section_path: Religious and other cultural contexts
section_name: Religious and other cultural contexts
paragraph_text: Religious and other cultural contexts
  
  Dreams figure prominently in major world religions. The dream experience for early humans, according to one interpretation, gave rise to the notion of a human " soul," a central element in much religious thought. J. W. Dunne wrote:
  
  But there can be no reasonable doubt that the idea of a soul must have first arisen in the mind of primitive man as a result of observation of his dreams. Ignorant as he was, he could have come to no other conclusion but that, in dreams, he left his sleeping body in one universe and went wandering off into another. It is considered that, but for that savage, the idea of such a thing as a 'soul' would never have even occurred to mankind....