All of us dream, but many of us never remember those dreams. When we think of dreams we think of fictitious thoughts which somehow manifest themselves at night when we go to sleep. These thoughts may be based on certain events in our lives or they may be based on nothing, no one is sure. What I am about to tell you about dreams will sound completely crazy, but these are not my words these are the words of a group of scientists at Boston’s Harvard Medical School. These scientists claim dreams are real and they are taking place in an alternate universe. They say the only way this universe can be accessed is during certain stages of unconsciousness. This would mean even though our bodies have gone nowhere, our consciousness is able to travel to other places. What the scientists said was so incredible I feel silly even talking about, but for the sake of accuracy I will tell you. They said if a person concentrates enough in a dream they can retrieve certain objects.

One of the questions which has been asked many times is, can a person who dreams he was killed actually die in real life? Some people actually believe if they die in a dream they are really dead, but when a researcher was questioned about this he said there is absolutely no truth to it. He went on to say many people report when they dream they died it becomes very anti-climactic. My question would have to be how many people went to sleep and never woke up? Maybe I should ask the question how many healthy people went to sleep and never woke up.  It has been said dreams are a lot more complicated than we think they are. Many scientists claim when we go to sleep it gives the brain time to sort through everything it saved during the day and eliminates the useless information thus freeing up more space in our brains. This is only a theory of course and we really have no way to prove it. One expert claims when we are told we only dream during REM sleep it isn’t true and we dream all night long, but we just don’t remember most or all of the dreams. One interesting fact investigators believe is true is if we are jolted out of our sleep we will remember what we were dreaming about.

If we remember our dreams we have more spontaneous activity in our brains in the temporo-parietal junction area than those who do not remember their dreams. It is also said those who remember their dreams will react to sound while they are asleep, those who do not won’t. Contrary to what some people think, a dream can last for quite some time and sixty minutes is not unusual. We really do not know how far dreaming extends down the ladder of animal life. We’ve all seen our dogs asleep and acting as if they were awake, because they were dreaming, but we don’t know if all animals dream or if fish and insects dream. If we are actually entering an alternate reality when we dream, is there any connection between this and an out of body experience? Many people don’t realize the fact five to thirty-five of every one hundred people are said to have an out of body experience during their lifetime. If we are dreaming and our consciousness is going to an alternate reality it would have to be out of our body and an out of body experience is also an experience where our consciousness leaves our body. It seems to be there is some sort of connection. Exactly what it is, is still a mystery if the alternate reality theory is true. It is possible some people have had out of body experiences and haven’t realized it. They may have thought they were dreaming if the experience occurred while they were asleep.

There is one thing you can be sure of with dreams and that is there is always someone who wants to interpret them for you. This certainly doesn’t mean what they are telling you is correct. There are those who believe their dreams contain important messages or they have secret meanings. Some ancient cultures believed when they dreamed they were receiving messages from their gods. This theory has been known to persist even in modern times. As soon as humans discovered language they began to try and interpret dreams. The Egyptians thought dreams were perceptions of things which existed, but could not be seen in life. They tried to perform rituals that summon the invisible dream spirits. The ancient Greeks had a different idea about dreams, they adopted what they thought were useful from their dreams and some Greeks performed specific pre-sleep rituals so they could purify themselves before they went to sleep. Early Christians adopted the idea some dreams have divine inspiration.

Dreams have puzzled us ever since man remembered his first dream. We will never know exactly when this was, but we do know somebody had to be first. If we started out in the Garden of Eden, the question is did Adam and Eve dream or did they only dream after being thrown out of the garden as punishment for what they did? The answer to this would probably be dreams were not a punishment since some of them are quite pleasant.

There is something called prophetic dreams. These are dreams in which a future of event you dreamt about comes true. There are still quite a few people who believe some dreams can predict the future. President Abraham Lincoln was said to have had a dream three days prior to his assassination which told him he would be murdered. Julius Caesar also is said to have seen his assassination in a dream, before it happened. When Albert Einstein discovered the theory of relativity he supposedly had a dream which inspired him. It has been said Samuel Taylor Coleridge was inspired to write The Tale of the Ancient Mariner because of a dream. Throughout history people have claimed to have had dreams which had an effect on their life.

We are making rapid progress in the study of the human brain. Some say it is happening much faster than we suspected it could. As we unravel the many pathways in the brain we are discovering more about the way we think. Will we discover more about why we dream? We probably will and that time may be closer than we think.