Time Travel in Dreams

International Multidisciplinary Journal of Pure Life (IMJPL), 2023

SUBJECT AND OBJECTIVES: The Holy Quran has always been an inexhaustible source of divine wisdom and knowledge that Muslim philosophers and mystics picked up and demonstrated through research and analysis. Among the important Quranic topics dealt with by Muslim mystics, headed by Ibn Arabi, is the true dream, as the Almighty Lord in His Holy Book, singled out several verses for it, so that Surat Joseph had topped the Holy Quran with the subject of the true vision and its interpretation. METHOD AND FINDING: In this research, we sought, by following the descriptive analytical method of the dream Quranic verses, based on a mystical viewpoint, to know its origin which has two dimensions, one existential and the other cognitive, as well as clarifying its effects on humans life. CONCLUSION: Based on this study, we concluded that the origin of the dream in the Holy Quran is mystically linked to the discontiguous world of imagination on one hand, and the world of contiguous world of imagination on the other hand, connecting this with the position of man and what he perceives from the presence of imagination, which is an independent presence in which meanings and spirits appear in forms. In addition, revealing the importance of the true dream in terms of predicting future events, and the position of the dream interpreter in regard to realizing the dream in the world of visibility.

One of the most overlooked aspects concerning the subject of biblical prophecy is that some one-third of the prophecies in The Bible originated as a dream -- or as is sometimes the case, a vision, which is just another way of saying a waking dream. If that's true, then perhaps the domain of prophecy isn't restricted to just the prophets of old but is also open to all humans due to the fact that we all dream.

Dreams are unsettling for dreamers regardless of their creed or communal identity. However, how long dreams haunt dreamers is an entirely different story. While studying in seminary, I encountered many perplexities with respect to dreams. I remember a senior theologian who reminded his pupils about the importance of dreams. He once attempted to explain the meaning behind the appearance of the rivers of heaven in dreams by virtue of Quranic verses, insisting that they do not imply the promise of grace or paradise but, rather, they foretell that one will end up with a wife who urinates in her bed. I was amazed at how a theologian could extrapolate such interpretations. In the work under review, Elizabeth Sirriyeh tries to situate such amazement in a larger historical trajectory in order to reveal the impact of earlier traditions on dreaming in the " world of Islam. " Sirriyeh elucidates the history of dreams and dream interpretation and their social functions in Islamicate culture over the course of nine chapters. Although it is not formally organized in this manner, I think it is beneficial to divide the book into two sections: the first three chapters examine dreams and dream interpretation historically from pre-Islamic to Islamic societies, and in the remaining chapters she shifts attention to the social imaginaries of dreaming among subsequent people of the faith. The first chapter explores the patterns of dreaming and interpreting dreams in pre-Islamic contexts. Sirriyeh pays special attention to Artemidorus's manual on the modes of dream interpretation. Identifying the patterns articulated therein, she demonstrates how they reoccur in the Abrahamic traditions' methods of interpreting dreams, even to the extent of sharing identical readings of specific symbols. She gives the example of how both Jewish rabbis, based on the Babylonian Talmud, and Artemidorus understood " a raven seen in a dream as representing an adulterer " (23). Another fascinating observation Sirriyeh makes in this chapter is how within the Christian tradition the appearance of angels in dreams " could help to explain conversions or perhaps encourage them " (26). After outlining common narratives and similar interpretative models found in dream manuals from the pre-Islamic to early Islamic eras, she concludes that there were " essentially conservative qualities of dream interpretation in the region " (28). As to the questions, why do dreams matter and why do believers in and practitioners of the Abrahamic traditions seek ways to interpret them, Sirriyeh proffers a poetic answer: " to release the dreamer from the powerful and evil hold of the uninterpreted dream " (12).

DreamTime Magazine, 2018

This article discusses an apparent paradox between perceived time and externally measured time during dreamed body movement. An appeal to concepts regarding space in special relativity may help to resolve the puzzle and perhaps point to a two-way perceptual relativity of dream and waking phenomenology.

Every day we spent about four to six hours in sleep, a part of which is spent in dreams. It is a series of thoughts, images, or emotions and consists of stories and images that our minds create while we sleep. The object of this paper was to explore what is happening to our brain when we are dreaming and what can we learn from the Quran and Sunnah about it. The analysis suggests the following: • Most of the dream occur during Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep. In this state the brain becomes highly active while the body's muscles are paralyzed, and breathing and heart rate become erratic. In this state we are unconscious of the world around us, but we do receive stimuli from our memory. • REM sleep are ‘literally ‘switched on’ by a small group of cells situated deep within the pons, which excrete a chemical called ‘acetylcholine’. This chemical activates the higher parts of the brain, which are thereby prompted to generate conscious images. REM activity is ‘switched off’ by another group of cells, also situated in the pons, which excrete two other chemicals: noradrenaline and serotonin. • Just like our observations during waking hours is a brain activity, so is dreaming. Most dreams incorporate autobiographical memory features. The left hemisphere seems to provide dream origin while the right hemisphere provides dream vividness, figurativeness and affective activation level. • Functional neuroimaging of the brain suggests that hippocampus fetches images and characters from the memory, amygdala imparts emotions to those characters, occipital cortex adds visual component to those characters and motor cortex impart movements to those characters’ bodies. However, the dreams are mainly experienced in the egocentric coordinates of the first-person due to decreased activity in temporoparietal junction (TPJ) and the dreamer has no control over his dream due to decreased activity in in lateral prefrontal cortex (PFC) since it is responsible for “executive functions” in the brain. • Due to absence of executive control, the brain has no control over how to manage these thoughts during dream. According to the Prophet(SAW), these thoughts can be initiated by Allah(ST), by Shaytan or could be impacted by one's thoughts and experiences during wakefulness. • The dreams initiated by Allah(ST) could be shown as true reality to the Prophets(AS) or as a transposed reality to others. Bad dreams initiated by Shaytan appear in the form of nightmares and create fear. The dreams initiated by one’s thoughts during wakefulness could be random or could also be inspirational resulting in creative and scientific discoveries.

This essay is an assessment of a number of dreams discussed by Bin Laden and some of his followers (dreams that allegedly anticipated and thus validated the September 11th, 2001 attacks) in the light of scripturally based Islamic oneiromancy. The essay's goal is to use classical Islamic scholarship to counter the simplistic - and highly manipulative - interpretation assigned to said dreams by Bin Laden. Whereas a fundamentalist mind is essentially focused on literal dream interpretation (in the same way as it accepts only literal Qur’ānic exegesis), classical Islamic oneiromancy reveals itself as a highly complex and dynamical discipline that can be used to suggest that the dreams of crashing planes may have been a warning rather than a divine legitimization of terrorist acts. Moreover, Islam’s true tradition of dream interpretation is only marginally interested in divination. Its actual scope is the recovery of an original epistemic content merely clothed in dream images. To find the true meaning of a dream is then to support a broader quest for knowledge.

2018

Jacob Rennaker Jacob’s concluding words are among the most poignant in all of scripture: “the time passed away with us, and also our lives passed away like as it were unto us a dream” (v. 26). However, far from being the mere poetic waxing of a dying man, I believe that the concept of “dreams” is critical to understanding Jacob’s theology and his writings as a whole. Within our dreams, we experience time differently than when we are awake. Rather than events following after each other in a linear and understandable way, they often present a different sort of logic altogether—one where time is not linear and connections between events are mysterious at best. Jacob’s description of revelation seems to re ect this sort of “dream time.”31. In fact, Jacob’s father Lehi explicitly describes one of his own revelations as dream-like: “Behold, I have dreamed a dream; or, in other words, I have seen a vision” (1 Nephi 8:2). In my view, Jacob 7 highlights the dream-like nature of revelatory ex...

1990

2019

This chapter compares dream visions and prophecies in mythic historiography with analogous stories in the gospels. Most of the visions and prophecies reveal the birth of a divine child. Fathers have dreams or oracles instructing them not to thwart the divine will. Older prophets play a role and have intimate conversations with mothers. The comparison of Simeon in Lukan myth and the Roman Nigidius Figulus is developed at length.

Early Christian and early Islamic texts on dreams and dream interpretation have come under increased scrutiny in recent decades. Dream literature from pagan and Jewish antiquity to the early medieval period demonstrates that dreams, especially prophetic dreams, were used to establish spiritual authority, enforce compliance, and justify violence in a religious context. The common cultural roots of Christi-anity and Islam emerge when we recognise the crucial role played by dreams and prophecy in the two traditions. The various methodologies used in recent scholarship on dreams and their interpretation are surveyed with a view to identifying those most relevant to the analysis of first-millennium CE literary sources in Latin, Greek, Syriac, and Arabic. The key texts from the three major religious traditions in this period (Western Christian, Eastern Christian, and Islamic) are then analysed with a view to assessing whether early Christians and Muslims understood and taxonomised dreams differently. Literary genre and audience (lay, clerical, or monastic) are revealed as the key determinants of difference, rather than religious origins.