is the moment of recognition of “What have we done to this beautiful house, this mansion?” No question remains about this open, on-the-table fact. His contribution and guilt and the knowledge that he cannot ask anyone to take responsibility for the choices he made in his life are all eminently clear.

The dream has grandeur, for it represents what mankind has done to the achingly beautiful mansion of God. As the Bible says, “My house has many mansions.” God’s earth and all of its priceless furniture and all the people in it are one of those mansions.

The patient extended his concern to the mass unconscious, knowing their despair, their hopelessness, their depression as it has come about by the steady erosion of responsibility by those in charge of the state and the country. This includes all the countries of the world. Civilization would seem to be in peril. No one dares say it for fear that the insubstantial house of cards on which it rests today will crumble.

Rightly the patient depicts the second floor, walls mirrored, which carries the message, “Look at yourself. Look at what you have done.” None of you leaders of mankind have truly risen to the high state of maturity; therefore, the keys (the sign of worldly development) are missing: no one is capable of being the emperor who looks out for all the people. Not this party or that party, not this group or that group, not this agenda or that agenda. A true emperor is one who looks after everybody without a second of doubt, everybody under his dominion.

There is also to be no destruction of anything in the “mansions of the Lord.” When the keys are found, when they are available, it will be such a time. That time is not now. Now is the time for recognition of the disorder, the despair and the depression, none of which can be addressed by yet further technical invention, cosmology, astronomy, discovering new planets, space stations or the like. Nothing on a large scale or the opposite, invisible like genetics, is useful in a life-saving way. Life giving, perhaps assisting on the physical plane, but not life-saving in the way a life ought to be lived on the spiritual, soul plane.

What I am saying has been said by smart and important men but there was no knowledge then of the interior of the mind such as it can be derived from psychoanalysis and by the exploration of dreams.

Here there is certain knowledge of a spiritual aspect to every human being that can be accessed by this method. It may be that one of the important pieces of this knowledge was lost. Before it vanished, it was available in ancient times as a way to remind people of their connection to the Divine.

This dream and the others above (and there will be more) stand as a marker for the true facts of life in that we are all held accountable for what we do. Even the leaders, those who rule, who have sway over others, and who have gotten away from the ultimate connection with God, must be accountable. The dream here reveals every person has a sense of the harm they do in this life. There will be no escape from the necessity to look in the mirror as indeed did the patient who went to the second floor, knowing he and only he would have to confront the MOTHER—the Divine mother.

INTRODUCTION TO DREAM FOUR

The patient is a woman of some fifty years who came to analysis due to the dysfunction of her second marriage and the internal chaos of her life.

At this time her marriage has been terminated and the patient has been able to focus on her history and has made considerable progress in understanding the reasons for her marriages, the nature of her relation to her siblings and to her parents.

She has learned of what her mother had unconsciously passed to her and how that has affected her life. The more she has cleared the dysfunction of her internal life, the more she was able to let, what I call a spiritual knowledge, come into a number of her dreams.

The patient still has challenges to meet and overcome and along with these there is a greater appreciation of her spiritual life.

Her mother has since died. The patient now sees and speaks regularly with her father, who is very old. It is at this time that she had this dream which I think is significant for her understanding but it is also, I feel, a reminder to whomever might read this essay that a spiritual life is as essential to one's living as is the bread one eats. Certainly this is not news but, in this chaotic world, we must put it in the center of our frenzied lives. We tend to forget. To know this mechanically is akin to forgetting it. This dream reminds us.

This patient was called Ms. E in my book The Mother's Signature: A Journal of Dreams (see Chapter 8, Case 3, pgs. 79-135).

DREAM FOUR:

I am driving and I stop at a large rest stop. I go inside to use the restroom and pick up snacks for the trip. There is a family inside – Mom, Dad and five kids. They have no money. The father goes into the bathroom and I see him drinking the liquid Dial soap. I ask him why he’s doing that – he says he is starving and has no money – it’s better than eating nothing at all. I tell them all to go through the store and take the drinks, snacks, etc that they want and that I will pay. I don’t want them to go hungry. I’ll spend the $150 to get them food and drink.

Associations and Interpretation:

Patient: Yesterday I visited my Dad at the assisted care facility. At ninety he has a lot of issues but he still enjoys eating and drinking. I stopped at a great bagel store near CBS after my meeting there and I brought bagels, cream cheese and lox to my Dad. I cut the bagel and loaded it with the spread and gave it to him. He ate it with gusto. He kept saying how delicious it was. It was a bit like watching a child eat a favorite snack. He must have said it was so good eight or ten times. Then he ate another half of bagel with more cream cheese and lox spread. It gave me pleasure to bring him something that he enjoyed so much, but I also felt a tremendous sense of emptiness. When I looked at him it felt as if there was nothing really there inside of him. He was a bit like a shell. I couldn’t feel his depth or heft. I felt my Mother’s complexity when I sat with her, even after her mini strokes. My Dad just seemed empty.

Dr. Bail: Who is the family in the dream?

Patient: Perhaps my family. I come from a big family. We struggled financially. It is close to the situation in the dream that the family can’t afford the snacks and drinks.

Dr. Bail: Why are you paying for them?

Patient: I suppose I feel blessed and lucky to have our work and my understanding about myself. I wish I could share it with them.

Dr. Bail: You would like to feed them the nourishment of self-understanding. Interesting, that it is at a bus stop the dream happens. You are on a journey as I suppose all of us are. This metaphor is an old and familiar one.

Patient: Yes. I would like them to know inner peace and the connection that I feel from this work to the Divine.

Dr. Bail: Why is the father drinking liquid soap?

Patient: I don’t know. In real life if a person drinks soap they vomit. He didn’t. He was drinking it like a stomach filler.

Dr. Bail: Soap is not food. It does not nourish but you know Dial soap is advertised as having anti-bacterial properties so he was purifying himself.

Patient: I suppose my Dad has had a life of little nourishment in satisfaction and peace.

Dr. Bail: Your father is in a cleansing process as he comes to the end of his life. But you have also told me that he is not a spiritual man. He has told you he does not believe in God. Your dream shows you that, indeed, your father is empty. He drinks soap to clean himself up spiritually but he has no food to nurture or nourish himself. He is a man with no spiritual connection and without that he is left empty at the end of his life. He eats a bagel like a child but you feel no depth or connection within him. Without the Divine, he is empty and unnourished. In addition, you understand that the rest stop is a metaphor for life wherein we come for a little while, do our lives and go on to our next destination, wherever and however that might be.

Patient: Why does the food and drink cost $150?

Dr. Bail: “15” is the number of the Devil in the Tarot and it presents the person the problem of perception -- that is which way to go, which road to choose. People often choose incorrectly, meaning a life without spirituality, and then rationalize their choice. At the end comes this point. You cannot bring spirituality to those who do not elect to do the work of clearing their unconscious. You may wish to help or share but it is of no use. Each person must do their own work to discover and craft their own deep relationship with the Divine. After all, that is everything and all that there is.

Commentary:

This dream is simple and transparent in view of the patient's associations. It must be understood that she has a great understanding of the nature of her dysfunctional characteristics and, as one or another still come back to challenge her, she learns more about how to master them and to truly respect herself.

It is due to this clearing that she can let the message of this dream about her father through so easily and poignantly; so poignantly about him and her siblings and how she wants to give them this gift.

Many people today and in the past, some famous, have come forward and with a great openness of their hearts expressed this need to be in touch with a force greater than they or any man or woman has. This force is called "the Divine".

Again and again one finds ancient sayings that say it all and have always said it all;

"Man does not live by bread alone"

"What does it profit a man to own the whole world and lose his soul."

I do not go on. It seems mankind does not learn.

Here in these above examples I have proved psychologically what the wisdom of mankind has been saying for thousands of years. Unfortunately there is the din of war and the chaos of everyday life of such dimension that most people cannot clear the space for quietness and contemplation, cannot approach the eternally royal kingdom to clear a space and still the strife. Only then can one allow the unconscious to be revealed by the dream and there, on the journey we all knowingly or unknowingly are facing, will be the Truth.

EPILOGUE

Since there can be no effect without a cause, we might think about our capacity to even consider the whole concept of God. Where does it come from? At what point in now forgotten time did that idea arise in human beings who are the earthly embodiment of God, as in “we are made in his image”? Scientists spend their lives searching out the causes of everything. It is what all science is about. We cannot put God down in coordinates or in a test tube or a beaker to be seen or measured. We can only infer, and it is my experience that such an inference has the great chance of being right; that there is a Divinity. When patients begin to dream in a variety of ways and in various scenarios, these events unmistakably point to the Divine. There is a Divine. And it can only have been a Divine that set our universe into existence with the Big Bang. All since that moment, thirteen and a half billion years ago, is still unfolding at this time in mankind for reasons only He knows.

If we are in God’s image and if we have minds and our minds have dreams in what we call the unconscious, then that would be the effect and the cause would be that the Divine gave us this facility so that we might keep in touch, the way we as parents nowadays give children cell phones. However, we have not kept in touch. Mankind has strayed far away from this path. There is no mistake about that. The information in our dreams tells us over and over what path we should take, what actions we should take, and that answer is never a violent answer.

My experience is here put forward to show how we can keep in touch and stay in touch with what is Divine in us and connects us to the Divine that wants to kiss us all in a way that he kissed the patient whose dream is described as noted above that gives us a true experience of God’s love.

March 2008

REFERENCES

Books and Video:

Bail, Bernard (2007). The Mother’s Signature – A Journal of Dreams. Beverly Hills: The Masters Publishing.

___________(2007). The Mother’s Signature – A Journal of Dreams. Chapter 7, Case 2.: Dr. D. (“Dr. Dombrowski”), Pgs. 71-78.

___________(2007). The Mother’s Signature – A Journal of Dreams. Chapter 13, Case 8, Mr. CC (“Charles Cohen”), pgs. 177-262.

___________(2007). Irmgard’s Flute, A Memoir. Beverly Hills: The Masters Publishing.

___________(1991). The Freud-Klein Controversies (1973-1977) Los Angeles: The Testing Ground and Final Solution. Beverly Hills: published privately.

___________(1990). The History of Object Relations in Los Angeles (videotape).

Koch-Sheras, Phyllis and Lemley, Amy (1995). The Dream Sourcebook,

Lowell House.

Web site: bernardbailmd.com:

(2008). “Mankind: For Whom the Truth Tolls.” (Also in The Mother’s Signature – a Journal of Dreams: Mr. CC and Dr. D.)

(2007). “The Mysterious Leap from the Mind to the Body.”

(2006). “The Mother’s Signature, “The Silent Struggle.” (Also in The Mother’s Signature – A Journal of Dreams: Dr. D.).

(2005). “Why Dr. Dombrowski Doesn’t have a Life.” (Also in The Mother’s Signature – A Journal of Dreams Dr D).

(2005). “’Living” in Two Realities: Sequel to Why Dr. Dombrowski Doesn’t have a Life,’ (Also in The Mother’s Signature – A Journal of Dreams: Dr. D.).