Conclusion
Questions of whether or not the dream world is made of some sort of
substance related to physical matter have yet to be answered by mankind.
Perhaps a millennia of exploration of the dream world is necessary before
these questions can be answered. I think we are on the brink of a great
discovery. Dreams are finally being viewed as an important area of scientific
discovery, especially as more reports from the dream world reflect physical
world benefits. The first benefit is the personal unfoldment and growth
that is possible in the dream world, therefore making the citizens of
physical reality more mature and healthy beings. The second benefit
of the dream world is the information we can retrieve from there and
bring back with us into the physical world.
Our dream life is continuous, not a life that starts and stops when
we are asleep or awake. According to Jane Roberts in her book The
Unknown Reality, Volume One (1977), we continue to dream while
we are awake, but our conscious mind averts its attention away from
the inner world to the outer world. She says that we do not understand
that “Dream life is continuous. It has organization on its own
levels that you do not comprehend, and from its rich source you dream
much of the energy with which you form your daily experience…
It often seems that sleep is almost a small death, and psychologists
have compared dreaming with controlled insanity. You have so divorced
your waking and dreaming experience that it seems you have separate
‘lives,’ and that there is little connection between your
waking and dreaming hours…” This means that the realities
being perceived underneath physical reality when we dream are happening
whether or not we are currently paying attention to them consciously.
The events in the various dimensions we occupy simultaneously, i.e.:
the dream world, the physical world, and perhaps a few others yet to
be officially named, are active and influencing us, whether or not we
are dreaming. Jane Roberts continues by saying, “You dream whether
you are living or dead. When you are alive, corporally speaking, what
you think of as dreaming becomes subordinate to what you refer to as
you conscious waking life.”
I would liken it to the multitudes of TV stations that are playing in
the vast arena of consciousness that we are as eternal beings, and just
because we tune in clearly to one station, like physical reality, it
does not mean that the events happening on the other stations have stopped,
but rather that our attention is the only thing that changed. Our activities
in the dream worlds go on without our conscious awareness of them. Perhaps
our dreams can be thought of more as snapshots that we take with the
conscious mind of things that happened while our attention was elsewhere
focused on physical reality events. Jane Roberts continues to say in
this book, “A remembered dream…is a snapshot of a larger
event, taken by your conscious mind.”
Perhaps becoming an oneironaut will be a childhood aspiration, just
as becoming a fireman is. Robert Van De Castle laments the lost possibilities
in childhood in his book Our Dreaming Mind (1994), “It is unfortunate
that our culture doesn’t provide more reinforcement for children
to develop and expand their capacity for lucid dreaming.” What
wonders these children would produce! Would the speed of our evolution
as a species be increased exponentially? Wouldn’t it be quite
interesting to grow up with the expectation that one will go to college
and earn a degree in oneiromancy, becoming a valued explorer of the
dream world and returning with treasures of knowledge and information
for mankind to use in the physical world? What an honored position in
society it would be, rather than the nonchalance such explorers are
viewed with presently.
This is how potent I believe the dream world is, and how powerful it
can be in the unfoldment of evolution. If every child were taught to
maintain the ability to dream lucidly, for we are born with the ability
and forget as we grow older, what kind of world would we live in? What
kind of discoveries could be made? Could communication with other dimensions
or other worlds within the physical universe be achieved through spirit
communication before physical communication is possible? Are there other
communities in the universe who traverse the universe freely and are
able to connect with us in the dream world? What if our political leaders
were to attempt such a thing?
Of course, these are all fantasies at this time, but so was the idea
of inventing the airplane and the automobile before they were manifested
physically. I believe that dreams are a huge unexplored frontier of
human consciousness. If we were to begin to explore and map this world,
we would discover much about ourselves, our physical world, and our
nature. Perhaps we could even blend the worlds at some point and bring
powers like the ability to move objects, or make physical reality more
fluidly in other ways, into manifestation. Perhaps we can even learn
to levitate in physical reality and fly the way we do in dreams. It
is estimated that we only use 10% of our brain. What is the other 90%
of the brain for? Is it to harness and embrace these other worlds in
which we live simultaneously and bring gifts back and forth to each
of these realities? Are these the abilities that are latent in human
beings, awaiting our intent to explore them?
Let us become oneironauts and find out! Jane Roberts says in her book The Unknown Reality, Volume One (1977), “The true mental
physicist will be a bold explorer?not picking at the universe with small
tools, but allowing his consciousness to flow into the many open doors
that can be found with no instrument, but with the mind. Your own consciousnesses…can
indeed help lead you into some much greater understanding…”
In The Unknown Reality, Volume Two (1986) she says, “Any
of your scientific or religious disciplines could benefit from a study
of the dreaming consciousness, for there the basic nature of reality
exists as clearly as you can perceive it.” She also says in The
Nature Of The Psyche (1979), “Then you would put all religions
and sciences out of business, for you would understand the greater reality
of your psyche. The physicists have their hands on the doorknob. If
they paid more attention to their dreams, they would know what questions
to ask.”
Stephen LaBerge and Howard Rheingold say in their book Exploring
the World Of Lucid Dreaming (1990), “Given that dreams are
such fertile fields for inspiration, why is there not yet a school of
dreaming in the Western world? …Once researchers have investigated
creativity in dreams more thoroughly they should be able to give you
more precise guidance in how to use your sleeping time to solve problems
and be creative.”
In the book Dreams And Dreaming (1990), George Constable, Editor
In Chief, states, “The shades of consciousness, from full engagement
with the waking world to retreat into deep sleep’s profound solitudes,
are being sorted out in ever finer gradations by researchers. They have
traced the psychological and physiological paths human beings follow
as the slip in and out of the world of dreams. But mysteries still abound.”
Using dreams for scientific exploration, not to mention religious and
spiritual exploration, would be a good beginning that does not cost
us much in resources, money or extra time. It can all be done while
we sleep. There cannot be a better business proposal than this! Discover
treasures, explore the universe, communicate with the population within,
and learn about the different possibilities for physical reality, all
while we sleep in our beds! This is a good use of our time here on Earth
spent in sleep.
I have asked more questions in this material than I have answered. One
question only spurs many more. The dream world is yet an undiscovered
territory, an unmapped frontier, in human reality. So let us use our
consciousness to the utmost of our ability. Let’s make the quality
of our lives better, using dreams as another outlet for experiences
in which we can grow, learn and discover the secrets of the universe
and ourselves while in the form of individuality. Waking life experiences
are not our only opportunities for growth. Dreams offer thousands more
opportunities for experiences than we can fit into one physical lifetime,
especially if we become lucid in them. Let us take advantage of that
time, making the best use of it we can, and truly expand ourselves as
a species.
“Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.”
—Thoreau