In the epilogue to his latest book, Healing dreams: Exploringthe dreams that can transform your life (Riverhead Books) Marc Baraschrelates the story of his editor trying to envision a simple sound-bitepromotion for his book. The editor asked, "How would a healingdream help the average person be effective in their daily lives?"Barasch, was, in his own words, "flummoxed" by thequestion. He had spent years researching the subject, through his owndreams as he dealt with cancer, through interviewing countless peoplewho had received dreams of Great Mysteries, and through in-depthscholarship on the vast spiritual traditions pointing to dreams as achannel by which God might speak and redirect our ignorant andsleepwalking lives into the pursuit of wisdom. Yet the editor wantedsomething simple to explain it all to the consuming public. Baraschsaid he was reminded of the saying that when a thief meets a saint,all he sees is the holy man's pockets. Later, when the editor had adream about struggling to land an extremely large fish, Baraschsuspected that the fellow had finally gotten the idea: dreams, andhealing dreams especially, take us beyond our narrow categories andconcepts into a much larger world. As he puts us, healing dreamsdon't come to make it all better, but to help us live the truth.Iknow from my experience that it is difficult to take a healing dreamand turn it into a nifty formula for rescuing others....Iappreciate Barasch's new book for the rare and worthy achievementit is: Through beautiful, even poetic language, integrated with thegrounding influence of the facts from the lives of those heinterviewed, he gives us a glimpse of a holy World Order that inspiresus to try to empathize with something that we can not fullyunderstand. In that sense, Barasch's book is the next best thing toa personal encounter with a healing dream itself.Among the varioustypes of healing dreams he explores, he includes his experiences withthe "Dream Helper Ceremony." Perhaps the most far-flungexport from A.R.E.'s summer camp, where it was first invented,Dream Helper involves a group of people volunteering to donate theirdreams to help someone in distress, doing so without knowing inadvance the nature of the person's problem. What began as anattempt to put a spiritual spin on traditional dream telepathyexperiments soon evolved into a potent healing ritual that many peoplehave used to their benefit....On the basis of his dream helperexperience, Barasch draws two important conclusions about healingdreams. First: if you want to have one yourself, offer to have ahealing dream for someone else! That's the closest to a healingdream formula he offers in the entire book.Two: there is some kind ofliving, spiritual fabric that unites all of us with a life beyond thephysical and to which we have a important relationship, acknowledgedor not. Healing dreams, he has discovered, come to pull us back fromthe abyss of isolationism into a more conscious relationship with thatunifying lifeforce. There's more to a saint, in other words, thanwhat can be found in his pockets.