Twenty years ago, I taught a course of dream analysis at the Cancer Support Association in Cottesloe, a Perth suburb. In the class was an elderly refugee from Eastern Europe whom I will call Zelda. At first she claimed to have had only one dream in her life, but it had repeated for years. She dreamt that she was running away from a witch. She was able to escape because the witch was hobbled by tightly laced boots. "What does it mean?" she asked.

In return, I asked her, "What was your mother like?" and you could see the penny drop. Zelda had run away from her violent mother when she was 14 and she never saw her again. Of course, there was more to the dream than this, but it illustrates the first step in dream analysis. A dream is likely to be a symbolic illustration of some important event in your day or life.

Zelda then told me that years ago she had deliberately stopped dreaming. When she was 21, she lost her infant daughter in a house fire, and suffered terrible nightmares thereafter. To escape them, she decided she would never sleep again. For the next 40 years, she spent her nights virtually awake, keeping herself occupied with reading and tasks. I'm sure she lapsed into sleep periodically - she would have been dead or mad if she didn't - but this was nonetheless an astounding achievement. Only the onset of her cancer had forced her to start sleeping again. (And she made the comment, "I now miss my reading.")

She then asked, "Could I start dreaming again?" and I say what I always do to people who feel they never dream: "Everybody dreams, whether they remember them or not. If you go to bed resolving to remember your dreams, within a few days you are likely to start doing so."

A fortnight later, I got a letter from Zelda. She said she had resolved to dream again, but to have "good" dreams. She then recounted the breakthrough dreams she had on three successive nights. These were dreams to die for. They did everything that "divinely" inspired dreams are supposed to do. I like to think that when she did finally succumb to her illness, she had made peace with her soul.

Of course, Zelda's experience of immensely positive dreams is very rare. Dreams are typically more problematic and confusing. But with reasonable certainty we can make the following claims about dreams.

Dreaming is essential for health and sanity. People get paranoid and dysfunctional within days of dream deprivation, even if they get sufficient non-dream sleep. Dreams usually relate to what has happened in the recent day, and their emotional tone is more likely to be negative than positive. Dreams seem essential for the consolidation of memory and learning. They select what is important from the recent day's events, and store them in their appropriate places in the memory bank. They also seem to dump the trash and do vital underground work toward solving problems.

Given that dreams have an emotional urgency that makes them seem so important, it makes sense to understand them. The main problem is the sheer time involved. Dream analysis is not that difficult. You only have to write down a dream in as much detail as possible, then talk about it, then revisit it later and let your imagination do the rest. I've done this for long periods in the past, and it works really well. But most people will just take a stab at a dream rather than invest that amount of time, and they frequently miss the target altogether.

Secondly, no matter how much we analyse a dream, we never conclusively nail it. While good analysis does involve some intellectual rigour and honesty, it is much more of a creative art than a science. It is not like translating a text from one language to another. Instead, we use a dream as a starting point to build deeper layers of meaning by connecting the image language of the night with the word language of waking consciousness.

Formal dream analysis easily falls prey to the distorting influence of delayed recall. To remember a dream, I know that I have to repeat the story three or four times in the process of waking up. Each time I revisit not the original dream, but the previous re-telling. By the time I emerge into full consciousness, I know the story has changed enormously, usually becoming simpler, more coherent and more story-like. If I then write it down, or talk about it, the dream assimilates richer associations from the memory bank. It takes on a fully fledged life in the outer world, but it is no longer what it was.

We know that dreams occur at the threshold of sleep, in what is called Stage One, or Paradoxical, Sleep. This means that we enter the dream world either from above, as we go into sleep, or from below, as we emerge out of sleep. Dream analysts usually work retrospectively, by examining the remnants of the dream that remains in the mind as you wake up. But some people enter the dream world from above, as they slide down from full consciousness towards sleep, and this can completely change the nature of the dream experience.

This approach is typically the province of (some) meditators and (some) artists and musicians. They often specialise in this skill, but it is available to all of us. All we need to do is notice what is going on in our minds as we fall asleep. If we resist the temptation of oblivion, and stay alert at the threshold, we can consciously enter the world of the dream. It takes a little effort and quite a bit of practice. It is like treading water, or riding a bicycle very slowly. You learn to relax enough to abandon linear and outer-oriented thought, but stay awake enough to see what is still happening.

The first signs are usually flashes of so called "hypnagogic imagery". These are like dream images, but lasting for just microseconds. I often find they contain extraordinary detail, and yet they are so subtle that I'll miss them completely if I'm just a little tired or absentminded. Auditory and tactile hallucinations are common, as are passing thoughts that you suddenly realise are completely irrational. Some people see colours or swirling light patterns.

The hypnagogic state is typically very fragmentary - a brief flash of amazing images on the plunge towards sleep - but practice can make it much more stable. This can produce extremely elaborate interconnected images. A perfect illustration of this is one of Salvatore Dali's masterpieces. It is called A dream caused by the flight of a bee around a pomegranate a second before awakening and even this long title sells the work short. The painting actually depicts two tigers leaping from the mouth of a fish towards a naked woman on a rock in the ocean, and much more. I am sure Dali first saw that whole image in a flash, and was able to commit it to memory in order to reproduce it.

The rapid-fire associative nature of hypnagogic imagery probably gives us a more accurate picture of what happens in the sleeping brain than does our recollection of dreams. As I said before, a dream is already a reworked memory of something that has passed by the time that we notice it. Dreams can often feel a bit tired, which hypnagogic imagery never is.

The Yoga tradition says that there are three natural states of consciousness, namely waking, dream, and deep sleep. Each of them is "real" although they differ from one another. Each has its own quality of consciousness and way of seeing "the world". The ultimate goal of a yogi is to be fully "awake" in each of them, even, paradoxically, the state of deep sleep.

There is a Tibetan tradition of what is called Dream Yoga, which we know mostly from the literature since I am not sure if anyone seriously practises it these days. The yogi tries to extend his dream consciousness both ways into deeper sleep and full wakefulness. While awake, he tells himself "this is all just a dream", so he notices the dreamlike, irrational qualities that are ever present in daily life. He also trains himself to wake up repeatedly during the night, so he doesn't wallow in total unconsciousness when he sleeps.

The philosophic purpose of this is to see and feel that everything is dreamlike and illusory, and devoid of lasting significance. Since nothing is worth taking seriously, and nothing lasts, the yogi tries to dwell in the state of perfect detachment. This is how the Buddhist doctrine of emptiness leads to complete peace.

But the very name that the Tibetans give the dream state reveals another reason for entering it. It is called the Sambhogakaya which translates as "the body of bliss". It is the playground of the gods, Mt Olympus transported to Tibet. Through his dreaming, a yogi locked in his cave can explore the infinity of imagination.

Most dreams have an anxious quality, which probably relates to their problem solving function. The hypnagogic state, on the other hand, is much more inclined to be radiant, beautiful, delightful, witty and playful. Many people never experience it, because it tends to be so subtle and transient. If you blink on the way down into sleep, you miss it. For others, however, it is the most satisfying state possible. I go there every day, if only for a few seconds at a time. It is the temporary antidote to all but the worst of depressions. It is the place from where you see Paradise, even if you can't live there. So keep an eye out for it as you drift into sleep.

Eric Harrison has been running the Perth Meditation Centre since 1987: www.perthmeditationcentre.com.au

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