Quantum Dreaming

  Ever have one of those days where you had so much to do you absolutely needed to be in two places at the same time? Of course, we’ve all had those kind of days. It would sure come in handy if someone invented a way to be in two different places at once. It would then be possible to pick up the dry cleaning and get to the bank before it closes. Imagine if such a thing were possible. If it were a part of your life everyday. Well, if I could incorporate such a thing into my life it wouldn’t be long before I’d start applying it to more than just running errands. I could get up, go to work and stay home to finish up those writing projects I’ve needed to finish forever. If only…

  But what about when you’re dreaming? You’re simultaneously in bed sleeping and gallivanting around in urban exploration, or moonlighting as a bus driver. We say we have dreams, but they really have us. Dreams capture us and whisk us off to another place, and often another time, to experience what is often impossible to experience in waking life. I’ve often thought of this experience as contact with  a spiritual world. As if, when we’re in a dream, we’re in an environment where absolutely anything is possible. You wanna fly? Take off running and jump into the air, you’ll be flying in no time. But I’ve recently come across an interesting phenomenon that has added a unique and complex spectrum to my musings on dreams.

  It’s found in quantum mechanics.

  Now, before your eyes glaze over or you go on to do something else, I’m not going to launch into a complex discussion of this area of physics. I’ve simply noticed  that there’s this whole field of science that has discovered the bizarre in the world of the subatomic level. Things such as particles being in two places at the same time and something called entanglement. Simply put, entanglement means this: if two particles have contact of some kind they will have instantaneous effects on one another no matter if the distance separating them is ten feet or a billion light years. Albert Einstein described this relationship as “spooky action at a distance.”

  I find it incredibly fascinating that similarities can be found in the tiny world of subatomic particles (where the laws of physics we’ve come to accept don’t seem to apply) and the world of dreams. In each there are these fantastical ideas of being in more than one place at a time and objects being entangled at a distance. This last thing of entanglement reminds me of dreamers who have the same dream the same night although they are in two separate beds across the city or country from each other. Scientists have just begun to scratch the surface of quantum mechanics, as I’ve felt I’ve just begun to scratch the surface of dreams. Interestingly enough, the correlation between two unrelated things such as quantum mechanics and dreams has further expanded my thinking to consider that the dream world is much more unlimited and unimaginable than it appears at first glance.

EB