Why do we dream the same dreams? Is it coincidence? Or could it be because, as Carl Sagan, one of the most well known of recent physicists, told us, “We are all connected”?
For those of you struggling to comprehend the strange complexities of shared dream themes, looking to the knowledge of physicists can be revelatory. This is a bit of a departure from the usual names such as Jung and Freud, and from approaches like Gestalt and psychoanalysis. But when you are looking for deeper understanding of your subconscious, searching beyond the familiar can reveal profound and exciting insights.
Jung speaks of our “collective unconscious”, of the shared memories of family, ancestors and culture that we can all access through the process of dreaming. These ideas were considered extraordinary in his time, and have still yet to be completely integrated into popular consciousness today. But all you need to do is glance through the comments on the main dreams on The Dream Well such as those about tidal waves, wolves and stairways to name but a few, to realise we all share so much in common when we dream.
Some people have asked, “How can we have the same dreams even though we don’t know each other or even share the same neighbourhood or family?” The truth is, our “family” and “neighbourhood” extend well beyond the people we know and speak to on a regular basis. We are in fact connected on many different levels. We are all human, and as such we share many commonalities – from the biological basis of our physical being to the cultural ability to use language and tools, form relationships and so on. Physicists will even point out that we are connected to the rest of nature through atoms and, as such, we are all made of “star material”. If we are all made from stars, is it any wonder then that we often have the same dreams?
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Each era has used a different metaphor to try to explain the way the brain works. In Victorian times, when the industrial revolution was occurring, we referred to the brain as a machine. This was the most advanced technology of the time and thinking of the brain as a highly complex clockwork thing, the best possible machine that existed back then, made a lot of sense. Recently, we have used the idea of the brain as a highly complex computer – again, the most advanced thing we could imagine, to try to explain and imagine how our minds work. But now technology has advanced even further. Our metaphor for how the brain works and, as a consequence, how the subconscious works has a whole new level of relevance.
Now, instead of thinking of ourselves as entirely separate beings, with our bodies and minds entirely our own and encased within our separate bodies, we can start to utilise the idea that the internet presents to us. What if, instead of thinking of ourselves as separate beings with our own computers whirling in our own separate heads, we started to think or ourselves and each other as more like individual handsets, laptops or tablets? We each have our own information, our own unique data or experiences, but when we sleep we effectively “connect” to the World Wide Web; we can both download and upload information. This web is like the collective unconscious – available to us all, but too vast and deep for any of us to be able to carry with us all the time individually. Dreams, then, can be a way of clearing out the new information we have gathered and storing it into the “cloud”. They can also be a way of “downloading” new information, software updates and so on that we can access from the shared information of everyone in our family, culture and the collective human consciousness. We are all connected.
When we think this way, the idea of having the same dreams is not so strange or unusual. But the opportunities and possibilities this concept presents us with are amazing: what would you access from this great wealth of wisdom if you knew you could access all shared information? And perhaps, even more importantly, what information would you like to store back in the cloud? If you knew that what you think and dream about will exist now and forever for future generations to draw upon, what would you like your own dreaming legacy to be?
To learn more about the meanings of your dreams, please visit The Dream Well.
