Dream Encounters in Christian and Islamic Societies and Its Implications for Christian Ministry and Mission

Authors

  • John Cheong

Abstract

Dreams are commonly experienced by people in every society, but how they are perceived differs according to a person’s perspective. One’s education, socio-cultural and religious backgrounds all influence the way dreams are viewed (Bulkeley 1995:9). Phenomenologically, a dreamer is aware of certain events during this altered state of consciousness. They may be achieved through incubation, drugs or mere somnolence. For this discussion, I focus on dreams encountered in the natural course of sleep. The loss of self-awareness and control experienced when a dreamer dreams is sometimes more pronounced than encountered in a vision or a trance. However, such loss is not necessarily total. One may suddenly awake in a parallel physical enactment of the dream in the real world like dreaming of free-fall from a cliff only to be awakened by the fall from one’s bed!

Published

— Updated on 2021-06-14

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Section

Contextualization