Where Do We Go When We Dream?

An examination of the shared human experience of Dreaming.

There is an exhilarating phenomena that occurs every night when we lay our bodies to rest. It is quite transparently one of the most bizarre, yet interesting, experiences that humans discuss amongst one another with no need for rationale or logic. It simply is the way it is.

From the common nightmare of speaking in front of an audience to which you find yourself wearing absolutely no pants all the way to the beauty of living out the romantic comedy you’ve longed for with your crush:

Dreams are here to provide an infinite sandbox for our minds to create each night.

Where is “here” though?

The Location Of A Dream

We are all very familiar with the duality of extremes that a dream/ nightmare can take us toward. We’ve all lived beautiful fantasies as well as our worst possible terrors.

Yet, something about this phenomena that all humans seem to experience eludes me. Where do dreams actually occur?

Do we go somewhere outside of our physical bodies?

Is it merely complete imagination made up by our mind?

How can some dreams be so individualized, yet others can report having shared communications in the “dream world” that is remembered in the physical world?

How is it that some are able to have complete control and create freely to their liking while others have to just sit back and watch?

The list of questions goes on and on.

I genuinely believe the answer to the “location” of the dream world can help solve a lot of these questions.

My Father’s Dream

My father once told me a story of a dream that changed his life entirely.

I had an Uncle in the family who had passed from cancer. He had a habit of beating my Aunt and cousins. My aunt was my mother’s sister so before the marriage we really had no connection to this man whatsoever.

When he passed most of the family chose not to attend his funeral.

Over a year after his death my father had a dream about my uncle. My uncle had communicated to him that it was located in the blue locker.

My father had no idea what “it” was. My father had seen the image of the blue locker, but had no idea where on earth that could possibly be or its significance to anything.

My father is quick to dismiss things to coincidence or having no meaning so he thought nothing of it.

The same day of having waking up from this dream my mother tells my father that she had received a phone call from widowed aunt. She was looking for my cousins birth certificate as it was needed to prove his citizenship for some trouble he had gotten into with the law at the time.

She was asking to see if my father might know its whereabouts.

This was completely normal for the family to ask my father for these documents as my dad handled all of the family’s taxes and immigration papers for they are all natively from Peru.

My father jokingly replied “Have her check the blue locker” and chuckled.

My mother didn’t realize he was joking and said to my aunt over the phone “He says check the blue locker.”

He interrupts “I was joking, I had a dream last night about it. There is no blue locker.”

My aunt immediately questioned “How does he know about that?”

Apparently my Uncle had kept a blue locker inside a local storage facility. Not even my cousins knew about it. Only my Aunt did.

My father was completely joking as he only had this information from his dream. He had hardly communicated with my uncle when he was alive. He wasn’t exactly fond of how he treated the family.

My aunt went to check that same day. There in the blue locker inside a scrapbook of old wedding photos and pictures of my cousins during their infancy was the birth certificate they had been looking for. No other certificates or legal documentation. Just photos of the family and the birth certificate of my one cousin. Despite the fact having fathered four of them.

This kept my cousin from receiving a far worse punishment than the hefty fine he incurred instead.

My father is not a religious man. Nor is he one who puts meaning to things unless he can observe a logical explanation himself. He is quite self-determined in this way.

To this day he cannot feasibly explain how that could’ve possibly occurred. There is no way anybody could have known about that locker.

Much less the fact that it was the exact document they had been looking for.

All this came from a very strange dream in which my deceased uncle spoke to my father. A dream that he had dismissed immediately.

A simple google search or a quick browse through dream-related subreddits and you will come across dozens of other dream-to-reality stories that just don’t quite add up.

After all this time this is what I’ve come to understand:

We have no idea where we go when we dream.

If one knew this much we could unravel so many of the enigmas that entrench the “Dream world.”

Is it a location on a dimension that we simply have yet to discover?

Or is it nothing more than illogical nothingness created to entertain the mind while the body rests?

The first answer could change our world as we know it entirely. It would create a new world for science to explore. It would change religions and spiritual practices forever. It would change the way we interact as people.

The latter would put this all to rest and have us move on to the next elusive mystery of humanity.

Where do you think we go, friend?

With All Due Respect,

Richard Landeau