Dreams in the Footprints of Corona virus.

In the footprints of the Corona virus, it might seem odd to write about dreams, but as I am interested in our nightly dream world, and its importance for our menthal health, I think it will be an interesting discovery.
The Corona virus, Covid-19, was detected in China for about three months ago. Italy was the next country with many infected, and shortly after, the WHO announced it was a pandemic virus. Many people around the Globe are anxious, maybe are really frightened for the consequences, but there are also many who live in denial of the dangerous situation for the whole world. What can help us in this situation? One thing is our dream world. When we dream, we are able to deal with the fear and to release the pressure from our daily lives.

The Jungian insight about this matter, is that the content of the dreams are products of an interplay between events that are going on in our personal life, in this world, and the archetypal program of the collective unconscious, the other world. It was C G Jung who discovered that active imagination occurs in the form of a waking dream, a dreamlike state that last in the absence of sleep. It is similar to that elicited by hallucinogenic drugs, under which one can observe one's conscious thoughts and actions while having access to notions, fantasies and emotions that are not normally available to the consciousness.
As far as we know, the first person who argued rationally about the dreams was Herakleitos, in 450-375 B.C. He pointed out that when we sleep, we are in our own special and secluded world, and  dreams are not messages from the gods. Dreams are the sleeping mind's normal content, and they had according to him less importance than the experiences we have share with others when we are awake. Herakleitos opinion is shared among the educated of today.

Other Greek authors who have had a strong influence in our modern time are, Hippocrates, the great doctor who lived, 460-337 B.C., and the philosophers Aristotle 384-322, and Plato 426-348/7 B.C.
Aristotle believed that the dreams had no astrological or divine origin, because sleeping animals showed that they also were dreaming. Plato's ideas are also very contemporary. He ment that we lack rational control over passions during our sleep, in the dream we do things that we normally are ashamed to do when we are awake. Lust, anger and betrayal, can be fully expressed in the fantasy of the sleeping person. This is what Jung called, the Shadow. We hide during the day the darkness within us, and during the night the shadow is seen.
I found prophetic and warning dreams fascinating. There are some interesting cases from the past that are well documented. The story about the French actor Champmeslé who died in 1701, is quite an interesting story. Two days before he passed away, his mother and wife showed themselves for him in a dream. They were both dead, but they waved and wanted him to join them. He became convinced the dream was true, he gathered his friends, payed for a funeral sevice in the church, listened while it was sungen, and when he left the church he passed away. It is possible that he suffered from an illnes and his unconscioness conveyed the information about the deadly illness.

President Abraham Lincoln is another interesting exemple I would like to mention. Two days before he was murdered he told his wife about his dream. Lincoln saw a coffin guarded by soldiers in The White House, and when he asked who was dead the soldier said: "It's the Presiden, murdered by an assassin.
I will tell you about one last dream, that the Bishop Lanyi, an advicer to the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Sarajevo, had one day before Franz Ferdinand was murdered in June 1914. The Bishop was worried by his dream and wrote it down, draw sketches of the event and even tried to warn Franz Ferdinand. When Lanyi found out that his message not had reached the Archduke, he held a mass for him. Afterwards, he realized that his dream had come true.
There are more stories of this kind, they are well documented and cannot be neglected as poppycock. Jung has developed a theory called the Synchronicity. I will write more about that in my next post.