Photo by Илья Мельниченко on Unsplash

Thanks to my recent Rhine Education Center course, Dreams and Altered States, I've been thinking about dreams and how they communicate information. This post shares some of my thoughts on the language of dreams. 

Information Sources 

As explained in our Dreams and Altered States course text, Psychic Dreaming, dreams reflect sensory, psychological or psychic input. Some examples follow. 

• Psychological input might be traced to the stress of the day or worries buried deep in our subconscious. This may lead to disturbing dreams or nightmares.
• Light or sound that bleeds into our sleeping awareness are examples of sensory input that can be incorporated into our dreams.
• Psychic input has an unidentified source that may be defined in different ways by different people. 

My Favorite Theory

In addition to different kinds of input, there are various theories about how information (as listed above) becomes a dream. 

Psychic Dreaming shared several such theories, but the one I liked best was that of neuroscientist J. Allen Hobson. According to Hobson: 

1. A stimulus or input (or information source) causes neurons to fire. 
2. The resulting neural impulses are translated into images. 
3. The subconscious mind makes the images into a narrative (dream). 

This process of creating a narrative is a lot like the process we use to make sense of information we receive when we're awake. But I find the idea that we do it in our sleep interesting.

Especially when it comes to psychic or spiritual dreams which I believe to be received.

Received Information

In one of his books or talks, biophysicist Rupert Sheldrake shares an analogy. 

Imagine that you know nothing of radios and that you assume that the sound is generated by the radio itself. To test your theory, you open the radio and remove some of the parts. When you see that the radio no longer functions, you may assume that you have understood how a radio works. But you would be wrong.

This, according to Sheldrake, is how many scientists approach the brain. And it is how a lot of them approach dreams as well. The parts do matter, obviously, but they are not the source of the message.

Some studies, such as those done with Faraday cages, indicate this analogy isn't valid for the communication of electromagnetic signals. (Though in my view, the mind is still a receiver in a way we don't yet understand.) 

In dreams the mind isn't just a receiver, however, it is also a translator—as Hobson theorizes and dream studies seem to suggest.

Dream Communication Studies

In 1962, American Society for Psychical Research (ASPR) researcher Montague Ullman opened a sleep laboratory at Maimonides Medical Center. Experiments used a sender and sleeping receiver. 

• The sender attempted to communicate an image. 
• Receivers were monitored via EEG in order to be awakened at the end of each REM and report their dreams. 
• Results were judged to be "hits" or "misses" with hits being statistically significant, indicating, that telepathy does in dreams. 

Survey studies by Louisa Rhine and others reinforce the Maimonides Dream Telepathy Study findings. According to these surveys, most (65% or higher) psychic experience happens in the dream state.

Of special interest to me was that, while the Maimonides Dream Telepathy study hits were obvious hits, they were almost never an exact replica of the original image. 

What This Means to Me

I have received to much evidential information in dreams to doubt that such communication is possible. I have also always known that we created the symbolism present in ordinary dreams. 

Psychic and spiritual, however, seemed different me and for most of my life I believed that they symbols they contained were directly communicated. This impacted the way I interpreated my dreams.

Now, thanks to what I learned in Dreams and Altered States, I feel that I'm looking at dreams in a more discerning way.

I wouldn’t go as far to say that dream images are never directly communicated, but it seems likely that w'e translating the information we receive most of the time. To me, it is not a closed system, but I am realizing that we play a much bigger part in our experiences than I imagined.

I will still use the same resources for dream interpretation (Christian / Catholic sources, cultural symbols, personal meaning and experience, etc). But the idea that the images themselves are (probably) my translations will definitely impact my dream work going forward.  

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Psychic Dreaming (affiliate link), written by our professor Loyd Auerbach, is available through Amazon and elsewhere. Please note: if you buy Psychic Dreaming via my Amazon affiliate link, I may receive a small commission at no cost to you.

To ask Professor Auerbach a question live on YouTube, check out his channel at YouTube.com/@AskProfessorParanormal

For more on about the Rhine Research Center and their wonderful online classes, please visit RhineOnline.org I am not taking Intro to Parapsychology and plan to share some of what I learn in an upcoming post.