History of Last Night's Dream: Discovering the Hidden Path to the Soul

( 7 )
Hardcover
$24.20
BN.com price
$24.95 List Price (Save 3%)
Marketplace (New and Used)
from
$0.01
$24.95 List Price (Save 100%)
Usually ships in 1-2 business days
All (28)  
Used (20)  
New (8)  
Close
Sort by
Page 1 of 3
Showing 1 – 10 of 28 (3 pages)
$0.01
(Save 100%)
Better World Books
Seller since 2006

Feedback rating:

(50880)

Condition:

New — never opened or used in original packaging.

Like New — packaging may have been opened. A "Like New" item is suitable to give as a gift.

Very Good — may have minor signs of wear on packaging but item works perfectly and has no damage.

Good — item is in good condition but packaging may have signs of shelf wear/aging or torn packaging. All specific defects should be noted in the Comments section associated with each item.

Acceptable — item is in working order but may show signs of wear such as scratches or torn packaging. All specific defects should be noted in the Comments section associated with each item.

Used — An item that has been opened and may show signs of wear. All specific defects should be noted in the Comments section associated with each item.

Refurbished — A used item that has been renewed or updated and verified to be in proper working condition. Not necessarily completed by the original manufacturer.

Good
Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. 100% Money Back Guarantee. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy!

Ships from: Mishawaka, IN

Usually ships in 1-2 business days

  • •Canadian
  • •International
  • •Standard, 48 States
  • •Standard (AK, HI)
  • •Express, 48 States
  • •Express (AK, HI)
$0.99
(Save 96%)
Alibris NV
Seller since 2005

Feedback rating:

(20379)

Condition: Very Good
2007-10-01 Hardcover Very good in very good dust jacket. Very Good, In very good dust jacket. Glued binding. Paper over boards. With dust jacket. 262 p. Contains: Illustrations.

Ships from: Sparks, NV

Usually ships in 1-2 business days

  • •Canadian
  • •International
  • •Standard, 48 States
  • •Standard (AK, HI)
  • •Express, 48 States
  • •Express (AK, HI)
$0.99
(Save 96%)
Alibris NV
Seller since 2005

Feedback rating:

(20379)

Condition: Very Good
2007-10-01 Hardcover Very good in very good dust jacket. Very Good, In very good dust jacket. Glued binding. Paper over boards. With dust jacket. 262 p. Contains: Illustrations.

Ships from: Sparks, NV

Usually ships in 1-2 business days

  • •Canadian
  • •International
  • •Standard, 48 States
  • •Standard (AK, HI)
  • •Express, 48 States
  • •Express (AK, HI)
$0.99
(Save 96%)
Avenue Book & Co.
Seller since 2009

Feedback rating:

(1245)

Condition: Good
Hardcover Good 0060575832 Former Library Book that may show some signs of use and library markings. 100% Customer Satisfaction Guaranteed.

Ships from: Fort Wayne, IN

Usually ships in 1-2 business days

  • •Canadian
  • •International
  • •Standard, 48 States
  • •Standard (AK, HI)
  • •Express, 48 States
  • •Express (AK, HI)
$1.00
(Save 96%)
Bookbyte-OR
Seller since 2002

Feedback rating:

(10216)

Condition: Very Good
Has minor wear and/or markings. SKU:9780060575830-3-0

Ships from: Salem, OR

Usually ships in 1-2 business days

  • •Canadian
  • •International
  • •Standard, 48 States
  • •Standard (AK, HI)
  • •Express, 48 States
  • •Express (AK, HI)
$1.00
(Save 96%)
oncesoldtales
Seller since 2009

Feedback rating:

(2447)

Condition: Good
A used copy. Pages worn with water damage. Cover worn with creases. Worn edges and corners. Binding solid and tight.

Ships from: Kent, WA

Usually ships in 1-2 business days

  • •Standard, 48 States
  • •Standard (AK, HI)
$1.99
(Save 92%)
Alibris NV
Seller since 2005

Feedback rating:

(20379)

Condition: Very Good
2007-10-01 Hardcover Very good in very good dust jacket. Very Good, In very good dust jacket. Glued binding. Paper over boards. With dust jacket. 262 p. Contains: Illustrations.

Ships from: Sparks, NV

Usually ships in 1-2 business days

  • •Canadian
  • •International
  • •Standard, 48 States
  • •Standard (AK, HI)
  • •Express, 48 States
  • •Express (AK, HI)
$1.99
(Save 92%)
Free State Books
Seller since 2012

Feedback rating:

(1006)

Condition: Good
Book has a small amount of wear visible on the binding, cover, pages. Free State Books. Never settle for less.

Ships from: Halethorpe, MD

Usually ships in 1-2 business days

  • •Canadian
  • •International
  • •Standard, 48 States
  • •Standard (AK, HI)
  • •Express, 48 States
  • •Express (AK, HI)
$1.99
(Save 92%)
thriftbooks-com
Seller since 2007

Feedback rating:

(5902)

Condition: Very Good
Book has appearance of light use with no easily noticeable wear. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. ... Read More. Read more Show Less

Ships from: Auburn, WA

Usually ships in 1-2 business days

  • •Canadian
  • •International
  • •Standard, 48 States
  • •Standard (AK, HI)
  • •Express, 48 States
  • •Express (AK, HI)
$1.99
(Save 92%)
Blue Cloud Books
Seller since 2010

Feedback rating:

(2520)

Condition: Very Good
This book shows minor wear and is in very good condition. Blue Cloud Books ??? Hot deals from the land of the sun.

Ships from: Phoenix, AZ

Usually ships in 1-2 business days

  • •Canadian
  • •International
  • •Standard, 48 States
  • •Standard (AK, HI)
  • •Express, 48 States
  • •Express (AK, HI)
Page 1 of 3
Showing 1 – 10 of 28 (3 pages)
Close
Sort by
NOOK Book (eBook)
$10.99
BN.com price

Available on NOOK devices and apps

  • Nook Devices
  • NOOK
  • NOOK Color
  • NOOK Tablet
  • Tablet/Phone
  • NOOK for iPad
  • NOOK for iPhone
  • NOOK for Android
  • NOOK for Android (Tablet)
  • NOOK Kids for iPad
  • PC/Mac
  • NOOK Study
  • NOOK for PC
  • NOOK for Mac

Want a NOOK? Explore Now

More About This Book

Overview

A third of our time on earth is spent sleeping, yet our dreams, if we remember them at all, have been relegated to nothing more than curious anecdotes. When Sigmund Freud awakened modern interest in the dream a century ago, his theory of interpretation undermined the potential insights dreams had to offer. For Freud, dreams were little more than fragmented puzzle parts made up of events from our waking lives. Most of us today still live under Freud's far-reaching influence. When we wake up after experiencing a powerful series of images, we too readily explain them away or simply ignore them all together. Whatever emotion or insight the dream evokes slowly fades. But what if Freud was wrong? Unless we challenge his deeply-ingrained assumptions, we will forever lose the gift of our dreams.

International bestselling author Rodger Kamenetz believes it is not too late to reclaim the lost power of our nightly visions. Kamenetz's exploration of the world of dreams reopens all the questions scientists and psychologists claimed to have settled long ago. The culmination of decades of research, The History of Last Night's Dream is a riveting intellectual and cultural investigation of dreams and what they have to teach us. We discover how the age-old struggle between what we dream and how we interpret our dreams has shaped Western culture from biblical times to today. Kamenetz introduces us to an eighty-seven-year-old female kabbalist in Jerusalem, a suave Tibetan Buddhist dream teacher in Copenhagen, and a crusty intuitive postman-turned-dream master in northern Vermont. He fearlessly delves into this mysterious inner realm and shows us that dreams are not only intensely meaningful but that they hold essential truths about who we are. In the end, each of us has the choice to embark on this illuminating path to the soul. But one thing is certain: our dreams will never be the same again.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

Kamenetz's newest work continues his exploration of the Jewish tradition down yet another path: that of dreams. Like Jacob, who wrestles with God in the famous biblical dream, a leitmotif in the book, the author of the bestselling The Jew in the Lotuswrestles with personal, religious and cultural history in an ambitious quest to revivify the language of dreams. Kamenetz offers a psychological-cum-mystical version of Susan Sontag's watershed Against Interpretation. Don't "interpret" dreams, he cautions, as he lays out another way to meet and greet the nightly messages of human brains. Kamenetz offers a post-Jungian, semiarchetypal, image-centered view of dream meaning. He does so in the context of a historical overview of dream interpretation that also locates dreams in the realm of Jewish mysticism. Narratives of encounters with spiritual teachers are also part of this amalgam of a book that seems to have changed shape over time and through personal discovery. This is a disarming, hard-to-summarize, well-written and idiosyncratic book that will find a distinct audience that appreciates its reflective quirkiness. Readers who have enjoyed Kamenetz's other journeys through Judaism will follow with surprise and pleasure his next steps along a winding spiritual path. (Oct.)

Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information
Los Angeles Times
“Rodger Kamenetz writes in this fascinating book that words, too many words, stand between us and our dreams.”
More Reviews (2) Fewer Reviews
The Christian Century
“Rodger Kamenetz’s vividly honest and well-reswearched book on dreams in Western culture is extraordinary-- in part for its defiance of genre...Before I read it had heard Kamenetz refer to it as a memoir, but it as much an argument for a paradigm shift in dream interpretation.”
The Forward
“The History of Last Night’s Dream is at once affable and audacious; Kamenetz is a reliable narrator in unreliable territory.... Kamenetz’s poetic eye is alive and well.”

Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780060575830
  • Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
  • Publication date: 10/9/2007
  • Pages: 272
  • Product dimensions: 6.00 (w) x 9.00 (h) x 0.93 (d)

Meet the Author

Rodger Kamenetz is the author of the landmark international bestseller The Jew in the Lotus and the National Jewish Book Award winner Stalking Elijah. He is a professor of English and religious studies at Louisiana State University. He currently lives in New Orleans with his wife.

Read an Excerpt

The History of Last Night's Dream

Discovering the Hidden Path to the Soul
By Rodger Kamenetz

HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

Copyright © 2007 Rodger Kamenetz
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9780060575830

Chapter One

The Descent into Dreams

New Orleans, January 2007

A whole world inside us is asleep. We wake to it but rarely.

We glimpse and barely remember. Or we don't understand what we've seen.

A third of our time on earth we've spent sleeping, with little to show: an image, a face. Only rarely does a dream come that wakes us to ourselves.

Will our lives someday be forgotten as we have forgotten our dreams?

I know there is a conscious mind and an unconscious. But I don't always think about what that implies—that more than half of who I am and what I am is completely unknown to me, except in fragments and glimpses, images and dreams.

Is it possible that all we don't know about ourselves includes also the most important thing? That our self-knowledge is trivial by comparison, and yet we use only our conscious awareness to guide our lives? And so we miss receiving great gifts that have been waiting for us all along.

To receive these gifts, we must learn how to dream, which sounds easy enough. But I mean dreaming with a purpose, learning to use dreaming as a way to depth. That proveddifficult, at least for me.

I had to make a wayward pilgrim's progress to the dream because I had so much to unlearn—and I am a slow unlearner. The progress falls into three parts, which I've titled "Images," "Interpretations," and "Dreams."

First I had to learn the true power of images. Then I had to unlearn the ancient reflexes of interpretation. Only then could I explore the world of dreams.

In part one of this book I introduce my first teacher, an eighty-seven-year-old Algerian-born mystic living in Jerusalem whom we students called Colette. My encounter with this powerful personality was a once-in-a-lifetime adventure full of strange, hilarious, and sometimes harrowing incidents, like the time she tried to lengthen my arms an extra inch. But she taught me the valuable ancient practice of directed waking dreams. This practice reverses the flow of ordinary thought, taking words back to images. By this reversing, I understood for myself, as she often said, that "images are sovereign in the mind."

Part one, then, deals with one obstacle to dreams, which is the habit of thinking in words; part two concerns the habit of interpretation, which is another barrier. I introduce Marc Bregman, my teacher of dreams as Colette was my teacher of images. We struggled together over a puzzling dream about reading a book, a huge blue book that seemed to be a commentary on Genesis. Before I could fully enter the realm of dreams, it seems, I had to unlearn the habit of interpretation. This habit is so thickly and deeply rooted in ancient history and religion and modern psychology that it feels like the only and natural response to dreams. But there is another approach to dreams, and this is what I needed to learn.

So in part two of my wayward progress, I dig up the roots of interpretation in Genesis and follow them where they lead: to the influential dream theories of the rabbinic sages and Church Fathers, all the way to Freud. I learned for myself how in every age, interpretation has repressed the power of the dream.

Only then could Marc Bregman teach me to undo interpretation and enter directly into the world of dreams, the journey explored in the third part of this book. Here he proved as shamanic a master as a contemporary American can be who wears red flannel shirts and hunts moose and drives a Chevy Avalanche.

What I experienced in dreams became not only real for me, but the touchstone for what is real.

But to explain that paradox more clearly, I have to back up and give a brief spiritual and personal history of who I was when I met him.

To all appearances I was awake the summer afternoon I first met Marc Bregman. But I was also unconscious in important ways. I had no awareness of my true predicament in life, though my dreams would soon demonstrate it vividly.

All I knew was, I needed a fresh start. Three frustrating years of work on a book project had ended in failure. It was a book about religion, and a major impasse was that I no longer felt sure in the truths I was writing about. The gap between what I wanted to believe and what I felt inside was wide; the empty space between belief and feeling troubled me.

I am very comfortable with words and metaphors, with books and ideas. I enjoy explicating religious doctrine. I love the stories and the stories about the stories, the commentaries and the traditions. But in the back of my mind, disquiet whispered: What if all this talk is about nothing? What if it isn't real?

I was not raised in a religious home. My extended family were good people; we loved our roots and tradition. The rituals we did were all about family, and warmth, and being together. Our grandparents had traded the Old World for the New, and they'd brought with them the warmth and the family closeness but had left the piety behind.

My family did not pray in a crisis; we worried. Our faith was in ourselves: in what we could see with our eyes and touch with our hands, in hard work, and, for the children, in school. Education was everything: with education you could become a doctor, a lawyer; you could be somebody. We were striving to fulfill the American promise: it was a story our grandparents began by immigrating, and we were completing it with our little triumphs. It was all very practical and obvious. This was how we lived.

I don't recall God being taken seriously in anyone's mouth.

I wasn't gifted with a simple faith, like the man my father told me about once who never prayed in the community: while others worshipped, he walked in the park and talked to God.



Continues...
Excerpted from The History of Last Night's Dream by Rodger Kamenetz Copyright © 2007 by Rodger Kamenetz. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Table of Contents


Images
The Descent into Dreams: New Orleans, January 2007     3
The Gate of Heaven in Newton, Massachusetts: Newton, November 1995     15
Colette and the Waking Dream: Jerusalem, Summer 1995     27
Kitchen Kabbalah and the Vault of Images     37
The Little Shocks     42
The Case of the Disappearing Dream     50
A Convention of Dreamers: Berkeley, June 2003     54
Interpretations
Marc Bregman and a Punch in the Gut: Morrisville, Vermont, June 2001     63
The Book of K de G     73
You Are a Dead Man: Dumuzi and Abimelech     80
Jacob, the Hero of the Revelation Dream     86
Joseph the Dreamer and Joseph the Interpreter     92
The Untimely Disappearance of the Dream: Numbers and Deuteronomy     98
The Rabbis Ameliorate the Dream     102
Peter Sees a Dream, and Jews and Christians Part Ways     108
The Gnostic Heresy and the Mystical Dream Journey     114
Sigmund and Irma: The Secret of Dreams Revealed     122
The Two Belly Buttons     129
Blind Spots Removed While You Wait, and the Book of K de G Speaks     139
How Dreams Abolish Time, and the Secret of K de G at Last     148
Dreams
The Three Gifts of the Dream     157
Lost and Wandering Dreams: The Predicament     161
The Opposition: Gravel Grandma     166
The Opposition: Freud's Staircase Dream     174
The Orphanage Dream: The Situation of the Soul     182
Becoming the Boy: The Pins and the Desert     189
A Very Important Person     198
The Male VIP: The Second Gift of the Dream     205
Jung's Descent into the World of Dreams     211
Marc Bregman Meets the Animus     220
Return of the Orphanage Dream: The Father Archetype     225
North of Eden     230
Acknowledgments     241
Notes     245
Bibliography     253
Index     257

Customer Reviews

Average Rating 4
( 7 )

Rating Distribution

5 Star

(5)

4 Star

(0)

3 Star

(0)

2 Star

(0)

1 Star

(2)

Your Rating:

Review Guidelines
Add Recommendations
Your Name: Create a Pen Name or Leave Anonymously

Barnes & Noble.com Review Rules

Our reader reviews allow you to share your comments on titles you liked, or didn't, with others. By submitting an online review, you are representing to Barnes & Noble.com that all information contained in your review is original and accurate in all respects, and that the submission of such content by you and the posting of such content by Barnes & Noble.com does not and will not violate the rights of any third party. Please follow the rules below to help ensure that your review can be posted.

Reviews by Our Customers Under the Age of 13

We highly value and respect everyone's opinion concerning the titles we offer. However, we cannot allow persons under the age of 13 to have accounts at BN.com or to post customer reviews. Please see our Terms of Use for more details.

What to exclude from your review:

Please do not write about reviews, commentary, or information posted on the product page. If you see any errors in the information on the product page, please send us an email.

Reviews should not contain any of the following:

  • - HTML tags, profanity, obscenities, vulgarities, or comments that defame anyone
  • - Time-sensitive information such as tour dates, signings, lectures, etc.
  • - Single-word reviews. Other people will read your review to discover why you liked or didn't like the title. Be descriptive.
  • - Comments focusing on the author or that may ruin the ending for others
  • - Phone numbers, addresses, URLs
  • - Pricing and availability information or alternative ordering information
  • - Advertisements or commercial solicitation

Reminder:

  • - By submitting a review, you grant to Barnes & Noble.com and its sublicensees the royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable right and license to use the review in accordance with the Barnes & Noble.com Terms of Use.
  • - Barnes & Noble.com reserves the right not to post any review -- particularly those that do not follow the terms and conditions of these Rules. Barnes & Noble.com also reserves the right to remove any review at any time without notice.
  • - See Terms of Use for other conditions and disclaimers.
Search for Products You'd Like to Recommend

Recommend other products that relate to your review. Just search for them below and share!

Create a Pen Name

Your Pen Name is your unique identiy on BN.com. It will appear on the reviews you write and other website activities. Your Pen Name cannot be edited, changed or deleted once submitted.

Your Pen Name can be any combination of alphanumeric characters (plus - and _), and must be at least two characters long.

Continue Anonymously

We're sorry, but penname is already taken.

Please select one of the following:
Your Pen Name can be any combination of alphanumeric characters (plus - and _), and must be at least two characters long.

Continue Anonymously

penname is available!

By visiting the BN.com website or marking a purchase on BN.com, a User is deemed to have accepted the Terms of Use.

Continue Anonymously

Welcome, penname

You have successfully created your Pen Name. Start enjoying the benefits of the BN.com Community today.

Sort by: Showing all of 2 Customer Reviews

  • Posted March 25, 2009

    A POWERFUL NEW LOOK AT DREAMS

    I first heard about this book on Oprah Winfrey's XM Radio show and then saw the video Rodger Kamenetz did with Oprah on oprah.com
    I immediately bought the book and read it over a period of a week. It's a book that asks a great deal of its readers but also delivers an incredible amount of useful information.
    At one level, like Kamenetz's best known book, The Jew in the Lotus, the History of Last Night's Dream is an account of a spiritual journey. Kamenetz at first is interested in one question: what happened to the promise of the revelation dream, that we see in Genesis, that is what has happened in our own time to the power of the dream to reveal us to ourselves, and to reconnect us with our deepest spiritual yearnings?
    This question rose in part it seems from Kamenetz's encounters with Tibetan teachers. It's clear Tibetans make active use of imagery in their spiritual practices. It's also clear that once long ago, Jews were a "people of the dream", with such dreamers as Jacob and Joseph, and the well known stories of dream interpretation in Genesis. Yet somehow in the West, the dream has lost its place as a source of spiritual enlightenment.
    Kamanetz studies with a fascinating teacher in Jerusalem, Colette, and learns about visualization and its connection to long lost Jewish mystical traditions. He then shifts ground and turns to dreams, which he learns from an intuitive dream teacher from Vermont, Mark Bregman. Bergman is basically self-trained, but through thirty or forty years of experience, he seems to know how to work with dreams in a direct way. Kamanetz describes him as a "shaman" and from the stories in the book that seems clear. This Vermont shaman though teaches Kamenetz how to find a path in dreams how to learn from his dreams, how to recover the lost spiritual promise in dreams. I know that after reading the book, my dreams changed. I began to see patterns in them, and understand how they might be showing me my deeper feelings.
    So this ook has two aspects. in one sense it's a spiritual detective story, and in another it's a very powerful journey into dreams that gives you an idea of what it would be like to work with your dreams. It's not really a do it yourself or self-help book, though the book did help me clarify what was going on in some dreams I had that confused me. Kamenetz uses lots of examples, of his dreams, and also of some of his dream clients -- people he works with one on one.
    I got a real sense of excitement and inspiration from this book and I think most readers would enjoy not only the history Kamenetz builds into the work, but the teachers he encounters.
    I recommend the book very highly.

    1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

    Was this review helpful? Yes  NoThank you for your feedback.   Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.

  • Anonymous

    Posted March 19, 2009

    another perspective

    Rodger Kamenetz sings the praises of Marc Bregman. Let's be clear, first of all, about who this Marc Bregman is NOT. The Mark Bregman whom Rodger Kamenetz calls his "teacher" is not the respected Jewish scholar and author who resides and teaches in Jerusalem. Not by a long shot.

    This Marc Bregman is an ex-postman who has self-resurrected as an astrologer and "dream therapist" in northern Vermont. He has a BA in religion and a degree in special education. He has no - repeat NO - training in psychotherapy, and is not licensed (as a psychologist, clinical social worker, or similar professional) to do therapy. No license means that no professional body has vetted him - and more importantly, if something goes wrong, his clients have no recourse.

    Bregman claims to have created this feeling-focussed dream work methodology, but thirty years ago it was common knowledge that the feeling content of dreams was far more important than the imagery of the "manifest content." Bregman, who appears sadly ignorant of both Judaism and Christianity (not to mention other religions), has jimmied together a messy theology of a god and demons who send dreams, a pure soul to which we can return if only we shed our persona (with his confrontive help, of course), and a jargon built on Carl Jung's archetypes (anima and animus).

    But don't confuse his use of these terms with Jung's. And don't confuse his "String Therapy" with psychodrama, to which he compares it. Where a trained, skilled psychodramatist uses a scalpel - Bregman uses a pickax. And as much as he claims to emphasize feelings, he relies on a list of dream symbols for interpretation.

    Finally, having watched the napoleon-esque Mr. Bregman in action, I observed an autocratic leader ("Don't trust the dreamer," says he) - self-centered, manipulative, and insensitive to his clients and, in this case, his audience. Strangely, his followers seem to have exactly the dreams he predicts (or, perhaps, suggests?). When asked what they have gained from their dreamwork, they can only respond in rote terms, as if reciting articles of faith. He, on the other hand, has apparently gained a great deal of ego-gratification (and wealth) from his clients, many of whom he is now training as acolytes. This scenario has many of the classic markings of a cult.

    Dreams are invaluable psycho-spiritual resources for us; it's too bad Kamenetz has gotten mixed up in this scene, which can only give dreamwork a bad name in the long run.

    This Marc Bregman is no Dalai Lama.

    0 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

    Was this review helpful? Yes  NoThank you for your feedback.   Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.
Sort by: Showing all of 2 Customer Reviews
If you find inappropriate content, please report it to Barnes & Noble
Why is this product inappropriate?
Comments (optional)
500 character limit