Destiny in Dreams -- Part II

In the last post I proposed a category for those dreams in which elements of a person’s “destiny” can be discerned. I defined destiny as an irrational pattern of multiple images and meanings, all of which impart a particular shape and implicit purpose to one’s life. In this essay I would like to consider some common characteristics of destiny dreams.

Large Scale. I used to think that destiny was discernible only in big dreams -- archetypal behemoths that dwarf the dream ego with their sheer magnitude and power. But the more I ponder the mystery of destiny the more it seems that many smaller dreams also belong in this category, and it becomes more difficult to draw the line. Still, large scale itself can be an indicator that inklings of destiny may be close at hand. When we are prompted to say, “I had a big dream last night,” we usually mean that something about the scale of the dream took us beyond our personal, day-to-day concerns into regions of greater depth, where personal elements are either displaced altogether or subsumed in the larger context of the problems and potentials of humanity itself. The awareness of our position in the larger context of humanity or the cosmos imposes a kind of responsibility.

In tribal societies, it was understood that big dreams were matters of concern to the whole tribe. It was the dreamer’s responsibility to report the dream to fellow tribal members. This ancient pattern expresses a deep insight more or less lost to our modern mass culture. Today, we are no longer able collectively to follow the deeper movements of the psyche -- and widespread disorientation is the result. Nevertheless, many people are still having big dreams. This means that those few individuals who bother to record and remember them bear a heightened responsibility to pay close attention to the formative images rising up from below. This in itself comes close to what I call destiny.

Small Scale. As Jung pointed out, any psychological statement can be stood on its head, which can be very aggravating to the ego. No sooner do we make a grand pronouncement than the very opposite also turns out to be true. This annoying fact is well expressed in the French aphorism “Les extrêmes se touchent.” (The opposites touch one another.)

Thus, I must quickly add that aspects of destiny can be expressed not only in terms of large scale, but in terms of small scale as well. This is dramatically apparent in dreams where a baby appears. The very qualities of smallness and fragility seem to magnify its importance, especially if the figure is in danger, which it often is (“I discover that the new-born baby has been lost. I am terrified and must find it.”) Something has barely come within reach of consciousness and is already in danger of being lost. Extra care must be given to it, and its diminutive size and innocent freshness prefigure a long period of development extending well into the future. To take such a dream figure seriously will have a profound effect on the dreamer. For daily life, which normally proceeds according to the will and discretion of the ego, now finds itself subject to a greater will, for whose realization the ego is responsible. The ego finds itself contained within a larger life expressed by the apparent evanescence of dream.

Occasionally a dream may feature, not a baby, but a tiny, fully-formed human, which the alchemists referred to as a “homunculus.” In this case, smallness of scale is joined to impossibility, imparting an uncanny specialness to the image. Something so small is easily overlooked. And yet it is already fully developed. It is small, like a baby, yet mature at the same -- paradoxical qualities which enhance its uncanny importance. As a “complexio oppositorum,” the homunculus resonates with the qualities of the Self, and the dream context in which it appears may contain signposts that point the way to those deeper levels of authentic being out of which destiny arises.

These small, fragile dream figures -- baby and homunculus -- by evoking from us a caring response, involve us in something larger than ourselves. We cannot simply follow the desires and needs of the ego, pretending that we have done any justice to the psyche.

Dream-plus-dreamer thus comprise a greater whole than dreamer alone. Their fates are interwoven and the dream has once again made a fair claim on the destiny of the individual. Because of this, and because it happens so often, it may not be going too far to say that our well-being depends on the well-being of the figures in our dreams.

3. The Task. It should be apparent by now that I believe dreams in general, and destiny dreams in particular, place ethical demands upon the dreamer to whom they appear. They saddle us with tasks, which may be one reason why so many people choose to ignore or dismiss their dreams, finding them not only mystifying but also irritating, due to the onerous burden of increased consciousness the dreams implicitly impose.

But if we’re not looking for meaningful burdens to place alongside the busywork and trivial distractions that so encumber our modern lives, we probably shouldn’t involve ourselves with dreams. As I said in the last issue, to seek one’s destiny in dreams is not for the faint of heart.

In my view, then, the tasks with which dreams challenge us are best gratefully accepted, for they give us access to deeper levels of psychic substance and meaning, the lack of which is cause for much suffering in the world.

4. Scale and Task Together. Here is an example of a destiny dream in which “scale” and “task” are interwoven. A man dreamed that he was in a deep cavern, shaped almost like a theater. At one end of the cavern was an enormous window onto space. The planet Jupiter dominated the entire view. Somehow he knew that Jupiter was going to explode, and within seconds it did. The giant planet erupted in a tremendous fireball, and as the explosion subsided the man saw fixed stars falling from their places in the heavens -- in a flash, what had once seemed permanent and eternal was falling away before his eyes. With a feeling of great urgency he ran out of the cavern, onto the sidewalks of a busy city. He felt he had to tell people what had just happened, but nobody seemed interested. People hurried about their business, too preoccupied with mundane concerns to pay any attention. [End of dream.]

The explosion of Jupiter and the falling of stars from the sky is an image of cosmic scale -- a transpersonal event of archetypal magnitude, affecting all of humanity. The dream showed that a major shift in “heaven” -- i.e., the archetypal dominants on which our lives are based -- is taking place. The gift of the dream was to engage the man as a witness to the event. The task imposed upon him was that he had to take action on the basis of that vision, incorporating it into his life by telling the world what he had seen. The “kicker” at the end of the dream guaranteed that it would be no easy task -- the man rushed out to alert the world at large, but no one showed any interest.

An important feature of this dream is that it isolates the dreamer from the collective -- he is isolated by his knowledge, which people in general don’t want to be bothered with, even though it affects them in fundamental ways. He has become, if he wasn’t already, what Melville referred to as one of the “isolatoes.”

Paradoxically, even as it isolates him, the dream simultaneously relates the man to the collective, because it is to the world-at-large and to his fellow humans that he owes his service for having witnessed the cosmic vision. His task -- and I would say his destiny -- is to find some way to express to others what seems so gigantically difficult to express.

5. Paradox. The sense of paradox is another common characteristic of destiny dreams. Insofar as they challenge and engage the whole person, and therefore encompass the opposites, the dreamer can neither stand completely apart from the world nor feign disappearance in the crowd. In the case of our dream of Jupiter exploding, the individual task of the man is emphasized, not his collectivity, because it is as an individual that he has to respond to and come to terms with the dream. But if his only response is to reject the task and remain safely ensconced within collective forms, he will avoid an onerous burden, to be sure, but he will also most likely fail his destiny.

From my perspective, the man is not absolved of responsibility just because the dream came to an end, or because it was “just a dream.” It ended in a state of profound irresolution. An archetypal shift in the world has taken place -- indeed, it is ongoing -- and the lack of interest on the part of the public is one of the “problematics” of the dream. It is up to the dreamer to find words, images and actions adequate to convey to an oblivious public the changes bearing down upon one and all.