Dream / Legends Dreams were images , thoughts and feelings experienced while sleeping . Force users sometimes had visions of the future during dreams , but the content and purpose of these were often poorly understood . Dreaming typically took place during a type of deep sleep known as REM sleep . History . Two such important Force dreams were Anakin Skywalker ' s nightmares portraying the death of his mother on Tatooine , and his wife , Padmé Amidala , dying during childbirth . These dreams served as turning points in Skywalker ' s fall to the dark side as they drove him into an obsessive desire to grow powerful enough to prevent those he loved from dying . As Darth Vader , he had a dream of his now - deceased wife struggling over him with manifestations of the dark side . General Grievous sometimes dreamed about the past , of the time before he became a cyborg and Supreme Commander of the Droid Armies of the Confederacy of Independent Systems . In his dreams he would relive old victories and battles from when he was a Kaleesh warlord . Anakin Skywalker remembered that his mother , Shmi , " had many waking dreams , disturbing and strange . . . that had scared him a little " as a child on Tatooine . The boy Anakin often had dreams himself ; while some were more like nightmares , the boy also experienced dreams of being a Jedi . Anakin ' s own waking dreams included one in which he envisioned himself somehow trapped in a strange ancient cube that he ' d purchased ( in his dealings for Watto ) from an old Jawa on Tatooine . The cube ' s sides had images of what appeared to be two Jedi Knights dueling with lightsabers , a volcano , a starmap to a certain moon , and a lamp with a knife - blade through it ( a symbol of forbidden knowledge ) ; the remaining sides seemed to have had ancient writing in an unknown language , long since worn away . The cube had no openings , locks or hinges , but Anakin had sensed something " evil " inside , and that somehow it could open . In his dream , Anakin found himself inexplicably inside the cube itself , as if it were a huge room from which he could not escape . He banged on its walls and cried for help , to no avail : " Help me get free ! " Then he heard a mysterious voice rise from the cube : an " evil voice " inside of it whispered that " no one could help him , " that " he alone must open it " . When the boy asked how , the mysterious voice answered : " From the inside . " As he woke from the dream , Anakin heard the same ominous voice still ringing in his ears and was certain that it had not been a dream , for it had been too real : the voice seemed to come from above his bed , from his cubbyhole , where he ' d stored the cube . " Did you talk to me ? " he asked the cube in the dark . " Yes . I called to you . " " Are you trapped in there ? . . . How can I let you out ? " The voice came again : " From the inside " . Anakin eventually came to realize that it was " himself " who was caught and trapped , that it was " he " who had been unable to free himself . But also that if ever there was to be a liberation , it would have to come somehow " from the inside . " But Anakin also realized that this particular cube was " warmer than the night air , " and that " live creatures " gave off " heat " . Only days later , Anakin had another waking dream — once again , an extremely vivid one , but also " grand " and " full of hope " — in which " a tall man with intense eyes , wearing a poncho " and a lightsaber , had come to take him from Tatooine . Coincidentally , right before Anakin met Qui - Gon Jinn and party , he had a grandiose dream of a shining white glowing figure ( presumably an angel ) wielding a lightsaber against a backdrop of space and encircled by shadowy humanoid figures fitted for battle , engaged in galactic war ; also in this same dream , he saw himself brandishing a blue lightsaber that looked very similar to the one he would eventually build . Once he ' d met Qui - Gon and his companions , Anakin experienced yet another permutation of the same dream , on the night before Boonta Eve . This time , however , he " recognized " the angel : he again envisioned the planetary wars , the armies of droids , " the rumble of transports and tanks , the hum of laser weapons . " But at the head of it all , " a mighty queen " — the angel of his recurring dream . This Anakin recognized to be , oddly enough , the same girl who accompanied the Jedi to his home . Upon entering the Jedi Order to begin his path to Knighthood , Anakin continued to have dreams , but they were of an increasingly dark nature . By the time Skywalker was 18 , the dreams he was vexed with were of a greater intensity than ever before , mainly manifested as disturbing visions of darkness and distorted memories of his time as a slave . He wished he could wipe from his mind his experience as a slave , and he grew increasingly worried about the safety of his mother , Shmi . It had been nine years — and many intervening interstellar missions — since Anakin had promised her that he would become a Jedi Knight and return to Tatooine to free her , and he remained determined to keep that promise . On one of his last missions before the Clone Wars , Padawan Skywalker experienced one of his most intense dreams yet . He dreamed he was once again back on Tatooine , but this time as a fully grown Jedi apprentice : he encountered the protocol droid he fashioned , C - 3PO , and returned to Watto ' s junkshop , where he found his mother abandoned , huddling in weariness and fear in a low cage . His desperate efforts to free her were in vain , and he awoke in a fevered sweat , to hear his own belabored breathing , as if through a respirator . Fate would tragically lead the 19 - year - old Jedi back to his homeworld in 22 BBY to find Shmi brutally held captive by Tusken Raiders . After Shmi died in his arms , young Skywalker suddenly found himself " in the midst " of his dark visions as he took revenge on those who had taken his mother ' s life . Zuckuss , a Gand bounty hunter , would sometimes experience what he recognized as being visionary possibilities in his dreams . Shortly after the Battle of Hoth , Zuckuss had suffered a respiratory attack on the " Mist Hunter " , and had fallen asleep afterward . He dreamed that the mists that shrouded his futures had lifted enough for him to see the possibilities branching out before him .