ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the social dreaming matrix as a transformational object. It offers an account of transformations in deep matrix in terms of the Buddhist concept of Sunyata or emptiness. The chapter discusses a number of tentative hypotheses about the nature and significance of the social dreaming matrix. Social dreaming brings about transformational effects. These dramatic transformations lend to the experience of participation an imaginal kinship with the religious rituals of traditional societies as described and theorized in anthropological accounts of ritual. Social dreaming generates experiences that can be most effectively characterized by the philosophical category of the "numinous", a term coined by Rudolf Otto to capture the experiential, non-discursive, non-rational, and ineffable aspect of religion. Free-association in social dreaming is both deconstructive and creative. The most common experiences generated in social dreaming matrices is that of communitas, the emergence of a web of symbiotic relationships and the "reciprocal dreaming" of identical dreams or dream motifs.
