Humans have been fascinated, inspired, and guided by dreams since our early history. Our ancestors regarded dreams as messages from the divine and considered them bridges between the ordinary and spiritual worlds. Dream interpretation was sacred to the Aztecs, Mayans, Egyptians, Greeks, Indigenous Peoples of the Americas, and African peoples, among others, who looked to dreams for guidance on life and death issues such as health and preparation for impending disasters.

Although prophetic dreams appear in the Bible, the early Church forbade congregants from connecting with God through dreams unless a priest mediated.1 In the Middle Ages, dreams were often considered the work of the devil. During the Salem witch trials, the accuser claimed the accused witch visited them in dreams and tried to choke or kill them. Enlightenment philosophers and thinkers, René Descartes and John Locke among the most famous, viewed dreams as neither messages from God nor a visitation from Satan. In his Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes argued that dreams mimic reality but are not reality, and we cannot trust our senses to attain the truth. Sensory information, therefore, was not reliable.2

Yet despite the rational skepticism of the 17th and 18th centuries, dream manuals circulated among both Christians and Jews. Tibetan Buddhists had elaborate visualization and meditation practices for cultivating dream states like lucid dreaming. The mystical branch of Islam, Sufism, likewise took a great interest in dreams. Spiritual masters examined seekers’ dreams to evaluate their emotional state and map out complex spiritual guides for dreamers.3

The evolving science of medicine and the natural sciences sparked curiosity in the physiology of dreaming: Where do dreams........

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