Dreams

Dreams are intertwined with our very existence. Dreams come to us when we are deep in sleep and keep us awake while we hustle to make them come true. Sometimes we question which dream is real. Some people dream when they sleep at night while some are living dreams that have been realized. Everyone has different interpretations of a dream and every dream has myriad interpretations. Poets romanticize dreams and nightmares. Nightmares often besiege our slumber. People living through their worst nightmares seek refuge in the comfort of their dreams, in the comfort of an interpretation of a life they always desired. That is why, we try to elucidate our dreams. Are they trying to tell us something?

Dreams can be abstract and complex. There are many ways to analyze dreams. Psychologically, philosophically, even religiously. Modern psychology explains that dreams are inchoate emotions or thoughts that are released by the deep subconscious and translated into narratives by complex regions of the brain. In modern science, we can tell if a person is dreaming or not while sleeping by PET scans and EEGs. A dream is a process done by the brain to store and organize our memory. The hippocampus of our brain, which controls our memory, examines and goes through all the data collected in a day. It decides which to store and clears the rest to accommodate new memories. It can be called a "garbage disposal method" of the brain. Most people dream in the REM(rapid eye movement) stage of the sleep cycle. If we observe the brain under a PET scan during this time, we will see that the whole brain is active, despite the fact that the person is in deep sleep. Sometimes thought processes on the edge of sleep tend to diverge radically from those of ordinary wakefulness. Hypnagogia is the transitional state from wakefulness to sleep. And the opposite hypnopompic, transition from sleep to wakefulness. During both times it is common to see lucid dreams. In the case of lucid dreams, a person is aware of the fact that they are dreaming. While we have no control over the content of our dreaming during REM sleep, in lucid dreaming , the dreamer tends to have some sort of control over the characters, narrative, and nature. In lucid dreams, dream consciousness and waking consciousness are no longer separate. Although there is a general agreement that consciousness exists while individuals are dreaming, in the scientific world, there is an ongoing debate about whether consciousness exists during our dreamless sleep and if so, how is it different from the waking and dream consciousness. Even though we are asleep, our brain is fully awake. Some parts of the brain become more active than when they are awake. Most of the time, we forget the details of the dreams after we awaken but the impact of the dream or the terror of a nightmare still lingers on.

Founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud claims that dreams are just manifestations of immoral wishes. When we are awake, our waking consciousness controls these immoral thoughts and emotions. Therefore we suppress expression of these wishes to evade our moral sensor. But when we are asleep, we let go of the safety valves keeping these strong impulses at bay. In dreams we get to know about the animalistic part of our nature.

The line between our reality and imagination is muddled up in our dreams. So the philosophers ask, are we living in our dream? Is it a physical phenomenon or is it a mental phenomenon? How do we ever know for certain that we are not dreaming right now? Are dreams simply illusions or imaginations?

Early western philosophers argued that dreaming can literally replicate endless experiences, which led to worries that if dreams can so very convincingly deceive us, we cannot know anything about the external world for certain, because everything we experience might be just a dream. René Descartes, a French philosopher, presented an argument that we might be trapped in a lifelong dream and none of our experiences has been caused by the external objects. In Meditations On First Philosophy, after discussing the dream argument, Descartes raises the possibility of an omnipotent evil genius who is determined to deceive us even in our most intrinsic beliefs.

Norman Malcolm is most famous for denying that dreams are experiences. Malcolm claimed the concept of dreaming is derived not from dreaming, but from descriptions of dreams, i.e., from the familiar phenomenon that we call “describing a dream”. (Malcolm 1959:55).

Saint Augustine, who devoted his life to God, often agonized about the act of fornication in his sexual dream. in "Confessions"(book X; Chapter 30) he rhetorically asks God "am I not myself during sleep?" This dilemma made him differentiate between "happenings" and "actions". he decided that he was not carrying out the actions but rather undergoing an experience which happened to him in the absence of a choice. By removing agency from dreaming, we conclude we cannot be responsible for what happens in our dream. As a result, any notion of sin or moral responsibility can not be applied when we’re dreaming.

All religions in the world interpret dreams in different ways. Most religions explain dream as sort of a bridge between the body, mind, and spirit. In Christianity, dreams give a peek into the afterlife, as if the soul is separated from the body. It works as a medium of communication between Men and God. In Buddhism, dreams are a separate world. A world entirely of our own. A world where we set our own rules. It is an expansion of our consciousness. Dreams are used as a tool to achieve ultimate self-control. A way to master our body and mind. Hindus believe that the whole world is an illusion made by a God named Vishnu. So in a way the reality we experience is Vishnu’s dream. But in the mystical texts known as Upanishads, dreaming becomes a personal experimental path towards the realization of the imaginary nature of the self and all of reality. In Islam, dreams have a spiritual significance. Dreams carry metaphorical meaning and Muslim intellectuals over the past centuries have tried to explain their meanings through dream interpretation theories. Dreams can also predict the future. For our prophets, dreams carry the direct message of Allah. Dreams are also cited in some Qur’an passages, but their application relies on the ability to correctly interpret their metaphoric contexts.

Humans continue to strive to understand the meaning of their dreams. Of the ones we see in our sleep and the ones we chase due to ambitions.