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For several years I secretly entertained a fantasy of an imaginary experiment in revelation. The purpose of this experiment was to allow a group of very different people to experience their essential Unity while at the same time providing each individual with a realization of his unique identity within that Unitive Whole. I supposed the experiment to be unscientific. The fantasy does seem grandiose. Still, I found it hard to resist the temptation to imagine it. Then one night, in defenseless sleep, I had this dream:

I found personal meaning in this dream, as it provided a way of resolving the internal struggles encountered in efforts to know myself better. I wondered if the dream might also yield an external, social application. At first, it served as a symbolic portrayal of a general, idealized approach to cooperative research, as explained in my report on the A.R.E. Dream Research Project (see page 27). But before that project materialized to confirm that interpretation, other dreams and events occurred to suggest that the dream of the “research dance” might point toward the fantasized experiment in revelation. I couldn’t help but explore the possibility.

At the summer sessions of Atlantic University, I had been conducting experiments in dream incubation. In these experiments, a person with a problem or a question would seek a helpful dream by first undergoing a preparatory ritual and then by sleeping in a specially erected dream tent. As part of the philosophy of the dream incubation procedure, the person was encouraged to share in some way with the rest of the community the benefits of the dream quest. On one particular occasion, such sharing led to an important discovery.

I’ll always be grateful to Kenneth Klein for his gift to us. It was “family night” and we were using our dreams to make up skits. Ken presented to us a dream he thought we might enjoy enacting: We are a circle of children. We each have a special, unique topping for making an ice cream sundae. We share and pass around these toppings so that we may each make our own exciting concoction. In a fun, roving pantomime, we began enacting this dream. By extending ourselves as enrichments for one another, we came to experience, through the mystery of improvised movement and drama, a special quality of togetherness. A form of communion occurred, more tangible and direct than the most intense of our group meditation experiences.

Was this happening a fluke? To find out, at the community session that following summer I asked that we be on the lookout for dreams about the session itself which we might enjoy enacting. Two such dreams occurred. Being somewhat more mindful of the process, we allowed ample time for the dream enactments to unfold. We dressed up for each occasion. We had music to accompany our drama. We approached the enactments as we might a sacred ceremony or celebration. Again these enactments proved to be powerful communion experiences for the community. They also provided us with a “mythology,” a shared symbolic story that gave meaning to the sometimes painful process of working together on a common ideal.

I am reminded of the story in Black Elk Speaks, where the tribe enacts the young Black Elk’s visionary experience. Not that our community dream enactments were as momentous. Our enactments were not of sacred visions, but of rather simple dreams about the community. Yet the magical quality of the enactment experience was reminiscent of what Black Elk described. What the two situations may have in common is the process of a community giving life to a symbolic program revealed by the unconscious in an attempt to experience in practice a possibly creative pattern of energy.

Our community dream ceremonies led me to believe that just as a single individual can seek to incubate a dream that will resolve a personal conflict, so can a community prepare itself to have a dream that will move the community as a whole closer to its ideals. What might be an appropriate community method for incubating such a dream? Quite appropriately, the search itself for such a method has been furthered by the contribution of many individuals.

I once presented a lecture on my observations and developing notions about a communal dream quest, and a member of the audience provided a crucial clue. William Lord kindly asked me if I had ever heard of the American Indian ceremony that was designed as a community vision quest, called the Sun Dance. The question startled me. I recalled that shortly after my dream of the “research dance,” I dreamed I received a letter addressed to me c/o “Sundance College.” It was a dream letter that apparently I had never opened and I am grateful to Bill for suggesting that I do so.

Doing some reading, I learned that the Sun Dance is a seasonal ceremony of rejuvenation. The purpose of the ceremony is to receive visions that will benefit both the individual dancers and the community as well. It is often because of a dream encouraging participation that a person decides to dance in the ceremony. According to some traditions, the Sun Dance came from a dream; and thus the ceremony is itself a communal enactment of a dream.

Central to the Sun Dance is a pole, hewn in a sacred manner from a tree. Around this pole the dancers are attached to it by means of long leather strips fastened to the chest. Sometimes the dancers are ornamented with symbols from their prior individual dream quest. Each person dances in place until overcome by a vision. At the conclusion of the 2-3 day ceremony, members of the audience who are sick may be healed by touching the center pole.

The Sun Dance ceremony is much more complex than I describe, and it is but the visible portion of a comprehensive, religious world view. What I want to convey in my brief account is that there is some similarity, in both form and purpose, between the Sun Dance and my dream of the “research dance.” In form, both are dances around a central focus of life energy, with the dancers displaying personal symbols. In purpose, both attempt to encourage revelation for individual and community.

When I read about the Sun Dance, I was surprised to discover these similarities. What especially amazed me was the realization that my dream of the “Sundance letter” had been clueing me to this connection, if only I had thought to track it down.

Since I had overlooked one dream clue, I wondered if I had overlooked others. I searched back through my dream journals and found that during the period of those community dream enactments described earlier, I had experienced several dreams involving a group of people surrounding a tree. In one dream, we are running around a tree, wrapping it with ribbons. This dream image seemed similar in form to the Sun Dance. It also reminded me of the May Pole celebration. These resemblances suggested that there existed an archetypical or Universal Idea that is common to the Sun Dance, the May Pole celebration, my dream of the “research dance” and my imaginary experiment in revelation.

Meanwhile, the A.R.E. Dream Research Project was being prepared. Could it be that within this cooperative experiment, there might occur dreams that would reflect upon the project itself? People in an intimate, long-term residential workshop might dream about their community experience, but could people working together through the mail also have dreams about their shared venture?

Since in my dream I am contacted at Sundance by letter, cooperative dreaming through the mail seemed less unlikely. And so I asked the research participants to question their dreams about our project. As shown in my report on that project (see page 42), some participants did have dreams about our cooperative experiment. And as an unexpected bonus, some of these dreams also hinted at there being a Universal Idea underlying the Sundance theme.

What is the nature of this Universal Idea? The image of a gyroscope (or a top) is a convenient device to portray the dynamic structure of the symbolic process we are dealing with. The gyroscope has three main components: the central axis, the circular motion around the axis, and the balance of forces between the two. The system as a whole has an important property, a certain type of self-generated creative stability. Using the components of the gyroscope as an outline, and with the aid of a few pictures and some contemporary dreams I’ll present a brief synopsis of some universal symbols related to the mythological background of the Sundance motif.

Beginning with the axis, we have the universal symbol of the Tree of Life, which may symbolize creation, the human psyche as a growth process, or the line of communication between Heaven and Earth. From earliest times, the Tree of Life has been pictorially portrayed with people standing around it, perhaps tending to its needs. Often in these pictures, there is above the tree either the sun, a winged figure, or a winged figure within the sun, symbolizing perhaps the source and goal of the fertile inspiration that gives rise to the tree.

By the time of ancient Greece, if not sooner, the people around the tree are dancing. There have been numerous rites and celebrations involving trees and dancing. A community theme has typically been a part of the tree festivities as they sought a blessing of fertility for the King and his people. The “Dithyramb” was a Greek spring song and dance festival concerned with the summoning of spring. A ceremonially erected tree was the focus of the festivity. The celebration featured dancing maidens as representatives of latent fertility. Regeneration was also a theme of the tree festivity, involving the rebirth of Dionysus, who, like the later Risen Christ of Easter, was seen as a twice-born young man. Another spring festival is the May Pole celebration of the British Isles, also enjoyed in this country, with its flowers and the dancing with ribbons around a pole prepared from a tree. It is almost as if by decorating a barren tree with flowers and dancing around it, the people are trying to coax the tree to imitate the spring in their dance and sprout forth its own flowers.

But there are also summer festivals involving trees and dancing. There is the Scandinavian Midsummer’s Festival, celebrated with a specially prepared tree. And there is the Sun Dance. With the Sun Dance it is easiest to discern what is actually present in all these festivities: a concern not merely for physical fertility but also for the regeneration of the imagination and spirit of the people, both individually and as a whole through the seeking of visions.

Here is a dream sent in by a participant in the A.R.E. Dream Research Project. The dream reflects the imagery of the tree rites and a concern for the creativity of ideas:

The Tree of Life has also functioned as the world axis, the “center still point” around which the phases of creation revolve. As a symbol, dancing around the center may reflect the “dance of life,” the constantly transforming movement and change over time that is paradoxically the eternally present and unchanging One. Or the dance may very well be an actual attunement to the vibration of the creative forces. Here is a dream, also from a participant in the A.R.E. Dream Research Project, portraying this process in modern imagery:

Like vibration, movement around a circle is pure movement; it actually goes nowhere. The mystery of manifestation may perhaps be experienced in vibratory activity, such as in ritual trance dance. The body is in motion yet in the middle of it all there opens an experience of the stillness and then the light, the re-creation of consciousness. The following dream, again from a participant in the A.R.E. Dream Research Project, suggests the mystical significance of dance:

Jesus dancing? Sure enough, in the Acts of John recorded in The Apocryphal New Testament there is a description of a round dance led by Jesus to initiate His apostles into the mystery:

“He bade us therefore make as it were a ring, holding one another’s hands, and himself standing in the midst he said: Answer Amen unto me.” (Verse 94)

 

As the apostles dance around Jesus, He sings a song and they chant Amen after every line:

“Grace danceth. I would pipe; dance ye all.

Amen . . .

The number Twelve danceth on high. Amen.

The Whole on high hath part in our dancing.

Amen.” . . . (Verse 95)

 

What is the significance of the twelve dancing around the One? Perhaps the most basic mythological symbol for that which revolves around our axial tree is the image of the Wheel of Life, again a reflection of the endless cycle of created manifestation. One of the most common representatives of the Wheel of Life is the zodiac, with its twelve constellations. Again, twelve revolve around one. There are the twelve Knights of the Round Table and several other similar examples. Perhaps the meaning of twelve around one is related to sacred geometry, as twelve is the number of equal-sized spheres that fit perfectly around a central, thirteenth sphere, forming a stable solid.

The relationship between the Twelve and the One, between the Many and the One, brings us to the third component of our gyroscope, the balance of forces between the axis and the whirling circle. Note what Jesus says to John about the round dance:

“Thou that dancest, perceive what I do, for thine is this passion of the manhood, which I am about to suffer . . . Learn thou to suffer, and thou shalt be able not to suffer . . . that suffering also which I showed unto thee and the rest in the dance, I will that it be called a mystery.” (Verses 96 and 101)

 

The image of Jesus suffering on the Cross is a familiar one. What is the mystery of this suffering? There are some mythological parallels, described in Campbell’s The Masks of God. There is the Norse god, Wotan, for example, who hangs from a tree, speared in sacrifice to himself, in order to learn the secret of the Runes. There is also Ixion, forever bound to the Wheel of Life by his passion; yet it is his passion that also creates the wheel and sustains it.

The Sun Dance also has something to teach about suffering. The leather strap from the central pole is gouged into the dancer’s chest. As the dancer leans back, pulling on the strap, he enters into suffering. If he moves too close to the center, the strap becomes slack and there is no suffering. If he pulls back too hard, his skin tears and he separates himself from the dance. Maintaining the maximum amount of tension that the flesh will allow, the dancer sustains the suffering. At a certain point, the body ceases to distinguish suffering from non-suffering, and at that moment the dancer is initiated into the mystery by a vision.

It is the transcendence of duality that is central to the mystery. The central pole of the Sun Dance lodge is forked, as an expression of this principle, and is thus reminiscent of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. The One is separated so that it may become consciously aware that it is One. That is perhaps the mystery.

We can go around and around about this point. There are many mythological spinoffs of this central, Universal Idea.

The lesson for community is that the tension between the Many and the One can be a creative tension. But when operating from a dualistic frame of reference, the choices are seen only as being either to “surrender the ego” and be one with the group, the community, the Whole, or to separate oneself as an “individualist.” But the initiation into the mystery comes when the tension is sustained until the time arrives that it is possible to transcend dualistic consciousness. Then we experience ourselves neither as merely individuals nor as merely one with the community or Whole, but somehow as both.

As a result of the dream story I’ve told here, I would now call my imaginary experiment in revelation the “Sundance Experiment.” The basic hypothesis of this experiment is that a community of people can obtain from their dreams the necessary symbolic patterns to create their own appropriate method with which to experience the secret of the universal mystery central to the mythology of the Sundance motif. Evidence of this possibility has been found in the dream incubations and community dream enactments conducted at Atlantic University. The A.R.E. Dream Research Project showed that it is possible for contemporary dreams to provide further clues to the nature of the mythological Sundance motif. Inasmuch as the Community Dream Journal provides a focus for dreams about the concept of community, it too may elicit dreams that will contribute to the Sundance Experiment. In fact, subscribers’ dreams (see page 132) are already reflecting aspects of Sundance imagery as well as a concern for the tension between individual needs and group unity. It does seem possible that, given the proper conditions, we can dream up our own experiments in revelation.

I suspect that there is a certain timeliness to the mythology of the Sundance motif that would make such symbology relevant to contemporary dreaming. The pressures on our planet are making it so important that we learn to cooperate; hence community has become an important goal for many. The origin of the Sundance theme in mythology can be traced to the period when community-states of diverse citizens were being formed, and the motif has often been applied to the problem of how people might cooperate to meet their individual needs. With its emphasis on fertility and rejuvenation, the Sundance motif is also relevant to our ecological concerns for our World Tree. Particularly important is the capability of the Sundance principle to help give birth to a contemporary mythology.

We are becoming increasingly aware of the value of dreams and mythology as a bridge to the transformation of consciousness that is the New Age. We are becoming at least subliminally aware that the human race is in the process of incubating a new dream to enact. What is it to be? What rumors have you heard? Here’s a dream sent in by one of our participating subscribers:

As this dream suggests, the transition into the New Age may involve a flooding from the collective unconscious. We may find ourselves bombarded by one another’s hopes and fears, dreams and nightmares. Psychic sensitivity could be a handicap, adding to a person’s confusion. In such a situation, we would become quite susceptible to autocratic rulership. (In fact, as will be discussed in a future essay, there is a “shadow” side to the Sundance principle itself, involving power, and expressed symbolically in the direction of rotation of the dance.)

As Jesus exclaimed during the round dance,

“Whoso danceth not, knoweth not what

cometh to pass. Amen.” (Verse 95)

 

A spinning gyroscope has a creative stability and can maintain its balance and its orientation while being buffeted by outside forces. Thus cooperation in a manner suggested by the general principle of the Sundance motif may provide a creative form of adaptation to the influx from the collective unconscious and enable us to discern, in a democratic manner, what is coming to pass, and to know what is not.

It may be that the evolution of human consciousness will involve supra-individual consciousness, the ability of a group of people to interlock consciousness in a synergistic fashion in order to create a higher level of intelligence. Such a possibility is suggested in one of my dreams related to the Sundance motif:

Be that as it may, community consciousness is no substitute for self-knowledge. The mystery of the community dance can only be revealed when each individual is attuned to his or her personal source of identity. If the forces of unification aren’t properly balanced by the forces of individuation, we might simply storm together to make a mob. One of my dreams expresses the problem more constructively:

The meaning is clear. Each of us who wishes to play the dream game will have to learn for himself the personal meaning of his dream symbols. But we can certainly help one another learn. If it is to be, we can learn to cooperate with one another and with our dreams to create a genuinely helpful Community Dream Journal. Here the hypothesis of the Sundance Experiment has an immediate, concrete and testable application. It will be interesting to see what we will dream up.

Brown, J.E. (Ed.), The Sacred Pipe: Black Elk's Account of the Seven Rites of the Oglala Sioux. Norman: University of

Oklahoma Press, 1953. (Available as a Penguin paperback.)

Campbell, J., The Masks of God. 4 vols. New York: Viking Press, 1969.

Cook, R. The Tree of Life: Image for the Cosmos. New York: Avon Books,1974.

Frazer, J.G. “The worship of trees.” In vol. 2, The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings, of the 12 vols., The Golden Bough: A

Study of Magic and Religion. London: Macmillan, 1922.

Harrison, J.E., Ancient Art and Ritual. London: Oxford University Press, 1918.

James, M.H. (Translator) The Apocryphal New Testament. Oxford University Press, 1924. (See Acts of John, Verses 94-104)

Jorgensen, J.G. The Sun Dance Religion: Power for the Powerless. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970.

Larsen, S. The Shaman’s Doorway: Opening the Mythic Imagination to Contemporary Consciousness. New York: Harper &

Row, 1976.

Neihardt, J. J. (Ed.), Black Elk Speaks. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1961.

Pulver, M. “Jesus’ Round Dance and Crucifixion according to the Acts of St. John.” In J. Campbell, Ed., Mysteries: Papers from

the Eranos Yearbooks. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1955.

Storm, H. Seven Arrows. New York: Ballentine Books, 1972.

Wasier, M.G. The Sacred Dance: Encounter with the Gods. New York: Avon Books, 1974.

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Dear Journal:

In our group meditations, we frequently have impressions of a Maypole, and I think this may be related to the “Sundance” theme. It seems to be such a natural occurrence for us. At times, more than one of us will have the same experience; sometimes the symbolism varies somewhat according to our individual frames of reference. The Maypole, Tree of Life, Living Waters, or whatever we choose to call it has been a common form of symbolism in our group meditations. We have seen the Maypole with streamers (ribbons) in different colors leading to each member of the group. The colors seem to indicate what is occurring within an individual. Or we may see the Maypole with streams of light touching each member. At times, the Maypole will not be there, but instead light will be seen encircling each member, joining us in a larger circle of light. At other times there may be a fountain of water, overflowing and shimmering like hundreds of sparkling diamonds. These droplets then touch each of us in the group. These experiences seem to indicate a unification of consciousness, all members seeking and sharing the same Ideal.

Dear Journal:

One day, three years ago, we received a prank phone call. The boy who called us said that we had just missed the chance to win $100 because we didn’t say, “Ask me about WNOR,” when we answered the phone. Of course, we were disappointed; but we learned that it was just a prank call. That night, however, I dreamed that there was such a contest and that we did win. The next day we listened to WNOR. It was true; there really was a contest to win $100. All we had to do was to send in our name and phone number. That night I dreamed that we won not $100, but $1000. Well, that couldn’t be right, I thought. They weren’t even offering $1000. A couple of nights later, Jill (my sister) also had a dream that we won, and so did Liz (my other sister). Every so often we would dream that we won. After three weeks or so, WNOR began to have bonus calls. It was possible to win $1000 by saying, “Ask me about WNOR,” on a bonus call. Again I dreamed that we won the money. Sometimes I dreamed that we almost messed up and blew it. Then one night I had a very vivid dream about it. As a result, I told Mom to be sure to answer the phone correctly. The next day, around 10:00, she was talking on the phone to a friend. A few seconds after she hung up, the phone rang. Mom was going to say, “Hello,” thinking it was her friend calling back. She must have remembered what I told her, because she answered, “Ask me about WNOR.” It turned out to be WNOR making a bonus call. We were the first ones to win a bonus call, and we won $1000, just like our dreams told us we would.