Dreaming and consciousness

discovering meaning and insight

This is about a series of dreams, all connected, that occurred over a number of years. It’s told as I experienced it, and not conveyed to persuade you of anything.

It took a long time to figure out. Because I had to go there again and again and again before I began to unravel what I was seeing. And the thing is, I never felt like I was deliberately trying to go there. I wasn’t programming myself before I fell asleep. It just seemed to happen.

The schools

There are large campuses there. Schools actually, with buildings everywhere; the way university campuses are laid out. Parking lots always seemed to be downhill, and they were inevitably adjacent to commuter railroad stations. But more about the parking lots later.

The campuses were always busy, full of students milling about, and classes were always underway. Nearly everyone was in a class. Class sizes were generally fairly small.

All the buildings were white, and they gave the impression of having been around for a while. Most were two-story, some were larger, and there were some single-story buildings as well.

This is where people go when they’re dreaming. Not always, but often enough. When I finally realized that this was what I was seeing, I started calling them schools. Sometimes I referred to them as “Heaven’s schools.”

Back when I was involved in consciousness research, we started using the term “Heaven” to describe the place we go in between lives. The use of that particular term was something of a tip-of-the-hat to the deeply religious region of the country we were living in. When local people participated and ‘came back’ from deep within consciousness experiences, they were often stunned or even a bit disoriented. So the term ‘heaven’ had worked its way forward as a suitable way of putting such experiences into some kind of context.

Deciphering the parking lots

I’m not sure that all of the students I saw are currently in a life right now. Perhaps some of them were in-between lives. But either way, at least some of them were alive right now. I know that because I recognized a few of them. Funny though, because most of the time they didn’t look like they appear in real life. Sometimes there was a resemblance, even a strong one. But often it was just a sense. I somehow knew it was him or her.

But another give-away was found in the parking lots. They were full of cars. It took me a long time to realize the symbolism of the cars. They were the vehicles, representing the physical body or vehicle that the so-called soul inhabited. What finally gave it away was when I started associating individuals I was seeing and then watching them return to their cars in the parking lot. I’d even watch them get into their ‘car’. The cars were identical to what they drove in real life.

When classes were over, many students would head downhill to their cars, to rejoin their bodies or vehicles, and I suppose to wake up back in real life or maybe to move on to another dream or locale.

I saw these kinds of activities hundreds of times.

The Simulation Studio

One day, I was directed to go to a nondescript white building. It was shaped somewhat like a quonset hut, similar to the old Hollywood sound stages with the roofs that curved in the style of old airplane hangers.

It was a simulation studio. The moment you opened the exterior door to the building and stepped across the threshold you were in a simulation.

It was a simulation so real that you had no way of knowing you were in a simulation once you entered it. I’m not sure how I got out. Did someone escort me out? Did I wake back up? I have no idea. But once I entered, I was in a full-blown immersive experience.

Some dreams back then seemed to be simulation training exercises or practice runs. But in those kinds of dreams there was always at least a modest chance of lucidity (conscious dreaming), of becoming aware. It was as though awareness was a dial that could be turned up or down. When it was fully engaged, like in the simulation studio, it was overwhelmingly real and powerful.

Comparative dreaming

Obviously I can’t assure anyone that any of this is real. While I’m personally assured of my experiences and interpretations, I’m always willing to consider conceding that I’m inaccurate or wrong. But if this is interesting to you, I suggest you consider comparative dreaming.

Comparative dreaming, even when done informally between two or more people, can be a revealing experience. In my personal dream studies, I discovered I sometimes shared dream experiences with other people. In these dreams, after awakening, I might share locales and events with other people I knew. Often enough we’d seen the same people or things, or maybe we’d participated in the same events or even conversations. We might have been in a park together, or around a group of people, and we’d find that we were able to describe very specific details. I was careful enough in how I approached these comparisons to become comfortable that we were somehow sharing a seemingly inexplicable connection.

While not proof of an afterlife, comparative dreaming can vividly convey the connectivity of consciousness. In the process, you can discover something significant: that these intensely curious and constructive consciousness journeys are well within the grasp of any of us.

“ain’t no grave can hold my body down.”