Beyond the Beyond: Echoes from the Other Side — What Are Your Dreams Really Telling You?

Beyond the Beyond: Echoes from the Other Side — What Are Your Dreams Really Telling You?

I have had vivid dreams ever since I was a young child. An active imagination can be a gift and a curse. I can think up strange stories that are fictional, but my mind often runs wild in the real world, too, and sometimes I wish I could rein it in. I think sometimes creative people can have those thoughts spill over into their sleep, as well. A friend of mine once became frustrated when we spoke about dreams. “Dude,” he said, puffing on a Parliament cigarette on some San Diego morning. “When I sleep, I dream about work. When you sleep, you dream about fighting vampires in Antarctica, hunting down the head vampire while riding a dragon and impaling him with a giant icicle you found dripping from the roof of some giant, ancient castle.” It’s all true. But where are these slumbering thoughts coming from, and why are they so different?

Some people don’t dream at all. Some people dream in black and white. “She dreams in colors, she dreams in red, can’t find a better man.” Sigmund Freud, the famous Austrian psychologist, had a lot to say about dreams. He looked at them as a window into the unconscious mind, a representation of wish fulfillment in the individual. These wishes are often suppressed, and when they are they can cause anxiety and manifest themselves in our dreams.

Carl Jung, Freud’s protégé for a time, had a very different view of dreams. He believed that the origins were in the unconscious, and were not suppressed wants or wishes, but rather direct messages meant to guide the dreamer toward psychological balance, which Jung called individuation. Dreams were, according to Jung, symbolic representations of the psyche’s inner state.

Freud and Jung laid the groundwork for dream analysis, but there were others as well. A biological theory of dreaming called activation-synthesis, proposed by neuroscientists Allan Hobson and Robert McCarley, suggested that dreams are the brain’s attempt to make sense of neural activity during the period of REM sleep. The frontal lobe is essentially weaving sparks into a story while the person sleeps.

Antti Revonsuo, a Finnish cognitive neuroscientist, believes dreams are the brain’s way of rehearsing threats, an evolutionary training for real-life danger. The mind, in this case, is getting ready for upcoming events by going over them while a person sleeps. This could explain why so many of us have dreams of falling or getting chased.

A common “New Age” belief posits that dreams are a sort of astral travel. That our soul leaves the body when we sleep and travels to other dimensions, perhaps even meeting others who are doing the same. Some believe that dreams are messages from our higher self or from a higher self like a spirit guide. Unlike the other theories, this one suggests that dreams are external in origin.

Maybe dreams are a way of accessing the Akashic Records, a cosmic library said to hold everything human beings have ever learned and will learn. Edgar Cayce, a psychic who was often called the “Sleeping Prophet,” frequently spoke about the Akashic Records in his various readings he did throughout his life. He described them as a kind of cosmic ledger or universal database. Dreaming, in this case, might be considered a spiritual download of sorts.

Whether dreams are some spiritual journeys across different dimensions and the deep reaches of space, a training simulation for survival or messages from the deep unconscious, they are a fascinating part of our psyche and the nature of our being. In the past, when resources were scarce and we might be stabbed by a warring tribe or eaten by a saber-toothed tiger, shutting down for six to eight hours at a time must have had a very good reason. Perhaps dreams are all these things, or maybe the truth is something we have yet to dream of.

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Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Eastern Sierra Now. Readers are encouraged to conduct further research and consult with relevant experts or professionals before making any decisions or taking any actions based on the information provided in this article.

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TM Rush