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252 Anthropology and Humanism Volume 37, Number 2

In sum, Pedersen’s work is a fine contribution to the anthropological lit-

erature on Mongolia, along with the superb scholarship of Western trained
Mongolian ethnologists Manduhai Buyandelgeriyan and Bumochir Dulam, as
well as Bumochir’s father Sedenjav Dulam and French ethnographer Marie-
Dominique Even. Manduhai’s recent work with strong female shamans
(mostly Buryat) provides a particularly striking balance with Pedersen’s more
male-centered fieldwork. More generally, scholars of Mongolia are debating
the relevance of clans and frightening, sometimes angry shamanic ancestral
spirits, in a new postsocialist world constantly fraught with uncertainty and
unpredictability for nomads, former nomads, and many others. It is no
wonder that not only séances but also the famous Mongolian Nadaam festival
have come into a complex, problematic, and politicized revival, given what
Pedersen describes as the “great eternal cosmic game (nadaam) that the spirits
play” (p. 210). You do not have to agree with all of Pedersen’s arguments to
enjoy this book.

Dream Cultures and the Culture of Dreaming

Charles D. Laughlin. Communing with the Gods: Consciousness, Culture and the
Dreaming Brain. Brisbane, Australia: Daily Grail, 2011, 586 pp.

DEBORAH HILLMAN
Independent Researcher
4 Mechanic St., Unit 11
Montpelier, VT 05602

As a graduate student in anthropology during the 1970s, I combed the library

shelves for books on dreaming. Eager to learn how cultural forces shape the
inner world, I viewed that endeavor as a natural extension of my personal
interest in dream life. It soon became clear that dreams were significant for the
field of anthropology, but mainly in terms of the various “dream cultures”
scattered around the world, cultures that value and pay close attention to
dreams. Many ethnographers found such cultures intriguing and wrote about
them. However, because they did not, themselves, grow up in a “polyphasic
culture,” they tended to distance themselves from the vivid reality of dreaming
consciousness. (Laughlin distinguishes “polyphasic” from “monophasic” cul-
tures, defining the former as cultures that “value experiences had in the dream
life, as well as those had in trance states, meditation states, drug- and ordeal-
driven visions, etc.” [p. 65]. In monophasic cultures, the primary focus is
waking.)
Despite the fact that most of us spend a third of our lives asleep, being at
home in the realm of dreams requires attention to dream life, gradually honing
a clearer, more focused awareness of the subtleties of dreaming. Such a subjec-
tive knowledge of dreams seems rare among anthropologists, even as anthro-
pological interest in dreams continues to flourish.
 Reviews 253

The dream work movement, which gained visibility in this country in the
1980s (and is now international in scope), has helped to encourage the study of
dreams in anthropology and elsewhere. Dream life, however, is seldom
explored in ethnographies on other subjects, and few anthropologists seem
inclined to consider the data of dreaming. That, along with a general lack of
attention to neuroscience, has shaped (to this day) the study of dreams and
dreaming in anthropology. That is the backdrop against which Laughlin’s
timely new book has emerged, paving the way toward a neuroanthropology of
dreaming. The author—a pioneering neuroanthropologist trained in Tibetan
dream yoga—weaves together an impressive amount of experiential knowl-
edge and scholarship, creating an account that is personal, thought provoking,
and deeply insightful. It is a work that one can approach on many different
levels: a contemplation of the role of dreams and dreaming in human experi-
ence; a history of the anthropological study of dreaming; an exploration of
inner terrain and alternative states of consciousness; and a call for a greater
appreciation of dreams in Western culture.
The book is engaging as much for the speculative pathways it takes us down,
as for the insight and information it offers. Laughlin shares his experience with
readers, informs us of his biases, and speaks to us, at frequent turns, as though
he were merely chatting—a breath of fresh air in a book whose essence is
strongly academic. “Communing with the Gods,” he explains early on, “is not just
another compendium of all the weird and wonderful ways that humans differ
in their dreaming. . . . Rather, my intent in writing this book is to present the
reader with a full account of dreaming, grounded both in the range of dreaming
experiences and dream cultures around the planet, and in the biological pro-
cesses that explain this range” (p. 22). Sixteen carefully crafted chapters struc-
ture the lively adventure, collectively revealing the many intellectual facets of
Laughlin’s career. The wide-ranging view that the book presents will interest a
variety of readers: anthropologists, dreamers and dream researchers, students
of consciousness, and those concerned with the field of neuroscience. The text
is destined to be a must read for ethnographers focused on dream life, and for
those who would like to become more attentive to dreams in the course of their
fieldwork.
This is not a “how-to” book to teach the basics of “dream work”—that is,
approaches to working with dreams within a Western context—for which a
growing body of literature exists in the dream work movement. Laughlin,
however, acknowledges the movement (in a chapter called “Dreaming in the
Modern Age”), and calls it “one of the most notable examples of the inherent
drive to health” (p. 476). He also offers some heartfelt wisdom for aspiring
dream workers:

If the intent is to increase awareness of one’s dreams and write them down, puzzle
over their meaning and maybe share them with other dreamers, then no, one does not
require a teacher to be safe. But if one intends to practice one of the dream yogas
full-on, carry out lengthy retreats or use powerful ritual drivers in their practice, then
they would be well-advised to seek a guide. And if the dreamwork involves healing
oneself, then guidance of a psychotherapist or other healer might be safer and more
productive. My stipulation is this: Avoid any and all ideologies, whether they
254 Anthropology and Humanism Volume 37, Number 2

are scientific, psychotherapeutic or religious. Ideologies put an end to questions—

transcendent dreaming raises questions. [p. 487]

Indeed, transcendent dreaming is the primary focus of the book. It is the kind
of dreaming that takes one beyond the boundaries of ego consciousness and
opens the mind to a more expansive awareness. One of Laughlin’s central
concerns is the nature of lucid dreaming, especially for people in polyphasic
cultures. A dream, according to the Western conception, is lucid, Laughlin
explains,

if we are aware within the dream that we are dreaming and that we are not awake. . . . There
is a lot wrong with this definition of lucidity from an anthropological point of view,
not the least being its inherent ethnocentricity. It assumes a culture in which waking
states and dreaming states are distinct, one being associated with active awareness
and the other not. We would hardly expect that kind of distinction to be made by folks
brought up in a fully polyphasic culture. [p. 134]

Laughlin takes that crucial observation even further, suggesting the wide-
spread experience of lucidity in polyphasic dream cultures. He views lucidity
not as a unitary state, but a kind of continuum, in which the brain’s prefrontal
cortex plays a prominent role. Culture, Laughlin writes, “has an enormous
influence on lucidity and how lucidity is used by the dreamer. Lucidity is a
characteristic of the ‘big,’ important, ‘culture pattern,’ dreams had by peoples
around the world. It is particularly a quality of shamanic dream journeys” (p.
161). A list of “indicators of probable lucidity” (pp. 159–160), for evaluating
ethnographic dream reports, suggests the range of possible effects of prefrontal
cortex involvement. Some of the “indicators” Laughlin proposes raise intrigu-
ing questions, as they are not currently thought of as signs of lucidity in
Western science. “Vivid and brilliant colors” and a “plot line of significant
duration” (p. 160), for example, are possible in what we think of as ordinary
dreaming. Future studies will benefit from a collaborative team approach,
involving neuroscientists as well as ethnographers.
Laughlin’s perspective is decidedly Jungian—a fact that he makes quite
clear—and his treatment of archetypes is especially cogent. The way he sees it,
the archetypes “are either inherent systems of neural circuitry, or they do not
exist. . . . Lodging the archetypes in the brain does not mean that there is no
spiritual [experience] involving the archetypes, or that there is no sublime
dimension to reality” (p. 317). In keeping with that, he suggests that these living,
“species-typical” structures might be involved in communications that occur at
the quantum level:

Transformations of neural activity may produce transformations in the structure of

the [quantum] sea, and vice versa. Thus local causation based upon biochemical
interaction among neural cells may be transformed into non-local causation based
upon biophysical activity between cells, brains and other structures or entities in the
sea. This suggestion still remains a hypothesis at this time, for it is one that is the very
devil to confirm. [p. 118]

Montague Ullman would, no doubt, have enjoyed such speculation. His own
contributions, in the areas of parapsychology and experiential dream groups,
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included reflections on physicist David Bohm’s view of the “implicate order,”

and how it relates to the origin of dreaming consciousness.
Another important and illuminating theme, discussed in considerable detail,
concerns the “cycle of meaning” in polyphasic cultures. Attitudes toward
dreams are closely tied to the worldview held by a culture, and the “worldview
of intact traditional societies tends to be a cosmology—a body of knowledge
that views all events and processes in the world as interacting in a more or less
coherent and entangled way” (p. 199). A cosmology offers a comprehensive
explanatory system, expressed in mythopoeic forms, such as stories, songs, and
rituals. The “living reality” that these provide, for peoples with intact cosmolo-
gies, is reflected in the way they experience and understand dreaming. In
monophasic cultures, “dreams are synonymous with un-real, but for most
peoples on the planet, dreaming is at least as real as waking experience, and
sometimes more real. Why? Because dreams are often understood to make
normally invisible forces visible, provide information about the otherwise
hidden world of spirit, and give access to power—the same functions that
myths perform” (p. 213).
Laughlin asks his readers to ponder the potential implications. “It is
curious,” he notes,

that so many of us remain unconscious while asleep. It is not a coincidence that our
upbringing denies and blocks out that aspect of our psychological natures. If I am
correct, the lack of dream involvement is part of the conditioning into false conscious-
ness that a capitalist, post-industrial political economy requires. [You] may wish to try
a thought experiment: Imagine what would happen to our society and way of life if
everybody suddenly started dreaming more lucidly.” [pp. 499–500]

Indeed, what would happen if everyone started to pay attention to dreams—

nonlucid dreams, as well as the lucid variety? That is what the grassroots dream
work movement tries to nurture, and Communing with the Gods has much to
offer the movement in terms of context; namely, one that goes beyond an
ethnocentric framework and takes account of the many dimensions of our
human experience of dreaming.
This is a book that one can pick up over and over again, discovering
insights that seem to be fresh each time. The “Summary and Segue,” at the
end of each chapter, is wonderfully reader friendly, and allows for a quick
recap of the main ideas. Although I may not agree with every aspect of
Laughlin’s viewpoint, the scope and acuity of his thinking are truly inspiring.
“The book will have been worth the writing,” he says, “if the reader can now
appreciate that dreaming is a window available to everyone who wishes to
explore their spiritual depths, their self and the rich and unbounded universe
of symbolic entanglement” (p. 506). Communing with the Gods was well worth
the writing and deserves to become a classic. To borrow a phrase from Laugh-
lin, himself: “Yes, really!”