Why do we dream? How have dreams helped inspire creative artists? How useful are they in daily problem solving? What evidence is there for second sight in dreaming? How much can dreams tell us about the future?  In this wide ranging and immensely stimulating account, Brian Inglis first sifts the historical evidence and then describes recent scientific research, before proclaiming the empirical evidence both for a psychic element in dreams and for their frequently beneficial value in our day-to-day lives.

He refers to the influences of ‘visions of the night’ on writers like Robert Louis Stevenson, Edgar Allen Poe, Sir Walter Scott, WB Yeats and Graham Greene. He quotes the testimony of scientists like Nils Bohr, Henri Fabre, and Frederick Kekulé (who remarked: ‘Let us learn to dream, gentlemen, and then perhaps we’ll discover the truth’); and he cites instances of how specific dreams have served as ‘memory joggers’ or solved working problems in the case of inventors like Elias Howe (who invented the sewing machine) and sportsmen like Jack Nicklaus.  The evidence for extra sensory communication in dreams is rich and enthralling - much of it derived from the contemporary archives of the Koestler Foundation. Precognition of dreams (as in ‘disaster’ or ‘farewell’ dreams), prophetic dreams, warning dreams and ‘lucid’ dreams are all indications that the mind in sleep can pick up useful information not ordinarily available to us when we are awake.  ’To sleep, perchance to dream’: the evolutionary potential of dreams has barely been tapped. Brian Inglis shows that it is we who can be the explorers now.

Includes chapters on

Inspiration from dreams (‘visions of the night’)

Problem-solving in dreams (‘sleeping on it’),

Second sight in dreams (dream telepathy and clairvoyance)

Dreaming the future (precognition and dream warnings)

‘Lucid’ dreaming (the mind’s control over dreams)

Dream interpretation (from shamans and prophets to Freud, Jung and beyond).

Brian Inglis (31 July 1916 – 11 February 1993) was an Irish journalist, historian and television presenter. He was born in Dublin, Ireland, and retained an interest in Irish history and politics. He was best known to people in Britain as the presenter of All Our Yesterdays, a television review of events exactly 25 years previously, as seen in newsreels, newspaper articles etc. He also presented the weekly review of newspapers known as What the Papers Say. He joined the staff of The Spectator in 1954, and became editor in 1959, soon afterwards hiring the young Bernard Levin to write for the magazine. He continued as editor until 1962. He also had interests in the paranormal, and alternatives to institutionalised medicine. Inglis’ friend and colleague Bill Grundy died on 9 February 1993. Inglis had just finished writing Grundy’s obituary when he, too, died.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Inglis