Influential Dreamers
How many do you recognize?

Dreamers featured in the 1" YouTube movie are (in order of their appearance):

1 Mohandas K. Gandhi

One man’s dream manifested the vision of an absolute reality.  His name was Mohandas K. Gandhi.  For years, Gandhi sought ways to free his native India from British colonization into self rule.  His nonviolent efforts brought him worldwide notoriety during the early 1900s.  One of these came to him in a dream. In 1919, after weeks of meditation, Gandhi had a dream suggesting that the people of India suspend their usual business activities for 24 hours – devoting that time to fasting and prayer.  The resulting mass strikes were called hartals.   These nonviolent unified efforts, mobilized by Gandhi, marked a turning point in India’s efforts to achieve independence.

2 Rene Descartes

Rene Descartes’ discovery of Analytical Geometry was the result of a dream which revealed that all sciences could be combined through mathematics.  The 17^th century mathematician and philosopher experienced illumined perspectives from dreams that led to his theory of dualism.  Descartes observed that man’s physical body functions in a manner similar to that of other animals while his mind operates on a metaphysical basis under the influence of the soul.

3 Sigmund Freud

In 1899, Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist Sigmund Freud published The Interpretation of dreams.  Known as the father of psychoanalysis, Freud called dreams the "royal road to the unconscious."  His theories and practices revolutionized the way we see and understand ourselves, opening doors to self awareness. For this reason, his name - perhaps more than any other in history - is synonymous with dreams.

4 Marie Curie

The discoverer of radium, Maria Sklodowska-Curie was a Polish-French physicist and economist In 1897 she and her husband Pierre opened the school of Industrial Physics and Chemistry.  Some years later she wrote, " At this time we were completely absorbed by the new field that opened up before us, thanks to an unexpected discovery. We were very happy despite our difficult working conditions. We spent our days in the laboratory, often eating a simple lunch there like students. A great tranquility reigned in our run-down shed (…) We lived with just one concern, as in a dream."  In almost everything written about her, Curie's capacity to harness day dreams in this single-pointed fashion is undoubtedly what enabled her to be one of two people (the other being Linus Pauling),to date, to have received two Nobel prizes.

5 Helen Keller

The World I Live In is Helen Keller’s account of the power of subconscious realities.  Deaf and blind from the age of 19 months, Helen described visiting foreign lands in her dreams where she had never been in her waking life and conversing with peoples whose languages she had never heard.  “I do not remember ever to have met persons with whom I could not at once communicate” she wrote.  Adept in sign language, Helen very rarely used her fingers to spell in her dreams, and she was self sufficient, enjoying “an independence quite foreign to my physical life.  Wherever I turn my steps, my mind is my faithful guide and interpreter.  In dreams we catch glimpses of a life larger than our own…..Thoughts are imparted to us far above our ordinary thinking..” 6 William ShakespeareDreams influenced Helen Keller’s thinking, gifting her with the power of consciousness to rise far above the norm.  

Sixteen comedies, 10 histories, 12 tragedies, and numerous sonnets are attributed to English playwright William Shakespeare.  Dreams form more than a narrative device in the hands of this master of human nature, they become a stimulus for ever-deepening thought which is why his works endure and remain the great challenge for every actor.  Although Shakespeare put dreamers on center stage in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" it is perhaps Hamlet's soliloquy about death, dreaming, and consciousness that is his most famous.

To be or not to be, that is the question—
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing, end them. To die, to sleep—
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to — 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep—
To sleep, perchance to dream. Ay, there's the rub,
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. There's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life,
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
Th'oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despis'd love, the law's delay,

7 Srinivasa Ramanujan

Sometimes dream inspiration can take on godlike qualities.  According to an article in Scientific American in 1948, a Hindu goddess called Namakkal would appear to the Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan in his dreams.  She presented him with mathematical formulae which he would verify after waking.  This pattern repeated itself throughout Rama-nujan’s life and his accomplishments were so substantial that one commentator stated, “It was doubtful so prodigious a feat had ever before been accomplished in the history of thought.”

8 Carl Jung

Swiss psychiatrist and founder of analytical psychology Carl Jung took a broad approach to understanding the psyche.  From art to mythology, from world religion to clinical practice, Jung contributed much to our knowledge of self through dreams particularly in his expansive command of archetypal symbols found around the globe.  His travels around the world led him to unite Eastern and Western concepts into a greater understanding of what is unconscious. Jung believed that the unconscious also had a creative capacity, that the collective unconscious of archetypes and images which made up the human psyche was processed and renewed within the unconscious.

9 Abraham Lincoln

About two weeks before his assassination, Abraham Lincoln dreamed he heard sobbing. Leaving his bed he sought the source.  Arriving in the East Room he saw a coffin lying on a platform. When asked who was dead, the soldiers guarding the body said, “The President. He was killed by an assassin.” When the dream came to pass only days later, Lincoln’s body was laid in state in the East Room guarded by soldiers.

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