Was it just a dream ?

“So long ago

Was it in a dream, was it just a dream?

I know, yes I know

Seemed so very real, it seemed so real to me
Took a walk down the street
Thru the heat whispered trees

I thought I could hear (hear, hear, hear)

Somebody call out my name as it started to rain”

- John Lennon (Dream)

Have you ever wondered about dreams? Those intricate stories our minds spin while we sleep, and the vivid visions of the future that keep us wide awake, hearts racing with adrenaline. Dreams are also the quiet hopes that sustain us when reality lets us down. To me, dreams are magnificent journeys—free to take, yet priceless in how they inspire us, fuel our growth, and push us to reach higher. In our dreams—especially the ones we see with open eyes—we are strong, powerful, beautiful, creative, and forever young. We become everything we long to be, sometimes down to the tiniest detail. Dreams can make us feel like superheroes, a captivating vamp, or a love-struck teenager with an impossible crush. But they can also leave us trembling like a frightened child, hollow like a ruin, or aching like the sick. It’s a pity that daydreaming is often dismissed or ridiculed—because to me, it is a vital, creative phase of any meaningful pursuit.To me it sounds like a very important and creative phase for any important achievement in life

I am an addicted, incorrigible dreamer. I dream with my eyes open—and, of course, closed. I dream of places, people, and moments so vividly and so often that sometimes I struggle to believe they aren’t real. The memories of these dreams are etched so clearly in my mind that I wonder if, in old age, I might begin to confuse them with reality.

I dream myself alive. I dream of breathtaking places and impossible experiences I know I’ll never have. Sometimes, I’m an eagle perched on a tree branch, surveying a vast valley. Other times, I’m plunging from mountaintops, savoring the thrill of the fall. And yes, I dream strangely too—of death and destruction, of being trapped in eerie, inescapable spaces. These moments feel so real that I imagine the actual experience couldn’t be much different. I once considered recording my dreams, but they always lost their magic when I tried to write them down. My words couldn’t capture their wild energy, their vividness.

Dreams fascinate me. I don’t always know what sparks them, but I have the ability to close my eyes and string together entire stories—so detailed I can almost feel, smell, and taste them. Sometimes, when one of these dreams materializes in real life, I’m left stunned, as though I had summoned it into being.

Surely, I’m not alone. There must always have been others like me—people who take dreaming seriously. There are mornings when I wake up laughing from some bizarre vision, and nights when I jolt awake, breathless, desperate to escape a nightmare. No wonder every ancient culture has its own lore about dreams. Some even had seers to interpret them. Certain dreams—like Queen Mahamaya’s vision before the birth of Siddhartha, or Abraham Lincoln’s premonition of his assassination—were believed to hold deep significance.

Poets, writers, mathematicians, and scientists have long claimed that dreams gifted them inspiration. I once read that Srinivasa Ramanujan saw mathematical formulas in his dreams, delivered by the goddess Namagiri, and verified them upon waking. Paul McCartney heard the melody of “Yesterday” in his sleep. Mary Shelley conceived Frankenstein in a dream. Throughout history, kings, statesmen, and artists have looked to their dreams for guidance—and I completely believe them. I’ve felt that kind of clarity myself. After all, many of our myths and legends begin with a dream. So do countless songs, books, and films.

It is generally believed that the mind, in its mysterious ways, plays with our dominant thoughts, fears, and desires—stitching them together into a tapestry of scenes, sounds, and emotions we call dreams. They are often seen as a psychological sorting process, a quiet theatre where the subconscious enacts the dramas of our waking concerns. But then, how do we explain those dreams that seem to emerge from nowhere? The ones that take us to places we’ve never seen, show us faces we’ve never met, or unfold in languages and landscapes we didn’t even know existed?

It’s in this space—between the known and the unexplainable—that dreams begin to feel like something more. Perhaps this very mystery is what gave rise to the idea that dreams are moments when the divine tries to whisper to us. That in the silence of sleep, angels—or call them messengers, guides, ancestors—attempt to converse with our deeper selves. In a way, dreaming feels like opening a secret doorway to a world that is both ours and beyond us. A place where the rational gives way to the symbolic, where meanings arrive not in words, but in sensations, visions, and inexplicable truths.

Perhaps the ancient sages were right when they said that both the waking world and the dream world are illusions—fleeting projections on the screen of consciousness. Just as a dream can feel completely real until the moment we wake, so too can life feel absolute until we pause and question its fabric. In both states, we experience joy, fear, love, and longing with equal intensity. The dream dissolves when we open our eyes. But what if waking is simply the next dream—just longer, louder, and bound by more rules?

In Advaita Vedanta, it is taught that the dreamer, the dream, and the act of dreaming are all expressions of the same Self—the undivided awareness behind all experience. And perhaps that is where the true magic of dreams lies. They remind us that we are more than our routines, roles, and rationalities. They allow us to touch the edges of mystery, to converse with parts of ourselves we never meet in daylight, and to remember that there’s more to existence than what meets the eye.

So, if you’re someone who dreams a little too much, don’t be in a hurry to dismiss it. Maybe your dreams are not distractions from reality, but gentle nudges toward a deeper truth. Maybe, just maybe, in dreaming, we come closest to remembering who we really are.