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| Dreaming Woman (2018) by Noah Buchanan |
YouTube has turned out to be a plausible source of personal testimonies about private revelations and the spiritual life. We have to exercise good judgment in evaluating them, of course, because what anybody just says in social media does not deserve credence automatically. Sincerity, plausibility, reasonableness, clarity, coherence, and a persuasive combination of emotional depth with poise and composure are, I suggest, some attributes that make a personal testimony credible. Concededly, all the aforementioned attributes can be duplicated in front of a camera by skilled actors.
In YouTube I came across the personal testimony of Sy Garte, a scientist in his sixties or older (estimate). He talks about his conversion to Christianity from his upbringing in atheist communism by his parents and grandparents. He is obviously highly educated and intelligent, reasonable and persuasive. His testimony is equable, and, most important of all possibly, he is sincere.
His video testimony was posted ten days ago and already it has racked up 152,000 views.
Of particular interest to me is when he speaks about his two numinous dreams (10:16, 13:10) and his personal interpretation of them.
—Walk by Faith, “3rd Generation Atheist Meets Jesus, Gets Shown the Door,” YouTube video, 19:11 minutes, April 28, 2023
By “numinous” we mean an experience that originates in the spiritual dimension of reality. We are assuming with this definition that human beings are corporeal spirits—they are concomitantly spiritual and corporeal beings with some connection with the spiritual world.
We hold that in a numinous experience a person encounters the spiritual dimension of their existence.
The term “numinous” in the sense above originates with Rudolf Otto.
“The term numinous, based on the Latin numen (‘will, the active power of the divine’) was coined by Rudolf Otto (1917/1926) to define a ’category for the interpretation and evaluation’ of nonrational manifestations of the sacred.”
https://www.encyclopedia.com/philosophy-and-religion/christianity/christianity-general/numinous
—Aimé Agnel, “Numinous (Analytical Psychology),” Encyclopedia.com, May 8, 2018
Insofar as dreams are a channel for numinous experiences, we describe them as “numinous dreams.”
Numinous dreams can besides be considered a type of private revelation, which is defined as:
“Supernatural manifestations by God of hidden truths made to private individuals for their own spiritual welfare or that of others. They differ from the public revelation contained in Scripture and tradition which is given on behalf of the whole human race and is necessary for human salvation and sanctification.”
https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/dictionary/index.cfm?id=35799
—“PRIVATE REVELATIONS,” Catholic Dictionary, Catholic Culture
As private revelations, numinous dreams call for the discernment of the spirits.
Discernment of the spirits is an involved and rather extensive subject in Christian spirituality.
My commentary about the two numinous dreams is intended to be brief so that I do not intend to deal at any length with the subject here.
On the other hand, I offer elsewhere an introductory post on the subject:
https://oddsandendsgonzalinhodacosta.blogspot.com/2017/07/discernmentwhat-is-it.html
I have suggested before that dreams from the “good spirit”—that is, from God directly or from God working through his good angels—demonstrate three attributes:
Concerning the interpretation of dreams from the good spirit, I have said:
“We should not belabor the interpretation of a supernatural dream, meaning that more often than not the basic meaning—not necessarily the entire import of the dream—should be immediately and intuitively apparent upon waking.
“This heuristic would be consistent with the observation in the spiritual literature that with the passage of time the risk arises that a subject will embellish, distort, or misinterpret their supernatural experience. The first, instant interpretation is best.”
https://oddsandendsgonzalinhodacosta.blogspot.com/2020/03/prayer-to-saint-joseph.html
This interpretative rule readily applies to the second numinous dream (10:16). “When I woke up—unlike the first dream…I knew what that one [second dream] was about.”
The first numinous dream (13:10) requires a more careful, closer look, because its meaning and significance are not explicable right afterward but rather only after the meaning of the second dream has revealed itself.
This first dream takes place “many years earlier” when the narrator is still an atheist. He relates:
“When I woke up from that dream [first dream], I had no idea what it meant…and later at the point after I had that second dream, I understood what ‘letting go’ meant. It meant ‘let go of everything that’s holding me back, all the training I’d had as a child, all the stuff I had learned, not just communism but atheism and the idea that God...can’t be real and just let that go.’ And it was hard to do.” (14:38)
Notable about the first dream is that the meaning shows the attribute of instant revelation, which distinguishes the second dream, but unlike the second dream the meaning of the first dream intuitively manifests itself at a later time, in fact, many years later.
It is this quality of instant revelation that I submit is a defining attribute of the true interpretation of numinous dreams originating from the good spirit. Instant revelation means that the meaning is immediately manifest right afterward or at some future point in time, intuitive and lucid, and that the message speaks with unmistakable and compelling persuasive power to the heart. It’s like uncorking a secret.
The two
dreams are themselves highly engaging with memorable literary quality.
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