The Lessons of Dune

How one weird sci-fi novel changed my life

from Dune: Part Two, directed by Denis Villeneuve. Copyright Warner Bros.

I had my first real experience of depression during my sophomore year of high school. It got bad enough that I stopped caring about my grades, and even stopped doing my homework for English—normally my favorite subject. I’ve written before about how reading Hermann Hesse’s Siddartha that year helped me start down the path that would turn my depression around.

But in that same class, my English teacher, Ms. LeCren, also introduced me to Dune.

It must have been one of the days when Ms. LeCren gave us “independent reading” time, and for whatever reason, I must not have had a book to read that day. Ms. LeCren, a sci-fi fan herself, must have seen something in me that made her think I would enjoy Dune. I was a bit skeptical at first, not knowing anything about the novel, even what it was about—but Ms. LeCren’s intuition turned out to be right.

I burned through the novel and went on to read the whole series that year.

Reading Dune had a profound effect on me and the trajectory of my life. It spurred my interest in comparative religions, meditation, psychedelics, and other subjects I write about today in Mindful Mondays. Here are a few of the lessons I learned from Dune:

The Power of Yoga, Meditation, and Martial Arts

In the Dune universe, the Bene Gesserit sisterhood practices “prana-bindu” exercises, a kind of yogic exercise/martial art that the protagonist Paul Atreides learns from his mother, the Lady Jessica.

In our universe, prana is the Sanskrit word for vital energy, and bindu refers to a point or ‘drop’ in the energy body. Reading about prana-bindu inspired me to study yoga and martial arts, including kung fu, T’ai Chi Chuan, and aikido. Both yoga and the internal martial arts (like T’ai Chi and aikido) make use of the subtle energy known as prana, qi, or ki, while bindu play a particularly important role in Indian and Tibetan tantric yoga.

Prana-bindu gives the Bene Gesserit sisters a superhuman level of awareness and control over their bodies, and we can gain a similar benefit from real-life training.

The Lure of Comparative Mysticism

The religion of the Fremen (the desert dwellers of Dune) is that of the Zensunni wanderers, a branch of Buddhislam.

Yes—in Frank Herbert’s vision of the future, Buddhism and Islam have merged, and the Fremen practice a blend of Zen Buddhist and Sunni Muslim teachings. This made me curious about the parallels between Zen and Sufism, the mystical branch of Islam. I started practicing Zen meditation while still in high school, attending the San Diego Zen Center. In college, I became a Religious Studies major, focusing on comparative religions, and took an upper division course on Sufism while continuing to practice Zen meditation on and off with the Arcata Zen Group.

I went on to explore many other traditions of spiritual practice, but Dune sparked my curiosity about what different religions might have in common with each other, especially in the realm of contemplative practices and mystical experiences.

The Potential of Planetary Ecology

Dune is a political novel, but it’s also an ecological novel—one that centers on how imperialist powers exploit indigenous populations and ecosystems in order to extract scarce resources.

On the more optimistic side, Dune touches on how human stewardship can transform ecosystems for the better. Technologies like the ones the Fremen use on Arrakis are already being used to prevent and reverse desertification here on Earth. Similar strategies, like reforestation, could help combat climate change.

Reading Dune made me more aware of ecological issues and how our welfare as human beings depends on the health of our planet, as well as how we can impact it for better or worse.

The Mystery of Psychedelics

Dune is a story that highlights the power of mind-altering drugs, including, most famously, the Spice, which Guild Navigators use to fold space and time with their minds, enabling faster-than-light travel.

But the Dune universe also includes other mind-altering substances. We see the Lady Jessica (and later, Paul) drink sandworm poison and transform it into the powerfully psychedelic Water of Life in order to become a Reverend Mother and gain access to ancestral memories. The Mentats (hyperintelligent “human computers” who serve as advisors to the noble houses) drink the juice of a plant called Sapho in order to “set their minds in motion.” And in Dune Messiah, we learn about semuta, a drug that makes listening to a certain trance-like music extremely pleasurable and addictive (sounds familiar!).

Frank Herbert is on record as having taken psilocybin mushrooms, and for anyone else who has, it’s pretty obvious that Herbert’s psychedelic experiences had a strong influence on his vision of Dune.

As part of their training, the Bene Gesserit have to try every drug known to man, in order to learn how it affects consciousness and how to handle it, should they ever need to use it in the future. Dune inspired me in a similar course of experimentation. And the experiences I had with psychedelics, in particular, have definitely altered the course of my life.

The Power of Training the Mind

In a podcast, the neuropsychologist and meditation teacher Rick Hanson spoke about reading Dune as a teenager and being moved by the simple idea that you could train your mind.

In our culture, we often take our minds for granted—as if your mind just is the way that it is, and there’s nothing you can do about it. We’re even actively careless in this regard, sabotaging our attentional capacities with smartphones and dopamine-hijacking short-form media like TikTok. But in Dune, as well as in most traditional cultures throughout history, there are ways of training the mind that can lead us to become better versions of ourselves.

In the novel, Paul Atreides effectively uses a combination of yoga, meditation, martial arts, and mind-altering drugs to become not only a highly effective fighter, but a spiritual and political leader as well—and ultimately, emperor of the universe.

For me, reading Dune inspired me to explore a similar range of practices, all of which have had a role in leading me to where I am today, practicing psychotherapy (another mind-training, consciousness-altering discipline), teaching meditation and mindfulness to my clients, and practicing T’ai Chi in the park on Saturdays. Although I didn’t end up becoming the Kwisatz Haderach, I’m deeply grateful for the opportunity I’ve had to study and practice all of these disciplines, especially from such a young age. Although I’m sure Ms. LeCren would never have predicted (or encouraged) the extent of the influence that Dune would have over my adolescent consciousness, I’m forever grateful for the recommendation.

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The Recommendation:

Read: If you haven’t read Dune yet, I don’t know what to tell you. Just do it. The sequels are worth reading too, but fair warning—they get weirder and weirder as they go on.

Watch: Dune and Dune: Part Two (now in theatres) directed by Denis Villeneuve.

Extra Credit: Jodorowsky’s Dune, the greatest science fiction movie never made.

Want more of my writing on sci-fi? Read Why I Read Sci-Fi and Fantasy.

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Quote of the Week:

I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.

—Bene Gesserit litany against fear, from Frank Herbert’s Dune

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That’s all for this week! As always, I appreciate your feedback on Mindful Mondays. What was your favorite thing I shared this week? What would you like to learn more about? Let me know by replying to this email or leaving a comment, below.

Thanks for reading,

Chris Cordry, LMFT

PS: Do you want to train your mind, for real? I specialize in helping clients use meditation, mindfulness, and other tools to overcome their biggest challenges and create the lives they truly want to live. Reply to this email with “coaching” if you’re interested.

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