As I was driving with my girlfriend, she turned to look at me. Something was different about her; she somehow seemed more powerful, more authoritative than I had ever seen her before. When she spoke, I understood immediately. “Why are you trying to disprove me? Why won’t you believe in me?” she bellowed in a voice that I recognized as God’s. Before I could answer, I woke up.
After I woke up, I was still shaken by what I had just experienced. Had I just experienced some sort of divine intervention? Or was my subconscious playing tricks on me based on what I was living in reality? I thought about the dream very carefully, applying the cognitive theory of dreams to my analysis.
In cognitive dream theory, as C.S. Hall writes in his 1953 paper, the “images of a dream are the embodiment of thoughts. They are a medium by which a psychological process, cognition, is transformed into a form that can be perceived.” In line with this theory, I now believe that the dream I had of God was my subconscious trying to make sense of my current situation.
At the time I was very interested in disproving God. I began studying cosmology, physics, the life sciences, and philosophy in order to find a sufficient answer to the questions, “Why are we here? Where did we come from?” Also at this time in my life, I was dating a very religious Christian girl with whom I had many conversations on religion and God.
Knowing these things, it makes sense that my Christian girlfriend that had tried in the past to convert me, would be the vehicle through which my doubts of questioning God would be asked in my dream.
Works Cited
Hall, C.S. "A Cognitive Theory of Dreams." The Journal of General Psychology (1953): 273-282. Journal.
