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Dreams!

Know about your dreams…

By Victor Published 2 years ago 12 min read
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Dreams!
Photo by Jr Korpa on Unsplash

Dreaming is the communication between our conscious mind and our unconscious mind. A dream is a succession of ideas, thoughts, pictures, emotions, and sensation that usually occur involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep. An average human spends approximately two hours on dreaming every single night, and the duration for which each dream lasts is around 5 to 20 minutes.

You’ve dreams. I’ve them. Everybody has. They’re an ordinary boring process. They don’t mean anything apart from illusions, that’s what you think, right?

But for Primitive man, that wasn’t the case. He was governed by his instincts; his descendants —like you and me — have learned to control themselves. While evolving we’ve lost the instinctive behaviour that we possessed earlier. Yet, it remains in hiding within the depths of our mind. Sometimes, it comes to the surface but we’ve lost the abilities to infer the hidden knowledge of our minds. That hidden information takes the form of dreams.

Cycle Of Sleep

Stage1(NREM) — it’s a semiconscious state — your heartbeat, eye movements begin to slow down, muscles jerk — it’s the transition period between wakefulness and sleep. It’s lasts for 4–9 minutes.

Stage2(NREM) — light dreamless sleep — your muscles relax, body temperature drops, brain activity slows down more. It lasts for 20 minutes.

Stage3(NREM) — now you’re in the phase of dreamless sleep —deepest sleep occurs — your frequency changes to delta waves.

Stage4(REM) — brain becomes more active, body becomes relaxed and paralysed, eyes move rapidly, and dreams occur.

Dreams and Creativity

It seems there is some way or the other a connection between dreams and creativity. World renowned scientists and innovators give the credit to the state of slumber — when their eyes are shut and a particular portion of their brain is active. When asked, how an idea pops up into their mind, they’d say, ‘It came in a dream’.

There are many cases of famous personalities who created the extraordinary innovations after considering what they saw an idea in their last night dream or the preceding one or the one preceding the last. It seems mind-boggling right? You want a proof…..i know…look below we’ve gathered some of the dreams of these personality that excelled in their respective fields just because of getting inspiration from their dreams.

It is said, Albert Einstein once dreamed of sliding down a steep mountain at the velocity of speed of light — when he woke up — the seeds of Theory of Relativity had been planted in his mind. Yes, the same Theory of Relativity, that shook the world — was a mere dream of Einstein which he transformed into reality by giving it technical form and publishing it.

By Taton Moïse on Unsplash

I know you want more of such examples.

Read till the end, the world of dreams has much to offer!

Niels Bohr — the electron master — had also witnessed a revelation in his dreams. He saw an electron moving in the dream and saw the structure of an entire atom. Then he proved that structure scientifically later.

Dr Frankenstein was the dream of Mary Shelley.

Dmitri Mendeleev saw the periodic table in a dream.

19th century, German chemist Kekule, researching into the molecular structure of benzene, dreamed of a snake with its tail in its mouth. He interpreted the dream as the structure was a closed ring.

Those of you that are interested in music, we have something for you also. You might’ve heard the name of Beatles. What a dumb I asked! Surely, you have!

By IJ Portwine on Unsplash

It is said the famous John Lenon, wrote a song while exploring his dream. Even Paul Mccartney played the music for “Yesterday” in his dream. Would you still consider dreams as mere illusions. Dreams sometimes prove to be portals of creativity — where the creativity energy collects all the information and combines them into an idea while dreaming.

You want more proof — probably a scientific one — here, below is the proof:

In a recent study, people that preferred small naps using REM(Rapid Eye Movement)sleep — the state in which dreams are most vivid — performed better in terms of creativity-oriented problems. That is to say, REM sleep benefitted people in terms of combining thoughts or ideas in new and different ways, says Psychiatrist Sara Mednick, the person who’s behind the study.

Effect of dreams on society

Hard work blesses an individual with plenty of rewards — that’s what we’ve read. It’s true, but not when we look at the system of administration of certain tribes.

In old times, it was based upon dreams that a good hunting site was chosen, similarly, a safe camp-site was selected, while giving one-hundred-percent consideration to a dream. There was no system of democracy; everything was based upon superstition. But sometimes these dreams proved to be true. A position of authority was given to the dreamers. Dream divination had its role in major events of history before the advent of science.

By Victor Malyushev on Unsplash

In Ancient Greece, just going back to the 8th century B.C, the Oracles of Delphi were famous. We know how, Pythia, the high priestess of the Temple Of Apollo at Delphi enjoyed authority. It is said, through her powers of divination she predicted the events of future — that is to say, what was going to happen — she would predict those events in the state of trance, a dream like state. She was consulted for all the major decision making by the rulers.

Even the interpretation of dreams of Butler, Baker and Pharaoh by Joseph is mentioned in Bible.

In Egypt, a very old Book of dreams was found in a library. This book served as a means to interpret the dreams. Some of the interpretations are as follows:

If a person sees himself dead, it’s good; it represented a long life.

If a person sees himself uncovering his own backside this is bad; it means he will be an orphan later.

If an individual sees his face in a mirror this is bad; it means a new life.

If a person sees himself eating crocodile flesh, it’s good; it means he’d become an official. (i.e. a tax collector)

The unique case of Americas is a good example of dreams giving power and prestige to the tribal members. A traveller while travelling through America’s northwest, in the year 1826, was baffled by the culture of Sauk and Fox tribal people. He observed the tribes giving utmost importance to the dreams. Any member of the tribe could predict a war using dreams, and the person of the tribe whose dream proved to be true was respected, and given the title of war leader.

Similarly, Jivaro people, the inhabitants of Andes, wouldn’t allow a fighter of their tribe to go for a battle once they know the person had an inauspicious dream. The member would stay in the tribe while the other members would go.

In Maricopa tribals, all their abilities that they regarded as special were believed to come from shamanic powers. Their Chief was chosen based on dreams. Dreams also helped them to lead war.

Iban (branch of the Dayak peoples of Borneo) people of Malaysia, give weightage to the dreams to the extent that they’ve three ritual offices:

Manang — office of shaman or the healer

Lemang — office of the bard

Tuai Burong — office of augor.

All the above mentioned three positions are gained through the dream experiences.

Even the life actions and decision-making processes of Iban Dayaks depend on divination, omens, and augury. They have several methods to receive omens; these omens can be obtained by intentional seeking or chance encounters. One of the method is using a dream to receive amulets and charms.

It is for sure they were all playing with their unconscious mind.

It was all in the past, now coming to the present.

Share your dream with me and I’ll predict what you did in the past, what you’re doing in the present and what you’ll be doing in the future. What, you don’t believe me? You think I’m dreaming, right?

— No. I’m not dreaming. I’m in as much reality as you’re. The information I’m going to share with you is unique. After going through it, your answer would be the same. I bet!

Sigmund Freud’ explanation of dreams

For those of you that were not taking their dreams seriously, we’ve something for you. The world of unconsciousness begun with the coming of Sigmund Freud, Austrian neurologist. His experiments and his unique techniques of treating his patients gave birth to what we call — psychoanalysis.

His concepts of ego, the id and the super-ego shook the world. These concepts explained that humans are always in the continuous war with their desires.

According to psychology, in reality, you’re — your prefrontal cortex, the seat of your “I” — when you say the word I — your sense of self. The pleasure of the brain is at the centre of brain.

Freud gave weightage to dreams. Not only he’d lived his dreams, observed them and studied them but also studied his patients’ dreams.

Freud related dreams with the unconscious mind. He believed the various symptoms specifically — abnormal behaviour, hysteria, and pain — are the ways in which the unconscious mind expresses itself — just as in dreams.

Using his technique of “free association”, Freud noticed that our dreams can be reduced to basic patterns. This technique helped in the development of psychoanalysis. Soon Freud found a way — the starting point — from where the unconscious problem of patient could be dealt with and could be explored further.

Freud observed, once a dreamer is encouraged to continue talking about his/her dream’ thoughts and images, he’ll himself reveal the unconscious background. The doctor after listening to the dreams of his patient then finds out the thoughts that the patient had been repressing from quite a long time. That’s the point from where the doctor starts his work. He brings out those repressed emotions and soon the patient is free from the clutches of hysteria.

Now scientists have come to know that dreaming is not a simple process. They arrived at the conclusion that dreaming is not a process due to activity of our brain; but it’s the opposite: the inactivity of our brain. It’s when certain parts of our brain are not working or are in a shut-down mode — that’s our prefrontal cortex that is shut while dreaming. Not just this, but our orbital frontal cortex referred to as conscience is also in a shut-down mode during the state of sleep.

Then what is active during the process of dreaming? When your rational brain is shut-off, your emotional brain is active in those moments.

Carl Jung’ journey into understanding dreams

The Swedish mind of Carl Gustav Jung went further. He tried to study dreams in a different way. He found out that man produces symbols unconsciously in the form of dreams. He believed consciousness as a recent discovery and is still in its experimental state.

Jung believed, dreams are the expression of reality that didn’t come in the conscious comprehension. That is to say, dreams churn the conscious thoughts and the unconscious ones.

Now let’s dig deeper, right into the dreams.

Recurring dream

It’s a dream that persists over a long period of time — coming again and again — the same dream. It can be a soothing and pleasant dream or maybe scarry nightmare. You might’ve realised a dream that occurs frequently. Usually such dreams are of the following types:

Discovering new rooms in a house — Sigmund Freud believed that the houses in such a dream are the representation of bodies. Others believed, when a person finds new rooms in a dream, it represent the dreamer finding out new things about themselves or their unexplored potential.

Teeth falling out — Sigmund Freud has his own way of interpreting this dream. He believed in case a woman had a continuous recurring dream of her teeth falling out; according to him, it means she’s yearning for having children, unconsciously. While he believed the case of man is a different one, when a man sees such a dream( teeth falling out) he’s afraid of castration.

The subjects of recurring dreams vary from person-to-person. Some more examples of recurring dreams include: chasing a train, bus or flight; falling from a very high place(Einstein saw it); held down or unable to move (stuck); losing control of a moving vehicle; the ability of levitation or able to fly; not able to speak or has lost the ability to speak; being caught in a storm and trying to escape from it; failing a exam one didn’t know about; not able to breathe properly; a person unintentionally finds lost object; drowning in water; house catching on fire etc.

Did you see any of them ever in your life?

Lucid Dreaming

A lucid dream is a form of dream in which the dreamer becomes aware that he/she’s dreaming. FMRI scanners were used to measure lucid dreams. Exactly similar regions in the brain showed activity in both the scenarios — while awake and sleeping(dreaming).

At the Max Plank Institute in Germany, lucid dreaming was given the tag of reality. It means it’s no more a fiction. That it’s testable. It’s a fact!

Now see what are the views of Frankfurt University

Frankfurt University found that lucid dreaming is a hybrid state of consciousness that is different from both waking state and dreaming state.

There’s something we’ve for you. If you don’t feel like sleeping just try this paradox. I bet you’ll be in deep slumber while trying to solve it.

Dream Paradox/Dream Argument/Butterfly Dream

Once, Zhuang Zhou dreamed he was a butterfly, a beautiful butterfly flitting and fluttering here and there, delighted with himself and doing what he loved as a free butterfly. He(the butterfly)didn’t know that he was in actual a human — Zhuang Zhou.

Suddenly he woke up and there he was, solid and human Zhuang Zhou. But he didn’t know if he was Zhuang Zhou who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming that he was Zhuang Zhou.

Try to solve the above paradox. What, you’re already dreaming?…

Good night…..and

sweet dreams………

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