Cancer
Dreamed by William Dement, c.1969
Some years ago I was a heavy cigarette smoker--up to two packs a day.
Then one night I had an exceptionally vivid and realistic dream in which I had inoperable cancer of the lung. I remember as though it were yesterday looking at the ominous shadow in my chest X-ray and realizing that the entire right lung was infiltrated. The subsequent physical examination in which a colleague detected widespread metastases in my axiliary and inguinal lymph nodes was equally vivid. Finally, I experienced the incredible anguish of knowing my life was soon to end, that I would never see my children grow up, and that none of this would have happened if I had quit cigarettes when I first learned of their carcinogenic potential.I will never forget the surprise, joy, and exquisite relief of waking up. I felt I was reborn. Needless to say, the experience was sufficient to induce an immediate cessation of my cigarette habit. This dream had both anticipated the problem, and had solved it in a way that may be a dream's unique privilege.
Only the dream can allow us to experience a future alternative as if it were real, and thereby to provide a supremely enlightened motivation to act upon this knowledge.
As a parting salute, I offer my all-time favorite quotation about dreaming, courtesy of Havelock Ellis-one that says it all: "Dreams are real while they last. Can we say more of life?"
SOURCE AND DATE: Some Must Watch while Some Must Sleep by William Dement (1972, p.102). "Some years ago" would be the 1960s; but in Living Your Dreams by Gayle Delaney (1994 ed., p.157) she writes "When I last spoke with Dr. Dement in 1985, he had been free of his habit for the whole 14 years since his powerful and effective dream", thus dating it to 1971--just one year before his book. One memory or the other has to be off by a few years.
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