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.”