Anna Knight is a learning support teacher at Archbishop Lanfranc school in Croydon

I had a recurrent dream from as early as I can remember until some time in my teens. It was most frequent when I was at primary school. I was in black space looking at and zooming into a huge blackness, which felt like “home”. I was flying into nothingness, and at the same time everything.

The speed picked up and the space got bigger and more empty as I went further in. It terrified me and I woke up feeling anxious. Awake, I could still see it and feel it. From time to time, I still feel relieved that I no longer dream it.

I instantly recognised “my dream” as I was watching the introduction to a television news programme in which the black and white aerial picture zoomed in from space to the Earth, and then to Britain, and flew over cities lit up at night, getting faster and faster over London, until it stopped at Big Ben. I was startled. How could someone else know about that feeling and think of filming it? Watching it would make me panic.

After I’d seen it a few times, the horrible feelings subsided. I felt someone had taken my pictures and controlled them. It made me feel I was not alone. Perhaps it helped the dream to stop.

Petruska Clarkson says: One level at which we can understand this is from the perspective that Jung called “the collective unconscious”. This is the layer at which we are, in a sense, all connected to each other, sharing a common evolutionary history and consciousness.

From this perspective, individual human beings are like islands sticking out of the sea, but connected at the bottom of the ocean.

The images she uses are universal - black space and black holes, feeling frightened yet at home, flying into nothing and, at the same time, everything. It reminds her of the huge emptiness of space.

We often feel we are alone when we are in difficulty, and having her frightening images transformed into a creative moment is deeply reassuring.

From what I understand of the human being’s position in the universe, all the stellar bodies are accelerating away from each one of us. I am fascinated by Anna Knight’s dreaming of something we can read about in astronomy and theoretical physics.

There is a sense in which it is frightening, especially as the world is dealing with the aftermath of the New York disaster. But it is also exciting as we realise how fragile life is and how precious the human capacity for human creation.

Anna Knight and Petruska Clarkson were talking to Harvey McGavin. Petruska Clarkson says anyone wanting to understand their dreams more fully should contact a recognised psychologist. Her booklet on dream analysis is available from www.nospine.com at pound;4.95