I dream a lot.
Day dreaming has been my integral part of my life
ever since life pulsated in my body. Sounds like an Arian statement.
Nevertheless, being an ardent Saggitarian, I shouldn’t have said the
above statement. As I contradict my time of birth and planet Jupiters
vibrations. But exceptions always reside. Don’t they ?. With in line to
my previous post on Dreams and its interpretations, I’ve planned to
write more about dreams. My quest about exploring the most unraveled
mysteries about dream recently went on high after a recent dream of
mine, rather I should call that as a nightmare because I woke up in the
middle of the night with a loud scream for which I am yet to find a
reason. My post on interpretations of dream didn’t help either. So I
started digging more about the Dreams and found some interesting tid
bits which I am going to share with you all in this post.
Now can anyone define a dream for me ? ok… I begun my research through wiki which defines dream something like this “A dream is the experience of envisioned images, voices, or other sensations during sleep.” Long before Sigmund Freud theories on dreams and the research work of Standford scientists, our own Indian scholar Charaka who lived in 300 BC have lucidly defined the root of dream. His research work was compiled as “Charaka Samhita”. He says “The
causes of dream are seven. They are what you have seen, heard,
experienced, wish to experience, forced to experience, imagined and by
the inherent nature of the body”. Phenomenal indeed. How come
Indians always have someone having done things before actually some
firangi discovers and patents it. May be we are too generous in nature.
Likewise in Bible (Old Testament) and even in Koran, they were many instances about the interpretation of dreams. For example, Joseph
had the power to interpret and tame dreams to act accordingly. Many
prophets were equipped with stronger affinity to interpret the images
in dream to lead the people around them like an Oracle. Throughout
history, people have sought meaning in dreams. They have been described
physiologically as a response to neural processes during sleep,
psychologically as reflections of the unconscious, and spiritually as
messages from God or predictions of the future.
Let’s
come back to our modern world leaving out those prophecies and quotes.
Have you ever noticed a time of dream onset ? When does actually dream
starts during our sleep ? To get an answer to these questions, we need
to know about the different stages of sleep. The first stage is the
sleep onset, second one is non-REM sleep and final stage is the REM
sleep. The dream usually starts in the REM sleep. REM
stands for Rapid Eye Movement. During the dreaming stage we believed to
have a rapid movement of eye balls. If you watch someone sleeping with
movements in eye balls, then that person must have been in dreams. Its
not necessary that every sleeps ends in REM, it could even end in the
second stage which is also the period of deep sleep i.e Non-REM sleep.
You know, the dreams can last in REM stage for 60-90 mins with many
intervals. The dream can even be directed by the dreamer once he starts
enjoying the sweet dreams. Will come back to that later on how to be a
director.
As this post would be a heavy dose for the readers, better I’ll give it in small chunks, I will just end with some unknown facts about dreams and will continue to share more information in next posts.
- Everybody dreams. EVERYBODY! Simply because you do not remember your dream does not mean that you did not dream.
- One third of our lives is spent sleeping.
- Dreams have been
here as long as mankind. Back in the Roman Era, striking and
significant dreams were submitted to the Senate for analysis and
interpretation.
- In your lifetime, you would’ve spent about 6 years of it dreaming. That is more than 2,100 days spent in a different world.
- Dreams are indispensable. A lack of dream activity can mean protein deficiency or a personality disorder
- We dream on average of one or two hours every night. And we often can have 4-7 dreams in one night.
- Blind people do dream.
Whether visual images will appear in their dream depends on whether
they where blind at birth or became blind later in life. But vision is
not the only sense that constitutes a dream. Sounds, tactility, and
smell become hypersensitive for the blind and their dreams are based on
these senses.
- Five minutes after the end of the dream, half the content is forgotten. After ten minutes, 90% is lost.
- Men tend to dream more about other men (not at all times J), while women dream equally about men and women.
- Studies have shown that our brain waves are more active when we are dreaming than when we are awake.
Keep dreaming till my next post.