“A month after my wife died, she came to me in a dream. She was only there for two minutes. She looked very good, very healthy. She embraced me, and asked if I would take care of our two grandchildren. I promised that I would.” – Devpur, India

“In my last dream, I met my father who passed away some time ago. We used to fish together when I was a kid, and in the dream I wanted to ask him when we could go on one last fishing trip. I didn’t get to ask because the dream ended too fast. I had always wanted to go fishing with him one last time as an adult, but we never had the chance. Even though we didn’t go fishing in the dream, it was still very good to see him.” – Warsaw, Poland

“My mom passed away seven years ago. I had just heard about a study that ranked the happiest and most depressing cities in the U.S. The most depressing place to live was Detroit, and the happiest was Boulder, Colorado. Anyway, a few nights later, I had a dream that I was Skyping with my mom. I was crying because I hadn’t seen her in forever. I said, ‘Where have you been? I’ve missed you! I’ve been worried sick!’ And she looked at me, and she goes, ‘I’m in Boulder, Colorado.’” – New York, USA

Of course, death can also haunt sleep, as it often does for veterans, trauma victims, and the elderly.

“I am 103 years old, so I don’t sleep well. But when I do, I see the dead—dead bodies, known and unknown.” – Rajuri, India

“When I killed my first person, I couldn’t sleep for three days. He wasn’t very close. He was 40 meters away from me, but I saw how he died. In my dreams, I always see the fighting. My wife Oksana is a sniper. She also sees such dreams. Oksana wraps her arms around herself and curls up. She pushes into me, trying to get as close as she can. We both dream of our friends who were killed. In our dreams, they are still fighting alongside of us.” – Horlivka, Ukraine/Donetsk People’s Republic

“I’m a Vietnam veteran, and all we did was what you call ‘hit and run.’ I was a river raider down in the delta. Many times I went to sleep in that muddy water. I didn’t think I was coming back. After I came home, I used to just wake up at night thinking I was about to shoot somebody. I did a lot of killing. Kill and stack the bodies. That’s all we did.” – New Orleans, USA

Among the dreams I’ve encountered, some of the most fascinating have been those involving mystical states of consciousness, or a lucid manipulation of the dream space by the dreamer. They suggest an existential freedom far beyond that enjoyed in waking life.

“I entered a room of people watching a wall of TV monitors. They talked to me and answered my questions. I was so surprised that they had real personalities—they were independent of me. They explained that they travel in dreams. ‘You went too deep,’ they warned. ‘You shouldn’t be here very long.’” - Kiev, Ukraine

“I often dream that the Goddess Amba Ma is watching me. In the temple, in the home, she stands there silently. I know it’s her because she has many arms and her face looks just like her pictures. The first time she came, I was afraid. Now, when I see her I’m happy. Sometimes, I begin to shake and I can feel her enter my body.” – Ahmedabad, India

“Sometimes when I’m falling asleep, I have this strange feeling of being huge and tiny at the same time. I can best explain it as a grain of sand up against a gigantic boulder—and being both at once. You feel the smallness and the bigness at the same time; the smallness feels greater when it is up against the vastness of its opposing size, and the boulder’s bigness feels even more massive compared to the tininess of the grain of sand.” – Berlin, Germany

I have always found the surreal aesthetics of dreams appealing, but it took 10 months of collecting them to understand why. I used to think of their inherent mystery—of all mystery really—as a simple lack of information. Mystery was a vacuum to be filled by knowledge. I see things differently now. I believe that mystery is an active and substantial force in its own right.

“There’s just one dream that I remember from many, many years ago. I’d lose the magic if I told you, so I can’t. I can show you this tattoo though. The tattoo is part of it.” – Austin, USA