As the scene unfolds, you are running on the roof of a building, with fear of the highest degree. Someone is following you - he is coming closer... He is faster than you are, but still, you cannot possibly give up. Your legs have started aching, and your body is now demanding rest. But the fear is consuming the pain - it is making you to continue nonetheless... You look behind but find no visible silhouette, but you know he is there - chasing you. You have run a considerable distance to save yourself. And as you try to run ahead, you see you have reached a dead end - you have reached the edge of the roof...
You are panting - it is now your mouth which is breathing. Your senses are alert, they have to be alert... In a moment of quick decision, you see that you have no choice. You jump off the roof to help yourself... And as you complete the jump, gravity takes over your body. You feel the mighty force pulling you down. You are short of air as you accelerate downwards. Adrenaline suddenly rushes in your body, and you are filled with a range of emotions - terror, excitement, thrill and pain... You continue falling downwards to what seems to be the end of your life... You are falling, and falling, and falling...
And then you wake up.
Dreams are no less than movies - with you as protagonists. For long, they have been a mystery - and unsolvable at that. People have argued over their purpose and their meanings for centuries now. But this mystery continues to be a mystery. They are unreal, but still, are so real - when we are dreaming, we don't even come to know that we are dreaming. Everything from images, ideas and emotions is present in our dreams. Stories seem to be real, but they don't make any sense. Characters are mixed, and plots are twisted - basically, we are transported to a wonderland, where anything is possible... And all that, when we are physically in one place, with our eyes closed and body intact...
According to the Indian text, Upanishads, dreams are our experiences when our soul leaves our body during our sleep. The experiences of the soul are basically our experiences - that's why our dreams feel so real to us. But yes, you don't have to believe that. The ancient humans were a fancy people. No wonder their imaginations had no limits.
The subject of dreams has always been a subject of discussion and debate. Many scientists and researchers have put forward various theories to explain the reason behind these virtual movies (if you see the irony). The first of those many theories was that of Sigmund Freud. According to him, dreams are manifestations of our deep, repressed desires - many of them linking to sexual desire. So, a train going into a tunnel in our dream is nothing but sexual symbolism. While this seemed to be a logical explanation; the way he proposed, everything could be traced back to sex.
During this time, Carl Jung, a student of Freud, proposed something different. He still believed in the psychological origin of dreams, but according to him, dreams were basically a means to solve our problems through the sleep and a reflection on our selves. We have noticed that sometimes - we have a problem in our mind when we go to sleep; and when we wake up, we are struck with a solution. (Although the solutions which I get this way often lead to more problems!) This theory seemed to be convincing, but soon enough, another theory came into limelight. According to researchers Allan Hobson and Robert McCarley, dreams are simply a result of random electrical impulses in our brains, with images and stories often pulled from bits of our memory. This theory explains why most of the time, our dreams don't make any sense - there is a random story, and there are random characters. And because it gives the answers to most of our dream-related questions, this theory is still one of the most prominent theories in the field of oneirology (the scientific study of dreams).
But these are all theories. No one knows for sure what actually happens. But, that doesn't stop researchers from pursuing this mysterious area. Scientists now know that most of our dreams occur during a phase of our deep sleep, called the Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep. During this phase, our brain functionality is so high that it resembles that of being awake. During this stage of our sleep, our body releases chemicals which essentially paralyze our body, preventing us from acting out our dreams... But, all our dreams don't happen during the REM stage. Some of our mild dreams also occur during our non-REM sleep, which sometimes causes us to act them out, because our bodies aren't paralyzed. That's why some people start kicking in their sleep... (That doesn't mean that you, kickers, are forgiven!)
But that is all okay, you'd say. Where's something fun? Okay then. Take this: Kekule, the chemist who discovered the structure of benzene did so in his sleep! He worked days and nights to figure out the structure of this molecule, but in vain. Until one night, when in his sleep, he had a dream about snakes, forming circles with their tails in their mouths. And then he realized that benzene molecule, unlike other organic molecules, had a circular structure instead of a linear one... Mary Shelly, the author of the famous book, Frankenstein, got the idea from a dream. Elias Howe, the inventor of sewing machine, got the idea of fixing a needle in the machine in his dream. And there is a skill that allows people to control what to dream about in their sleep. This is called Dream Incubation.
People have even come up with the meanings of dreams - like, being naked in public means you are trying to hide something and you fear exposure; falling down means your life is out of your control; being chased means you are running away from your problems; flying means you are in control of things; and so on... But who is to say what is actually meant by what you dream?
Amidst all this comes the concept of Déjà vu - the sensation that a currently occurring event has been experienced in the past, whether it has actually happened or not. One of the theories of Déjà vu attributes the feeling to having dreamt about a similar situation or location, and then forgetting it until reminded of the dream during the event in present. Maybe it is true. During a typical life span, a person spends a total of about six years dreaming. And out of those six years of dreams, can it not be possible that we dreamt about something that actually happens in reality?
Movies like 'Inception' add a completely new insight into dreams. The movie shows the concept of 'dream sharing', and it shows the concept of a dream within a dream. Characters are confused between the real world and the dream world, and without any indicators for the same (like totem), they could be forever lost in the abyss of the dream-world, called the 'limbo'. And all such objects make the concept of dreams and dreaming all the more intriguing...
Do dreams symbolize our inner desires? Are they hints to solutions for our problems? Or are they just random impulses which mean nothing? Do they express our fears and insecurities? Or are they prophecies? Is our entire life a dream? How do we know we are in the 'real world'?
There are many unanswered questions about these virtual realities, and rest assured, we may never know for sure what causes them or what they mean. But, dreams are a means for us to break free from the shackles of our lives - they can take us to places we have never seen, they can make us have experiences which we could never have, but above all that, they have the power to free us from the chains we are in, and to transport us to a world where anything and everything is possible... All that's needed is for us to close our eyes. And the rest is a miracle...
You are panting - it is now your mouth which is breathing. Your senses are alert, they have to be alert... In a moment of quick decision, you see that you have no choice. You jump off the roof to help yourself... And as you complete the jump, gravity takes over your body. You feel the mighty force pulling you down. You are short of air as you accelerate downwards. Adrenaline suddenly rushes in your body, and you are filled with a range of emotions - terror, excitement, thrill and pain... You continue falling downwards to what seems to be the end of your life... You are falling, and falling, and falling...
And then you wake up.
Dreams are no less than movies - with you as protagonists. For long, they have been a mystery - and unsolvable at that. People have argued over their purpose and their meanings for centuries now. But this mystery continues to be a mystery. They are unreal, but still, are so real - when we are dreaming, we don't even come to know that we are dreaming. Everything from images, ideas and emotions is present in our dreams. Stories seem to be real, but they don't make any sense. Characters are mixed, and plots are twisted - basically, we are transported to a wonderland, where anything is possible... And all that, when we are physically in one place, with our eyes closed and body intact...
According to the Indian text, Upanishads, dreams are our experiences when our soul leaves our body during our sleep. The experiences of the soul are basically our experiences - that's why our dreams feel so real to us. But yes, you don't have to believe that. The ancient humans were a fancy people. No wonder their imaginations had no limits.
The subject of dreams has always been a subject of discussion and debate. Many scientists and researchers have put forward various theories to explain the reason behind these virtual movies (if you see the irony). The first of those many theories was that of Sigmund Freud. According to him, dreams are manifestations of our deep, repressed desires - many of them linking to sexual desire. So, a train going into a tunnel in our dream is nothing but sexual symbolism. While this seemed to be a logical explanation; the way he proposed, everything could be traced back to sex.
During this time, Carl Jung, a student of Freud, proposed something different. He still believed in the psychological origin of dreams, but according to him, dreams were basically a means to solve our problems through the sleep and a reflection on our selves. We have noticed that sometimes - we have a problem in our mind when we go to sleep; and when we wake up, we are struck with a solution. (Although the solutions which I get this way often lead to more problems!) This theory seemed to be convincing, but soon enough, another theory came into limelight. According to researchers Allan Hobson and Robert McCarley, dreams are simply a result of random electrical impulses in our brains, with images and stories often pulled from bits of our memory. This theory explains why most of the time, our dreams don't make any sense - there is a random story, and there are random characters. And because it gives the answers to most of our dream-related questions, this theory is still one of the most prominent theories in the field of oneirology (the scientific study of dreams).
But these are all theories. No one knows for sure what actually happens. But, that doesn't stop researchers from pursuing this mysterious area. Scientists now know that most of our dreams occur during a phase of our deep sleep, called the Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep. During this phase, our brain functionality is so high that it resembles that of being awake. During this stage of our sleep, our body releases chemicals which essentially paralyze our body, preventing us from acting out our dreams... But, all our dreams don't happen during the REM stage. Some of our mild dreams also occur during our non-REM sleep, which sometimes causes us to act them out, because our bodies aren't paralyzed. That's why some people start kicking in their sleep... (That doesn't mean that you, kickers, are forgiven!)
But that is all okay, you'd say. Where's something fun? Okay then. Take this: Kekule, the chemist who discovered the structure of benzene did so in his sleep! He worked days and nights to figure out the structure of this molecule, but in vain. Until one night, when in his sleep, he had a dream about snakes, forming circles with their tails in their mouths. And then he realized that benzene molecule, unlike other organic molecules, had a circular structure instead of a linear one... Mary Shelly, the author of the famous book, Frankenstein, got the idea from a dream. Elias Howe, the inventor of sewing machine, got the idea of fixing a needle in the machine in his dream. And there is a skill that allows people to control what to dream about in their sleep. This is called Dream Incubation.
People have even come up with the meanings of dreams - like, being naked in public means you are trying to hide something and you fear exposure; falling down means your life is out of your control; being chased means you are running away from your problems; flying means you are in control of things; and so on... But who is to say what is actually meant by what you dream?
Amidst all this comes the concept of Déjà vu - the sensation that a currently occurring event has been experienced in the past, whether it has actually happened or not. One of the theories of Déjà vu attributes the feeling to having dreamt about a similar situation or location, and then forgetting it until reminded of the dream during the event in present. Maybe it is true. During a typical life span, a person spends a total of about six years dreaming. And out of those six years of dreams, can it not be possible that we dreamt about something that actually happens in reality?
Movies like 'Inception' add a completely new insight into dreams. The movie shows the concept of 'dream sharing', and it shows the concept of a dream within a dream. Characters are confused between the real world and the dream world, and without any indicators for the same (like totem), they could be forever lost in the abyss of the dream-world, called the 'limbo'. And all such objects make the concept of dreams and dreaming all the more intriguing...
Do dreams symbolize our inner desires? Are they hints to solutions for our problems? Or are they just random impulses which mean nothing? Do they express our fears and insecurities? Or are they prophecies? Is our entire life a dream? How do we know we are in the 'real world'?
There are many unanswered questions about these virtual realities, and rest assured, we may never know for sure what causes them or what they mean. But, dreams are a means for us to break free from the shackles of our lives - they can take us to places we have never seen, they can make us have experiences which we could never have, but above all that, they have the power to free us from the chains we are in, and to transport us to a world where anything and everything is possible... All that's needed is for us to close our eyes. And the rest is a miracle...
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