Dreaming Dimensions

In dreams and in fiction we experience ‘other realities’ and in theoretical physics ‘other realities’ is a possibility that is taken seriously by many physicists. There are many things that are unknown about dreams and sleep. Dreams are obviously some sort of message but no-one is sure who or what is sending them or why they are being sent. Maybe they come from ‘other realities’.

The most important part of your life, sleep, is allowing you to close a thin door on reality and peer through a glass door to another one. At the same time your brain and body recovers more in the sleeping hours than in the waking hours.

An average adult sleeps for about seven hours twenty minutes; some people may sleep for a longer or shorter period. Older people need less sleep as do females, introverts, and thinner people. Those who sleep the most are the young, males, the overweight and extroverts. Even if you slept as long as you could you would have few or no side-effects.

Sleep is divided into two categories which are REM (rapid eye movement) and stages of non-REM. Dreams occur in REM sleep as this is when the brain is the most active, sometimes more than when you are awake. We may also dream in non-REM as there still is plenty of activity in the brain. It may be a question of what dream types we have in these different stages.

Adults are asleep for about a third of each 24 hour period, while babies sleep for two thirds of a day, which is mostly spent in REM dream sleep. Sleep plays a significant role in brain development. When you reach the age of 75 you have dreamt for at least 10 years of the total 25 years you have spent sleeping.

Sleep and wakefulness are regulated by parts of the brain. When dreaming we all give off electrical wave pulses and motions from our scalps as well as other complex brain wave patterns too in the different stages of sleep. These electrical waves are not fully understood. Like most things to do with sleep there are a lot of theories and few facts.

The question, ‘Why do we sleep?’ has baffled scientists for centuries. No one really knows for sure. Some scientists believe we sleep so the mind can organise its memory, but that is only one explanation for a very complicated process, this and more explanations are needed.

There are some scientists who are convinced that there is a solely biological reason for sleep. A lot of these scientists used to believe that we slept to gain energy, but only small amounts of energy are gained from sleeping. But the energy gained by sleeping may be a different type than from eating food or resting. It could be that we sleep for an entirely different reason.

It could be said, ‘We sleep so we can dream.’ Everyone has dreams even if they don’t remember. No one can claim to know what all dreams are, how and why they work the way they do or where they all come from. There are plenty of theories, some of which have been tested, these include that dreams:

• are messages from figures in religion such as god
• are experiences from a past life
• are psychic in nature and could be prophetic or connected to people, living or dead
• reflect our spirituality
• are influenced by the physical body
• can be influenced by outside stimuli like sounds, light and electrical waves
• are letting the subconscious work and fantasise
• have some other sort of psychological reason – there are many.

Some of the above have plenty of evidence to support them. The conscious and subconscious mind does need to sort itself out every day. Pent-up desires and anxieties do come into dreams. What the body feels does also have an effect on your dreams and the psychological explanation comes into some parts of dreams.

In dreams we have social freedom, religious freedom, freedom from time and freedom from known physics.

“Dreams are like mirrors, they reflect everything we are and everything we have been through. If we could fully understand this linking pattern, we would discover not only the secret of dreaming but the secret of life itself.” (1)

During sleep our awareness is far more acute than when awake. Can we still hear when asleep or is this awareness from a sixth sense or even a seventh? The fact that dreams can be influenced by our surroundings, even if only a little is accepted and has been demonstrated in a laboratory, but scientists do not know for sure how or why this happens. We are more open to external stimuli when sleeping such as noises, presence of others, lights and electrical waves. This shows that our brains are still receptive. We can receive some real, recordable signals when we are asleep. Our brain could receive unknown signals, messages and vibrations from another quantum reality without us knowing.

Dreams could be the mental interpretation of signals from another reality, messages in time and space. Everything is made up out of tiny vibrating strings, according to theoretical physics. The vibrations of these Superstrings vibrate and make all the matter at the quantum level. These Superstrings exist in 10 dimensions of space, so they would be vibrating in every alternate version of this universe and other universes.

It is surprising how seriously many physicists are taking the possibility of parallel universes. These physicists believe the ‘Multiverse’ or ‘Alternate realities’ in which there are many universes spinning off from this reality. This is a very real scientific possibility, which fits with mathematical models; it is not just science fiction. These alternate realities would be infinite in number and anything imaginable can be happening in them. Anything can also happen in dreams.

Max Tegmark, professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Pennsylvania said that the concept of the Multiverse “Is tested in well tested theories such as relativity and quantum mechanics.” He continued, “The key question is not whether the Multiverse exists, but rather how many levels it has.” (2) By ‘levels’ he means different types of alternate realities.

Michio Kaku, an acclaimed physicist and professor of theoretical physics at the City College of New York said, “Our universe could be one bubble floating in an ocean of bubbles.” (3) Not all the ‘bubbles’ would be the same size and shape or made from the same ‘liquid’.

If other realities really do exist then they are sure to have some effect on our own reality. We already know that some of the smallest things on the planet can eventually affect everything else, even if it is only on a small scale. Think of cross-contamination of chicken in a kitchen. The tiny particles of the chicken could eventually be everywhere in the kitchen. Similarly alternate realities would eventually contaminate all the other realities; they would do this from the vibrations of string.

There could be so many realities that each may be very different or very similar to our own, in fact fictional worlds could really exist as well. We live in a world where everything is governed by known physics and logic, but we dream in a place which is governed by nothing but our mind, anything can happen.

During sleep our scalp gives off waves such as Alpha, Beta and Delta. If we can send these wave patterns and we are easily influenced in our dreaming state by known outside influences, then we could also be receiving similar wave patterns in the form of vibrations of the superstring from other realities.

Using logic it could be said, ‘In some alternate worlds, inter dimensional travel is possible. This world is one of those infinite worlds the travellers could visit, hence making parallel universes fact and making it possible to travel to parallel universes from this one. Beings from fictional scenarios are likely to be visiting our reality right now. If they could visit they could also communicate and our sensitive sleeping brain picks up these communications then turns them into our dreams.’ So the question may be; what comes first, the dream of a strange place, thus making us the creators of realities, or the real place which somehow influences us?

Every time you do something the number of realities would double and every time you create or imagine a world one is created. Dreams are significant in creation myths from around the world.

What we dream is really happening in alternate versions of reality. The yet not fully understood sciences of theoretical physics, sleep and dreams will one day show that parallel realities exist and will show that they interact with our sleeping minds.

So when you’re in the arms of Morpheus the Greek god of dreams and sleep, ask him if he is telling you truths or fictions.

(c) Mark A. West

REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING:

Stephen Hawking: Brief History of Time.

Stephen Hawking: The Universes in a Nutshell.

William C. Dement: The Promise of Sleep.

Andy Baggott: Dream Power.

Jacob Empson: Sleep and Dreaming.

Todd F. Eklof: Parallel Universes at www.cliftonunitarian.com/toddstalks/paralleuniverses.

BBC: Parallel Universes at www.bbc.co.uk/science/horrizon/2001/paralleluni.shtml.

BBC: What is Sleep? at www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/sleep.

(1) Jacob Empson: Sleep and Dreaming.

(2) BBC Two: Horizon, Parallel Universes. February 2002.

(3) www.cliftonunitarian.com/toddstalks/paralleuniverses.