Dreaming Spirits
February 10, 2026 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198878117.003.0003 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Qualitative study |
|---|---|
| Population | Participants in the Threshold Worlds dream survey |
| Topics | Dreaming |
| Keywords | Liminality Dialectic Dream Affordance Identity music Religious identity Religious experience Epistemology Aesthetics Secularity Faith Spirituality Dualism |
| Key findings | Proposes that religiousness and religious cultural affordances interrelate with sensory-perceptual experiences and personal predispositions in a looping, dialectical manner described as "religious amplification." |
Abstract
Abstract This chapter examines the interaction of four variables captured qualitatively and quantitatively in the Threshold Worlds dream survey: religious identity (or religiousness), religious dreams, hypnagogia, and absorption. Drawing on participants’ examples of religious dreams and hallucinatory experiences during liminal states of consciousness, the complex correlations and relationships between these variables are exposed and discussed—with considerable attention given to both the measures used to gather such data in the survey and the conceptual challenges of defining and theorizing nocturnal religious and spiritual experiences. Finally, a new theoretical framework—religious amplification—is introduced to help make sense of the looping and dialectical manner by which religiousness and religious cultural affordances interrelate with our sensory-perceptual experiences as well as our personal predispositions.
Comparable studies
Other qualitative studies on dreaming, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Other as a Nightmare: The Israeli-Arab Encounter as Reflected in Children's Dreams in Israel and the West Bank Jewish and Arab fifth to seventh graders living in various settings in Israel and the... | 1989 | Qualitative content analysis | n = 212 |
| Nonwaking Responses to Waking Stressors: Dreams and Nightmares1 Men from the cohort eligible for military duty during the Vietnam Conflict, varying in... | 1990 | Survey interview study | n = 442 |
| Communing with the Gods: The Dreaming Brain in Cross-cultural Perspective | 2011 | Phenomenological study | |
| Partial memory reinstatement while (lucid) dreaming to change the dream environment. Lucid dreamers | 2020 | Qualitative study | |
| Strange themes in pandemic dreams: Insomnia was associated with more negative, anxious and death‐related dreams during the COVID‐19 pandemic Global survey participants | 2022 | Longitudinal mixed-methods study | n = 2,240 |