What did you dream about last night? Before you head into the comments to detail every
last moment of the strangest visions you ever had, consider how weird dreaming really is. Yes,
there are various, variously conventional ideas on exactly why our brains take us along these nightly
journeys, and we will cover that in today’s video. But, alongside all the more expected explanations,
there are some truly out of this world notions that dreaming might actually
be more than simply random stories that we tell our sleeping selves. A lot more.
This is Unveiled, and today we’re answering the extraordinary question;
do we enter a parallel universe when we dream?
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Dreaming has long been one of the most mysterious aspects of the human experience. As we drift into
the realms of sleep, our minds conjure up vivid and sometimes bizarre scenarios,
leaving us to wonder about the nature and purpose of these nocturnal adventures. As
strange as it all seems, however, there has been a lot of scientific thought and theory
put into trying to understand dreams. So, before anything else, let’s start with that.
At its simplest dreaming is a complex and dynamic process that occurs during the rapid
eye movement (or, REM) stage of sleep. This time is characterized by heightened brain
activity, which in turn generates vivid imagery in the mind’s eye. Of course,
dreams can be mundane or fantastical. They can make perfect sense, they can make no sense at
all. And researchers generally believe that they’re influenced by a myriad of factors,
including our daily experiences, our underlying emotions, and our subconscious thoughts.
There have been plenty of in-depth studies into dreaming, over the years,
and especially in the twentieth century. But three of the most notable and widely referenced are:
Freud's Interpretation of Dreams, in 1899; Hall and Van de Castle's Content Analysis, in 1966;
and the Activation-Synthesis Model, in 1977.
Sigmund Freud's groundbreaking work in many ways laid the foundation for modern dream psychology
and analysis. Freud proposed that dreams were a window into the unconscious mind,
revealing repressed desires and unresolved conflicts. And, while some aspects of the
Freudian approach have been heavily criticized, the emphasis on the symbolic nature of dreams
and their connection to the subconscious remains influential. It was more than sixty years later,
though, that another major shift took place, following the Content Analysis
study of ‘66. Here, the researchers Hall and Van de Castle systematically logged
and analyzed thousands of dream reports. They identified common themes and symbols,
providing valuable insights into the universality of certain dream elements. And their findings
paved the way for a more empirical approach to dream research from that point on. Finally,
however, and developed by John Allan Hobson and Robert McCarley, the Activation-Synthesis Model
of ‘77 broadly suggested that dreams are a direct result of the brain's attempt to make sense of
particular neural activity during REM sleep. This was something of a pivot, then, as dreams are here
seen as a form of 'brain noise' that the mind simply organizes into cohesive narratives. Or,
sometimes, not so cohesive narratives. This model certainly challenged Freud’s ideas,
highlighting the biological basis of dreaming. And today, researchers are usually caught somewhere
between the two ways of thinking; either dreams are a reflection of ourselves and our non-physical
minds… or they’re the creation of traceable neural firings within our physical heads.
So now, let’s enter a parallel universe.
The connection between dreaming and parallel universes perhaps understandably arises from
the surreal and often nonsensical nature of dreams. In a dream, the laws of physics
and reality seem to be suspended, allowing for otherwise impossible scenarios. In your dream
world you may inhabit a version of you that can fly, or change faces, a version that’s turquoise
all over, or one that doesn’t have eyes or a mouth. Seemingly anything goes. And so,
while dreams themselves still don't serve as direct evidence for parallel universes, they
have long prompted speculation about the nature of reality and the boundaries of possibility.
Some theories suggest that the bizarre happenings in dreams align with the principles of quantum
physics and the concept of a multiverse. Broadly, quantum uncertainty posits that
all possible outcomes of a situation do exist in what might be termed as parallel universes.
This means that, even in the apparently real world, anything actually is possible. And so,
dreams could then offer glimpses into these alternate plains. Quite how,
no one’s really sure… but it’s a suggestion that has gradually garnered some support.
Robert Lanza is an American scientist. For much of his career he’s worked in the fields of stem
cell research and cloning but, in 2007, his profile took a different direction when he
published an article titled “A New Theory of the Universe” in “The American Scholar”. In it,
Lanza outlines his model of biocentrism, which he puts forward as a candidate toward a grand
unifying theory; a theory of everything. In short, biocentrism argues that life
and the universe are inherently related to, dependent on, and created by the individual;
by consciousness. It’s said that seemingly key concepts - such as Albert Einstein’s
spacetime - can only ever amount to speculation. And that all we can be truly sure about,
when contemplating the true nature of reality, is that it’s always, essentially,
our own doing. The look of a tree; the shape of our hands; the passing of time; the contemplation
of gravity… it’s all biocentric in that none of it exists without consciousness to make it exist.
The bridge between this worldview and dreaming is, then, quite simple. As Lanza and other
biocenticrists would have it, all that we do in a dream - creating and experiencing
perceived realities - is also all that we do in waking life. There is no, or little, difference,
and the two aspects of life only feel as though they’re separate because we require sleep to
access one of them. Lanza argues that both the waking and dreaming experiences amount
only to the collapse of probability waves into an observer-led reality. In this way,
the approach does somewhat mirror the aforementioned principles of quantum physics;
things only exist when we see, feel or experience that they do, but quantum uncertainty at the same
time means that anything is possible. In dreams, compared to in waking life, that
last part is always far more apparent… which is why we can dream fly, among endless other things.
In an article for “Psychology Today”, in 2021, taken and adapted from a 2020 book he co-authored,
titled “The Grand Biocentric Design”, Lanza explains further. “In dreams,” he writes “we
leave the consensus universe and can experience an alternate cognitive model of reality - very
different from the one shared by other observers while awake”. Here, then, it’s never as though we
pass through some kind of wormhole while dreaming, to enter into another dimension. Instead,
it’s a realization that any alternate universe that might exist does exist within consciousness,
it’s merely a matter of access. The waking world is an interpretation of reality shared
by all who populate it; the dream world is an interpretation usually shared by far fewer,
and often only inhabited by one, the dreamer. It’s as though, on a
set that picks up infinite radio stations, your dreams are those where only you are listening.
So, what’s your verdict? How do you view your own dreams? How do you feel
when someone else starts telling you about theirs? One somewhat stereotypical response
whenever another person begins recounting their dreams is to suddenly drift off;
to find their tale perhaps unfairly tedious. Could that feeling, in itself,
betray something more? Could it be that you’re often less interested in other
people’s dreams because those are “parallel worlds” that you’re simply not a part of?
Lanza hasn’t commented on that particular aspect, but in general his approach has
hardly gone unnoticed in recent times. For some, biocentrism amounts only to philosophy,
and has yet to seriously break new ground in terms of the scientific understanding of reality. But,
to others, the overriding ambiguity is also key to how (and why) this model works.
All of us live, all of us dream, but the connection between those two shared
experiences has always been somewhat mysterious. Freud argued that dreaming
was a reflection of our innermost selves. The Activation-Synthesis Model says it’s the result
of our physical brains responding to random neural activity. But biocentrism throws all
that out the nearest window. Instead, it suggests that dreaming is every bit
as real as living. And that’s why, perhaps, we enter a parallel universe when we dream.
What do you think? Is there anything we missed? Let us know in the comments, check out these other
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