Despite this, certain symbols seem to be fairly universal in our experience., however, while obviously of concern, do not touch upon the greater events behind dream activity, or begin to touch upon the mysterious psychological actions that are behind the perception of any event. Dreams are primarily events, of course. Their importance to us lies precisely in the similarities and differences that characterize them in contrast to waking events.
Behind all of these issues are far deeper considerations. The nature of creativity itself is involved, and the characteristics of energy without which no action is possible.
Basically, the psyche is a manifestation of pure energy in a particular form. It is very difficult to consider its experience outside of the framework familiar to us. We demand a certain preciseness of definition and terminology. That vocabulary automatically structures the information, of course. The psyche is a conglomeration of energy gestalts. To understand that we must realize that pure energy has such transforming pattern-forming propensities that it always appears as its manifestations. It becomes its “camouflages.”
It may form particles, but it would be itself whether or not particles existed. In the most basic of terms, almost incomprehensible in our vocabulary, energy is not divided. There can be no portions or parts of it, because it is not an entity like a pie, to be cut or divided. For purposes of discussion, however, we must say that in our terms each smallest portion — each smallest unit of pure energy — contains within it the propelling force toward the formation of all possible variations of itself.
The smallest unit of pure energy, therefore, weighing nothing in our terms, containing within itself no mass, would hold within its own nature the propensity for the creation of matter in all of its forms, the impetus to create all possible universes. In those terms, energy cannot be considered without bringing to the forefront questions concerning the nature of God or All That Is, for the terms are synonymous.
We can say precisely that pure energy is everywhere within itself conscious, but the very words themselves somewhat distort the meaning, for I am speaking of a consciousness most difficult to describe.
Pure energy, or any “portion” of it, contains within itself the creative propensity toward individuation, so that within any given portion all individually conscious life is implied, created, sustained. Pure energy cannot be destroyed, and is “at every point” simultaneously being created. Our physical universe and laws give us little evidence of this kind of activity, for at the level the evidence shows us the appearance of time or decay. Our own psychological activity is the closet evidence we have, though we do not use it as such. Pure energy has no beginning or end. The psyche, our psyche, is being freshly created “at every point” of its existence. For that matter, despite all appearances, the physical universe was not born through some explosion of energy which is being dispersed, but is everywhere being created at all of its point “at each moment.”
The psyche’s basic experience, then, deals with a kind of activity that we cannot directly perceive, yet that existence is responsible for the events that we do perceive, and therefore acts as the medium in which our dreaming and waking events occur.
In that respect we cannot rip apart our events to find the reality behind them, for that reality is not so much a glue that holds events together, but is invisibly entwined within our own psychological being. There are obvious differences between what we think of as waking and dream events. We differentiate definitely between the two, making great efforts to see that they are neatly divided. In our world, conventional and practical sanity and physical manipulation are dependent upon our ability to discriminate, accepting as real only those events with which others more of less agree.
These so-called real events, however, have changed radically through the ages. “Once” the gods walked the earth, and waged battles in the skies and seas. People who believed such things were considered sane — and were sane, for the accepted framework of events was far different from our own. In historic terms the changing nature of accepted events provides far more than, say, a history of civilization, but mirrors the every-creative nature of the psyche.
All of the elements of physical experience at any given time are present in the dream state. Practically speaking, however, the species accepts certain portions of dream reality as its so-called real events at any particular time, and about those specialized events it forms its “current” civilizations. Historically speaking, early men and women dreamed of airplanes and rocket ships. For that matter, their natural television operated better in some ways than our technological version, for their mental images allowed them to perceive events in neighboring areas or in other portions of the world. They could not simply press a button to bring this about, however. The psychic and biological mechanisms were there, permitting the species to know, particularly in time of stress or danger, what normally unperceived events might threaten survival. But in the dream state, then as now, all such issues were contemporary, acting as models from which the species then chose the practical events that formed its physical experience.
To that extent a study of the dream state gives us some important insights as to to the nature of the psyche. In certain terms we are “prepackaged.” We always recognized one package of psychological reality as “us”. In basic terms we are always arriving by kind of, instantaneous mail into that package, however. We are unknowingly immersed in and a part of pure energy, being newly created in each moment, so that the energy of our atoms and molecules and or our physical universal is being replenished at every conceivable moment.
Our psyche is being drawn back into itself, into All That Is, and “out of itself” into our individuation, in psychological pulses or activity that have a correlation with the behavior of electrons in our world. In dream or sleep state, when we do not meet as directly with physical activity, there is the opportunity to learn more about the psyche by a study of dreams — those events that are so like and so dissimilar to our waking experience.