THE SUNDANCE

EXPERIMENT

III: Dialogue Between the

Unconscious and Society

 

 

The Sundance Experiment is an ongoing, open-ended exploration of the possibilities in cooperative dreaming, the structure and dynamics of dream-inspired community mythology, and a search for a contemporary experiment in revelation. The first chapter (Sundance, Fall, 1976, pp. 108-123) told the dream story of the origins of our Community Dream Journal, how it got its birthname, "Sundance," and presented some of the ancient mythology and imagery associated with the archetypal motif concerning the mystery of creation. The hypothesis of the Sundance Experiment was there explained as, "... a community of people [who] 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 ..." The second chapter (Sundance, Spring, 1977, pp. 258-268) was an example of the Sundance Experiment in operation. Dreams and other contributions by our participating subscribers indicated further dimensions of the Sundance motif as an archetypal pattern of how organized systems (a community, plant life on earth, creation itself) regenerate, and supported the idea that cooperative dreaming, or dream-pooling, might lead to something worth while.

A notion central to the hypothesis of the Sundance Experiment is that the dreams of individuals may have significance for the dreamer's community. In this third chapter we have two contributions to this idea. The first is a historical account of dream-inspired cultural enrichment as practiced by native Americans. The second is a contemporary, two-leveled example, in which a dream-inspired essay speaks for itself about the potential of individual dreams to inspire cultural change.