{"id":4464,"date":"2012-03-27T10:44:25","date_gmt":"2012-03-27T14:44:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/dreamgates\/?p=4464"},"modified":"2012-03-27T11:38:44","modified_gmt":"2012-03-27T15:38:44","slug":"dreams-of-george-orwell-and-1984","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/2012\/03\/dreams-of-george-orwell-and-1984.html","title":{"rendered":"Dreams of George Orwell and “1984”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>A dream changed the mind of one of the greatest political writers of the twentieth century. George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair) reached a watershed in his thinking in the summer of 1939, when he discovered that \u2013 despite his deep commitment to revolutionary causes and ideas of the Left \u2013 he remained a patriot at heart, ready to fight and die for his country. The change was worked by a dream.<\/p>\n

In his essay \u201cMy Country Right or Left\u201d Orwell recalled that the night before the Nazi-Soviet Pact was announced he dreamed that the war had started. \u201cIt was one of those dreams which, whatever Freudian inner meaning they may have, do sometimes reveal to you the real state of your feelings. It taught me two things, first, that I should be simply relieved when the long-dreaded war started, secondly, that I was patriotic at heart, would not sabotage or act against my own side, would support the war, would fight in it if possible.\u201d A few weeks earlier, he had been calling for the creation of \u00a0an underground network to spread anti-war propaganda in the event that hostilities broke out between Britain and Germany; no thought of that now.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In his terrifying parable Nineteen Eighty-Four<\/em>, Orwell\u2019s protagonist, Winston Smith, is a dreamer, and resistance to Big Brother begins with a dream. Winston Smith dreams that as he walks in the dark, a man\u2019s voice tells him that they will meet in \u201ca place without darkness\u201d. He trusts that voice and it sows the hope that there are others who oppose the Party. His first act of defiance is to start keeping a journal. He writes his private thoughts in a contraband notebook just out of view of the spy cameras of the Thought police that are built into the \u201ctelescreen\u201d on the wall that spews out propaganda day and night and cannot be turned off.<\/p>\n

In the second dream reported in the novel, Winston finds himself in a place of freedom in nature, in a \u201crabbit-bitten\u201d field where fish swim in green pools under the willows. In this \u201cgolden country\u201d, a young woman throws off her clothes with magnificent abandon, defying the Party\u2019s ban on love and passion. As he embraces her, Winston becomes a rebel, and knows rebellion is possible.<\/p>\n

In Orwell\u2019s novel, both dreams are played out. The young woman from the second dream invites Winston to a tryst in the landscape of his golden country. As their love blossoms, she promises that whatever happens, \u201cThey can\u2019t get inside you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Alas, the way the earlier dream is manifested proves her wrong. Winston decides to confide his hopes of fighting the regime to a senior Party member he believes to be the voice in his dream. The \u201cplace without darkness\u201d proves to be a torture cell where the lights are never turned off, where the prisoner\u2019s mind is raped until he is ready to believe any lie he is told to repeat, and to betray everything he ever loved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A dream changed the mind of one of the greatest political writers of the twentieth century. George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair) reached a watershed in his thinking in the summer of 1939, when he discovered that \u2013 despite his deep commitment to revolutionary causes and ideas of the Left \u2013 he remained a patriot at…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":224,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,34,5,20,29,16],"tags":[1167,1165,1168,1166,1034,1170,1169,1035],"class_list":["post-4464","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conscious-dreaming","category-creativity","category-dreams","category-history-of-dreaming","category-story","category-writing","tag-1167","tag-big-brother","tag-dreams-in-fiction","tag-george-orwell","tag-literary-dreams","tag-my-country-right-or-left","tag-nazi-soviet-pact","tag-writers-dreams"],"yoast_head":"\nDreams of George Orwell and "1984" - Dream Gates<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/2012\/03\/dreams-of-george-orwell-and-1984.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Dreams of George Orwell and "1984" - Dream Gates\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A dream changed the mind of one of the greatest political writers of the twentieth century. George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair) reached a watershed in his thinking in the summer of 1939, when he discovered that \u2013 despite his deep commitment to revolutionary causes and ideas of the Left \u2013 he remained a patriot at…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/2012\/03\/dreams-of-george-orwell-and-1984.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Dream Gates\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2012-03-27T14:44:25+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2012-03-27T15:38:44+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/dreamgates\/files\/2012\/03\/orwell1-202x300.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Robert Moss\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Dreams of George Orwell and \"1984\" - Dream Gates","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/2012\/03\/dreams-of-george-orwell-and-1984.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Dreams of George Orwell and \"1984\" - Dream Gates","og_description":"A dream changed the mind of one of the greatest political writers of the twentieth century. 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He is the creator of Active Dreaming, an original synthesis of dreamwork and shamanism. Born in Australia, he survived three near-death experiences in childhood. He leads popular seminars all over the world, including a three-year training for teachers of Active Dreaming. A former lecturer in ancient history at the Australian National University, he is a best-selling novelist, journalist and independent scholar. His nine books on dreaming, shamanism and imagination include Conscious Dreaming, Dreamways of the Iroquois, The Dreamer's Book of the Dead, The Three \"\"Only\"\" Things, The Secret History of Dreaming, Dreamgates, Active Dreaming and Dreaming the Soul Back Home: Shamanic Dreaming for Healing and Becoming Whole. His most recent book is The Boy Who Died and Came Back: Adventures of a Dream Archaeologist in the Multiverse. Over the past 20 years, he has led seminars at the Esalen Institute, Kripalu, the Omega Institute, the New York Open Center, Bastyr University, John F. Kennedy University, Meriter Hospital, and many other centers and institutions. He has taught depth workshops in Active Dreaming in the UK, Australia, Canada, Costa Rica, France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Romania, Brazil and Austria and leads a three-year training for teachers of Active Dreaming. He hosts the \"\"Way of the Dreamer\"\" radio show at www.healthylife.net. He has appeared on many TV and radio shows, ranging from Charlie Rose and the Today show to Coast to Coast and the Diane Rehm show on NPR. His articles on dreaming have been published in media ranging from Parade to Shaman's Drum.","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.mossdreams.com"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/author\/rmoss"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4464","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/224"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4464"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4464\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4469,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4464\/revisions\/4469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}