By Lucito de Jesus
My interest in history is biased by my intention to know more about a symbol.
In this period of writing, Ambeth Ocampo is someone that I regarded as an authority in Rizal’s life. In fact I could have been dependent on him on the collection of the dreams of Rizal and the background on them for the presentation that I have been asked to make for the Yuchengco Museum at the RCBC Plaza in Makati on September 24, 2011. However, meeting with Ambeth did not happen but instead I met with Resti Santiago, an astrologer, who gave me the book, “Jose Rizal Reminiscences And Travels” which provided 10 dreams of Dr. Jose Rizal and also provided the information that I need to work on those dreams. The said book is published and copyrighted on 2011 by the National Historical Commission of the Philippines. On Resti Santiago’s presentation at the same venue of Dr. Jose Rizal’s Birth Astrology, I met with Museum Curator Jenny Javelosa who had asked me to do the delightful work on shedding light on the dreams of our national hero at the occasion of his 150 years.
The simple interpretation of dreams involves an analysis of the dreams’ contents. Basically, without analysis, a credible interpretation can not be made. I am not one who would claim to have intuitive abilities to interpret a dream without conducting an analysis of it first. I had to work on a dream’s background first, and in what soul state the dreamer may be, before I interpret it. I do all sorts of other techniques to further explore dreams also. I wish to propagate the value of respecting dreams which come from the Unconscious mind. I also want to show the responsible and competent approach in dealing with dreams.
I have started to prepare a book on the 10 dreams of Dr. Jose Rizal mentioned in the book cited above. It will be very helpful then for anyone to get a copy of the said book to know fully therein the context in which the 10 dreams had been worked on. There are other dreams that might be disclosed and explored herein. They could be that of Dr. Jose Rizal’s also but not part of the book, his mother’s that is in the book, and others’ which have been used to illustrate and clarify an archetypal condition wherein Dr. Jose Rizal could have been at the particular period in his life.
Dream # 1. Dream Title: Medical Exam Questions (page 54, Jose Rizal Reminiscences And Travels )
The actual year of this dream was on 1872 when Dr. Jose Rizal was to be in his First year of College in Medicine. However, this dream was recalled and recorded at the time he was taking notes on his frightening dream of May 10, 1882.
“It was true that I had a dream once that was fulfilled. Before the examination for the first year in Medicine, I dreamed that I was asked certain questions but I did not mind them. When the examinations came, I was asked the questions in my dream.”
Jose Rizal recalled that when he was to enter his medical studies in the Philippines, he dreamt that in the dream, he was being asked certain questions but he did not mind. Unfortunately for him, he found in the time of the actual medical examination that those questions in his dream were indeed being asked. He must have regretted not minding the questions asked of him in his dream. By this medical question dream, he had developed the idea that dreams could be precognitive. The development of the idea that his dreams could be precognitive had been also supported from an even earlier experience of another precognitive dream which was actually his mother’s. When he was just eleven years old, his mother had been imprisoned for being implicated on poisoning a woman who was their relative in-law. Unjustly accused, all of them in the Mercado family desired for their mother to be freed. In her captivity, she had a dream. When the young Jose visited her in prison, she told him her dream. Jose interpreted the dream that she would soon get out of prison. In not so much as 3 months, his mother was indeed let out of prison. Jose was happy in the way that he was like a Joseph, the son of Jacob, in the Old Testament Bible who was able to correctly interpret the dreams of the two companions in prison regarding their fates. The two dreams which are about the medical questions and her mother’s dream when in prison (and some Biblical dreams that he might have read) were elements in his dream experiences that could have made Jose to take his dreams as possibly precognitive. At the time when the study of dreams were not available yet in the libraries that he had visited, he had no informed way of assessing his dreams. Up until his last recorded dream on September 25, 1896 before his death on December of that year, it seems he was not yet knowledgeable about the nature of the unconscious mind, subconscious mind, and its symbolic language. At his lived life, Sigmund Freud had not yet written any of his dream books nor did Carl Jung who was 17 years younger that Freud. The dreams that Jose surely was familiar of were those in the Old & New Testament Bible. Considering these, Jose can’t help but be so anxious and afraid of his dream about the death of his eldest/sibling brother Paciano where then it was evoked from him his 2 precognitive dream experiences and belief tendencies. Historically, we know that Ponciano did not die as Jose dreamt it and that his older brother even participated in the Revolution of 1898, two years after his own death in December 1896.
The archetypal parallel here is that of also after two years on the murder of Senator Ninoy Aquino Jr., the Philippines regained back its freedom from the rule of the Marcos regime.
