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The Waking Dream: Unlocking the Symbolic Language of Our Lives
The telephone rings. It is a grammar school friend you have not heard from in 30 years, but just now, while going through a box of old photographs, you came across his picture. Is this coincidence, or do such events have deeper significance? This engaging and penetrating book opens readers to the world of meaningful coincidences. Weaving ancient insights with contemporary teachings on sacred psychology, astrology, and subtle energy. Grasse shows readers how to understand the deeper meaning of the symbols and synchronicities of their everyday lives.
315 pages, Paperback
First published January 25, 1996
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
May 3, 2015
This is my kind of book, and symbolic language is really all around us. I really do believe waking life can be interpreted just as in a dream, and it is one of the works of this kind I would definitely want to read again at some point. It really makes you think of everything in life and its meaning, along with utilizing the ability to read symbols and omens and understand the deeper workings of synchronicity. If the world feels mechanical this author will help infuse it with colour, shifting the mind to a deeper reality at work. Of course, if you are the type of person to find significance in everything, this is right up your alley. From songs playing on the radio at the right time, to bumping into people at those strange moments to something you watched on television, books falling off shelves, hidden messages to be uncovered, and pathways discovered. When a bad situation lifts and you see signs everywhere of a new sense of freedom, it really is something we should all think about and keep an open mind and observe. It would be in my top ten list of books that changed my way of looking at reality (astrology and some psychology may fill up all the other spots).
November 22, 2016
"The stream of knowledge is heading towards a non-mechanical reality; the universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine." -Sir James Jeans
In the modern, mechanistic worldview, cold, hard, objectivity rules and there is no place for the mystery of subjective meaning and the symbolist perspective that pervaded world cultures in days past.
Ray Grasse is among a few vanguard thinkers that asks us to rethink the modern position and, in an epistemological revolution, to allow space for the strange, acausal, signs and symbols that often peek through the ordinary experience of life. Grasse suggests that, rather than a meaningless accident of matter, the physical world is intimately linked to the inner world. All things, he says, partake in a single regulating intelligence, or Divine Mind, that permeates and transcends material reality. In this view, everything is governed by hidden connections, cycles, and archetypes. Everything is meaningful and Grasse suggests life is a "living book of symbols, a sacred text that can be decoded," if we only know how to decipher the code.
In this fascinating exploration of the symbolist worldview, Grasse considers ancient knowledge across world cultures including esoteric and hermetic traditions, kabbalistic lore, and yoga. He looks at astrology, tarot, numerology, omens, rituals, archetypes, chakras, and more, in an attempt to synthesize symbolic knowledge into a coherent perspective with fundamental laws. Like Freud's "Interpretation of Dreams," which contains observations about features of dream symbolism, Grasse's book is an "Interpretation of Reality," providing clues about how to decode symbolic meaning in waking life. It often feels like he's drawing from hermeneutics and literary theory to decode the symbolism of everyday life!
Grasse hints at a mysterious creative force at work, a collective psyche, a master storyteller, a magic weaver, linking the events of the individual, society, and the universe together in a brilliant tapestry, with meaning everywhere. But if we are all part of some grand work of art, who is the artist? How does the artist work? What are the grand metaphysical implications of a symbolic worldview?
The book doesn't answer the big questions but it gets the reader thinking. It provides a starting point for investigations. It's full of wonder and provocative suggestions, the kind of book that might be found in a Renaissance alchemist's library.
I don't believe everything Grasse proposes in this book. Sometimes his suggestions of what is meaningful and significant are forced and beyond belief. Yet, considering the whole of the text with an open mind, I can't help but feel there's something to the symbolist worldview, and I give Grasse great credit in attempting to re-introduce it to a modern audience.
In the modern, mechanistic worldview, cold, hard, objectivity rules and there is no place for the mystery of subjective meaning and the symbolist perspective that pervaded world cultures in days past.
Ray Grasse is among a few vanguard thinkers that asks us to rethink the modern position and, in an epistemological revolution, to allow space for the strange, acausal, signs and symbols that often peek through the ordinary experience of life. Grasse suggests that, rather than a meaningless accident of matter, the physical world is intimately linked to the inner world. All things, he says, partake in a single regulating intelligence, or Divine Mind, that permeates and transcends material reality. In this view, everything is governed by hidden connections, cycles, and archetypes. Everything is meaningful and Grasse suggests life is a "living book of symbols, a sacred text that can be decoded," if we only know how to decipher the code.
In this fascinating exploration of the symbolist worldview, Grasse considers ancient knowledge across world cultures including esoteric and hermetic traditions, kabbalistic lore, and yoga. He looks at astrology, tarot, numerology, omens, rituals, archetypes, chakras, and more, in an attempt to synthesize symbolic knowledge into a coherent perspective with fundamental laws. Like Freud's "Interpretation of Dreams," which contains observations about features of dream symbolism, Grasse's book is an "Interpretation of Reality," providing clues about how to decode symbolic meaning in waking life. It often feels like he's drawing from hermeneutics and literary theory to decode the symbolism of everyday life!
Grasse hints at a mysterious creative force at work, a collective psyche, a master storyteller, a magic weaver, linking the events of the individual, society, and the universe together in a brilliant tapestry, with meaning everywhere. But if we are all part of some grand work of art, who is the artist? How does the artist work? What are the grand metaphysical implications of a symbolic worldview?
The book doesn't answer the big questions but it gets the reader thinking. It provides a starting point for investigations. It's full of wonder and provocative suggestions, the kind of book that might be found in a Renaissance alchemist's library.
I don't believe everything Grasse proposes in this book. Sometimes his suggestions of what is meaningful and significant are forced and beyond belief. Yet, considering the whole of the text with an open mind, I can't help but feel there's something to the symbolist worldview, and I give Grasse great credit in attempting to re-introduce it to a modern audience.
November 13, 2017
This thoroughly researched work is deep, clear and uplifting, reminding us that, despite all of the linear, reductionist thinking in the contemporary world, there are no accidents, and that the Universe is still brimming with meaning. And for the first time, I really understood how astrology works.
March 11, 2016
best book I've ever read. damn.
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July 1, 2021This book is dated (pub. 1996) and the writing style is somewhat dry and academic, but I got something out of it. In the end, Grasse is making a case for a return to connecting science with meaning, and turning away from science = nihilism. "The fact that science cannot directly examine meaning does not prove that meaning doesn’t exist...absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." He looks at deep history and the origins of science, when philosophy was a branch of science.
He discusses:
Geomancy = geology and geography understood symbolically, energetically
Alchemy = chemistry understood symbolically, energetically, psychically
Sacred Geometry = pure forms and their significance
Numerology = spiritual quality of numerical patterns
Sarcred Psychology = human motivation in its cosmic dimension (chakras, Kabbal, archetypes)
Sacred Medicine = the deeper significance of illness (Native American)
"From ancient Greeks like Pythagoras and Plato, through the Renaissance theorists Galileo, Johannes Kepler, and Sir Isaac Newton, to the great German thinkers Goethe and Hegel, saw in nature’s patterns a source of important insights into spiritual and psychological principles. As Galileo commented, 'Philosophy is written in the book which is ever before our eyes—I mean the universe—but we cannot understand it if we do not learn the language to grasp the symbols in which it is written.' "
He discusses:
Geomancy = geology and geography understood symbolically, energetically
Alchemy = chemistry understood symbolically, energetically, psychically
Sacred Geometry = pure forms and their significance
Numerology = spiritual quality of numerical patterns
Sarcred Psychology = human motivation in its cosmic dimension (chakras, Kabbal, archetypes)
Sacred Medicine = the deeper significance of illness (Native American)
"From ancient Greeks like Pythagoras and Plato, through the Renaissance theorists Galileo, Johannes Kepler, and Sir Isaac Newton, to the great German thinkers Goethe and Hegel, saw in nature’s patterns a source of important insights into spiritual and psychological principles. As Galileo commented, 'Philosophy is written in the book which is ever before our eyes—I mean the universe—but we cannot understand it if we do not learn the language to grasp the symbols in which it is written.' "
August 29, 2020
Brilliant look at the world of symbols and meaning. Lays out elements of the world view with clear explanations, then weaves them together to create an enlightening depth of field. Accessible to those who are new to the concept and unlocks new dimensions for those who are well traveled on the path.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews