Dream Resonance: Language of God, Magic, and Meaning?
The language of dreams and symbolism has been explored by many great thinkers like Carl Jung and the tradition of depth psychology, mythologists like Joseph Campbell, and esotericists such as Manly P. Hall. Their thoughts have also trickled into the mainstream, so that today, it’s not uncommon to find a dream dictionary on any household bookshelf, or to notice the use of symbolism in film, television, music, books, and advertising.
But how far does the significance of symbolism go? Is it merely psychological, or does it represent something more? Shamans and practitioners of magic use something like symbolism to allegedly effect changes in their reality; in religious traditions, God speaks to prophets and others in the language of symbolism in dreams.
Could symbolism as we know it merely be a human iteration of a cosmic principle? Does it ultimately tell us something about the nature of reality, God, and meaning in the universe?
Image Credit: Josephine Wall
Pssst, You’re God Dreaming
In recent articles in this blog, I have explored the perspective of the mystical or perennial worldview, and I will continue to apply it here to the language of dreams and beyond.
As I discussed in If Infinity is Real, Only God Exists, perhaps the best metaphor for the mystical account of reality as we know it, taken on the whole and aggregated into one interpretation, is that of a cosmic Dream, with what we might call God being the One Dreamer, with all other seemingly separate beings as fragments of this Dreamer, much like characters in our own nightly dreams are fragments of us.
In other words, the idea is that there’s a universal consciousness we can call God, the fundamental reality, which is dreaming all of this, in much the same way that each of us lays down at night and experiences seemingly separate environments and characters in our own dreams. If we interpret our dreams, then we understand that they were simply fragments of our own mind.
This is not to say that God is literally laying in a bed somewhere dreaming us, but rather that…
The way our dreams unfold in our minds at night is akin to the way our universe of finite forms unfolds within the infinite consciousness revealed by the mystical experience, in the Perennial worldview.
If this sounds like something that might require a bit more explanation, I’ll refer you to If Infinity is Real, Only God Exists. For this article, I’ll be exploring this spiritual philosophy’s implications for the language of dreams, and how it may apply to God’s Dream as a whole.
Signs and Coincidences
Most people understand, at least vaguely, that dreams use a symbolic language. This is why dream interpretation is a topic you might not be too surprised to hear people talk about, and there’s a market for dream dictionaries. Although most people probably don’t actively interpret their dreams, there is at least a general awareness that dream symbolism is real, and it emerges from our minds.
What is less common knowledge is how this principle of symbolism extends outside of the world of dreams. It’s no great leap to understand that the same principle of dream symbolism would extend into culture, which is after all still mental or psychological. Hence, the same symbolism is used in our art, fiction, and movies, for basically the same reason: it’s meaningful to us.
However, there is a whole other realm of the application of symbolism to understand phenomena beyond the edges of the cranium. Any time we propose that something normally thought to be confined to the cranium extends out into the world, we know we’re breaking into the mystical domain. It’s here that we depart from the normal idea of dream interpretation and merely psychological symbolism.
For instance, various folk beliefs and “superstitions” have long understood the principle that signs and symbols appear to give us a message from some divine messenger, spirit, or the gods; this is an idea probably as old as humanity itself, commonly found in shamanism.
A more modern understanding of this overall, multi-cultural phenomenon has emerged in the form of synchronicity, and synchromysticism.
Synchromysticism
Synchromysticism is a form of mysticism based on the principle of synchronicity. Carl Jung, one of the greatest psychologists in history and primary figure in Depth Psychology, coined the term synchonicity to describe a type of coincidental experience people have, which seems to indicate an acausal connecting principle, or something not based on cause and effect (atoms bumping into each other) as we know it.
For example, you may have three or more experiences in the span of a day that involve unicorns (or any symbol); while all of these occurrences are perfectly explainable in cause-effect terms (no unicorns popped into existence out of nowhere), the fact that they occurred in the same day is statistically unlikely, and if you reflect on it, probably symbolically meaningful. This would be a synchronicity experience.
Synchromysticism involves noticing these occurrences, and taking them seriously for their symbolic import to the psyche, as you would dreams.
Synchronicity
by Carl Jung
Jung was intrigued from early in his career with coincidences, especially those surprising juxtapositions that scientific rationality could not adequately explain…Together with a wealth of historical and contemporary material, this essay describes an astrological experiment Jung conducted to test his theory. Synchronicity reveals the full extent of Jung's research into a wide range of psychic phenomena.
Why is it a form of mysticism to pay attention to synchronicities and take them seriously? Because it indicates that there’s something more going on than the randomness we expect from our mundane world.
Synchronicity hints that somehow there is a pattern, perhaps even a message, which unfolds in such an inexplicable way as to imply the possibility of a hidden divine hand, or at least some principle that transcends mundane cause and effect.
Really, this is just a new take on a very old idea that the divine, spirit, or transcendental realm speaks to us via signs in our daily life. People were finding meaning in coincidental events long before Carl Jung gave it the name of synchronicity. Still, the concept is useful, in that it combines all of these disparate beliefs and traditions into a unitary principle, and connects it to a psychological understanding of symbolism, which we may find understandable on a somewhat more rational basis.
Of course, this is normally dismissed by most skeptics and academics to be mere superstition, cherry-picking, and confirmation bias, but when so many people experience, in some cases, such wildly unlikely coincidences, and since there are plenty of reasons from science to think reality is more mysterious than it seems to be anyway, for many of us, it’s enough to take it seriously.
This is especially true once you’ve had such experiences yourself, which can make even some of the most hard-nosed skeptics stop to wonder.
Forms in Kind
Synchronicity seems to present us with symbolic messages or representations in the same way that a dream does, which is a departure from the seemingly random, un-dream-like world we normally experience. If you think about it…
Synchronicity can be described quite simply as: when normal reality starts behaving as if it were a dream.
And yet, this sort of thing is exactly what we should expect, at least if we take the mystics’ worldview of the universe as God’s Dream seriously. Even if it doesn’t always act like a dream, the fact that it sometimes does in the form of synchronicity does align with this perspective. It’s almost as if synchronicities are moments where its dreaminess is revealed.
This principle also applies outside the passive domain of synchronistic experiences, into the active domain of magic. One of the primary tools or mechanisms by which magical practitioners claim to be able to effect changes upon the world is a principle known as sympathetic magic. This is magic based on the principle of imitation or correspondence, and has also been called the Law of Similarity.
The most common example of sympathetic magic most people will probably be familiar with from pop culture would be the voodoo doll, yet it extends far beyond this. Sigils, for instance, are symbols which are devised to represent and therefore have an effect upon their object. You create an abstract symbol to represent something, and then conduct some magical practice with the sigil, to affect that thing.
Before you go scoffing at these magical practices, Dr. Dean Radin in his book Real Magic has shown that various experiments have actually demonstrated relatively strong evidence for the existence of these types of effects, collectively known as psi phenomena.
You could also say that a magical ritual is a kind of sympathetic magic, what it is intended to invoke and affect is usually represented in some way, by its form, movements, words spoken, objects used, etc. The mechanism, or at least a primary one, is another form of sympathetic magic.
This idea can even be applied to religious rituals, such as the Catholic Mass. Of course, most religious practitioners would never accept that they are performing magic, but there’s no reason the principle wouldn’t apply to what they’re doing, if it’s real.
Kindred Dreams in Resonance
Another source that discusses this principle is the Hermetic text The Kybalion. One of the seven major Hermetic Principles it lists is the Principle of Correspondence, which is where the well-known aphorism “As Above, So Below” originates. Included in this principle is the idea that your outer circumstances will correspond to your inner states, and so you could say it encompasses what I’m discussing here.
If we go back to the mystical metaphor of the universe as God Dreaming, we can discern a new angle on this idea.
If the whole of the phenomenal universe is a dream of forms unfolding in God’s universal consciousness, then this principle of correspondence, whether passive in the form of synchronicity, or active in the form of sympathetic magic, is mostly about the similarity of forms in God’s Dreams.
It’s almost as if a kind of resonance occurs between similar dream forms, and causes them to be drawn to one another.
Far from arbitrary, these coincidences, seemingly attracted by similarity of outer forms to inner states, often lead to an enhancement of meaning in life, or some might even say spiritual guidance. Again, this is almost exactly the same as in the case of dreams, which are looked to as a kind of nightly oracle, when analyzed and understood.
Again, it’s as if the dreaminess or mental quality of what is normally considered only to be internal is revealing itself to also be external.
Synchronicity: The Magic. The Mystery. The Meaning.
Dr. Kenneth Harris
Synchronicities are all around us and they can help us on our path to evolving spiritually, mentally and emotionally. Many of us can recall a time where we set out to do one thing and something else happened that created something special for us.
So, we might suppose that for the same underlying reason that a particular form is drawn into our sleeping dreams, it is also drawn into our waking life-dream, as a synchronicity. Both occur because it something similar within us resonated with it. For instance, the tornado may resonate with our fear, or the ocean may resonate with our unconscious mind, and so they appear in our lives accordingly.
Of course, this is not to say that everywhere tornados happen it’s because of fearful people, or everyone visiting the ocean is delving into their unconscious. Most of what’s happening in the world is a part of normal cause and effect, a sort of mundane “background.”
On the other hand, perhaps in some cases, a person may happen to be at a place where a tornado is happening when they normally wouldn’t be, by “coincidence,” because fear or something within them resonated with it. Or, perhaps someone who is suddenly drawn to the ocean also needs a connection to their unconscious, for whatever reason.
Obviously, there are plenty of “background” or non-synchronistic “filler” phenomena, but when something resonates with us internally, that is a clue it’s meaningful, and perhaps drawn via dream resonance.
In fact, that’s already the principle behind the more mundane understanding of symbolism, we just don’t normally take it to reach out across space and time. We know people put certain symbolic elements in movies or books because they feel it will “resonate” with the audience psychologically, and lead to a more enjoyable experience.
What if symbolism in fiction is just our own imperfect version of exactly what’s occurring in God’s Dreaming?
This idea has actually been explored in a somewhat more academic fashion recently by psychologist Dr. Brendan C. Engan and parapsychologist Dr. Jeffrey Mishlove, who have coined the term Archetypal Synchronistic Resonance. The concept they discuss is very similar to what I’m describing here, minus the God Dreaming parts.
Does this mean that our head is a synchronistic resonance chamber? Consider that most of your internal life consists of imagery; even when we speak, we are essentially using words to conjure images in one another’s heads. Could this internal imagery actually be the antenna, so-to-speak, which is resonating with and therefore calling forth similar outer forms?
Divine Dream Dynamics
So, if we take this idea seriously, it would mean that not only can we apply the understanding of symbolism and sympathetic resonance to our dreams and synchronicities, but even to the rest of our lives. When we do this, it’s very interesting how we actually can find much meaning in seemingly normal events that aren’t necessarily coincidental, and the dream-like or mental nature of reality seems much more prevalent.
To apply an understanding of dream resonance to our life, we need only treat anything that comes into our experience as if it were a dream. Remember, according to mystics, it is.
Therefore: why did your car break down on your way to work? Why did a certain person come into your life? Why have you suddenly seen a strange animal that you’ve never seen before? These things may not seem like synchronistic coincidences, because they don’t necessarily seem unlikely, until you start to notice that they “coincidentally” correspond to the state of your inner psyche, just as if they had popped up in a dream, which does seem unlikely if the world were random.
So, to explore this possibility with any given event or phenomenon in your life, it’s useful to ask yourself: How would I interpret this, if it were a dream I had while I slept, i.e. if I assumed it to be a manifestation of my mind?
Some will say that synchronistic thinking borders on psychosis, and certainly it can be taken too far, and that is something to be aware of. It’s probably not healthy to go around thinking every single little thing in your life has tremendous symbolic meaning. It probably doesn’t.
But does that mean it’s entirely delusional to begin applying this type of analysis, at least to significant events? I believe it’s possible to maintain a core of rationality and suspended judgement, and investigate the possible dream symbolism of any aspect of your life.
A New Lens for Scientific Mysteries
Beyond how it can apply to finding meaning in our life, this principle could also potentially shed new light on various mysterious phenomena in science. I’ll briefly mention a few.
For instance, it could be applied to how we view some psi phenomena. Some research on telepathy has indicated that empathy or closeness of two research participants usually leads to a stronger statistical significance, in other words more telepathic connection is found between people who have a close relationship or bond.
Could this be due to dream resonance, with interpersonal closeness contributing to the similarity factor? Perhaps this is because when we know someone better, we have a more complete image-structure representing them in the synchronistic resonance chamber of our mind.
Another area where this could be applicable is in Rupert Sheldrake’s concept of Morphic Resonance. This idea has been put forward by Dr. Sheldrake to explain cases where entire species or even “inert” matter seems to learn and form new habits non-locally.
For instance: monkeys on an island were taught to use a certain tool, and then monkeys elsewhere were documented to have mysteriously started doing the same, with no contact with the first group that were taught. We might say this is some sort of species telepathy, except it has also been observed in crystals. There are documented cases where a newly invented crystal compound began to crystallize more easily everywhere, after the first few labs did it, though all other conditions remained the same.
If we assume morphic resonance to be real, could it’s non-local mechanism be related to the similarity of form of the creatures, since they’re of the same species, or the similar atomic structures of the new crystal? Could this facilitate their communication via dream resonance?
Finally, perhaps the most obvious application of this principle to the mysteries of science is the phenomenon of quantum entanglement, where two particles can become mysteriously connected across any distance. Could this strange bond be a subatomic expression of the same underlying principle of resonance based on similar forms?
It’s possible these applications might be taking the idea too far, but it’s nevertheless interesting food for thought.
The Cosmic Attractor?
So, what does it all ultimately mean? If the universe is God Dreaming, then why do similar forms seem to be drawn together?
If we zoom out to see how this principle could play out on the grand scale of the mystics’ picture of the universe, with an arc of Souls streaming into the delusion of the Dream and then back toward God, perhaps this principle of resonance is one of the ways that the multifarious Dream tends toward reunification.
In Chaos Theory, we have the idea of a strange attractor which draws seemingly chaotic or “random” systems toward an overall pattern, by virtue of their starting conditions. If we use this as a metaphor for the effect of Dream Resonance on the grand scale, we could hypothesize that the quality of resonance/attraction between similar forms is the starting condition which leads to the overall system converging toward unity, rather than chaotic dispersion.
It’s also worth mentioning that we don’t really know that this phenomenon, if it’s real, occurs outside of consciousness. Just like the proverbial tree falling in the forest which may or may not make a sound if nobody is there to hear it, are similar forms drawn together when there’s no one there to recognize their coincidence?
Just as Steven Hawking asked what “breathes fire into the equations” of physics, is consciousness what “breathes fire” into synchronistic dream resonance?
One possibility is that wherever consciousness appears, wherever God Dreams of being a Soul, each Soul is attracted via similarity of forms along a long chain of dreams via this resonance, which ultimately culminates in a realization of the divine Unity of all in the great cosmic Self, in the One Dreamer, which is of course also the core of the personal self.
After all, the very idea of similarity, if you think about it, is a kind of unity in otherwise variant things, via the similarity of form connecting them. According to Jungian thought, we are drawn to those things which symbolize aspects of our unconscious that are ripe for integration into consciousness, ultimately to be drawn toward individual wholeness. Could the same thing be true on the cosmic scale?
Image Credit: Warner Bros.
The Gloopy Matrix Framework
How does this principle operate within the framework of our otherwise normal, seemingly random, cause-effect reality?
One possible answer is that the realm of normal space-time could be conceptualized as a kind of inertial matrix or field, a gloop of determinism within which this transcendental principle can operate to varying degrees, depending on how much inertial resistance it meets.
It can operate much more easily in our nightly dreams, for instance, because in the mental space, there is very little resistance; change comes easily, images can flash into existence instantly. On the other hand, it can operate in the waking dream of our normal life only in very slow, hit-or-miss, subtle ways, due to the gloop’s cause-effect inertia.
Perhaps our sense of intuitive guidance is, sometimes, simply this force attempting to work its magic in the very thick physical world, via our very thin mental space. So, we may feel drawn to do things mentally that are only nominally meaningful to us personally, but they contribute to some chain of cause and effect that will ultimately allow dream resonance to create a symbolic occurrence for someone else.
It’s a stretch, philosophically, but if true, this would mean that we are always instruments of dream resonance, even when we don’t realize it.
Materialism Slipping Through Our Fingers
Granted, we’ve come a long way in this article from interpretation of dreams to an acausal mechanism forming the ultimate trajectory of Souls through all creation, and many people will not be along for such a wild ride. That’s okay, I’d rather freely explore these ideas than hold back to seem more “legitimate” to some stodgy people.
For those who have experienced this type of phenomenon and are open to mystical worldviews, I hope this article has helped you to tie some intuitions together rationally, or at least explore some interesting ideas.
For the more skeptical, I would simply say this: in an era where many reputable intellectuals are entertaining ideas such as that we may live in a computer simulation, the seemingly solid world may consist entirely of information, or that the world our brain shows us is a mere caricature of reality, I propose that we loosen our insistence on the old dust-in-the-wind materialist worldview, and be open to new ideas and experiences.
Science Set Free
(The Science Delusion)
Dr. Rupert Sheldrake
In Science Set Free, Dr. Rupert Sheldrake, one of the world's most innovative scientists, shows the ways in which science is being constricted by assumptions that have, over the years, hardened into dogmas. Such dogmas are not only limiting, but dangerous for the future of humanity.
