Hi all!
These last few weeks, months really, in our exploration around narrative, I have been doing some reading and research around some of the beginnings of science, scientific study and scientific theory. And how the stories behind the birth of science, especially modern science are – well – interesting and often super disturbing.
I won’t go back to the “roots” of science because my research has not been so extensive to explore the roots of alchemy from ancient Egypt [temple craftsmen working with metal refinement, coloring of glass, production of gems based in Alexandria] and how it spread throughout Islamic and Greek territories because of all the wars [so many wars and conquests] and into the imagination of medieval Europe and Judeo-Christianity.
I will say this, though – when science was coming into human consciousness, there was a debate between materialism and other ideas around the nature of the world, like idealism or dualism or metaphysics. Stay with me, this does get interesting and it is related to dreaming.
Materialism is the belief that all things are made of matter [materials] or is dependent on matter, even consciousness. So, this means that things can be measured and studied or they are not real. The scientific method is based on this premise and generations have been taught that the scientific method and materialism are the roots of good science.
Idealism holds that consciousness and, therefore, ideas are the primary forces of the world, not matter. Think Plato’s ideal forms or archetypes. There is also metaphysics which was originally stated as things that do not change or the first causes of things. The study of being and existence but was not based on materialism but philosophy.
Why is this important here? Because in the modern study of dreams and dreaming, which came under the larger umbrella of science when psychology came into being, dreams and the psyche came under the umbrella of materialism.
Meaning, dreams and human consciousness were to be studied under the ideas of materialism and what can be proven and observed.
Before “science” came into being, dreams were often worked with in the realms of spirituality, religion, and the supernatural. Visions and visitations from the gods, prophecies from god, demonic possession. Hallucinations. Dredges from what you ate that day. All the things.
But with the advent of science and the winning out of materialism in science, dreams became something to be explained and studied with the assumption that everything could be explained and studied and even measured.
There is, of course, great need for this kind of study and it absolutely has an important place in dreaming and in all studies of consciousness. Just look at all that neuroscience is teaching us about the way the brain works and how dreaming works with the brain.
And.
Just like we explored a little last article about the discovery of the atom and how, initially, they did not know how to see not just the parts but what happens between the parts and the energy that is created or negated in the movement of all the parts of the atom, dreams and consciousness are not, yet, things that we can completely measure or understand.
I mean, Quantum Physics, which I don’t entirely understand, does bring into question the reliance on science or ideas solely based on what we can see and measure.
So, science based only on materialism will take this to an extreme, the idea of measuring and explaining, where everything in your dream and your dreaming experience must be explainable in ways that are not just materialistic but also that fit with the beliefs of current societal, cultural, religious and scientific norms.
Which leaves out, in many ways, an individual’s experience. Which leaves out your experience of your dream from last night.
Which then leaves us to go searching for what our dream “means” by going to scientists and psychologists who have “answers”.
This is how the scientific narrative can work against us in terms of our own dreaming. The narrative that everything in your dream is explainable, yes, but also that what you dream is not necessarily unique to you. Is not based, really, on your experience, your heart, your individualism.
And that there is no room for what is not yet explainable. Like how some dreamers have dreams that speak to future events. Like how some people who are autistic nonspeakers, we are discovering, are actually having conversations with each other or with loved ones in their dreaming spaces. Like how some ideas are “downloaded” for some folks through dreaming [John Milton dreamed a lot of Paradise Lost and many scientists have reported dreaming about solutions to experiments they were working on].
But back to you and me – the scientific narrative is that all is explainable and able to be catagorized, including your dreaming experiences and your experiences around your faith, spirituality, etc.
The scientific narrative based on materialism, just like all narratives, is just that – another narrative. Or another hypothesis. I did read somewhere that scientific materialism itself was just another hypothesis. I love that and actually feel it to be true.
Another narrative or theory to feel into whether it fits us or not. Another narrative to not make assumptions about as absolutely true for us or for everyone.
Because our dreams are unique to us and our experiences in our dreams are ours and ours alone. There may be commonality, sometimes, between dreams, of course. But the magic of dreaming is that your dreams are your dreams. Including all, what we call now, the magic.