Dreaming and Travel to Other Dimensions | Mysterious Universe
The world of sleep and dreams has long been steeped in mystery, lore, and legend. We have long wondered what our dreams mean, where they take us, and why we even do it. These are profound questions which have occupied our thoughts for eons, with each disparate culture coming up with their own semblance of an answer throughout history but the ultimate answer remaining elusive even now. Although we have some sort of an inkling of an idea of how dreams work, or at least we think we do, there is little in the way of why they happen or what exactly they mean. One of the more unusual and stranger ideas out there concerning dreams is that they literally take us to new worlds and realms on the fringes of our understanding, that they allow us to transcend some barrier to fly off into the alien landscapes of unknown dimensions. It is a curious, even eyebrow raising idea to be sure, but has been much discussed and seems to be worth at least looking at.
Before looking at these bizarre dream journeys it is important to understand some concepts that could lie behind the proposed phenomenon, specifically that of the theory that there are other dimensions and realities overlapping and bumping up against our own. The most well-known of the theories concerning this is what is called the “Many Worlds interpretation,” or also the “Mulitverse” theory, which has its recent origins in the 20th century. It is a complex idea indeed, wrapped up in talk of quantum physics and spooky actions of the universe which we do not yet fully comprehend and which I do not intend to delve into the logistics of too deeply here, but the basic idea is that there are other realities that perhaps branch off of our own and simultaneously coexist in the same time and space as us. In these interlocked realities, all possibilities of our actions and decisions have been realized and gone off into their own reality or world, essentially creating infinite daughter universes. This is all based on the idea in quantum physics that every possible outcome and configuration exists simultaneously until a sentient observer forces it to congeal into one.
One way to look at it is that each and every decision you make has only one outcome in this particular reality, based on the decision or action you made at the time. However, while you may have not made the opposite decision in this reality, in another you did. So while in one reality you for instance overslept and missed a meeting, in another reality you made the meeting, and on and on, with the butterfly effect potentially spreading outwards until there are alternate versions of you with vastly different lives, and even realities in which you have died or were never even born at all. It is all based on the quantum theory that every possible outcome is realized somewhere, we only just see the one that has materialized in this world we now inhabit, with the others branching out into parallel dimensions of their own. One researcher of this theory, a Howard Wiseman of Griffith University in Australia, has explained of the idea thus:
All possibilities are therefore realized – in some universes the dinosaur-killing asteroid missed Earth. In others, Australia was colonized by the Portuguese. The beauty of our approach is that if there is just one world our theory reduces to Newtonian mechanics, while if there is a gigantic number of worlds it reproduces quantum mechanics. In between it predicts something new that is neither Newton’s theory nor quantum theory.
These hypothetical alternate realities are not any less or more than ours, they are not merely copies or spin-offs, but rather full fledged universes every bit as real as our own down to the last atom, and which have merely diverged to encompass pretty much every conceivable combination of factors and configurations and in which infinite numbers of ourselves go about their lives unaware that they are not the only ones. These new universes with their own futures are not inferior, they just represent all of the outcomes that we have never seen, and ours the outcomes that they have not seen, and they all exist right now at the same time. This is the general idea, and another researcher named Phillip Pulman has explained of it:
If a coin comes down heads that means that the possibility of its coming down tails has collapsed, until that moment the two possibilities were equal. But on another world, it does come down tails. And when that happens, the two worlds split apart.
There is much more to the whole idea than this, and I have only brushed on the very basics of the basic concept here, but it all leaves the question of: if these realities are out there right on top of us, overlaid and stacked upon us, then is there ever any communication or contact between them? Is it possible to peer into or even enter these parallel realms? The idea that such crossovers might be possible have already been suggested by myself in another article on such matters, with phenomena such as deja vu, which could be a stray memory from an alternate you who has been there crossing over to you and making it you feel like you’ve been somewhere even if you yourself have not. This is where the idea of dream travel to other dimensions comes in, which ponders the question of whether our dreams are at least at times offering us glimpses of alternate universes beyond our ordinary perceived reality.
(cont.)
The world of sleep and dreams has long been steeped in mystery, lore, and legend. We have long wondered what our dreams mean, where they take us, and why we even do it. These are profound questions which have occupied our thoughts for eons, with each disparate culture coming up with their own semblance of an answer throughout history but the ultimate answer remaining elusive even now. Although we have some sort of an inkling of an idea of how dreams work, or at least we think we do, there is little in the way of why they happen or what exactly they mean. One of the more unusual and stranger ideas out there concerning dreams is that they literally take us to new worlds and realms on the fringes of our understanding, that they allow us to transcend some barrier to fly off into the alien landscapes of unknown dimensions. It is a curious, even eyebrow raising idea to be sure, but has been much discussed and seems to be worth at least looking at.
Before looking at these bizarre dream journeys it is important to understand some concepts that could lie behind the proposed phenomenon, specifically that of the theory that there are other dimensions and realities overlapping and bumping up against our own. The most well-known of the theories concerning this is what is called the “Many Worlds interpretation,” or also the “Mulitverse” theory, which has its recent origins in the 20th century. It is a complex idea indeed, wrapped up in talk of quantum physics and spooky actions of the universe which we do not yet fully comprehend and which I do not intend to delve into the logistics of too deeply here, but the basic idea is that there are other realities that perhaps branch off of our own and simultaneously coexist in the same time and space as us. In these interlocked realities, all possibilities of our actions and decisions have been realized and gone off into their own reality or world, essentially creating infinite daughter universes. This is all based on the idea in quantum physics that every possible outcome and configuration exists simultaneously until a sentient observer forces it to congeal into one.
One way to look at it is that each and every decision you make has only one outcome in this particular reality, based on the decision or action you made at the time. However, while you may have not made the opposite decision in this reality, in another you did. So while in one reality you for instance overslept and missed a meeting, in another reality you made the meeting, and on and on, with the butterfly effect potentially spreading outwards until there are alternate versions of you with vastly different lives, and even realities in which you have died or were never even born at all. It is all based on the quantum theory that every possible outcome is realized somewhere, we only just see the one that has materialized in this world we now inhabit, with the others branching out into parallel dimensions of their own. One researcher of this theory, a Howard Wiseman of Griffith University in Australia, has explained of the idea thus:
All possibilities are therefore realized – in some universes the dinosaur-killing asteroid missed Earth. In others, Australia was colonized by the Portuguese. The beauty of our approach is that if there is just one world our theory reduces to Newtonian mechanics, while if there is a gigantic number of worlds it reproduces quantum mechanics. In between it predicts something new that is neither Newton’s theory nor quantum theory.
These hypothetical alternate realities are not any less or more than ours, they are not merely copies or spin-offs, but rather full fledged universes every bit as real as our own down to the last atom, and which have merely diverged to encompass pretty much every conceivable combination of factors and configurations and in which infinite numbers of ourselves go about their lives unaware that they are not the only ones. These new universes with their own futures are not inferior, they just represent all of the outcomes that we have never seen, and ours the outcomes that they have not seen, and they all exist right now at the same time. This is the general idea, and another researcher named Phillip Pulman has explained of it:
If a coin comes down heads that means that the possibility of its coming down tails has collapsed, until that moment the two possibilities were equal. But on another world, it does come down tails. And when that happens, the two worlds split apart.
There is much more to the whole idea than this, and I have only brushed on the very basics of the basic concept here, but it all leaves the question of: if these realities are out there right on top of us, overlaid and stacked upon us, then is there ever any communication or contact between them? Is it possible to peer into or even enter these parallel realms? The idea that such crossovers might be possible have already been suggested by myself in another article on such matters, with phenomena such as deja vu, which could be a stray memory from an alternate you who has been there crossing over to you and making it you feel like you’ve been somewhere even if you yourself have not. This is where the idea of dream travel to other dimensions comes in, which ponders the question of whether our dreams are at least at times offering us glimpses of alternate universes beyond our ordinary perceived reality.
(cont.)
