In mainstream Western culture, if we give credence to dreams it’s usually for personal guidance, healing and insight. In many other cultures, especially shamanic ones, dreams can serve the collective as well. Neuroanthropologist Charles Laughlin (Communing with the Gods: Consciousness, Culture and the Dreaming Brain) says dreams play a role in producing social and cultural change. He goes on to say dreams “might be crucial in ameliorating the pernicious effects of materialism upon what is arguably an un-sane post-industrial society.” (p. 26).
Mudflats at Sunset Photo by Christina Leimer
Great! That’s what I think too. But how?
Here are a few examples of dreams as the impetus for large-scale change.
- Harriet Tubman’s dreams helped her free slaves through the Underground Railroad. They showed her ways to cross rivers and safe house locations she didn’t know before.
- Mahatma Ghandi’s idea for a general hunger strike as a form of nonviolent resistance to the British Raj in India came to him in a dream and it led to the independence movement.
- Frederick Kekule discovered the structure of benzene when he saw a snake biting its tail while he was dozing. That dream image led to understanding chemical bonding and organic chemistry.
- Robert Louis Stevenson dreamed part of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde while sick and sleeping. The book struck such a deep chord that it became a modern myth—human’s dual nature or the public and private self. It has carried along in Western culture as an idiom that refers to a person who’s both good and evil.
- Paul McCartney heard the melody to what became the song Yesterday so clearly in a dream that he thought someone must have recorded it and he was just remembering it from somewhere in waking life.Yesterday became one the most popular songs of the 20th Century.
- Larry Page received the basis for what became the Google search engine in a dream, though he had to work out the specifics in waking life. It seems to be common that dreams point the direction or give clues then leave the details to the dreamer or community. According to anthropologist and shaman Michael Harner (The Way of the Shaman), dreams can be literal though, especially visionary dreams, and require no interpretation or extending. They may be prophetic.
There are usually dream specialists of some sort in cultures that recognize dreams for the collective. Shamans are an example. Dream specialists develop expertise and guide people to share, understand and even interact with dreams. Sometimes the dream specialists interact with dreams on others’ behalf or on behalf of their community. But, in these cultures, most people are socialized to the importance of dreams. They grow up talking about their dreams and their meaning. Physical places and ways to share dreams with others in wake life exist too. It’s not about saying, wow, that’s bizarre! The sharing is to help people understand the dream’s meaning and co-create it or validate it, especially when the dream is a “visionary” dream.
Dream-teacher, shaman and author Robert Moss teaches people what he calls “active dreaming.” It’s not dream interpretation, analysis or decoding—he wants to make clear. Active dreaming is a journey “to reclaim ways of seeing and knowing and healing that were known to our early ancestors. … It is a way of remembering and embodying what the soul knows about essential things.” (Active Dreaming: Journeying Beyond Self-Limitation to a Life of Wild Freedom, p. 3)
Moss believes Western culture is in dire need of re-connecting to our dreams and the deeper levels of knowledge and existence dreams provide us. That’s why he teaches people to become dream-teachers. He also teaches co-dreaming, or creating a group vision and jointly dreaming it into existence.
Some of these teachers-in-training are interested in how dreams can be used to change society. In one of his sessions, they suggested curing disease, bringing dreamwork into healthcare, healing the oceans and fish, electing a woman president of the U.S., healing the rage and violence that brings war and terrorism, world peace and creating a dreaming society. (p. 204)
Guess I’m not the only one searching for ways that alternative states of consciousness can help us create a more humane and nourishing world for people, planet and all life.