The Secret History of Dreaming: How dreams have powerfully shaped historic events

In a new book, The Secret
History of Dreaming,
author Robert Moss shows how
the world has been and continues
to be shaped by dreams and
dreaming.

Jeff Taylor founded monster.com based on a dream. Jack Nicklaus changed his golf swing and won tournaments,  the Founding Fathers were guided by night dreams, oil was discovered and the Rolling Stones' song "Satisfaction" was created from dreaming.

In a brilliantly insightful new book, The Secret History of Dreaming, author Robert Moss makes history fun by showing how dreams and dreaming helped create many of history's most pivotal moments. It's a fascinating look into a side of history many of us have been missing.

A renowned dream teacher, thrillers novelist and scholar, Moss uses historic examples to show how dreams have enormous potential to influence not only great events, but our own everyday lives as well.  

Moss prefers the term "dreaming" which encompasses not only night dreams but also "waking visions, the interplay of mind and matter that is sometimes called synchronicity, and experiences in a creative "solution state."'

I recently interviewed Moss:

 Q: What surprised you the most when you were researching the book?

I was surprised to find that dreaming and coincidence have shaped great lives And great events even beyond what I had understood. Here's are two examples:
 
(1) A dream led directly to one of the biggest oil discoveries in world history.

In 1937, Colonel Harold Dickson, the former British Political Agent in Kuwait, dreamed that a sandstorm opened a crater under a strange tree in the desert, and revealed a mummy that came to life as a beautiful woman who gave him an ancient coin. His wife recorded the dream for him in the middle of the night, and then he consulted a Bedouin woman dream interpreter who gave him the location of the tree in his dream – in the Burqan hills – and told him he would find great treasure there. He was able to persuade the Kuwait Oil Company (which had been drilling dry holes up to this point) and they struck it rich at the exact place he had dreamed. This was the origin of Kuwait's oil wealth and a major source for the Allies in World War II.

 (2) The Founding Fathers not only dreamed of a new kind of democratic order; they paid attention to night dreams and were guided by them.

John Adams and Dr Benjamin Rush – who made a close study of precognitive dreams – were in the habit of exchanging dreams in their extensive correspondence. In 1809, Rush wrote to Adams about a dream in which the doctor's son read him a page from the future history of the United States. The dream letter described "the renewal of friendship" between Adams and Thomas Jefferson, who had been estranged for many years because of their political disagreements. It stated that the later correspondence of the two former presidents would inspire many. And it recorded that Adams and Jefferson "sunk into the grave nearly at the same time." Nearly seventeen years later, long after their reconciliation, the two former presidents died on the same day – July 4, 1826. The predictions on the page of Dr Rush's dream history were exactly fulfilled. ###.

My wife and I have enjoyed many of Robert's books and workshops and were inspired to lead dream groups in NYC as a result. Our way of utilizing dreams is to trust the only experience that really matters, your own. To find out more about these fun dream groups for everyone click here.

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