The Hundredth Dreamer

This talk will focus on the challenge each of us faces in helping develop a societal goal characterized as the new dream culture. The title comes from biology’s Einsteinian field theory, morphogenesis, popularly known as “The Hundredth Monkey” theory. Scientists observed all members of a species of monkeys on several islands developing an entirely new behavior after a critical number of them first learned the behavior on one specific island. This critical mass is called “The Hundredth Monkey”.

We’ll explore the cultural background that has led to a massive ignorance and resistance to the inner world and dreaming, drawing on Jung’s historical cultural view and other studies of our patriarchal culture. Its pathologies include fear of the inner feminine and related creative child: fear of the chaos of change and its creativity in society and the unconscious; the resistances that we each feel toward dream recall and work; and finally, dream ego confusion within the dream experience itself. In turn, we’ll consider how the unconscious is constantly pushing us to be artists, mystics and scientists of the elemental creativity that is the dream; and how both body and society must enter into an integral understanding of the dream work and its goal, individuation. Hopefully, our work will build toward that time in the future when one of us will be the hundredth dreamer.