Dreaming (Australian)

The dreaming is a mystical way of life for the Australian Aborigine offering a place of metaphysical repose. The dreaming may be understood as a pure asceticism of nature, an attainable condition within any individual provided certain insights are appropriately cultivated. When the dreaming is understood as a spiritual condition (rather than simply as a term denoting the creation-time of the Aborigines), it can then provide an unchanging (and on-going) metaphysical referent to order the relationship between an individual and the natural environment, with the spirit of the individual acting as nature's consort. The dreaming is thus a quality of spiritual perception offering an ability to live in the shade of primordial creation as if it were eternally recurring.

The Australian Aborigine accepts the land on which he lives as an extension of himself, not as a separate entity that should be simply exploited for material gain. The land and the people on it are understood to be manifestations of a continuing and recurrent creative process, metaphysical in nature, outside space and time. When the chthonic rhythms of nature are respected, humans are able to live in harmony with nature. When they are disrupted, by wounding the land through exploitation, natural forces (such as hurricanes and earthquakes) are engendered in response. The Aborigine tradition maintains practices which ensure a deep and reverential contact with the power of the land. For them, true imagination is the power to see subtle processes of nature and their angelic prototypes in the form of spirits of the dreaming. The significance of this bond is focused for the individual through a particular totem that offers him an alternative perspective from which to relate to the environment. They are thus able to reproduce within themselves the cosmogenic unfolding, the permanent creation of the world, in the sense in which all creation is finally only divine imagination.

In terms of this understanding, land which remains wild and unpacified retains a powerful mysterious force that can function as a regenerative force among men. Within the landform itself a life-essence (kurunba) is present as a cultural layer that has been inspired by mythological contact with the dreaming. The landform thus becomes iconic in essence embodying metaphysical significations. The culture of the landscape, namely the sacred or primordial history attributed to it, thus becomes a reality of other-worldly dimension and a gift to those who live upon it. The topography becomes a mnemonic device through which the events of the dreaming can be recalled and relived. Landscape becomes an active participant in the creation of culture. It thus serves as a manifold mytho-poetic edifice which the individual can enter into in times of personal or cultural renewal. As such any rearrangement of it does violence to the bond between humans and the metaphysical reality.