Oneirisms is a “collective journal of metaphysical experience,” a place to post your dreams and visions and read what other people have experienced outside the physical dimensions of space and time. An oneirism is “dream-like experience,” and in posting dreams for all to see we provide the means for others to share in the ride.
By telling and reading the stories here, we are re-creating them; they “happen” in our minds, thus building consciousness loops of increased complexity. With any luck, we will become aware of how much of “real life” is actually metaphysical — that is, it happens or is co-created in our minds.
Psychoanalysis places great value on a prolonged examination of one’s own dreams. Whereas Freud saw dreams (and the subconscious in general) as reflecting mostly personal experience and repressed desires, Jung broadened the field of dream study with the concepts of the collective unconscious and the archetypes.
As Jung writes, “There are many symbols, however (among them the most important), that are not individual but collective in their nature and origin. …they are in fact ‘collective representations,’ emanating from primeval dreams and creative fantasies.” (Man and His Symbols)
And his colleague M.-L. von Franz: “Thus our dream life creates a meandering pattern in which individual strands or tendencies become visible, then vanish, then return again. If one watches this meandering pattern over a long period of time, one can observe a sort of hidden regulating or directing tendency at work, creating a slow, imperceptible process of psychic growth—the process of individuation.” (also from Symbols)
The idea for the site was also inspired by the book The Hero With a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell. In his book (originally published in 1948), Campbell used dreams from real people to provide perspective on myths from various cultures throughout human history.
Most of the dream stories in Hero came from Dreams: Their Meaning and Practical Application by Clement Wood, who wrote a syndicated newspaper column on dreams in the 1940s. Campbell writes, “In contrast to most of the dreams presented in the standard works on the subject, those in this popular introduction to Freud come from people not undergoing analysis. They are remarkably ingenuous.”
The site is a subsection of Supraterranean, an experimental magazine where people can self-publish any type of creative work. I (creator of both sites) became convinced that we as a species would benefit from learning more about the meaning of dreams, both our own and the dreams of other people. As Jung writes, “The general function of dreams is to try to restore our psychological balance by producing dream material that re-establishes, in a subtle way, the total psychic equilibrium.” It seems that our world could use some “psychic equilibrium” right about now.
Please join us on the adventure! Share your dream or vision on the Submissions page, or just poke around the site.
