Do We Time Travel When We Dream?

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Do We Time Travel When We Dream?</h4>

Dreams are a universal but still reasonably unknown experience for our entire species. Every time we sleep, we could be about to enter into their world… even if we still have no solid answer as to why we have them. According to many theories, dreams are much more than just random images and events. But, some go a step even further than more traditional dream analysis. Because, have you ever woken from a dream, and felt as if you’ve not just moved through space… but through time, as well?

This is Unveiled, and today we’re answering the extraordinary question; do we time travel when we dream? 

Dreams are complex and vivid experiences that happen during sleep. They can be so intense that we often mistake them for reality itself. They occur during the Rapid Eye Movement, or REM, stage of sleep, during which our brains become extremely active. The increased activity translates into often bizarre sequences of images, ideas, emotions, and stories, many of which we cannot fully understand after the event. It’s different from person to person, but the REM stage makes up roughly 25% of our total time sleeping. This is our stage for dreams.

Despite their surreal nature, dreams do play a crucial role in our emotional well-being. The brain waves during REM are in many ways similar to those of an awake state, which is part of the reason why it can be so difficult to shake off the feeling of unease after an especially bad nightmare. Our muscles are also often temporarily paralyzed while we dream. It’s this paralyzation that generally prevents us from acting out our dream selves in real life. But it’s also why we can occasionally experience sleep paralysis, where the dreamer wakes up during REM sleep… but they’re unable to move. Sometimes it’s coupled with hallucinations, too, creating a terrifying phenomenon called the sleep paralysis demon. These demons aren’t dangerous but they are pretty scary. 

More broadly, scientists believe dreams serve numerous functions. They process emotions, consolidate memories, and solve problems from the waking world. In modern research, the study of dreams falls under the field of neuroscience, where significant strides are being made to properly understand the topic. For example, research shows that the amygdala, a part of the brain which processes emotions, is typically very active during sleep - which accounts for the vividness of dreams and their emotionally charged nature.

Elsewhere in the brain, though, there are a number of regions to focus on in terms of our perception of time. For example, the brain’s prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for logical thought and time perception, is one place that’s actually less active during sleep - which could explain why dream time is so distorted. Another aspect regards how memories are processed during sleep. We know that dreams often incorporate fragments from all across our lives, seamlessly blending past and present experiences. This can create scenarios where we feel like we’re reliving past events, or even glimpsing into future ones. Researchers generally believe that this is simply a byproduct of our brains effectively filing away all the information that we’ve encountered. But, again, this re-running of memory, not least because it’s difficult to apply a universal rule to it, is another reason why we can be left with a feeling of messed up time. 

There are several case studies relating to our perception of time during dreams. One, in 2014, used lucid dreamers - people who are aware of (and can sometimes control) when they’re dreaming. The focus was on the passage of time, with participants asked to perform specific tasks within their dreams, and then to signal to researchers when they were completed. In general, the results suggested that time is elongated inside of dreams. The dreamers typically reported the tasks to take much longer to complete from their point of view than they really did in real time. One potential explanation is that our sense of time in the waking world relies on external cues, which don’t exist while we’re dreaming. Things like weather, light, outside sounds… without these, our internal body clock mixes itself up. The result is a warped perception of time. 

It’s perhaps little wonder, then, that some suspect and believe that dreaming can allow us to glimpse directly into the future as well as, seemingly, into the past. These are intriguing but also controversial claims. Seemingly prophetic dreams are not uncommon, and can apparently predict the future with remarkable accuracy. Perhaps you have a vision of a meal that you then eat the next day, or a meeting at work that takes place two weeks later. There are some links between this and the widely experienced phenomenon of déjà vu, the feeling that a person has already experienced the situation that they’re in. At times, déjà vu can feel as though it’s mirroring something that was previously experienced in a dream. One theory is that this sensation occurs due to a mismatch between our short and long-term memory systems. An experience feels familiar because our brains - which double up as pattern recognition machines - have simply made a mistake. And the same could be true of future dreaming. No matter how close to reality those visions apparently come, it all could be the result of an error in our brain’s processing at the time when that vision becomes real.

Many can recount moments when their dreams foreshadowed real-life occurrences, giving what seemed to be an actual glimpse into the future. But there is a lack of scientific evidence to support that this is really what’s happening. Philosophically, if not scientifically, there have been suggestions that dreams don’t adhere to waking life’s linear progression. Instead, when we’re dreaming, we may have access to a non-linear understanding of time, where the past, present, and future are all intertwined. Quite how it is that we access this seemingly different dimension with dramatically shifted rules… is unknown. But, more often than not, it ties into various other, equally unknowable questions surrounding consciousness. Or what some may term the soul. Is consciousness a thing apart from our physical bodies? And, if it is, then could it escape the limits of those bodies under certain conditions? Such as… while dreaming.

Clearly, in the debate around dreams, subjective experiences play a significant role. Dreams all too often defy conventional explanation, leaving science at a loss. But cultural interpretations, religious ideas and metaphysical speculations offer us something else. For instance, in some cultures both past and present, including in many Native American traditions, dreams are said to work like bridges to our ancestors. Failing that, in wider religions and for a select few, they’re painted as though they are connections to gods, or to higher, spiritual dimensions. In Ancient Greece, believers considered Morpheus to be the god of dreams. It’s said that other gods would choose him to be their messenger, and that he would regularly appear in the dreams of targeted people… on someone else’s behalf. Importantly, Morpheus can take any form he likes, with his name essentially translating to mean shape-shifter. Overall, though, the Greeks clearly thought that dreams were a channel to the gods; an important medium for the distribution of divine messages and guidance, all seemingly without the bounds of time as we have on Earth. 

The Hindu and Buddhist traditions offer rich perspectives on dreaming, as well. Again, dreams are often described as linking the sleeping person to at least a parallel reality. In fact, in Hinduism, the dream world is typically seen as being more important than the waking world, such is the influence that it can have over any one person’s life experience. Dreaming is seen by many to be our purest state. And, in that state, it is possible to gain glimpses into past lives or previews of future incarnations. The Samsara - the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth - is crucial to Hindu teachings. And it’s in the time of dreams that we get closest to a true understanding of it.

For Buddhists, the nature of dreams taps into a wider concept called Śūnyatā, which is an ultimate and higher type of emptiness. Nirvana itself is sometimes understood as a kind of perfect Śūnyatā, leading to many beliefs that in dreaming we come much closer to a true understanding of the world. The coming and goings of our waking lives simply cannot compete with the comparative fluidity of dream time and the power of our subconscious. 

For now, while science can successfully explain many aspects of dreaming, there are just as many that still have it stumped. And while, to some degree, we’re only ever lying in our beds whenever we’re in a dream, unconsciously living out the night time hours of our lives… on the other, we’re fully transported to whole new worlds. To unique spaces where the boundaries of time vanish. Whether we’re revisiting the past, glimpsing into the future, or traversing parallel realms, dreams reveal the limitless potential of human imagination. And perhaps the unbounded journey that our consciousness, essence or soul can, at times, embark upon.