Honestly surprised there isn't a religion that revolves around the belief that we are transported to an alternate reality/parallel universe when we dream. Certainly a much more fun belief than any of the other major religions out there now.
It doesn’t revolve around it, but the dream state is considered one of the bardos in Tibetan Buddhism and there are practices around it. It basically consists of practices to become lucid during dreaming in order to practice yoga/meditation within the dream state. [1]
I had no idea it was a thing until once in a dream I was sitting for meditation for whatever reason and became lucid. I decided to keep sitting and practicing in that lucid state. When I woke up later I started doing some research and found out about that Tibetan practice. Maybe someday I’ll meet someone to teach it to me.
I've never done yoga in my dreams, but I do relax/meditate once in a while and have techniques for crafting and going to relaxation bubbles in the midst of whatever dream/dream timeline I'm in. It's funny to consider that as a spiritual practice people train for.
> It's funny to consider that as a spiritual practice people train for.
Yeah, I think the thing to note is that in the Tibetan teachings there are various "bardos" [1], three in "ordinary" life and three around the time of death [2]. They also teach that the bardos of death are an opportunity for self-liberation. So if you can't bring awareness/lucidity to the dream state, how likely are you to be able to during the time of death? It's thought of as an opportunity to practice for those moments.
So I think it's easiest to understand the "why" around the dream practice when you put it into that context.
Same, especially given that some of my repeating places are this, at least in dream logic.
There's a 'timeline' where my sister and I live in a different apartment, a timeline where I stayed in/returned to the town I went to college in, one where I didn't go to undergrad after high school and went a lot later, one where my dad's investments saw fruit and we live in a house he left us, one where I stayed in my hometown and work there...
The creepy part is that they're accurate down to things like what cats we have.
> Honestly surprised there isn't a religion that revolves around the belief that we are transported to an alternate reality/parallel universe when we dream.
Spiritism has that. When you sleep, your spirit separates from your body, and goes meet other spirits (some of them of other alive people, some of them of people between one life and the next; reincarnation is a central belief of Spiritism); the place where these spirits are could be considered an "alternate reality/parallel universe" of sorts. Dreams are mostly partial recollections of these experiences. For a longer and more detailed explanation, see https://www.febnet.org.br/portal/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/... starting at page 267.
This existed in the past. Religious leaders (shamans) of different Native American tribes used to go on "vision quests" -- fasting combined with mescaline or other hallucinogenic plants to induce dreams -- sometimes lucid sometimes not. The dreams were interpreted spiritually and visions of the future (or remote viewing of the present).
