You’ll spend roughly a third of your life asleep — more than 200,000 hours in another world. The dream world.
Every night, your body lies still while your mind builds entire realities: places, people, and moments that feel as real as waking life. And yet, most of us forget almost everything we experience there.
Maybe you shrug off dreams as random noise. Maybe they terrify you — the nightmares, the paralysis, the strange symbols that stay with you long after you wake. Or maybe you’ve had dreams that felt like they were trying to tell you something.
In recent decades, neuroscience has revealed that dreams are far more than imagination. They’re data — emotional, psychological, even spiritual. They hold powerful clues to who we are, what we fear, and what we’ve yet to face.
That’s why we sat down with Dr. Baland Jalal, one of the world’s leading neuroscientists studying dreams, sleep paralysis, and consciousness itself. Based at Harvard, he’s in a rare position to bridge the gap between science and spirituality.
In this conversation, we explore what dreams reveal about God, consciousness, and the nature of reality — and what they can teach us about mental health and trauma.
We go deep into how dreams process emotion and memory, why nightmares can become windows into healing, what lucid dreaming shows us about consciousness, and how ancient spiritual experiences may not be so different from what neuroscience is now discovering.
Once you hear what’s really happening inside the dream world, you may never see waking life the same way again.
Chapters: 0:00 - Intro 2:02 - The Neuroscience of Dreams 17:51 - Your Dreams Are Speaking To You 47:04 - God & Spirituality Invading Your Dreams 1:13:26 - Learning New Things In Your Dreams 1:31:51 - We Can Now Speak To People In Their Dreams 1:44:36 - The Terror of Sleep Paralysis
Mighty Pursuit Links: Website: https://www.mightypursuit.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mightypursuit/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@mightypursuit/ X: https://x.com/MightyPursuit
Dr. Baland Jalal Links: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/balandjalal/
For business inquiries: hello@mightypursuit.com
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Bobby Bones Show
Listen to 'The Bobby Bones Show' by downloading the daily full replay.