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{"id":17981,"date":"2016-03-22T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-03-22T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leithart.level2d.com\/?p=2796"},"modified":"2016-03-22T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2016-03-22T00:00:00","slug":"dreamworks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2016\/03\/dreamworks\/","title":{"rendered":"Dreamworks"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Kelley Bulkeley\u2019s Big Dreams<\/a> is about the big subject of religion, examined from the perspective of our dreaming. He begins with the simple, well-known observation that most of our dreams are quickly forgotten, while \u201ca few are highly memorable.\u201d Any account of dreaming should try to account for this.<\/p>\n

Taking a page of Nassim Taleb\u2019s Black Swan<\/a>, he suggests that \u201cinstead of treating highly memorable dreams as marginal, make them the center of inquiry. Look at them not as trivial exceptions to the general rule of ordinary dreaming but as singular expressions of the tremendous potential of the dreaming mind.\u201d We tend to minimize the significance of rare but powerful events. Bulkeley wants to do otherwise.<\/p>\n

Certain dreams recur across cultures and time periods, and these dreams are found in elaborated form in the great religious traditions. He isolates four types of big dreaming: aggressive, sexual, gravitational, mystical. Each of these \u201cfour prototypes is associated with a distinct kind of emotional and physiological arousal\u2014a fight\/flight response in a chasing nightmare, an actual orgasm in a \u2018wet\u2019 dream, a startled sensation of vertigo in a falling dream, a joyous feeling of freedom and power in a flying dream.\u201d These play out, he argues, in four types of religious experience: demonic seduction, prophetic vision, ritual healing, and contemplation. Thus, \u201creligious traditions through history have accurately described several types of big dreams that modern-day researchers have analyzed and explained in terms of their naturalistic roots in the human brain.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is a fair bit of reductionism here, as he attempts to work out a cognitive science understanding of religion. Yet the phenomena that Bulkeley explores are undoubtedly fascinating \u2013 why do we dream at all, and why are certain dreams nearly universal? The parallels with religious traditions are there as well, not to mention the fact that actual dreaming plays a big role in many religions, not least in the biblical ones (Abraham, Joseph, Daniel, Joseph the father of Jesus, and others are dreamers). If Bulkeley can\u2019t explain religion through analysis of dreams, he enriches our grasp of human beings, who are, Prospero knew, such stuff as dreams are made on.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"