How many dreams do you dream during your life? Most dreams are forgotten upon waking, but if you could remember them all the total number would be in excess of 100,000. Imagine if each of your night-time dreams were a complete life, an incarnation lasting around 70 years, that of a human life. Perhaps this is the nature of rebirth.
Since the dawn of the species, if we had all lived around 100,000 to 200,000 lives and if these lives were on average 25 to 50 years in length, the timeline would take us back five million years to Australopithecus, our earliest ancestors.
The phenomenon of dreaming reflects the phenomenon of rebirth. This fractal style reflection of the macrocosmic in the microcosmic permeates the whole of reality. For example, on a superficial level, the solar system resembles an atom. If this is so, then understanding our relationship to our night-time dreams will help us understand our relationship to past lives and rebirth.