Do the Dead Communicate to Us Through Our Dreams?

Although there is no proof of life after death, even the most skeptical of us may feel as if we have been visited by a dead loved one in our dreams. That is because our memories will not let us go.


It is possible that dead people or animals can communicate to the living through dreams. Just how they manage to do this is a subject of great debate. Do ghosts haunt a person's dreams as they haunt old houses and landscapes? Probably not - or, at least, not directly. But their words and actions in life lodge into our subconscious and rattles in there like a sharp stone when we sleep and can turn off our everyday concerns. When this happens, figures come out of the shadows that we can no longer ignore.

Ghost Nation

This writer happens to be part Native American but am mostly Caucasian. For most of my life, I have had nightmares about entire tribes of men, women, children, horses, dogs and other aboriginal animals set on fire or slaughtered with machetes by white people. Are the ghosts of my ancestors trying to communicate with me? Maybe -- but in a very indirect way.

Reading about Native American life, looking at the artwork and even just looking at old sepia-toned photographs could stir something inside of me of the nation that was lost. Perhaps with the nightmares, there is a reminder that my ancestors should never be forgotten. There is also a reminder that our current money-obsessed society isn't the only definition for a civilization. There are many Native American ideas about equality of all species that can be intertwined with modern life.

Ghost Animals

I have also dreams about my long-lost pets. I hope that the pet isn't stuck as a ghost and has moved on to whatever paradise awaits pets, but some dreams are far more realistic than others. I may even be lucid in the dream and I'm able to tell the pet how I wish I had been a better caretaker. Even if the pet dies of old age, I still feel that I let them down somehow.

Perhaps my subconscious knew my pets better than my conscious self, so that these dreams keep reminding me that there's nothing more I can do and that the pet probably doesn't hold his or her death against me. It can take years or decades for a message like that to sink in, so a dream keeps repeating until it finally sinks in. When the message is finally understood, it can seem as if the pet has just visited.

Ghost People

What happens to dead pets can also happen to dead people. Somehow, we may have unfinished business with the dead person or somehow feel guilty about their deaths. But our subconscious goes through an entire crammed memory bank of conversations and interactions with this person when he or she was alive. It remembers and can extrapolate in dreams how the dead person would react to a current situation. When we long to talk to along-dead person about a problem, our brains can usually figure out what advice that person would give based on past experiences. But our brains may not be able to tell us until we are in the deep relaxation of sleep.

So far, there is no concrete evidence that the dead can contact the living through dreams. But people want to believe they can because it gives them a hope that there may be life after death, if not for us than for our loved ones.

We do have a fear that we only truly die when no one remembers us anymore. The memories keep them with our everyday lives, so in a sense they are alive and will be so until we die. But if we tell others abut our experiences with "ghosts" then perhaps that spirit will be remembered by another and so the burden of keeping the memories alive is shared.

References:

"Star Trek: The Next Generation: The Inner Light." (Season 5, Episode 25; 1992.)
"Sleeping, Dreaming and Dying: An Exploration of Consciousness." The Dalia Lama & Francisco J. Varela, Ph.D. Wisdom Publications: 2002.
"Time Life American Indian Series: The Spirit World." Henry Woodhead, et al. Time Life Books; 1992.
"Why I Don't Believe In Ghosts." Philip Pullman. "The New York Times." Oct. 31, 2003. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/31/opinion/why-i-don-t-believe-in-ghosts.html



Image of Wovoka, Paiute Shaman, from Wikimedia Commons.