The Many Universes Theory of Dreaming
The naked truth about dreams
In a lucid dream I try not to care about being naked in a room full of my friends. I know it is a dream and I know it won’t matter back on earth, yet I still feel awkward. How can I behave normally if I am naked? There is nothing normal about my public nakedness, yet it seems to be normal within the dream for it is occurring and there doesn’t appear to be any shock horror. No one is going out of their way to study my junk.
So what does this mean? Does it mean that there is no point in looking for anything normal in a dream – or wondering whether a dream has any significance back in this world? Should I simply accept that a dream is some kind of “simulation of the real world” (Erlacher & Schredl, 2008) and leave it at that?
If I want to make more of it, one problem is that dreams don’t stick around. We experience them, we wake up, and very quickly they go out of our mind – and no one else cares. To top it off, the people I thought were in the room and saw me naked, deny that such an event ever occurred. So did this embarrassing event ever happen?
I remember it, though not as clearly as I can remember certain incidents that have occurred in this world – particularly those incidents with a bizarre or unique flavor.
So did my dream actually happen? What is the evidence? I can recall it, but none of the other participants admit to it. So did it all just happen in my mind? In the dream I can remember picking up a newspaper in an effort to conceal my nakedness – I remember the paper’s texture – so I was touching something beyond my body, not dissimilar to how I would hold a newspaper in this world. Do equivalent events in a dream and on earth rely on the brain to synthesize the elements of perception: sight, sound and touch? Here on earth, that appears to be the case. In dreams there are too many unknowns, for we really do not know what we are dealing with.
The question is: where does the sensory input for a dream come from? Is it all being fantasized and created in the mind, or are we actually creating a mash-up of a vast number of parallel worlds (as hypothesized by my online articles at http://conceptlib.com/dreams.html )? See this extract below:
The many universes interpretation of quantum mechanics gives a possible location for dreams beyond this earth, yet in a certain sense in the same space. This interpretation states that there are very many or perhaps an infinite number of parallel worlds existing beyond this one. Many of these universes are almost identical to ours, but others are quite different. New universes are constantly being created in phenomenal numbers. Every time a quantum event takes place the universe splits so that all possible outcomes occur, but in different universes.
With each split whole entire universes are created and in each of these universes is a copy of ourselves, but they are not ordinary copies for they are actually us. Before the split "I" am one person and after the split I am still one person only in more than one universe.
The many universes theory tells us that there can be no physical contact between the split universes, however because our doppelgangers inhabit these other worlds we have no need to make physical contact - we are in a sense already there.
When our minds are unlinked from this world in sleep, the way is open for us to experience the other universes through our doppelgangers. Our consciousness is the same as their consciousness and when in sleep we become unconscious of this world we have access to all our other selves.
Dreams are the result.
Our dream journey is realized by our consciousness "piggy-backing" onto the consciousness of our doppelgangers and sensing / experiencing exactly what our doppelgangers experience. Because our experience is their experience there is no sense of interference or taking over of the body of someone in another dimension. Everything continues as normal for our hosts.
The number of parallel universes we "visit" in the course of a dream may be as few as one or could be in the billions. Like with splitting universes there is no actual cataclysmic sense of being ripped asunder when moving from one world to another. We may experience bizarre scene shifts, anomalies in perception, strange sensations, etc., but we have learned to accept these as normal elements of the dreaming process.
Would the answer to the question of where the sensory input for a dream comes from be better formulated if we had access to technology which could actually record a dream? Some researchers are suggesting that they have taken the first step in this direction. (Dresler M., Koch S. P., Wehrle R., et al., 2011)
The latest dream aide-mémoire that may become available some time in the future will allow others to ‘watch’ our dreams via neuroimaging. (Dressler et al. 2011)
And how are they going about it?
“Using eye signals as temporal markers, neural activity measured by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) was related to dreamed hand movements during lucid REM sleep. Though preliminary, we provide first evidence that specific contents of REM-associated dreaming can be visualized by neuroimaging.” (Dresler M., Koch S. P., Wehrle R., et al., 2011)
The use of eye signals as temporal markers may not be as clear-cut as it sounds. Eye signals performed in a lucid dream are physical dream movements which appear to correspond with the dreamer’s actual eye movements as recorded in the sleep lab on earth. However, if you are performing this same eye movement action in trillions of parallel worlds there may be no direct correlation between the signals detected in the lab and you performing these actions in the dream – even if you have made a commitment to signal with your eyes when you become aware that you are dreaming. Because you are performing the same action in so many other worlds, the conclusion that the eye movements you make in the dream is what is being recorded here on earth may turn out not to be the case. The mechanics of how all the versions of us in the parallel universes interact with each other needs to be considered before jumping to any conclusions about the origin of any signals in a sleep lab.
This extract summarizes the key difficulty in matching dream content to the physical actions of a sleeping body:
The main obstacle in the direct neuroscientific study of specific dream content is that spontaneous dream activity cannot be experimentally controlled because subjects typically cannot perform predecided mental actions during sleep. Hence, dream research methodology mostly relies on the evaluation of subjective reports of very diverse dream contents. However, such memory traces collected after awakening are often imprecise. Therefore it seems difficult, if not impossible, to pinpoint specific dream content in a precise temporal frame, a prerequisite for the analysis of imaging data acquired during dreaming. (Dresler M., Koch S. P., Wehrle R., et al., 2011)
There is an assumption that time behaves similarly in dreams and on earth and is somehow synchronous – as assumed by the conclusion that eye signals performed in lucid dreams match ‘corresponding’ signals recorded in the sleep lab. As stated above, on the face of it this link seems obvious, but when placed in the context of the many worlds interpretation of dreaming, further factors need to be considered.
We provide the first demonstration of imaging of specific dream contents by using the technique of lucid dreaming. This technique could be used to inversely infer specific dream content from its underlying neural activity, allowing for true ‘‘dream reading.’’ (Dresler M., Koch S. P., Wehrle R., et al., 2011)
If the neuroimaging data can be translated into actual images and the dream-cam does become a reality, the question that will be asked is: what is the viewer actually watching?
The images on the dream screen may well originate from inside the subject’s brain, but how did they get there? Is the brain acting as a receiver – like a radio – of signals coming from elsewhere in the same way as it responds to external stimuli received through our sense receptors on earth?
One simply has to look at the current thinking on the nature of consciousness to appreciate that when it comes to an individual’s awareness, no definitive explanation of this phenomenon exists. [Listen to this delightful podcast from The Guardian. Science Weekly podcast: Can science ever explain consciousness? http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/audio/2012/feb/27/science-weekly-podcast-consciousness?CMP=twt_gu#start-of-comments ]
The search for a physical location in the brain for a dream state receptor will most probably reap results – the more precise the measuring equipment, the clearer the picture becomes, however one must frame the same questions about dreams as one has about consciousness: What are dreams? What causes them? How do they originate, etc. and in terms of any interest from the intelligence services: How responsible are we for the content?
We have to assume that we are conscious when we have dreams, otherwise we would not be aware of them them. There are, however, levels of consciousness:
We assert that REM sleep dreaming is non-lucid in that the dreamer mistakenly concludes that he or she is awake whereas in fact, he or she is asleep. The reason for this delusional error could be the persistent inactivation of frontal and parietal cortical circuits necessary for waking memory, self-reflective awareness, and insight. In lucid dreaming, self-reflection arises and augments so that the dreamer recognizes that he is not awake but asleep. (Voss U., Holzmann R., Tuin I., Hobson J. A., 2009).
What they mean is, the dreamer realizes that he or she is asleep on earth. This is very useful for it gives the lucid dreamer an opportunity to investigate the proposition that the dream is totally generated from within the mind. The dreamer may make eye movement signals to indicate that he or she is dreaming, however even with total self reflection, the sensorial integrity of the dreamer’s surroundings aren’t compromised. The dreamer is still enveloped in the dream. Like the TARDIS in Dr. Who – it’s bigger on the inside! The brain may be the size of a small rock melon, but from your point of view, once you are dreaming you are in a world that stretches to the horizon.
This said we begin to realize how difficult it is to make absolute statements on the nature of dreams.
It may not even be a matter of receiving sensory input from “out there” (wherever that is), but rather of being put in a position to be aware of, well, everything.
Whilst we are awake our mind is overwhelmed and almost totally preoccupied by sensory input from this world. Everything else is fleeting, a memory, a feeling or thought. But when this world is switched off and we basically become unconscious after falling asleep, what is also switched off is the barrier which keeps us grounded in this one world. Now we have the multiverse to play with, meaning we are exposed to what can be best described as infinity.
The next question could be: If, when entering the dream state we are in a position to access anything from the worlds of our doppelgangers, why do we dream what we dream? Why do we experience the particular mash-ups of the present, past, future, all the alternative versions, bits of landscape, colors – when we potentially have absolute freedom to dream anything that any of our doppelgangers in the parallel worlds experience? What makes or guides our choice? Are we the ones somehow making that choice?
Can the ideas of Freud and Jung, etc. be successfully adapted to explain this question? Does the psychological state of the dreamer influence the flow of the multiverse? Emotions we first sense in dreams can be very powerful and remain with us for a very long time.
I am naked in my dream. I feel uncomfortable because I am surrounded by colleagues and friends. It is a lucid dream so I know I am dreaming and I can see that those around me aren’t concerned about my nudity, yet it still doesn’t feel right. If I lived in a society where everyone walked around naked, can I assume that my nakedness in the dream wouldn’t be an issue for me?
But then why, if I would normally be clothed in the company of friends, am I naked in the dream? I can’t recall undressing, thus creating this embarrassment (only for myself it seems), but then I may have forgotten that part of the dream where I disrobed. Perhaps on dream TV I’ll be able to catch up on the missing bits.
But even so, we will still not know what a dream is, how it is formed or why we dream what we dream. And if the many universes theory of dreaming gains traction, these questions will still persist.
References
Dresler M., Koch S. P., Wehrle R., et al. (2011). Dreamed movement elicits activation in the sensorimotor cortex. Curr. Biol. 21, 1–5. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2010.11.056.
Erlacher, D. & Schredl, M. (2008). Do REM (lucid) dreamed and executed actions share the same neural substrate? International Journal of Dream Research, 1(1), p.7-14. Available at: http://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/ojs/index.php/IJoDR/article/view/20/0.
Voss U., Holzmann R., Tuin I., Hobson J. A. (2009). Lucid dreaming: a state of consciousness with features of both waking and non-lucid dreaming. Sleep32, 1191–1200. Available at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2737577/
