I

2

Anthropology of Dreaming

35-66

"No one can observe the dreams of

Dreams are private experiences and the best one can do is ... approximate the dreaming of the Other". {This incorrect allegation must have been carelessly (and unintendedly) retained from an earlier draft of this book.}

{This allegation is in flagrant contradiction of pp. 377-83 infra, discussing "co-dreaming (a.k.a., "shared dreaming," "mutual dreaming"), wherein multiple persons dream the same dream (which is undertaken by teams of expert dreamers).}

p. 38

"Adolph Bastian (1826-1905) ... published an astounding amount of ethnographic ... information on dream beliefs and practices ... among the peoples of New Guinea and Togo, Zur Mythologie und Psychologie der Nigritier ... .

p. 39

In that one volume alone, he recorded ... that the soul leaves the {material} body {in order to occupy a dream-body in a dream} and may morph {in shamanic-style dreaming} into animal forms, soul-loss {such as, by the soul's being captured in a dream by dream-deities}, and dream visits at night by ancestors".

"It is curious that North American anthropology has paid so little attention to Bastian. ... see Koepping 1983".

{The reason why this was ignored by the United-States anthropology is quite evidently that it would thereby have granted great respectability to AmerIndian theology (which is heavily based on dream-experiences), and then the then-vicious U.S. government would have been less capable of continuing its policy (as of the 19th century ChrAira) of grossly maltreating and abusing its AmerIndian tribal peoples.}

"structuralist thinking that predominated in Bastian's thinking ... passed on through him to Tylor and E'mile Durkheim (1858-1917), then through Lucien Le'vy-Bruhl (1857-1939) and ... to Claude Le'vi-Strauss (1908-2009; see Koepping 2007) ... . ... And, of course, the same strain exists in the history of psychology as well ... again starting with Bastian and passing eventually to Carl G. Jung (1875-1961) and thence to Mircea Eliade (1907-1986) and

James Hillman (1926-)."

{"James Hillman (1926-2011)" (OAC:"JHP").}

p. 40

"Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) had earlier developed the notion of

structure in biology he called "ur-phenomenon" (Ger : Urpha:nomen),

[fn. 3 ""ur-" meaning ... "archetypal," ... -- hence the structure underlying biological appearances (Seamon and Zajonc 1998:4, 25-27)."]

but Bastian was really the first serious proponent of the psychic unity view in ethnology during the 19th century. ... Every human mind inherits a complement of species-specific "elementary ideas" (Elementargedanken), and hence the minds of all people, regardless of their race or culture, operate in much the same way, structurally speaking. ...

p. 41

From this perspective, the social group has a kind of group mind, a social "soul" (Gesellschaftsseele) ..., in which the individual's mind is embedded and influenced."

p. 41

"In one of the most important lucid dreams, ... I noticed a huge brown bear ...

{"Shirley MacLaine, in one of her current books, recounts a story of a recurring dream in which she is always being chased by a ferocious bear and ... At that point, the "ferocious" bear turned into a Sweet and Shy looking Yogi Bear type character, and ... said : "... It’s your dream!"" ("RD&WhThATTY")}

p. 42

eating berries. ... Looking at the bear, it nodded and went back to eating berries. In that instant I knew, in the dream, that I had found my personal totem or familiar, and so it has turned out to be."

"Bastian held that ... forces mold the unique evolutionary track ... . He advocated a kind of "multilineal" evolutionism of the sort later espoused by Julian Steward (1902-1972) and his "cultural ecology" approach that influenced so many ethnologists in the 20th century."

"Andrew Lang (1844-1912) was ... a prolific poet, novelist, historian and collector ... of folklore and fairy tales. He was also interested in psychical research ... and was one of the founding members of the Society for Psychical Research ... . He wrote a book in 1897 ... that examined the relations between dreaming and paranormal phenomena."

"An animistic society holds ... that all animate (animals, birds, trees, crops) and inanimate (rivers, mountains, air) forms have an inner spiritual essence or "soul," and that these souls may be directly experienced by people as animated spirits in their dreams ... . ...

{According to Siberian and AmerIndian shamanry, animate beings have, each, a soul and an guardian-spirit (or guardian-angel); inanimate entities may have guardian-spirits. Guardian-spirits of animate and of inanimate entities may be visited in dreams.}

He emphasizes that ... the spiritual soul is derived from dream experiences in which the soul ... "quits the {material} body" {occupying a dream-body instead} and wanders around ... -- that they are the experiences had by their dream-selves wandering about in another dimension of reality."

{N.B. This description would apply only to the dreamer, and not to any other beings encountred in the dream. That persons appearing as semblances of known persons are not themselves can be easily established by asking them (when awake) whether they met one in a recent dream; their denial is an absolute disproof. Rarely are actual "souls" of mortals (other than one's own self) encountred in dreams; such dreams are truly extra-ordinary.}

"religions are commonly founded in direct personal experience, sometimes in the dream state, sometimes in other A[ltered]S[tatesOf]C[onsciousness]-like visions, drug trips {to Otherworldly realms}, ... or "waking dreams," and so forth. That is why ..., ... under whatever appellation,

the experience of one's spiritual self separating from one's physical body happens all the time in dreams ... .

{Actually, the only dreams wherein this may occur are dreams of projection of the astral body, which cannot occur until one is very adept at astral projection in the waking-world. But it ("the experience of one's spiritual self separating from one's physical body") must, of course, also occur with each such experience in in the waking-world.}

Such experiences, shared by people everywhere, call out for comprehension".

p. 46

"a Polish ethnographer, Bronislaw Malinowski (1884-1942), ... became quite interested in dreaming, as reported in his volumes Sex and Repression in a Savage Society (1927) and The Sexual Life of Savages (1929). Trobriand Islanders ... do make a distinction ...

p. 47

between between normal (Malinowski calls these "free" dreams) and important dreams had by {politically} powerful people and having to do with magic and spirits (Malinowski's "official" dreams; 1927:93)."

p. 49

"Franz Boas (1858-1942) ... spent a formative period researching the Inuit of Baffin Island, before returning home to study with Bastian during 1886-87 at the Royal Ethnological Museum in Berlin. ... Boas migrated to the United States and eventually ended up Professor of Anthropology at Columbia University where he put together the first department of anthropology {in the United States of America} ... . ...

p. 50

The American approach to the study of dreams was to be limited to recording the dreams of informants, along with their interpretations and associated stories, rituals, dramas".

Out of "the case for the study of dreaming ... was born the "culture and personality" school of Margaret Mead (1901-1978), Ruth Benedict (1887-1948), Abram Kardiner (1891-1981)."

"One of the most avid dream ethnographers during the mid-20th century was Dorothy Eggan (1901-1965). In an article in 1949, she took her fellow ethnographers to task for shirking their responsibility

to collect dreams from societies in which dreaming is held to be important. ...

{Just about the only dreams worthy of being recorded are the more extra-ordinary ones attained by shamans.}

In true Boasian tradition, Eggan collected hundreds of dreams from her Hopi informants ... . The Hopi have very clear consensus of elements arising in dreams.

For instance, to dream of ... means death, because ... peoples in the American southwest use ... to cleanse the body of the deceased.

{Far more useful would be an indigenous theory of how the dream-deities are, or become, aware of the probable future in the waking-worlds; and of how those dream-deities construct the dream-scenery so as to indicate those probable futures.}

Also, specific kinds of dreams require actions due to beliefs {whose? the dream-deity's own beliefs?} associated with dream symbolism.

{This would require explanation as to how this is known. Do deities in the dream tell the dreamer what specific action is required?}

"Of great importance in the recording of their dreams is a Hopi belief that they are significant and that

in order to negate the effects of a bad dream it must be told immediately on awakening, even though a reluctant listeners must be aroused in the middle of the night".

{Herein, what would be more useful would be an indigenous theory of how the dream-deities are able to cancel some provisional future event in the waking-world by means of a ritual performed by the mortal dreamer in the waking-world.}

p. 53

"Myths are often strange and surreal with fantastic characters ... and unpredictable outcomes. ... What struck Le'vi-Strauss ... was that

these weird stories recur over and over across cultures.

{The most evident cause for unworldly, unearthly events in myths as expounded in similar detail in countries diverse and numerous, is that in a wide variety of such countries numerous mortal dreamers have, while dreaming, visited the same divine worlds wherein similar events are to be witnessed.}

This must be, he argued, ... the same as ...

an underlying structure of the novel, a` la Roland Barthes' (1915-1980) analysis of literary forms, or

{Forsooth, dream-deities do compose structured novels which are available to be read in the vast libraries in the dream-worlds, so readily to be visited by dreaming mortals.}

[of] a symphony, a` la Heinrich Schenker's (1868-1935) analysis of the structure of classical music."

{Indeed, deities abiding in dream-worlds do compose structured music, which can be heard in mortals' dreamings.}

p. 53, fn. 5

"Le'vi-Strauss ... was ... aware of the Schenkerian analysis of the symphonic form (Littlefield and Neumeyer 1992) and

was ... influenced by the writings of C. G. Jung ... (see d'Aquili 1975 on Le'vi-Strauss' debt to Jung)."

"Adam Kuper (1941-) ... has sketched out a structuralist method for analyzing dreams (Kuper 1979, 1983, 1986 ...). ... Kuper notes (1979:645) notes that in many societies, myth and dreaming interpenetrate -- that is ... "... much of the content of dreams tends to become articulate in myths, and myths, or parts of myths, are retold in dream" (Burridge 1972:129; see also Eggan 1955; Kracke 1992; Brown 1992)."

"Another kind of research began to emerge during the second half of the 20th century -- the holocultural study; that is, a study in which a hypothesis is tested by correlating various traits using a worldwide sample of cultures."

d'Andrade 1961 (tabulating information from HRAF)

# of societies

societies advocating COSD

with agriculture & animal-husbandry

20

25%

with agriculture, not animal-husbandry

19

58%

with hunting/fishing

25

76%

"Bourguignon (1972) carried ... further by reasoning that "hallucinogenic {i.e., involving deities observably/noticeably/patently praesent} trance" states are closely allied with COSD {dreaming involving deities observably/noticeably/patently praesent};

so closely in fact that it is hard to tell where trance leaves off and dreaming begins".

{Where there be a smooth transition of a waking-state (such as, a trance) into a dreaming-state -- without intervening loss of consciousness/memory --, this is known as /wake-induced lucid deaming/ (WILD).}

Bourguignon 1972 (tabulating information from HRAF)

of 37 with trance

23 (62%) have COSD

14 (38%) lack COSD

of 17 without trance

5 (29%) have COSD

12 (71%) lack COSD

[quoted from Hall & Domhoff 1963a, p. 309] "Major acts of friendliness like saving a life, protecting someone from danger, or rendering a major service are rare.

{My father, while he was alive on this planet, regularly used to dream of rescuing persons who were about to be killed in accidents. (This is characteristic of anarchists who are seeking to rescue, by largely material means, humanity from capitalism.) I myself have never experienced any such dream, simply because no one hath ever been in any danger, trouble, nor difficulty in any dream of mine -- only joy, peace, and beauty prevail in that wondrously divine world of splendor and of glory.}

Love, altruism, humanitarianism, benevolence, generosity, and unselfishness ... are not characteristic of the dream world.

{Neither have I, nor hath any of my closest acquaintances, ever experienced a dream involving personal aggression (though I have certainly experienced dreams of vast rallies against the United States government, and against capitalism generally); every dream throughout my life hath been of great love, altruism, humanitarianism, benevolence, generosity : the essence of communism/socialism.

Hate and violence are".

However, pro-capitalists' dreams are indeed full of hate and violence simply because that hideous evil known as "capitalism" (viz., domination of a nation by a single tyrant as "caput/head"), or otherwise as "monotheism" (domination of heaven by a single tyrant), is indeed by its very nature created-and-upheld by hatefulness combined with violence.}

p. 58

"Hall and Domroff (1963b) published yet another study in ... dreams collected ... . The percentage male characters for male dreamers was 64. ... The

p. 59

percentage male characters for female dreamers was 52 ... . The fact that males dream of male characters more often than {about twice as often as} female characters, and that females dream of both sexes more or less equally may be a universal property of dreaming cross-culturally. This hypothesis "is suggested by evidence from the dreams of two widely separated ethnic groups, the Hopi of southwest United States and the Yir Yoront of Cape York, Australia. ..." (ibid:279)"

"Men also tended to dream of ... coitus, death and animals more often than women, and

{Some females have erotic dreams often; and some males seldom have erotic dreams. (In fact, that is the experience in my own circle of acquaintances.) This factor would seem to depend on other circumstances.}

women dream about mother, clothes and female figures more often than men.}

{If women dream of clothes, this may be so mainly in cultures where women are expected to select clothing (or, in primitive conditions, to make the clothes). Whether they dream of clothing much otherwise is doubtful.}

"for structualists the dream is, like a myth {every myth being a record of a dream} ..., the manifestation of a deep {viz., deeply supernatural} structure {viz., divine construction} within the unconscious {though the mortal dreamer be always entirely conscious in every dream?!} mind of each member of the group."

{Despite of whatever these features may be in regard to mere mortals : yet, for the dream-scene-constructing dream-deities, the dream's structure may be neither "deep" nor "unconscious". Only where dream-deities can be understood as thoroughly actively controlling a passive mortal's mind from the vantage of their august palaces in transcendent planes-of-existence, can any allusion to a mortal's "unconscious mind" enter into consideration of the sublime theology.}

"Boas ... was understandably against racism in any form (Stocking 1974).

He thus stood opposed to what Graham Richards (1998:137) calls the late Victorian "scientific racism" of the evolutionists."

"In modern materialist Western cultures, children are typically taught to disattend their dream states ... (see Mageo 2003b; Wax 2004). Children are taught from infancy that dreams are not real ... . Elementary schools typically do not address one's dream life".

p. 63

"Dreams ... tend ... to inform culture ... with respect to spiritual issues (see Blainey 2010 on "entheophilic" vs "entheophobic" worldviews; see also Walsh 2007:Chap. 24).

{Entheophobic} Western societies are what we call monophasic {viz., reductionist (materialist)} cultures (... McManus, Laughlin and Shearer 1993; LaHood 2007 ...; Rodd 2006) which tend to skew

the development of consciousness away from ASC and

{Objection to terminology :- Waking-state consciousness is as much [or more] "altered" (away from to natural state of the soul) as is any other state.}

toward perceptual and cognitive processes oriented outward to the external world."

{Objection to terminology :- The dream-universe is as "external" (so experienced by the consciousness) as is the waking-universe.}

p. 64, fn. 9

"in many societies one's identity is essentially polyphasic -- ... one's identity transcends the limits of the waking ego structure (Laughlin 1989, 1994a; Laughlin, McManus and Shearer 1983; Walsh and Vaughan 1980), and ... the native's understanding of dreaming may be couched in transpersonal terms (see ... Ewing 1994 ...)."

p. 64

""People in the medieval and early modern period often saw dreams as communications from God ... . For the ancients, dreams were ... visitations. ..." (Pick and Roper 2004:3; see also Parman 1991:Chap. 2 and 3; Kruger 2005).

... there are in excess of 4000 cultures on the planet today, and roughly 90% of them seek out and value experiences in ASC, and especially in dreams (... Bourguignon and Evascu 1977).

p. 65

We call these polyphasic cultures, meaning that they value experiences had in the dream-life, as well as those had in trance states ... (see Locke and Kelly 1985). ... I with to imply ... that there are also societies whose dream cultures are intermediate between extreme monophasic and polyphasic systems, and that societies do, in fact, range from no interest in dreaming to intense interest in dreaming with every combination in between.

... there exists a kind of watershed {or, in analytic-algebra terms, "inflection-point"} ... where disattention to ASC altogether will produce an extremely monophasic standpoint, identity and culture conjoined to an extremely materialistic political economy."

{In the place of multiple planes-of-existence resided in by multiple categories of deities, there is substituted (in the theologic cosmology) only a single plane (the material plane of the waking-state), whereof the various deities become mutually aequated through a process of "consubstantiation" -- which is aequivalent in a materialistic world to a consolidation of [inter]national wealth into the grip of a single tyrant/despot.}

"But polyphasic cultures ... are societies in which dream experiences are often conceived by most people as different {surreal} aspects of reality, not unreality {irreality} ... .

Their sense of identity incorporates memories of experiences had in dreams and other ASC, as well as in waking life.

{Not only "memories", but also ongoing praesence throughout waking life, of the deities encountred in dreams; for such deities, after having manifested themselves in dreams with promises to assist the mortal dreamer in waking-life, remain a continual praesence in waking-life, invisibly observing from the astral plane the deeds and needs of the prote'ge'-mortal.}

What we call {visiting, or being ensconced in} a "dream{-world}" may be {Otherworldly deeds of} the polyphasic ego (soul, spirit, shadow, etc.) of a person experiencing another domain of reality (e.g., Herr 1981:334 on

fuzzy boundaries between ... dream, hallucination and vision;

{A dream may transfigure itself (via "sleep-paralysis") into a waking vision; or a waking vision may transmute itself (through "wake-induced lucid dreaming" process) into a dream.}

Merrill 1992 on this issue among the Rama`miru {sic : read "Rara`muri". /Ramamiru/ is a Romanian name and a Tamil name.} of {northwestern} Mexico).

One can thus understand why the ethnographer Jean-Guy Goulet's Guajiro (a South American people {specifically, the tribe inhabiting the paeninsula, of that name, jutting from the northeast coast of Colombia}) hosts would not allow him to live with them unless he

"knew how to dream" (1994:22).

{would demonstrate respect and admiration for dreaming, whether one's own, or that of others}

One may also understand why the anthropology of dreaming has for generations focused upon polyphasic cultures,

{implying, of course, that antipathies of anthropologists themselves are "at odds with" {in discord with, in opposition to} materialism}

p. 66

perhaps because they are so at-odds with ... Western ... materialist expectations

(see ... Kennedy and Langness 1981 ...; O'Nell 1976 ...; von Grunebaum 1966 ...; Woods and Greenhouse 1974)."