WORLD DREAMS
by
Paco Mitchell, M.A.

(Presented online at the 2009 IASD PsiberDreaming Conference, 9/27/09 to 10/11/09, http://www.asdreams.org/psi2009/)


Introduction

There seems to be something in human nature that strives to see the possibilities of life from a higher vantage point. However anchored we may be to our rocky cradle on Earth, our efforts to achieve an elevated, even global, perspective, apparently began long ago. Archaic shamans “flew” at will through the heavens of inner space, or adorned themselves with feathers to swoop across the ground around the tribal fire. The Egyptians depicted the night sky as a goddess arched over the Earth, swallowing up the sun at sunset and giving birth to it again at dawn. Ancient Hindus imagined their yugas, or world ages, in terms of prodigiously astronomical numbers of years. And Eratosthenes, in a daring mathematical extrapolation, calculated the circumference of the Earth with remarkable accuracy while pacing the sands of Egypt.

Today, however, new developments are shaping our sense of perspective. We now have a photograph of the whole Earth, captured in a single frame -- a post card from space. Ever since the Apollo 8 spacecraft circled the moon, and the astronauts inside the little capsule took snapshots of the Earth as it rose above the lunar horizon, we have been imprinted with a cascade of images of the Earth in its wholeness and integrity.

But that was over forty years ago, and already the lunar explorations recede from our thoughts, as new marvels crowd their way into our distracted minds. As usual, our technological achievements outstrip the level of our psychological development, let alone the level of wisdom we bring to bear on our situation. For all the virtuosity of that 1968 “moon-shot” -- a triumph of invention – I suspect we have scarcely begun to integrate into our world-view the full implications of that photograph, in terms of a truly global perspective. Of course, “global” enterprises of one sort or another are increasingly evident, but by no means are they always felicitous.

If the Pentagon, for example, habitually thinks of new ways to project its influence into distant “theaters” around the globe, this is as much cause for alarm as for celebration. For we cannot assume in advance that massive extensions of military power will promote the general welfare of global citizens far and wide --notwithstanding noble proclamations affirming “freedom,” “democracy” and “security.”

Nor can we assume that when multi-national corporations think of innovative ways to increase profit margins through the use of global markets and supply networks, the outcome will automatically benefit all, equally. Executives and shareholders may cheer, but consumers may groan under non-stop marketing pitches and the glut of meaningless products.

In my opinion, we dare not leave the task of generating a true global vision to the same massive organizations that are plundering the planet to provide us with what we don’t need. What we do need is to generate from within ourselves the seed-elements of that encompassing vision for which the Earth and its creatures are crying out. Jung put it well in his 1960 letter to Herbert Read, referring to the future: “What is the Great Dream? It consists of many small dreams, and many acts of humility and submission to their hints.” And so we dreamers fish every night in the seas of our dreams, and occasionally we bring up a stunning catch.

World Dream #1: Max Zeller’s Temple Dream

The first “world dream” to reach my attention was reported by Max Zeller in the mid-70s. I read his fascinating account of the dream in Psychological Perspectives (1975). (Richard Russo, by the way, wisely included the same article in his 1987 volume of collected essays, Dreams Are Wiser Than Men.) In this dream, Zeller looks out over a landscape, and in every direction, as far as he can see, people are working on gigantic pillars rising from the foundations of an enormous temple. He too is working on a pillar. The process is in its beginning stages, but at least the foundation is in place. Implicit in the dream is the idea that, once the work is finished, the temple will encompass the entire globe.

Zeller told the dream to Jung, who responded by saying “That is the temple we all build on.” He said that people all over the world are working on the temple, “the new religion,” whose dimensions and final shape no one could really see yet. On the basis of his experience with dreams, Jung estimated it would take “about six hundred years” for the work to be completed and for the temple to become visible.

This exemplary dream sets the tone for what I want to discuss today. For I believe it provides a global overview of that which is taking place, but which is not yet visible in outward terms. To gain a perspective on such a profound “macrophase” process one must sound the visionary depths characteristic of dreams.

Zeller’s temple dream reveals an ongoing process that affects all of us, whether we know it or not. The dream “sees through” the superficial clamor and clutter of modern life and exposes deeper fundamentals: the archetypal shift in collective attitudes that is taking place.

Anyone paying attention knows that humanity is in the midst of a wrenching transition, and that the outcome is far from certain. To put it mildly, not all human activity leads in the direction revealed in Zeller’s dream. As if spellbound by the compelling momentum of our ponderous organizations, many people, like innocent rafters, paddle downstream with the current, toward a global Niagara.

I would rather resist the current, however irresistible it seems, and apply my strength in a different direction. Though I may not live to see the fruit of my efforts, I prefer to labor in the dark, knowing that I too am somehow participating in the largely hidden process announced by Max Zeller’s dream.

In this spirit, therefore, I offer two world dreams, out of several of my own. These dreams seem to resonate with the pulses of a planet laboring to give birth to new visions.

World Dream #2: The Turbine Is Spinning Backwards

The first dream is deceptively simple. I dream that a jet turbine engine has been built into the walls of a house. The engine has been shut down, but the blades are still spinning. As I look closer, however, I see that the blades are spinning backwards. [End of dream.]

At first glance this might seem like a very modest “world dream,” and perhaps it is. But if we consider the image of a jet engine -- the very epitome of power, thrust and forward momentum – the dream assumes a greater magnitude. For the modern jet -- from whose intrusive effects there is no sanctuary on Earth -- is a perfect symbol of the power-complex of our modern scientific-industrial civilization. No one escapes it. In the dream, the jet engine is built into the walls of a private residence, as if to indicate how deeply it -- and what it symbolizes -- has penetrated our personal lives. And yet . . . the turbine blades are spinning backwards! This single, subtle detail seems to offer a grain of hope: that it may yet be possible for us, in our humble, daily lives, to turn off the great engine, to forego the thrill of its powerful thrust, and to begin unwinding what the machine of modern civilization has wrought – if only in our thoughts, reveries, attitudes and dreams. If we don’t start there, after all, we won’t really have changed anything, no matter how ardently we protest.

World Dream #3: The Marching Worshippers

In this dream a group of about a dozen people, led by a woman, march into my living room. As they march they are held in formation by curious panels, like the partitions of an egg carton, which both separate and join them at the same time. They are looking for a place to worship. They stop and look around the room. The woman leader, examining the oriental carpets on the floor, decides that this is an appropriate place for them to worship. They all kneel on a large carpet and begin praying simultaneously. However, each individual prayer is different from the others. What joins these worshippers is a common love, and the focus of that love is . . . “beauty.” Once they have completed their prayers they get up and walk around the room, examining the various artifacts and artworks on the walls. [End of dream.]

Let’s assume that this dream is its own interpretation, and simply re-state six of the manifest premises it offers: First, the marching worshippers are both separated and joined by partitions. Even though they form a group, the participants in this ritual devotion retain their individuality. This suggests a healthy, discriminating balance in the needs of the soul – for both singleness and communion. Second, the partitions resemble an egg carton. By extension, then, the worshippers themselves are like “eggs.” In other words, in their devotions they embody, and carry into the future, a fertile life-potential. Third, the leader is a “woman.” This indicates to me that, at least in this dream realm of ritual and worship, a different impulse is at work besides the still-prevalent masculine, patriarchal, hierarchical impulse toward power and domination. A different sensibility is shown at work on these deep levels. Fourth, the worshippers are joined together by a shared love. This amounts to saying that they are united by a common bond of Eros, the principle of relatedness. Considering the divisiveness of the historical phase now coming to an end, this is good news indeed. Fifth, what they share through the commonality of their Eros is a Love of Beauty. The coupling of Love and Beauty reiterates ancient cosmogonic principles that have suffered eclipse in recent centuries – and with devastating consequences – under the boot-heel of the power-principle. Sophia, Amor and Psyche, the Anima Mundi – these and other mythic realities begin to stir under the banner of our anonymous marching worshippers. With luck, these stirrings may herald a re-awakening. Sixth, and finally, the worshippers’ prayers occur simultaneously yet remain distinct. This reiterates the paradox of the “egg carton” partitions. Each person brings his or her own devotional attitude, practice and personal voice to the common ritual. In his book Psyche Speaks, Russell Lockhart describes precisely this phenomenon in relation to the symbolism of the Aquarian Age, the Water Bearer, in which individuals pour the waters of their experience into the common pool.

I take this dream as a comment on the archetypal forces gathering strength at the level of the deeper currents of libido, which move far beneath the storms raging on the surface of our runaway technological age. In my view, it anticipates developments to come, and shows something of their nature. For, to an increasing extent, people are withdrawing their interest and attention – their libido, their love – from the distractions of our confused culture. Marching Worshippers all over the world are practicing their humble rituals today, rituals created out of the darkness of their inner visions. Such visions inevitably prompt fundamental re-assessments of what really matters in life. The effect of this and related processes is to move us closer, collectively, to a reversal of the spinning turbine blades. We can only guess at the outcome of our great human experiment on Earth, or at least the coming portion of it. So much depends on how consciously aware people become. But meanwhile, let us each contribute what we can to the building of the vast temple that awaits us in the future, yet which is taking shape under our feet today.

Final Thoughts

In selecting examples of world dreams, I have deliberately chosen those in which the personal element is either de-emphasized or absent. This is not to say that world dreams cannot contain personal images. I have had many dreams in which an impersonal image of global import bore down on me in the most personal way. Those dreams, in effect, revealed to me elements of my own personal destiny. I think of this interplay between personal and impersonal factors in dreams as a kind of two-way directionality. It is reminiscent, perhaps, of Jacob’s dream of the ladder to heaven, where the angels were simultaneously ascending and descending. After all, a global dream image necessarily affects individuals at personal levels (the angels descending) and personal dream images point to wider and higher responsibilities in the world (the angels ascending). If we have one thing to learn from the globalizing trends of the day, it is that, ultimately, personal life cannot be separated from the life of the planet as a whole, and vice versa.

Dreaming Planet -- IASD Chicago Conference Presentation

By
Paco Mitchell


For some time now, I have been entertaining the question of whether a planet like ours can dream. My provisional answer is, yes, it can.

I know it is a strange question, since it is widely held that matter –- all the way from particles, to planets, to galaxies -- has no inherent mentality, and therefore no subjectivity. The universe in its entirety is regarded as blind, deaf and dumb – as if it were an enormous accident. It has no feeling, no wakeful intelligence and no final purpose. Void of mind. Void of dreams.

According to this materialistic view, the only place in the universe where subjective awareness can be presumed, is within the confines of the human skull. But given enough time and money, even that endangered preserve will be reduced to “nothing but” an epiphenomenon of brain chemistry.

Fortunately, this view is not unanimous. Even within the scientific enterprise itself, a “kinder, gentler” perspective is taking shape. This new view actually allows for the possibility of mind in the cosmos. Listen to this forward-looking quote from 1930, by the British astronomer Sir James Jeans:

“Today there is a wide measure of agreement, which on the physical side of science approaches to unanimity, that the stream of knowledge is heading toward a non-mechanical reality; the universe begins to look more like a great thought than a great machine. Mind no longer appears as an accidental intruder into the realm of matter; we are beginning to suspect that we ought rather to hail it as the creator and governor of the realm of matter.”
(The Mysterious Universe, 1930.)

Sir James may have been jumping the gun as to unanimity, since materialistic reductionism is still with us today. But the cat is definitely out of the bag, and the day may not be far away when people, scientists included, will take it for granted that the entire cosmos is inherently hospitable to the operations of spirit and mind, psyche and soul.

Fortunately I am not a scientist defending my hypothesis of the Dreaming Planet to other scientists. I am a dreamer, attending to the intuitive visions that spontaneously occur to me, whether during sleep or while waking. For in my view, it is out of the so-called “darkness” of the dreaming imagination that the most brilliant wisdom rises like a star to guide and inform the mundane knowledge of the day.

I know how impractical this devotion to dreams must seem to modern skeptics. But I would say to them that their skeptical refusal to admit, let alone consult, the value and wisdom of dreams, is symptomatic of a deep malaise that endangers us all. Therefore I grant the skeptics no claim on my allegiance.

And so I labor in the deep diamond mine of dreams, convinced that it is important work. And when occasionally I bring back a diamond -- however small, rough and unseemly -- I know it was well worth the effort. For to an extent we often fail to recognize, the future is an extension of our imagination and is dreamed into being out of our depths. Thus, if our imagination and dreams are stunted today, how can the future that flows from our actions and attitudes be anything but stunted as well?



Cosmology sees the universe today as the result of an evolutionary process that has been unfolding for at least fifteen billion years.

The development of our planet, including its precious cargo of life, is an unbroken continuation of cosmic evolution. And from the moment of the Big Bang, the entire process has taken place within a series of surprisingly delicate parameters. A few degrees hotter or cooler, as it were, and we wouldn’t be here. This “delicacy” is apparent in so many ways that some scientists have advanced the notion of an “Anthropic Principle.” Roughly paraphrased, this idea holds that life, up to and including reflective consciousness among humans, is inevitable. It is as if, despite the accidents of creation, our presence in the universe were so unavoidable as to seem almost mandated.

But while scientists duke it out over theoretical refinements, I take it simply that the evolving universe is the encompassing frame of reference for everything that exists.

I’ve known many people who squirm in discomfort, their eyes glazing over, when reminded of the existence of the universe, especially its scale. They say, “It gives me the creeps just thinking about it.” Or, “I feel so insignificant.” But why should the universe be too big for us to consider, especially when the realm of dreams may be just as vast? As Jung once said: “I can think of no better comparison for the universe within, than the universe without.”

Whatever our personal history, attitude type, belief system or range of concerns might be, everything in us and around us takes place in the larger context of an amazing cosmic drama. We live out our entire lives against a background of pinwheel galaxies, exploding stars, light-years, planets, comets and moons. We may accentuate or dismiss the role of humans in the cosmic process, to be sure, but there is no denying that we are part of the whole story.


Let’s imagine that, several billion years ago, an immense cloud of hydrogen gas mingled with cosmic dust and heavy elements blown out of exploding stars. As the cloud condensed it formed our sun and its planets, including the Earth. Soon enough the solar mass began to shine, while nascent planetary clumps sorted themselves out according to harmonic intervals. Fortunately for us, the Earth ended up in a “sweet spot” on this musical scale, the zone richest in biotic potential. It was not so close to the sun that it fried, like Mercury and Venus; nor so far away that it shriveled to the size of an ice cube, like Pluto. It was just the right size, in just the right spot, with just the right elements.

So the Earth cooled and solidified, an atmosphere formed, rain fell, oceans gathered and the land eroded.

The planet was probably not dreaming as yet.

Mud gathered in a chemical soup and slowly organized itself -- or was organized. This critical point -- the organization of the soup and the beginning of life –- is the focus of an intense effort on the part of biochemists to carve another notch on the stick of their achievements. It is all speculation, of course, since we can only guess at the exact chemistry of the early Earth.

In earlier times, humans simply generated countless creation myths -- stories about how the world and humans were formed -- from the depths of the mythopoetic imagination. In Egypt, the great god Ptah brought the world into being with a Thought and a Word, a precursor to the biblical Logos, as I take it. In another version, Ptah sat at his potter’s wheel and threw the World Egg out of clay. Still another Egyptian story imagines a heron -– the Bennu Bird -- landing on the Primal Mound as it emerged from the receding flood waters on the First Day. As the rays of the rising sun struck the Primal Mound, the heron announced the news of creation. In the Old Testament Book of Genesis “the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters,” although in the New Testament Book of John, “In the beginning was the Word.”

In their own creation story, scientists have imagined that the chemical soup on Earth was zapped by lightning, a circumstance they busily keep trying to duplicate, like Frankenstein in his laboratory. By all reports, they’re getting closer to creating self-replicating compounds. The recent discovery of organic molecules in vast interstellar clouds even suggests that the Earth might possibly have been “seeded” with life-potential through the action of comets and meteorites, in which case the whole universe could be a seed-bed – a giant seminar --- for life.

[http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/060808_st_life_molecules.html]


But by whatever means, the cosmic propensity toward vitality imparted form to the mud-soup, which began to wiggle. With more time it began to breathe. Add a skeleton and some musculature, simmer and stir, and before you knew it, the mud-soup was up and running, swimming, crawling, flying, dancing and singing.

Humans had not yet taken their place in line among these multitudes, but by this time the Earth was probably dreaming.

Feathers and fronds, scales and skin, claws and jaws -- all sprang from seeds, eggs, wombs and so forth. The star-born impulsiveness of the cosmos, evolving since the beginning of time, bodied itself forth in millions of gaudy forms.

Finally, after countless aeons, long after the dancing, singing and dreaming had begun, proto-humans added their songs to the chorus, their antic motions to the dance.

And the Dreaming Planet had finally created an instrument – humans -- with which it could not only reflect on itself, but also extend the planetary, and therefore the cosmic, imagination.


Since dreaming is a psychic function we inherit from our animal brethren, it is part of our evolutionary inheritance. In fact, we are so hard-wired for dreams that without them we get sick. We can no more do without dreams than we can do without metabolizing food. We don’t have to think about our dreams, of course, for they do their work in the dark, while we sleep, just as our digestive system does its work without our conscious awareness, in the darkness of the bowels.

When we go to sleep at night, we slide back down into a more complete, less differentiated, less fragmented state. There we recover the larger context to which we belong. The dream is not only the background to consciousness, it is the root of our psychic being. In the dream we resume the long view, where the evolutionary drive pulls us out of ourselves, toward something new. Dreams, like heraldic trumpets, announce trends of development that have not yet reached consciousness.

Perhaps this is one way that dreams further the mysterious process of evolution. I am even inclined to think that we would never have reached the evolutionary stage of homo sapiens at all, had it not been for the anticipatory function of dreams.

Is it possible that the evolutionary thrust of the cosmos itself might be the driving force behind dreams? Or that dreams might somehow manifest a deep desire on the part of the cosmos?

It would be as if the potential for dreams and consciousness had been latent in the drifting cosmic cloud, then again in the percolating amino acids of the primordial soup, and was somehow cherished and hoarded through all the accidents and transformations along the slow evolutionary ladder.

When astronomers affirm that the iron in our blood and the oxygen in our breath were compounded in the heart of an exploding star, it tells me that you and I breathe, sing and dream today, only because the elemental bodies of stars were sundered long ago in a cosmic sacrifice of heavenly proportions. As direct descendants of that ardent process, we are, in fact, dreaming stardust -- perhaps the planet’s first means of awareness of itself.

We haven’t really come to terms with this simple truth about ourselves. We still think in terms of discontinuity and separateness.

As the Earth spins in its orbit, one-half of the planet is warmed by the sun; but the other half, always facing the stars, is constantly dreaming -- through us. Whether we know it or not, each of us contributes to the perpetual wave of dreams surging across the surface of the Dreaming Planet.

I believe that our dreams actually further the evolution of the cosmos. This is a kind of destiny: WE reflect back to the STARS those images which they could only engender by first stirring us into being. As we dream, so dreams the planet, and therefore the stars.

Our dreams, then, are like grappling hooks with which we pull ourselves into the future. In dreams our own star-driven potentialities are given form, as we sleep. The planet continues to spin, and we carry these potentials into the light of day. Who knows? In some strange sense, both the sun and the stars may be awaiting the outcome of our efforts. For no less a luminary than William Blake once said:

“Eternity is in love with the productions of Time.”

The Teaching Babe Dream

For many years it has been apparent to me that certain dreams deserve to be called “teaching dreams.”

Though a teaching dream makes itself available to one dreamer at a time, the aim of such a dream seems more ambitious: In addressing one, it speaks to all. This experience probably underlies the ancient tribal tradition of the “big dream,” in which anyone who had a big dream was expected to tell it to the tribe as a whole.

Today the Earth’s teeming population approaches seven billion souls, a far cry from the intimate conditions of our tribal past. Meanwhile such tribes as do persist are under tremendous pressure to “assimilate” -- and so the dream circle, along with every other vestige of our traditional past, struggles to hold its own against the technocratic tide.

Yet despite these unfavorable conditions, dreams -- ever resurgent and abundant -- continue making themselves available to individual psyches, tribal or not. And to those intrepid few who bother to pay attention, some of those dreams come laden with lessons to teach, which we are always well-advised to learn.

I have had many teaching dreams, but one in particular comes to mind. Years ago I conducted a dream class at a local community college. Two weeks prior to the first meeting, I had a dream which seemed geared to my anticipatory state -- How many would sign up? Who would they be? How would they respond to the topic of dreams?

When I woke up with the dream I assumed that it had to do with the class. This, in retrospect, may have been inaccurate, for after so many years the only thing I remember about that class is the dream. The ironic conclusion I draw today is this: I didn’t have the dream in order to teach the class; I taught the class in order to have the dream.

The dream was short:

I am about to begin the first dream-class meeting. An unknown woman approaches me, thanking me for having “helped” her in the past. I neither recognize her nor recall how I might have helped her. Without hesitation I reply: “Oh? Who was the teaching babe?” [End of dream.]

In my dreaming mind the expression “teaching babe” was accompanied by the image of a cherub or putto, a fat baby with wings, one of the traditional images of an angel. It was clearly the punch line of the dream. But why should such a simple image be so charged with significance that I still remember and puzzle over it decades later?

Well, for one thing it offers valuable lessons about relationships in general -- including relationships in therapy and the transference. On this count alone, the Teaching Babe qualifies as a teaching dream.

Without presuming to encompass the dream, what are some of the things it can teach us?

First, it challenges our standard, cause-and-effect assumptions about influence between persons, as if influence were a mechanical thing found only on the horizontal level, like billiard balls on a pool table: I teach, therefore you learn.

Instead, the dream proposes the existence of a third, invisible factor, the Teaching Babe, an “angel” operating on a higher level. It flies back and forth between two individuals, and as a result of its subtle shuttling action a connective field is created between the two, and it is within and because of this field that teaching, and therefore learning, can occur. What is being evoked is a level of psycho-spiritual connectedness transcending the normal bounds of consciousness.

The second lesson derives from the first. By placing the third, vertical element on a higher level than the horizontal pair, the dream implicitly questions the modern fallacy that seeks and finds value only in the horizontal productions of the ego. It should be evident by now that conventional modernity has little use for what it cannot by itself generate, measure, see, predict or control. And one thing is for certain: the Teaching Babe is autonomous, beyond the control of the two egos below. It follows its own tendencies and inspirations, like the divine spirit-wind in the Bible, which bloweth where it listeth.

The third lesson, again, flows from the preceding one: As the angel connects the two below with one another, it simultaneously connects what is below with what is above. The angel thus mediates not only between person and person, but also between the personal and the archetypal or, as we used to say, between “terrestrial” and “heavenly” levels of being.

In centuries past we used to speak freely of “heaven” or “God,” but the demand for scientific proof has placed new limits on our discourse. The modern spiritual crisis is to no small extent a crisis in language, and much confusion results from our literalizing, materialistic bias. We think we have criticized ideas like angels, heaven or God, for example, because when we peered into deep space with our telescopes we found no “evidence” for their existence. Carl Sagan once criticized astrology because the gravitational influence of Jupiter is “about as strong as that of a fly.” Under the onslaught of this attitude, traditional religious language has come to be widely regarded as a colorful relic, but not to be taken seriously as a category of thought.

It did not occur to us that we might have been looking in the wrong place, using the wrong instruments, working from the wrong assumptions and applying the wrong criteria. In the tug-of-war between religion and science, we forgot that there is a third realm, common to both, that joins and encompasses the two: the human psyche.

We should not forget that the same psyche which produces dreams also produces religion and science. And apparently the dream-generating psyche cares little for the restrictions imposed by hard-minded rationalists. Dreams merrily continue, unabated, in their amazing inventivenss, and the deep impulse that produced every inflection of religious culture since the earliest Paleolithic times, continues in our day to produce new variations on ancient themes.

Mircea Eliade, a historian of religion, was well aware of how categories of religious experience persist even when lost or discredited in daily life:

“What is above, the high, continues to reveal the transcendent in every religious complex . . . no world is possible without verticality, and that dimension alone is enough to evoke transcendence . . . [Though] driven from religious life in the strict sense, the celestial sacred remains active through symbolism. A religious symbol conveys its message even if it is no longer consciously understood in every part. For a symbol speaks to the whole human being and not only to the intelligence.”

With these thoughts Eliade brings us to the crux of the dream. Its central image -- the mediating angel -- is in fact a living symbol speaking both to and for the whole human being. When I say “living symbol,” I mean that the angel is a living psychic presence, a dynamic, autonomous, transcendent agency. It is in us, of us, above us and around us; in short, the angel is greater than we are. We are subsumed by it. Think of it as the archetype of individuality and a manifestation of the deeper Self, the Whole of which we are a Part. In a sense the angel is our guide and exemplar, presenting us with our own potentials, as if it has come to lead us out of our smallness into some greater life to which we always belonged. When Jung said, “There is a greater person in yourself to whom you bar the way,” I believe he referred, in part, to the potentials that are implied by the angel.

Incidentally, the dream’s focus on the angel’s role in relationship raises the question of whether individuation can take place in the absence of relationship. I seriously doubt it.

At this point our dream reflections lead us in many different directions, as if the angels had stopped their dancing and scattered, flying off the head of the pin altogether. Within the limits of this essay, I can only hint at three of those possibilities:

1. The shamanic element in the human personality. This forms as much a part of the underlying psyche today as it did 50,000 years ago, even though mainstream medicine and culture are no longer based on shamanic practices. But the shamanic element is not only present, it is the prototype for all forms of “psi,” “non-ordinary” or “non-local” experience. Over millennia, the shaman’s powers of flight, healing and familiarity with the spirit-world, most likely shaded imperceptibly into the spirits, daimons and angels of the Neolithic, classical and Biblical periods, into the Middle Ages. Throughout history, psychic experiences in abundance -- prophecies, oracles, augurs, visions, out-of-body events, clairvoyance, ESP, telepathy, premonitions, ghosts, visitations, intuitions and so forth -- have been firmly interwoven into the tapestry of culture. If these reports have yet to be finally expunged from the human record by the de-bunking aspect of science, it shows more than just how tenaciously people cling to darkness. The fact that such experiences just don’t go away says as much about the innate potentials of the psyche as it does about the superstitious credulity of ages past and present.

2. The mystery of relationship. A magnum mysterium indeed, and fertile ground for many studies on the psychology of Eros. Among others, Russell Lockhart’s work in particular (Psyche Speaks and Words As Eggs) is loaded with insight into this phenomenon.

Today the dynamics of Eros, long charted by poets, philosophers and psychologists, have begun to blur and overlap with cutting-edge research and theory in the physics of quantum fields. It seems more and more plausible that everything that exists is intimately connected with everything else that exists.

3. The wholeness of the personality. This vast topic evokes Jung’s work on the phenomenology of the Self. It also touches on the mystery of psyche-world interactions in synchronistic events. For ultimately, when one penetrates the depths of the personality one comes face to face with the ancient paradox: Self and World are not discontinuous fragments after all, but form one integral reality.

To a casual onlooker, the Teaching Babe might appear to be a small dream, limited to the personal realm. But looks can be deceiving, especially with dreams. Once given the respect it deserves, and cherished over time, it reveals itself to be a “teaching dream” indeed, affording perspectives onto the vastness of psyche and cosmos.

That in itself is a lesson worth learning.

The Mills of God -- A Dream

"Though the mills of God grind slowly,
Yet they grind exceeding small;
Though with patience He stands waiting,
With exactness grinds He all."
-- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Recently I dreamed:

I am in a very large public space the size of a domed football stadium, possibly larger. In spite of its great size, the space is encompassed by an even larger structure -- an enormous rotating drum.

The drum resembles a “ball-mill,” a crushing and grinding machine used to pulverize ores and other materials. In the case of this particular drum the material to be pulverized is a white, earthen material.

Not only will the drum reduce the material to a powder, but it will also perform a transformative operation, turning the white powder into something else and giving it a new shape in the process.

I observe this scene from a second floor balcony. On the ground level there are groups of people going about their business, which consists mostly in recreation and entertainment. One group is playing ping-pong.

The “drum” is so large, and is turning so slowly, that most people are unaware of it.

Reaching over the balcony, I crush a portion of white material in my hand and let it fall to the ground below. In this way I add material to the overall “mix” of what the drum is processing.

Some of the lumps in my hand are resistant to crushing. I am concerned they might interfere with the process, but decide the drum is large enough that the small lumps will be pulverized. I let them go.

Apparently the drum has completed a preliminary phase, for it ejects a large mass of prepared material, flopping it onto the ground like a gigantic batch of bread dough. Immediately a second, smaller batch of gold or yellow material -- similarly mixed -- is added to the white. Both the white and the yellow earthy materials will be thoroughly intermixed before proceeding to the next stage.

Whenever it is ready, the material will either be (1) formed into a new mold to receive and give shape to a completely different material (as in bronze-casting), or (2) given shape itself by an as-yet unseen form or container, the way an amorphous mass of bread dough is given shape by its baking pan. [End of dream.]


The transpersonal perspective of this dream was so striking to me that I felt it belonged in the series of dreams I am presenting in this column as examples of “Wisdom in Dreams.” Whenever we see our lives from a higher, wider perspective, we are probably being gifted with wisdom.


ASSOCIATIONS AND OBSERVATIONS:

1. The “rotating drum” depicts a structure and process larger than most human enterprises. As such, it suggests a collective phenomenon affecting individuals, groups and the institutions by which they feel contained. The drum, in other words, contains our containers. I take the drum, therefore, as an expression of an archetypal, “macrophase” psychological process to which we are all subject. It reminds me of Longfellow’s poem quoted above, in which he refers to the “Mills of God.”

2. The drum is visible, but only in a peripheral or subliminal way. To see it requires an unusual type of vision. Because most people focus on what they are doing and do not pay attention to the periphery of their awareness, they cannot see the drum and hence do not know it is there. Nevertheless, even if they are not consciously adding their own material to the process -- their own “white earth” -- their lives are inexorably subject to the grinding and pulverizing action of the drum.

3. No one really knows what the final shape or outcome of the milling process will be. As Jung said, “The great problem of our time is that we don’t know what is happening to the world.”

4. “White earth” resembles the white plaster material I used for many years as a bronzecaster, as I formed molds in the “investment” method of lost-wax art bronze-casting. The psychological and alchemical properties of bronze-casting were quite evident to me during those years. Following are some correlations between bronze-casting, alchemy and the dream:

-- The mold has to be strong enough to withstand tremendous heat, yet sensitive and delicate enough to retain impressions of the wax within. This hints at the way structures of consciousness must be refractory enough to withstand the “heat” of intense emotions, conflict, stress, disappointment, etc., while still retaining the insights, the valuable impressions, received along the way.

-- In order to release the fresh casting from the mold, the mold must be broken. The spent material is then crushed, pulverized and added to the fresh mix for a new mold. Worn out attitudes and forms -- the old molds into which we once poured our experience -- must be willingly sacrificed if there is to be any re-birth, any re-vitalization of life. The dream suggests that the renewal process is actually taking place.

-- Alchemically, “white earth” refers to what remains of the prima materia after it has undergone the nigredo, also known as the “dark night of the soul.” Associated with silver, the moon, and the albedo, white earth announces a new light after darkness, a capacity for reflection and heightened psychic sensitivity.

-- The yellow-gold earth, in contrast, hints at something inherently luminous, e.g., “the sun” or “gold.” Because the yellow mass is smaller than the white, it suggests to me the product of a refinement, an extract or precipitate, in the same way that tons of ore must be processed to extract a few ounces of precious metal.

-- Implicit in the two materials are pairs of opposites: silver and gold, moon and sun, passive and active, reflection and radiance. The combination and mixing of the two colors pre-figure the possibility of balancing solar and lunar potentials. Although the black phase, the nigredo, was not explicitly mentioned in the dream, it is implicit in the “fire” -- and therefore “death” -- the material had to undergo in order to reach the albedo phase. Thus a tentative alchemical sequence of symbolic colors is suggested: from black to white to yellow.

5. I take the “substances” in the dream, and the processes with which they resonate, to be metaphors for the development of personality and soul. When one has gone through the fire and endured -- a process of conscious suffering -- then a state of whitened reflectivity is possible. Thus we are all potential contributors to the larger collective psychic process that is shaping our common future, even though we cannot yet see clearly what form that future will take.

6. In Aion, Jung pointed out that the historical phase now coming to an end -- astrologically, the Age of Pisces -- corresponds to the alchemical stage of the “separatio.” Thus we have seen two thousand years of the development of consciousness based on the separation of opposites: good vs. evil, light vs. dark, etc. The coming aeon -- astrologically, the Age of Aquarius -- corresponds to the alchemical stage of the coniunctio oppositorum, or the conjunction of opposites. (For more on the communal aspects of the Age of Aquarius see Russell Lockhart’s Psyche Speaks.)

Because of the correlation of historical processes with alchemical symbolism, I anticipate that a confrontation with the opposites, with a view to their eventual integration, will increasingly predominate in human affairs. Everywhere we turn we will be faced with an implicit task, to find ways of integrating what seems to be opposed.

7. Edward Edinger’s prophetic vision of the “Coming of the Self” (cf. his book The Archetype of the Apocalypse) portends a planetary psychological crisis of enormous proportions. Whether humanity rises to the occasion will depend on whether enough people meet the challenge head-on, consciously, or whether the passion for unconsciousness prevails.

8. The Rotating Drum dream suggests that the larger process of synthesizing consciousness on a new level may yet take precedence over the indifference of the people playing “ping-pong.” The outcome, however, is by no means assured. A shared responsibility is implied.

9. The mechanical metaphor of the Rotating Drum does not exactly qualify as an image of God. But I see no reason why the drum and its operations cannot be regarded as a direct metaphorical parallel to Longfellow’s “Mills of God.” Of course, we no longer imagine our world in such poetic terms, but dreams are not bound by our conscious limitations. Nor should our imaginative responses to dreams be limited by those same intellectual fashions. When I imagine the drum, therefore, I also see a vast hand turning it -- what we used to call the Hand of God. This great hand, imparting movement to events and shaping them at the same time, acts most forcefully upon our world in a time of crisis and change.

Dreaming of Re-Birth

There is a Latin saying I’ve always enjoyed: Canis panem somniat, piscator pisces. A dog dreams of bread, a fisherman, fish. The idea is that one’s dreams follow the lines of one’s waking pursuits. Thus we imagine cats in their dreams searching for mice and warm places, or dogs chasing after cats and sticks. And because of my long years’ experience as a bronzecaster I still occasionally dream of kilns and molds, crucibles and furnaces.

But dreams will not be limited by clever Latin riffs, or any other attempt we make to encompass them. On the contrary, they encompass us, subsume us, just as our breath is subsumed by the atmosphere through which we move, which nevertheless forms part of our most intimate substance.

In taking up the vast question of re-birth in dreams, then, I am aware that the subject is way over my head. Yet because re-birth dreams have occasionally visited me, thereby forcing me to think about the question, I therefore feel justified in my audacity. I may seem like an ant trying to scale the Matterhorn, but so be it.

Two dreams in particular dropped the question of re-birth into my lap. Spaced a couple of years apart, they both took the form of verbal equations, as if I was dreaming an algebra of the soul. The dreams resonate closely with one another, the way paired strings vibrate sympathetically on a musical instrument. I’ll recount them separately, but hopefully some of their resonant tonalities will be audible.

Re-Bath

The first dream depicted a woman in a bathtub and carried the caption: Re-birth = re-bath.

Short and sweet. The image of the woman in the bathtub seemed like a visual portrayal of the formula’s solution: “re-bath.” At the same time, paradoxically, it was as if the “real image” of the dream was the formula itself and the picture of the woman in the tub was the explanatory caption -- a fox-and-hound relationship between the verbal and visual elements, like a fugue.

But for me the crucial point, the axis on which the dream turned, lay in the little prefix “re” -- again. All the thoughts and associations that have accrued to this dream gather around that simple part of speech. It suggests to me that the cleansing, re-ordering process -- the bath -- is repeatable, and therefore can happen at any moment: an ever-present potential. When Dylan Thomas referred to “the moon that is always rising,” he simultaneously evoked “the sun born over and over.”

This is good news. After all, if we were only allotted one re-birth per lifetime, we would all most likely end up in a pitiful heap. Periodic renewal is necessary for physical and psychological health and vitality, just as the body continuously sloughs off dead cells as it creates new ones. One could probably say that we all live in a constant state of actual and potential re-birth, if only we knew it.

The woman in the dream was an unknown figure. As such, she qualifies as an image of the soul -- in Jungian terms an “anima figure.” But the impersonal character of the dream tempts me to elevate her beyond the level of my personal anima. She seemed more like a general principle or an over-riding presence, along the lines of the Anima Mundi of centuries past. The fact that she was depicted not as a marble statue or elegant engraving -- the naked-yet-modest goddess standing atop the globe -- but simply as a woman in a bathtub, suggests to me that the grandeur of the Anima Mundi is to be found, not just in philosophy, but in our everyday lives: the transpersonal and transcendent vision glimmering right before our eyes.

The ramifications of this dream extend well beyond these brief observations, but this, at least, is a start.

A New Logos

The second dream was more complex: “Re-birth = re-interpretation in the light of a new Logos.”

This far-reaching statement is enough to set the teeth of philosophers and theologians on edge for centuries. In effect it calls for a new religious dispensation. And considering the amount of blood spilled as a result of the last “dispensation,” it might well give one pause to raise a banner in the name of yet another one. But I didn’t ask for the dream, it came to me. Therefore I must raise the banner.

What I would call the “old,” or the current, dispensation can be summed up in the New Testament words of John 1:1: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

This enigmatic statement derives from classical Greek philosophy and has provided the grist for many contending mills. It holds that the principle of the Logos -- divine mind or reason, the creative word, the “Word of God” -- is to be regarded as the fountain from which human life proceeds, from “the beginning.” It is a First Principle on the basis of which all else is based. Christian theologians were quick to seize on this concept and apply it to the Christ and, by extension, to Jesus. And so we have had a tradition which saw Jesus as the Christ, and Christ as the Living Word of God.

So far so good.

The problem is that this formulation, handed down from antiquity, has been overtaken by events and ideas of the past few centuries. The result is that few people today really understand, or even care, what it means.

At this point I am reminded of Edward Edinger’s profound statement: “The Jewish dispensation was based on law. The Christian dispensation was based on faith. The new dispensation is based on experience.”

If Edinger was correct, and I believe he was; and if my dream is relevant to our contemporary dilemma, and I believe it is; then we can say that any significant re-birth of a personal or a cultural nature will be based on the experience of a new Logos, a new story or telling, a new outpouring of the Creative Word. It will amount to a new way of imagining the world and our relation to it, requiring the gathering of untold numbers of perceptions, ideas, intuitions and insights, imaginative visions, creative renderings and understandings.

The “new Logos” will manifest the operations of the Creative Word as whispered and heard in the silence of millions of individual souls. Jung said that the Great Dream “consists of many small dreams, and many acts of humilitity and submission to their hints.” Russ Lockhart evokes the Aquarian image of many individuals pouring the waters of their experience into the common pool. And Edinger referred to the “Christification of the Many” and the “Coming of the Self” to all.

Thus the new Logos will manifest itself in as many ways as there are individual souls to witness its advent and lend their efforts to its articulation and expression.

This, of course, is a great task of untold duration, suffered by all but consciously borne by relatively few. How much more important, then, will those individual efforts and sacrifices be in the years to come? For there is no guarantee that the re-birth implicit in my dream will come to pass in this time of crisis and trial.

It may ultimately prove to be my folly, but I nevertheless continue to find hope for renewal in the births and re-births announced in our dreams.

Wisdom in Dreams --- Part I

Humans have always flirted with wisdom, even courted it. From the Venus of Willendorf to the cave paintings of Lascaux; from the Great Pyramids of Egypt to the Healing Temples of Aesculapius, a sheen of wisdom has lain over the human enterprise, gracing our intelligence, skill and inventiveness with an imponderable something. When wisdom smiles on human endeavor we seem truly gifted, lifted beyond ourselves on wings that do not melt if they approach the sun.

Ancient cultures recognized this “something” as an enveloping, transcendent presence. They even dared to give it many names: Sophia, Shekhina, Athena, Nebo, Ea, Christ, Buddha, Mohammed, the Goddess, Venus, Thoth, mana, the magi, the daimon, among countless others.

Modern culture, drunk with the hubris of power and mesmerized by its trinkets, trains us to look with amusement on those early cultures. We scoff at the naïveté of the ancients, who not only saw fit to personify wisdom but also looked upon a world suffused with the quaintness of soul, the superstition of spirit.

But we live in a time when much of humanity seems gripped by a strange, fateful inertia. It is as though we were incapable of tearing ourselves away from our labors and amusements long enough to face the deadly paradox: that the mythological machinery of technological prowess and economic “growth,” if not somehow brought under control and harnessed to serve wiser ends, might conceivably bring the human enterprise to an unseemly, premature end.

In such a time we might ask whether knowledge alone -- severed from wisdom -- is worth what it is costing us. And if it is not worth the cost, how then are we to bring wisdom, however haltingly, back into our lives, re-connecting it with knowledge?

The Philosopher’s Stone

The aim of this article is to consider dreams as a potential source of wisdom. But first, let’s consider a few qualities of wisdom itself. Admittedly, sometimes wisdom rises to the level of rarified mystical insight or philosophical perception. But equally striking, and perhaps more important for our purposes, is the very commonness of it. An alchemical saying, referring to the Philosopher’s Stone, expresses it thus: “Here stands the mean uncomely stone, ‘Tis very cheap in price! The more it is despised by fools, the more loved by the wise.”

On a practical level, wisdom may come into play when we exercise discernment and insight. If a politician lies to us, for example, and we cannot discern the lie, then we can have little insight into the personality of that politician and little chance of responding wisely to the slogans and propaganda issuing forth from the media under his or her control. How can we be wise citizens in a troubled time if we do not actively seek such discernment and cultivate such insight? But with discernment, we are one step closer to wisdom.

Ironically, young children sometimes have an uncanny ability -- and why not call it wisdom? -- to see through social poses and put their finger on the telling characteristics of someone they meet. This reveals an unconscious capacity for discernment. The fairy tale about the Emperor’s clothes points to the presence of wisdom in the young, as does the expression “Out of the mouths of babes.” But what is freely given in childhood is too often drummed out of us by the time we are adults. The attainment of wisdom then becomes a matter of recovering something that we once had, but lost. I wonder if this in part is what Jesus referred to when he said “Except ye become as little children . . . .”

“Unto the seventh generation”

The word wisdom means “seeing doom” or “seeing judgment,” in the sense of seeing an outcome in advance. A long-term perspective is therefore implicit in a wise response to processes that affect us and others. An example would be native people’s ecological concern for the effects of an action on “seven generations.” Contrast this with the contemporary ethos of “resource-extraction for immediate profit,” and ask yourself which is the wiser course.

Wisdom can enter into our life-choices in subtle ways without our knowing it. “Mistakes,” for example, can further the larger process of becoming whole persons. Wisdom is always greater than we are. And whether we wish it or not, the shadow side of the personality forms part of the greater whole and, one way or another, will have its say. If we deny and repress the shadow, then -- willy-nilly -- it will express itself through projection. Thus the evil eye casts about for an enemy, seeking yet another resting place on which to displace one’s own darkness into the world. Would it not be wiser to come to terms with our shadow, however unpleasant the process, than to force someone else to carry the burden for us?

It should be evident from these everyday examples that wisdom is not always out of reach, even though from earliest times we have imagined it as a gift from the gods. But I believe the ancients’ attitudes, in many ways, to be healthier than our own, and more accurate. Ironically, in the “science” of wisdom they may have been more astute than we are.

For we have turned our backs on wisdom in favor of efficiency, expediency and power. In the process we have displaced wisdom from the elevated temple it once occupied as a ruling principle of the universe, relegating it instead to rarified individuals whom we then either dismiss as impractical fools, or place on pedestals, out of reach of the rest of us.

Only a stunted culture could imagine that wisdom is not a property of the universe, free for the taking, like honey for the bear, available to anyone with eyes to see.

The Wisdom Vessel of Dreams

Dreams provide a great corrective for the myopia of our age, insofar as they force us to look at ourselves more honestly. They confront us mercilessly with our shadows and our complexes, our fears and inflations, our manic ambitions. They show us the damage we wreak on the unknown creatures and persons of the soul. Whenever we take dreams seriously and allow ourselves to be challenged ethically by the claims they make, we have inched a little closer to wisdom in ourselves and in the world. For it is far more difficult to judge someone else wrongly, once we have seen the wrongs that we inflict on ourselves. It would be difficult to overstate the benefits of this kind of psychological hygiene for the world itself.

By showing us that we are not masters in our own psychic households, dreams help us to ratchet down the rampant egomania that threatens the world and all of us with it. Matthew Fox equates this egomania with “anthropocentrism,” which he calls one of the great unrecognized sins of our time, along with ecocide, geocide and biocide. For example, were we not so egomaniacal and anthropocentric, we would find it more difficult to look with such stunning, apathetic complaisance at the extinction of animal species taking place today on all sides.

These two features of dreams alone -- that they confront us with our shadows and thereby undermine our titanic egotism -- constitute a massive potential for the influx of wisdom into the suffering world.

But note: It requires the moral courage of a fearless witness to look at dreams in this light and to allow oneself to be transformed, not into what one would like to be, but into what one actually is. This same moral courage also forms a crucial part of what I am calling wisdom in the person, the dream and the world.

I say “crucial” advisedly. The word derives from the same root as “crux,” “cross” and “crucifix.” The individual who confronts the wisdom in dreams may indeed undergo a kind of psychological crucifixion, an excruciating suspension between the opposites. But how else is the one-sidedness that is tearing our world asunder to be brought into balance, if not through the moral courage of individuals, who find the wisdom to recognize both sides of their own story?

Balance, moral courage, discernment: all are parts of wisdom, as is the seeking of it.

Communing With the Animals: A Dream

We could fill volumes with examples of dream wisdom, once attuned to its subtleties. But I would like to cite just one simple dream, before concluding, as an example of what I consider the “wisdom-voice” in a dream. A woman dreamed:

I am standing in a field, on one side of a wire fence. On the other side of the fence a group of people calls to me impatiently, “Let’s go, let’s go!” Instead of getting caught up in their impatience, however, I calmly say: “No, first we must commune with the animals.” [End of dream.]

Several aspects of this dream reveal what we might call the “vector of wisdom.”

First is the distinction between the individual and the group, which are placed on opposite sides of the fence. So long as the dreamer is caught up in collectively-determined impatience -- drivenness -- she will probably not be open to wisdom. But she is on the “other side of the fence.”

Second, the wire fence is a porous division, not an absolute barrier. She can see the group and hear its call throughout the dream. But whereas they are agitated, she is calm. In this respect the dream shows the dreamer resisting the emotional pull of a complex, which usually draws one into a less-differentiated state -- a form of regression. We function at a lower level than what we are capable of.

Third, it is probably because she is standing “on her own side of the fence” that she is able to give voice to the wisdom-perspective. If she can stay grounded in this way, she may be able to detach herself from the complexes with which she has been aligned or identified in the past. They won’t disappear or stop exerting their pull, but at least she has established a precedent of “standing her ground.”

Fourth, the wisdom-message that “first we must commune with the animals” suggests that the dreamer is aware of a priority lost on the group: communion with the animals in some way takes precedence over pursuit of worldly concerns.

Fifth, it should be noted that “the animals” do not appear in the dream. They are not visible. Interestingly, this suggests that the “communion” need not be taken literally, that is, it can take place inwardly. The animals are always present, we just usually ignore them.

Finally, we should note that this small dream is an exception that proves the rule, since the wisdom-voice usually emerges from the depths of the dream, carried by a figure other than the ego. This is in line with our traditional notion of the angel, who flies from “heaven” to deliver a healing message to the receptive ego. Thus, it often happens that a stranger, an animal, even the structure of the dream itself, gives voice to a wisdom the ego is lacking. Here, the dreamer finds herself aligned with the “angelic” message.

This dream suggests that a shift is taking place in the dreamer’s psyche, a loosening of the ties between the ego and the complexes with which it is normally aligned or identified. The dream therefore points to new potentials that are within reach of consciousness -- if she can only continue to stand her ground.

A deeper implication is that the wisdom flowing from the Self, as an expression of the Whole, is close by, ready to manifest itself to her and, through her, to the world.

As we go deeper into our dreams, and incorporate more and more of their inherent wisdom, we may gradually find in the individual soul a reflection of the underlying patterns humans have always recognized as “divine.” In this sense, as individual sparks of the divine fire, we all participate in the cosmic currents of wisdom that, I believe, permeate the universe and everything in it.

Let us all seek wisdom, then, in ourselves, in our dreams, in one another and in the world. And whenever or wherever we find it, may we find the courage to live it, embody it, bring it forth and let it shine.

DESTINY AND DREAMS -- Part III

As I reflect on destiny and dreams, I think about how often matters of importance turn on points so small as to pass virtually unnoticed. I recall, for example, the first time I experienced the truth of Jung’s profound insight that the psyche has an objective reality quite independent of the conscious personality. He calls this the “reality of the objective psyche.”

I had been studying Jung and dreams for about a year, when one night I dreamed: I am looking across a corridor at an unknown man who is peering around a corner, looking directly back at me. End of dream. Period. The dream was so truncated, so minimal, that I was tempted not to bother writing it down. I had plenty of other images to record and ponder. And yet there was something uncanny and fascinating about this bizarre wisp of a dream, and it kept pulling me back into its curious “space.” What was it? Finally I realized what the strange effect was: The man really was looking at me. I was just as much an object of his perception as he was of mine. In a word, he was aware of me.

This was a bit of a shock, since I had naïvely assumed that the dreams I was so assiduously recording, and the figures that populated them, were always the objects of my perceptual awareness, but never the reverse. Suddenly I had to admit that I was not the only witness in the dream: I too was being observed.

This insight, repeated on other occasions, came to inform my outlook on dreams. I was forced to give new respect, greater credence and autonomy to the people and creatures, situations and dilemmas, of the mysterious world I entered every night as I slept. Dreams -- so readily dismissed as ephemeral nonsense -- were taking on substance, acquiring a strange kind of reality.

Over the decades this experience has so affected my world-view that I find myself squarely at odds with much of what my culture holds to be “real” and “unreal.” I might have come to the same conclusion in any case, without that dream, yet the fact remains that the dream -- small as it was -- inaugurated a new point of view, like opening a window onto the cosmos. And that dream still reverberates for me to this day.

How can we possibly discern the patterns of destiny in our dreams, if we have not had some convincing experience of the “reality of the objective psyche”? For without such a premise, and the experience on which it is based, we are like a dog chasing its tail. Recognizing no autonomous “Other” in ourselves, we are left with only the ego to account for dreams, which are reduced to a by-product of consciousness, as in Freud’s theory of dreams as a “rubbish bin” of repression. We may as well just ask ourselves what our destiny is, take the answer at face value, and get on with it. Many are content to live like this: the ego leading the ego ad infinitum, ad nauseam.

But to experience the Otherness of the objective psyche -- provided we can stoop low enough to admit it -- opens up possibilities for deepened insight. When we recognize the ego for the small island that it is, we may discover some of the profound hints that wash up on the beaches of our sleep every morning, in the note-stuffed bottles of dreams.

“Other” is a deliberately neutral term. But we could just as easily say “God,” “Fate,” the “Great Spirit,” “the Goddess,” “Wisdom” or any number of terms for that which exceeds our understanding and stands for the creative principle of the universe and of life. But “Other” has the virtue of modesty, humility and accuracy. With it we acknowledge our ignorance before this great mystery.

The autonomous psyche is an ancient, universal experience. Only recently have we stripped the world of its soul and its spirits, consigning what is left of the soul to the constricted chambers of our heads or bodies, where it undergoes its final reduction into mere brain chemistry or -- the new panacea -- “DNA.”

Yet the ancient truths still percolate as merrily as ever in the cauldron of the soul: the dreaming psyche. There we can still find what is so painfully and tragically lacking in our machine-world today: a sense of inborn purpose and meaning -- a destiny -- given with our nature and implicit in the realization of who we truly are, not who society tells us we should be.

A friend of mine recently told me a dream: She is walking along a path through the woods. Two large snakes overtake her on the same path, moving past her with a curious, un-serpentine motion. When they are both well ahead of her they stop, raise their heads, turn around and look directly at her. It is as if they are saying to her: “Well, are you going to follow us or not?” End of dream.

Seeking the course of destiny requires, as Jung put it, that we “follow the deeper currents of libido” -- autonomous psychic forces that reveal themselves in dreams, much like the two snakes above. The dreamer happens to be a Doctor of Oriental Medicine. Could the two snakes waiting for her have anything to do with the ancient symbol of the Caduceus, the staff of Hermes, emblem of the healing professions? Possibly. The two intertwined snakes of the Caduceus certainly resonate with the healing tradition of Kundalini, whose serpent energy runs up and down the two spinal pathways, activating the chakras. But even if there is a correspondence between those traditions and her dream snakes, it is not as an ancient symbol but as living energies in her psyche and body that they tacitly speak to her. They invite her to follow their lead, calling her perhaps even beyond her profession.

If she can overcome the fear they naturally evoke, and follow them, then she may become a “healer” in the deepest possible sense: not just as one who skillfully practices an ancient tradition of medicine -- she has already accomplished that brilliantly -- but as one who has attained the far more difficult goal of becoming a whole person. We should keep reminding ourselves that the words “heal,” “health” and “whole” all derive from the same etymological root.

One at a time, then, and aggregated over the years, dream images ultimately show us who we are, who we have always been, and the paths we must follow if we are to approach the transcendent mystery of the Self. Fortunately, the various dream-guides who appear from time to time -- no matter how frightening or strange they may seem to us -- form part of our larger nature. We may gather hints from other people, or try to imitate them, but in the final analysis we ourselves contain the pattern and embody the mystery of the greater Whole.

And I believe that as we arrive at this deeper self-knowledge, we thereby reflect back to the originating cosmos a significant piece of its own essence. In the process we not only validate our own existence, we also validate the cosmos itself, and its fifteen-billion-year quest for conscious life.