Why do we Dream?

                                                                 בס"ד

by Rabbi Ephraim Sprecher
Dean of Students, Diaspora Yeshiva

Row, row, row your boat... Life is but a Dream. The Mishna in Avot states, "One moment of pleasure in the After-Life is better than all of life in this world."

How can we have confidence that another world awaits us after death? The answer is dreams! Have you ever had a dream that was so vivid, that you experienced it as if it were reality, but then you woke up and realized that it was all an illusion?

Dreams remind us that this world is not the ultimate reality. After death, we will awake to an even more real existence, and our experience in this world will be like a dream to us. That is why the Talmud in B'rachot describes sleep as one sixtieth of death, so that we can taste the After-Life in this world. And that is why there are two events in life that one cannot predict when they occur - Sleep and Death. The Zohar teaches that everything in this world serves to teach us about the ultimate reality of the Spiritual World. This world is really just an illusion and the Next World is the ultimate reality.

This world may seem real, but one day, we will leave this physical dimension and enter an entirely different spiritual dimension, which I call the Fifth Dimension!

A dream is a humbling experience, and it is the key to belief in the After-Life. So even a dream, the experience of illusion teaches us about the ultimate reality of the World To Come. This is what the Mishna in Avot means, "This world is compared to a foyer or lobby before the World To Come. Prepare yourself in the foyer, so that you may enter the banquet hall of the After-Life."