On NonLocal and NonVisual Dreaming

All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.

― Edgar Allan Poe

There are people who don’t dream. Did you know this? Are you one of them? There are people who do dream, but barely ever. I feel badly for people who don’t or can’t dream often and with vigor. I dream vividly, every night and have been called a “traveler” by a shaman. She told me the main issue for  me would be trying to stay in one place, whether awake or asleep!

Dreams can be fun, they can be enlightening, they can be work, they can be sorting through a complex day, and the can be some of the most meaningful experiences we have, if we are lucky. I have a friend who, for a while, was collecting precognitive dreams. He was doing this based on two dreams of mine that blew his mind. What about you? Do you know people who have foretold the future in their dreams? Have you done it yourself?

Most commonly, I think that many of us have precognitive dreams in the de’ja’vu moments that strike us from time to time. We actually have moments where we realize we had dreamed the current happenings at a previous time. The dream was one we forgot, until we relived it. It startles us and takes us out of ourselves for a moment. We question what is really going on here in this life on Earth.  I have other types of de’ja’vu, as well, and maybe you do too, but that is a pretty cool type of de’ja’vu that points to the possible non-locality of our consciousness. The more intense precognitive dreams, however, can be recalled upon waking and can unfold before you as you go through your day.

One I had was that I was a gull flying through the skies above India. I was confused and scared. Other birds of my flock and myself were crashing into one another, flying crazily about in an unordered and uncharacteristic way. It was unprecedented in my birdie experience. I looked far away and saw the most gigantic storm I had ever seen. It terrified me and I didn’t think I could handle the combination of that awful storm and the stress of the chaos around me.  I decided to fly toward the ground, thinking that landing would help me get back on track, gather my senses. On the way down, I crashed into another bird and we both lost our balance, falling. As I approached the ground too swiftly, terrified and flapping, I became my human self again. It was a relief to know that my existence wasn’t actually being threatened. I felt badly for the birds above me.  I looked over and saw a good friend of mine, Seth, standing in the stony hills nearby and he beckoned to me. He brought me to his Uncle’s house, where we could wait out the storm together.

When I woke up the next morning, I went to a website that tells you about all the natural disasters of the day all around the globe, which was my penchant at the time. I saw, deeply startled, an icon of a bird over the continent of India. My blood chilled a bit as I clicked on the icon and read about how a giant flock of seabirds had been blown off their migratory course and onto land by a Category 5 storm.  Many birds had died.

This shook me. I was really spooked. I had never had an experience like this before. I got myself together and got ready for my day. I went out to go shopping. I, totally randomly, ran into my good friend, Seth, who I hadn’t seen or talked to in years. We were so excited to see each other and we hung out for a while. As we were talking and hanging out, Seth brought up how his uncle lives in, you guessed it, India. I hadn’t even told him the dream because I thought it made me sound cray cray, but now I had to. It blew my mind.  When I told him, it blew his mind, too.

I would never again doubt the possibility of dreams to predict the future or at least pick up on events of the present that should be, if traditionally viewed, outside our ability to perceive.

Even thought my doubts were forever cast aside, there is no way to know which dreams are precognitive and which aren’t, at least not that I’ve found so far.  The next time I dreamed a vivid chunk of non-local perceptions, it involved a blonde boy, a waterfront, a dolphin jumping over the moon, and putting out a fire with my feet. Those are some pretty specific details that you can’t just pass off as coincidence, no? I think not. Nonetheless, they all coalesced into a strange reality the very next day.

I was asked by a friend to help her babysit. She had never asked me to do this before, but I was bored and wanted to share in the dolla dolla bills, so I joined her. We went to a ritzy place on the waterfront.  There, we were in charge of five children. One of them was a small blonde boy. That alone did not strike me as strange. I thought nothing of it. This particular boy loved me to death and wanted me to play with him all night, so I thought nothing of him asking me to read him a story at bedtime. He handed me his favorite book, I opened it and, greeting me on the title page was a picture of a dolphin jumping over the moon. I dropped the book. I was shocked witless. We were on the waterfront, there was a blonde boy, and a dolphin had jumped over the moon. I knew that the next part of the dream involved me putting a fire out with my feet, so I was a little scared at this point. I managed to get myself together enough to read the book to him and help get the children all to bed. My friend and I left, me heading to a party and her going home. I got to the party and hung out with my friends. I was a smoker at the time and was out on the porch with a group of people, not having told anyone about the strange precognitions of the day, smoking a cigarette. Another friend pulled up to the party and parked in the tall grass because there was no parking left otherwise. We greeted the friend. We talked. Everyone finished before me and left me on the porch alone, going inside to continue the revelry. All of a sudden, no shit, a fire broke out in the tall grass under the car that had just pulled up. I can’t tell you how freaked out I was as I ran over and put the fire out with my feet. Just. Like. In. The. Dream.

There just isn’t an easy way, with our current, materialistic worldview, to explain this away. It is starkly amazing.

I love this type of experience because it shows that science has not yet explored every frontier, explained every action, or allowed for every possibility. We still have much to understand about our time here on Earth and I love that. It would be so boring if we already knew everything and our current, dominant, materialist worldview were all there was, end of story, you know?

I could go on endlessly about the various questions this precognitive dreaming brings up about the world. Predetermination, free will, choices: all these topics are fascinating in light of such experiences. Quantum physics, hyperdimensionality, and the geometric structure of the void are all avenues of research that I think directly link with such experience. Still, I won’t go down all those paths. Not tonight. Instead, I want to also talk about the visual nature of my dreams. My dreams, but not everyone’s.

One of my students told me this yesterday and, while it now feels like it should’ve been common sense, I guess I just never thought of it before: blind people don’t dream in images.

Whoa.

If someone has been blind since birth, they dream in sounds, sensations, smells, and tastes. Can you imagine!?  Not only have I never ever perceived any of these senses in dreams, I can’t even imagine what it would be like to only experience these things and to do it in total darkness. I mean, I guess that is what it is like to be blind in the first place and, of course, it makes total sense that you would only perceive in dreams what you could perceive when you were awake….it just blows me away.

When I dream of smell, sensation, sound, and whatnot, it is always more like something I read than feel. It’s like, I know it happened, but didn’t actually experience it. And so, while you could feel sad for people who were blind since birth because they didn’t ever get to see colors and images, even when asleep… or, you could realize that, if you’re like me, we are also missing out on something! Our dreaming skillsets are totally different and both are really cool, maybe even enviable! I would absolutely love to trade one of my nights of visual dreaming for a night of auditory and olfactory dreaming!

Dreams are crazy rad. I will never get enough of them.  What kind of dreams do you have? Do you dream in color or grayscale? Have you had precognitive dreams? What do you think about de’ja’vu?

I hope you dream as much as you want to, love the dreams you have, and share your experiences with others.

Happy dreaming!