Rustlings of a dream theology?...

Where do dreams come from, 
where do we go when we dream, 
what are the limits of our dreams?

This is a question that has mystified the greatest minds and mystics since humans have existed.  

Shakespeare said:

“I could be bounded in a nutshell and still be king of infinite space, if were not for these dreams at night”

Yes, clearly, most seem to have a direct or indirect continuity with waking life. Much is obviously the working through issues from waking life: insecurities, shames, worries, guilts, desires, plans, and neuroses.   But what of those creative, wild, visual ones that are so full of unknown people, places, situations and even dimensions that seem to come out of nowhere and relate to nothing experiential??  What about that mystical feeling that they indeed must come from somewhere else?….

This is a theme that I have informally catalogued most of my life.  Many people have kept dream journals. That is useful, but can also at times seem to even more confound their contradictory illusive lessons.  Many people claim that they do not dream at all.  This is surely not true.  During ‘rapid-eye-movement’ sleep, when all but one’s diaphragm and the eyes are paralyzed, it has been confirmed that everyone does produce images, recalled or not. 

I feel sorry for those that say they never dream.  Everyone dreams, usually 3 to 4 times a night.  During this period of sleep, apparently unrelated to dream content or sexual activity, men have erections during REM sleep, and the blood vessels in a women’s vagina become engorged. Evolutionary advantage? Who knows?

My dreams are by far the most exciting, dynamic and beautiful part of an otherwise often very dull life, even the frightening ones.  My own personal technique for dream recall comes mostly from physical limitations.  Dealing with a bad back most of my life, I am forced to change sleep postures frequently during the night.  Usually it is right after an in depth REM sleep cycle.  Suddenly awake, retreating to pee in the late night silence sometimes helps me to focus and re-visualize as much as possible on the vague, mystical world and adventures I have just left.  Except for the very last one of course, much recall in the morning is very challenging though at best.  One must mentally wait to wake up and begin planning the day, and delve backwards for a moment.

Much dream research has tended to find that dreamtime is longer than real time.  I think I do agree with that.  My own estimate is somewhere around 5 times longer.  Two odd experiences here confirm that—

The first one was long ago; I was dreaming late one morning, when suddenly my dream turned into a violent, frightening earthquake.  Buildings were collapsing, the ground was roiling, etc.  This seemed to last(visual dream time) for about 5 to 10 seconds it seemed.  Upon awakening, I was actually in the middle of an earthquake!  which must have been going on for more than a second or 2 before it was transposed into my dream imagery and woke me up.

The second, more recent corroborating experience, please excuse, is a little more disgusting.  One early morning dream surprised me as I was, in my dream experiencing a long fart.  It seemed to go on(in dream time) for about 5 to 10 seconds or more. The noise, or just the basic physiology of it must have helped awaken me, as I was still farting as I woke up.  How long can a fart actually last in reality?  I would hope not more than a second or two. 

On the other hand, recent dream research and studies seemingly show that there is very little difference in dreams from the young and old.  But I’m not so sure about that one.  My more youthful dreams almost always involved characters that I knew, or was regularly interacting with in the real world, or were some bizarre amalgam two or even several friends.  Recently, more and more, very vivid characters are complete strangers.

Flying dreams, or suddenly being lifted above a scene was much more common in my youth.  Now, almost never; however, I am frequently more involved in some very weird transport motif—careening down a mountain in a washing machine type vehicle, or riding a street-wave on a car that is my knuckles, etc.

Also, perhaps it is due in part to some of the quantities of psychotropic drugs ingested during that period, or maybe just because my telepathic mental muscles are atrophying with age, but I do not have any clairvoyant telekinetic dreams anymore.  At one time they were almost common.  I would be dreaming clearly of someone unseen in ages, and magically, they would just appear at my doorstep upon awakening.  Telepathic conjuring types dreams like this had at one time been almost normal.  Perhaps not coincidentally, around the same time that those experiences ceased, the occasional, brief and eerie déjà vu flashes while awake disappeared as well.

But an unusual phenomenon that has pleasantly taken their place is the strange revisiting previous dream spaces within a current dream.   Is it because I’ve now been through so many dream dramas with age that they must get replayed?  I currently might be intensely relating a dream scene, or referring to a previous sequence to someone in a dream, and upon waking, remember both.  Retelling previous dreams within a dream while dreaming…!  Can a dream dream itself as in a dream mirror?

   

From Neils Bohr, dreaming the structure of the benzene atom, to Einstein’s dream of relativity, to Elias Howe’s dream of the sewing machine, it has been fascinating as a species to watch the mysteries of the night transform physical reality thatwhich ultimately elevates and revolutionizes waking life in the world around us.

Some dreams as clear as low angled sun shining through translucent leaves—much clearer in detail even than any real life memory.  Most are cloudy vestiges though.

 ‘Lucid dreaming’ where one tries to control and manipulate one’s dreams to reality, though popular these days, seems somewhat of a waste of time to me though.  Why would anyone want to control these beautiful exploits?  I’d personally much rather my wild dream visions deploy experiences and color interpretations in my waking life.

Spanish quantum physicist, Ernst Pascual Jordon states: “Observations not only disturb what is being measured, they produce it.”  The essence of modern neuroscience assumes that our brains create consciousness,(including dreams) out of its unfathomable complexity. Exactly how, no one really knows.  But could it all be not somehow created elsewhere?......Sure; God, but….

Alternative dimensions are a big discussion recently.  The concept of infinity has often been foremost in humanity’s consciousness ever since we became humans.  Could either, or possibly both be relevant to the dream phenomenon?

Physicists are more and more finding that alternative dimensions nicely explain certain physical laws that are otherwise unexplainable. And, although I don’t pretend to understand even a fraction of it, apparently ‘quantum computing’ has even objectively demonstrated the existence of other dimensions, as apparently basic computational functions are somehow just beginning to be worked out in other dimensions.  It seems  not to be an impossible stretch to think that dreams could somehow be a link into these other, perhaps even ‘unlimited’ dimensions.

Almost all religions are at least in some way concerned with eternity and infinity.   But if our limited human brains can even get anywhere near the concept of ‘infinity’, it must, by its very definition mean that every possibility, and everything imaginable actually exists, somewhere!  Thus, why can’t every dream actually be a window, a wormhole, somehow into an actual reality somewhere? 

All I’m suggesting is that to blithely explain that dreams are just the mere leftover neural garbage of cerebral synapses that need some sort of extra biological release seems a very limited and paltry explanation for an otherwise very pervasive mystical phenomenon. 

As the role of formal religion slowly fades somewhat in our ever more secular world, could investigating and exalting dream consciousness expand and eventually help point us all toward eternal truths?  Hmmmmmm…..