“This splendid book is destined to become a classic, one that transcends disciplines and provides an agenda for the role that dreams can play in ensuring human survival.”
— Stanley Krippner, PhD, coauthor of Extraordinary Dreams and How to Work with Them
“Erudite, brilliant, and delightful...the first history to pay serious attention to the sacred art of dreaming as practiced worldwide by women as well as by men.”
— Barbara Tedlock, PhD, author of The Woman in the Shaman’s Body
“Robert Moss is dragging us, kicking and screaming, into a new vision of consciousness, space, and time. Our understanding of consciousness can never be adequate without taking into account the dream events chronicled by Robert Moss in The Secret History of Dreaming. Moss describes how we can acquire accurate information in dreams about future and distant events. This terrific book strikes the perfect balance between information and entertainment. Moss is a storyteller par excellence.”
— Larry Dossey, MD, author of Healing Words
“The Secret History of Dreaming is a masterly survey and exploration of how inner, dreamed realities have generated core historical realities across time and space. A great and very informative read.”
— Iain R. Edgar, PhD, professor of anthropology, Durham University, and author of A Guide to Imagework
“Robert Moss is a dynamo in dreaming. A modern-day Waymaker, he guides us as travelers through the sea of dreams, starting at the source in ancient times, and challenges us to a consciousness shift into a future safe harbor as a dream-appreciating culture. Robert’s research reveals a treasury of secrets never before published in any book on dreams. Robert makes dreamers such as Harriet Tubman, Joan of Arc, Mark Twain, and Winston Churchill come alive. A brilliant, must-have book!”
— Rita Dwyer, past president and executive officer, International Association for the Study of Dreams
“Robert Moss is a brilliant teacher of the immense and intimate field of dreaming. Nearly anything imagined, from invention, to strategy to poetry, has its roots in dreams. Moss deftly and powerfully demonstrates that dreams are the spirit body from which this world emerges. The Secret History of Dreaming is an essential text and should be included alongside any study of human history or scientific inquiry.”
— Joy Harjo, poet, musician, and author of How We Became Human
What do the first major oil discovery in Kuwait, Mark Twain’s fiction, and Harriet Tubman’s success conducting slaves to freedom via the Underground Railroad have in common? They were all experienced first in dreams. Dreaming is vital to the human story. It is essential to our survival and evolution, to creative endeavors in every field, and, quite simply, to getting us through our daily lives. Robert Moss traces the strands of dreams through archival records and well-known writings, weaving remarkable yet true accounts of historical figures influenced by their dreams. With eloquent prose, Moss describes beautiful Lucrecia de Leon, whose dreams were prized by powerful men in Madrid and then recorded during the Spanish Inquisition, as well as the fascinating dream correspondence between Wolfgang Pauli and Carl Jung. The Secret History of Dreaming addresses the central importance of dreams and imagination as secret engines in the history of all things human, from literature to quantum physics, from religion to psychology, from war to healing.