Dreams made in heaven

For the skeptic and atheist, dream interpretation is one of the last bastions of the superstitious.

Scientists have tried to discount theories that dreams are a link to a spiritual world. One theory advanced by neuroscientists is that dreams are a form of trash removal. Various images cluttering our brains are dumped into a dream trash bin, where our mind tries to make sense of this refuse by weaving these random pieces of junk into a narrative.

However, scientific attempts to explain away the contents of dreams ignore some basic truths:

1. Dreams are not wishful thinking. Most dreams are unpleasant and force the dreamer into stories that are unwanted or frustrating. In addition, the people and creatures encountered in dreams act independently; they seldom follow the wishes of the dreamer.

2. Dreams often exceed the intelligence or imagination of the dreamer, who often is incapable of writing a story or poem that matches the inventiveness or poetic imagery of the dream.

3. Some dreams contain content that is foreign to the experience of the dreamer. In one dream, for example, I encountered a dead horse in the side yard of a suburban two-story house. I had never seen such an image in my life and, in the days before the dream, I had not seen or thought of anything related to horses.

From these observations I would conclude that at least some dream content originates outside the dreamer's brain.

Theater of the soul I would suggest that this outside source is a spiritual realm and that the dream is a "skit" performed on a spiritual stage, with a script, direction and performers provided by persons "on the other side." Since imagery in the spiritual realm is completely fluid, these spirits are free to put on the "masks" of people both known and unknown to the dreamer.

The dreamer, then, is merely an actor in a play not of his own creation. In fact, the dream message in some cases may not be directed at the dreamer; it may be a performance intended to educate and/or entertain an audience of spirits. There are at least three possible audiences for a dream:

1. The dreamer
2. Persons to whom the dreamer tells his dream
3. The spirits on the other side who are either actors in the dream or part of an audience watching the dream

Dream creation in the spiritual realm suggests two other conclusions:

1. Since some of the dream content is based on our personal thoughts and experiences, there is no such thing as a "private" thought. Spirits can access our thoughts and memories as source material for their dream theater.

2. The spiritual writers, directors and performers in our dreams are most likely the spirits of people who have died and passed on to the other side. You don't get to sit on your butt in heaven. You are given a job in "Holywood."

 

How do you draw that conclusion? We are not exactly sure how dreams work, I can't think of any particular reason to believe that dreams would be about things we want or things we have been thinking about lately if dreams were generated purely in our heads.

For instance, it could be that one of the purposes of dreams is to activate parts of your brain that haven't been active lately, to keep them fresh. If it is so, then you may expect to find dreams about horses even if you haven't thought about them lately, or if they are unpleasant.

I don't know that I agree that dreams exceed the intelligence or imagination of the dreamer. There are situations, moods, mental states, prompts, etc. which influences our creativity and intelligence. It may be that sleep is just a state in which we're pretty imaginative, and the failure to match it in real life is just us not placing ourselves in restrictive states of mind (combined with overanalysing the creativity of the dreams themselves).