Explore the science and spirituality of dreams — from subconscious processing of daily experiences to extraordinary dreams that may reveal transcendent or multidimensional realities.
Do our dream experiences provide a glimpse into the transcendent/multidimensional realities or are they merely byproducts of our subconscious mind when processing our waking experiences in sleep?
I believe most of our dreams are based on our everyday lives. I feel that our daily experiences are processed by the subconscious mind producing dreams that are free from time and space limitations. Most dreams reflect our experience, usually events that have taken place during the past few days. Domhoff (2003) and his collaborators provide evidence in numerous studies that dreaming is in many ways continuous with waking fantasy and daydreams. In long dream series, they find that a person’s dreaming concerns and interests are very similar to the same persons’ waking concerns and interests. Schredl (2007) has shown in several studies that a person’s dreaming concerns are very similar to the same person’s waking concerns.
I also believe that some dreams are “special”. These dreams appear to create new experiences that Kirppner (2002) refers to as “extraordinary”. They seem to help us prepare for the future, generate a new idea, or provide helpful insights to our waking life. For example, many extraordinary dreamers who have experienced one of the extraordinary dreams are convinced that it has provided them with unique and valuable insights about their dreams, themselves, and the nature of reality (Krippner et al., 2002). Bogzaran’s studies, “Images of the Lucid Mind,” suggests that when one moves from ordinary lucid dreaming to a multidimensional dream, mages slowly transform into more abstract patterns such as light lines or energy lines, spheres, dots, and circles. In this state of consciousness that she calls “hyperspace lucidity” lucid dreamers often experience the transformation of their dream bodies into particles of light, or the dream body slowly or suddenly disappears, but awareness continues. Another example of extraordinary dreams is visitation dreams also seem to represent a transpersonal reality. They create a way in which the dreamer can be either visited by an inhabitant of this realm, or called to make a journey to this realm, encountering a deceased loved one, an angel, a spirit, or a deity.
I had an extraordinary dream when I was attending university. I was very close to my maternal grandmother growing up. When she passed away, my mother kept her apartment and belongings for a few years to preserve a connection to her somehow. One day, I experienced a dream in which I saw my grandmother. We hugged and talked. It was very real. Then I woke up. I immediately called my mother. I told her about my dream and as many details as I could remember. When I told my mom that grandma wanted me to thank her for taking so much time to clean her apartment the day before, my mom was quiet. She said she in fact cleaned her apartment. We were both in shock and very emotional. Maybe my experience was coincidental, or maybe inferential. But it was so real for me. Experiences like this suggest that dreams can also be related to transcendent/multidimensional realities.
So, to me, dreams can be ordinary or extraordinary.
References
Bulkeley, K. (2019). Dreaming is imaginative play in sleep: A theory of the function of dreams. Dreaming, 29(1), 1-21.
Domhoff, W. G. (2003). The scientific study of dreams: Neural networks, cognitive development, and content analysis. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Domhoff, W. G. (2007). Realistic simulation and bizarreness in dream content. In D. Barrett & P. McNamara (Eds.), The new science of dreaming (Vol. 2, pp. 1–27). Westport, CT: Praeger.
Hartmann, E. (2010). Meteorite or gemstone? Dreaming as one end of a continuum of functioning. Dreaming, 20(3), 149–168.
Krippner, S., Bogzaran, F., & de Carvalho, A.P. (2002). Extraordinary Dreams and How to Work with Them. New York: SUNY Press.
Schredl, M. (2007). Dream recall: Models and empirical data. In D. Barrett, & P. McNamara (Eds.), The new science of dreaming (Vol. 2, pp. 79–114). Westport, CT: Praeger.
