Bookmarks, Night Visions: Dreams Can Free Us from the Constricting World of Rationality

Beginning of article

Bookmarks By Richard Handler

Night Visions Dreams can free us from the constricting world of rationality

A History of Last Night's Dream: Discovering the Hidden Path to the Soul Rodger Kamenetz HarperOne. 256 pp. ISBN: 978-0-06-057583-0

Throughout history, humans have tried to make sense of the baffling, nonlinear fleetingness of dreams. For shamans, mystics, and sages, dreams have provided a pathway to transcendent power--call it God (or myriad gods). In the Holy Bible, dreams were often seen as prophetic. Abraham's grandson Jacob dreamed of a ladder into the heavens where angels journeyed up and down, as if on some celestial highway. Later, Jacob's son Joseph …