Aware, after quantum mechanics, of the infinite smallness of the universe, we can now think of dreaming as a phenomenon of physical entry into a parallel universe. The mystery of the varying access to the dream universe person to person and day to day actually has a physical solution. Dreaming depends upon the minute positioning of the body during sleep. There is a physical portal, recognizable only from a subelectron’s view (very small), that a body either does or does not shape itself to fit through.

Therefore to dream is to enter into a parallel universe that exists independently of our own. The moralistic interpretations of psychoanalysis treat dreams as psychologically revealing byproducts of the awake mind rather than as the separate experiences of our consciousness. We are living two lives in two universes. Dreams are more than merely expressions of subconscious drives or exercises in wish or death wish fulfillment, dreams are experiences of consciousness. The consciousness which awakens us from sleep is the same one with which we enter a dream. When you use the word “experience,” you must include what you have dreamed. It counts! In fact it seems our human consciousness is even more attuned when operating in the dream universe. We seem more preternaturally adept in our handling of the unknown. We are more creative, more confident, more smooth. Why? Answer: time. The dream universe is truly parallel to our own in that it involves our landscape. The big difference is in the functioning of the time dimension. The function of time in our awake universe is frankly maddening. Our time proceeds with a horrifying consistency, leading to anxiety, depression, trouble. Time that never stops, never alters its speed, is an impediment to the operation of our consciousness. It is our nightmare. But in the dream universe, time is cut up, out of order, fractured. We prefer this. We see it in our obsession with film, which, informed by the dream universe, makes magic by altering the time dimension (slowing it down, speeding it up, skipping over it).

Our technological progress in media is directly proportional to our longing for a more dream-like awake universe. We want to dream all day. Thus we watch TV incessantly and implant ourselves with communication devices (cell phones), or bombard ourselves with drugs. The forging of the modern world is incidental to our quest to circumvent the functioning of the time and distance dimensions in our awake universe. Progress: with replay technology, with recording, we are capturing time and preserving it, and in most cases correctly falsifying it according to our dream-universe-influenced media tastes. Think of TV sports. As viewers we cannot imagine not having slow motion replay – an idea we got from dreams. Fast-forwarding, freeze-framing, these are dream universe effects, discovered by a consciousness liberated from the rigidity of the time dimension as it functions in the awake universe. Our nightly adventures (or misadventures) in the dream universe are learning experiences. We learn what is wrong with the awake universe.

We must remember that though we have access to two universes, we have only one consciousness. Dream events are experienced exactly as awake events. A dream feeling is as legitimate as a real feeling, because the same consciousness is operating regardless of the universe it inhabits. And, remembering our amazement at the heightened capabilities of our consciousness in the dream universe, we wonder if our dream experiences aren’t worth more.

Copyright 2006, by Christopher Duckett

The Dream Dimension