Some artists, writers, engineers, musicians and singers have made good use of their dreams , they got concrete creative material and productive ideas. Naturalist Louis Agassiz is one them , his story from Paperveins.org.

While Agassiz was working on his vast work “Poissons Fossiles” a list of all know fossil fish, he came across a specimen which he was, at first, unable to figure out. He hesitated to classify it and extract it since an incorrect approach could ruin the specimen. At that time, Agassiz reports having a dream three nights in a row in which he saw the fish in perfect original condition. The first two nights — being unprepared — he did not record his image. By the third night he was ready with pen and paper, and when the fish appeared again in the dream he drew it in the dark, still half asleep. The next day he looked at his drawing which had remarkably different features from the ones he had been working out, hastened to his laboratory and extracting the fossil realized it corresponded exactly to his dream.

Elias Howe the inventor of the sewing machine found the principle to make the machine work in a dream, Professor Herman V. Hilprecht from the University of Pennsylvania was able in a dream to solve a difficulty connected with two Babylonian inscriptions, which had not previously been recognized as complementary to each other; a point of peculiar interest is the dramatic form in which the information came to him – an old Babylonian priest appeared in his dream and gave him the clue to the problem.

Scottish essayist, poet, and author of fiction and travel books, Robert Louis Stevenson was a true dream worker he used to work with specific self-suggestions at night to induce certain themes in his dreams, the plot of his most popular book ‘The strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mister Hyde’ was revealed to him in a dream.

You too – you can use your dreams to receive concrete productive ideas and creative material, if you are new to maintain a dream journal, I think it is best to first be in a habit to maintain such journal for a least 30 days, once you are in the habit of maintaining a dream journal use self-suggestion, another way to receive creative insight that I experimented with in the past is to read a book about the topic you are interested and while you read the book ask yourself a series of questions, go to sleep immediately after you finished your reading , you will have a chance to have a dream that answer your question it worked many time for me.

Have fun with your dreams!

Technorati Tags: dream, creativity, agassiz, louis, stevenson, journal, hilprecht, elias, howe

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