dreams

Dreams

Dr. P.C. Simon

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ream is a mixture of the conscious and the subconscious activities of the mind. The

conscious activities of the past are replayed on the minds screen during sleep. To this

process, the subconscious mind adds its own information, including intuitive information.

Some dreams are true and others are not depending on the ability of the dreamer to identify

with the various elements of the dream. If we believe that a dream is going to happen, it

becomes an activity of the mind and the mind makes it happen.

dream is a letter our subconscious writes to us. A dream that is not interpreted is a letter

that is not read. Heraclitus said "During sleep, one returns to his true nature."

reams are essential for the well being of the individual. They are more important than

sleep. Some people can get along with few hours of sleep but dream they must.

dream is a projection of our mind. While dreaming, everything seems real. When we are

dreaming, if somebody told us that what we see is not real, we would not believe it.

wedenborg wrote that his dreams led him into the inner (spiritual) world. His "Journal of

Dreams" filled thirty six volumes. Some of his enemies said that they were a mad man's

rambling. But those who understood, wished that they had such madness.

here are two kinds of dreams. One is the elaboration of what was on the subconscious

mind. The other is the prophetic dream. Examples are those recorded in the bible such as

the dream of Pharaoh, his butler and baker which Joseph interpreted; the dream of

Nebuchadnezzar which Daniel interpreted. It is intuitive information or divine revelation. A

dream may also be induced by spiritual entities.

YMPTOMS OF DREAMING

st before a dream there is a burst of activity in the brain similar to an epileptic seizure.

This lasts for a fraction of a second. It convulses the body. Sometimes a grunt is given out.

What causes the jerk is an enigma. The main symptom of dreaming is rapid eye movement

(REM) of the eyeballs under the closed eyelids.

reaming also can be detected electronically. By means of an electrode fixed to the

abdomen of the pregnant woman, the fetus can be observed dreaming.

uring dreaming, the sleeper may lie motionless, snoring may stop, children grimace and in

the adult male, the penis may swell and erect between two REM periods.

uring early night, sleep is deep and REM periods are short, occurring at intervals of

about 90 minutes. During early morning, REM periods can be as long as one hour.

EM is the light sleep. NREM is the deep sleep. There is an NREM of 20 to 30 minutes.

During deep sleep, bodily position changes, pulse rate increases, breathing becomes shallow,

irregular and rapid,. blood pressure rises, the sleeper turns and changes position. Adults

spend about 1/5 of their sleeping time in dreams and children spend about half the time

dreaming. Normally a person dreams three or four times each night and has about 1000

dreams a year.

ream is essential for our mental health and well-being. Alcohol, drugs, and sleeping pills

reduce REM sleep and cause disturbances of mind, like drowsiness. If a sleeper is awakened

as soon as the REM starts, the NREM is reduced to a shorter period. If he is again and

again awakened at the commencement of REM, the NREM is shortened until at last he

begins to dream as soon as he sleeps.

icro sleeping will bring fleeting wisps of microdreams. They come and go in flashes. A

person who is not allowed to dream when asleep will start dreaming as soon as he closes his

eyes and will stubbornly resist awakening. Further deprivation will bring about dreaming

when awake and hallucinations. Dream has a function of restoring internal balance. Dream

is necessary. Continued dream deprivation will bring mental collapse and may eventually lead

to death.

REMEMBERING DREAMS

r. Nathaniel Kleitman of "The Dream and Sleep Research Lab" of Chicago found that

dreams may last from 5 minutes to an hour. Out of 2240 awakenings, 1864 times the

dreamers remembered their dreams. If a dream is slept through, the dreamer usually forgets

the dream. But if he is awakened during the dream, the dream is not forgotten.

his is what happened to Friedrich August Kekule von Stradonitz . He was going home

late one night after visiting his friend Hugo Mueller. He took the bus as usual and sat on the

outside on the top deck. He fell into a reverie. The atoms were gambolling before his eyes.

He was thinking about the valences of atoms and he saw the small atoms were held by the

larger ones, forming a chain. At this moment, the bus conductor shouted "Clapham Road",

and he woke up. He spent part of the night putting on paper what he was dreaming.

he second time Kekule dreamt about the atoms was in front of his fireplace in Ghent. He

saw the atoms dangling around in a snake-like fashion. Suddenly it appeared to him that the

snake was biting its tail. Suddenly, as if by lightening, he was awakened from his dream and

he worked the whole night putting his ideas to an hypothesis he had.

n his publications in 1860, Kekule did not refer to his dreams. Many scientists never refer

to how they get any information. Accidents, imagination, and dreams have often been the

initial ingredients of discoveries. Kekule himself wrote "Let us learn to dream, gentlemen.

Then perhaps we shall find the truth. But let us beware of publishing our dreams till they

have been tested by the waking understanding."

eiss and Brown reported that Otto Loewi discovered the chemical substance that

transmits nerve impulses in a dream. When the idea occurred to him for the first time in a

dream, he fell asleep again and could not remember it well when he awoke the next

morning. When the same dream came to him a second time, Loewi went directly to the

laboratory and performed the experiments suggested in the dream. He did not mention the

dream in his publications but he told his friends and family. Weiss, who recorded this

information, got it from his own wife who was Loewi's daughter. This story along with

many others’ proves that highly significant research schemes originate in dreams which I

believe is intuitive information arriving.

erman Helmoltz,nineteenth century philosopher and physiologist said "fruitful ideas often

come in the morning upon awakening."

elvin Calvin, who won a Nobel prize for chemistry in 1961, described how the

explanation for photosynthesis came to him when he was waiting in his car parked in a

prohibited zone. It occurred to him like a flash. In a matter of 30 seconds the cyclic

character of the path became clear to me.

herefore, there should be such a thing as inspiration, I suppose, but one has to be ready

for it.

CAUSE OF DREAMS

e do not yet know the true cause or meaning of dreams. But, if they could be correctly

interpreted they would yield valuable information. Once again the true strength of the

dream lies in our belief of what we have dreamt.

DREAMS COMING TRUE

any dreams are meaningless, at least they have not been interpreted and no significant

results have been accumulated..

ll biblical dreams are significant according to the biblical version of the results. I quote

below a few dreams that materialized and proved helpful to the dreamer.

n the book " In Search of the Dream People" Richard Noone writes about the Temiar

People in the interior of Malaysia. Noone says that they are the most perfectly adjusted

people in the world, far more advanced than the so called civilized people of the world. They

control their anger and aggression through manipulating dreams. Temiar children are

encouraged to talk about their dreams every morning. They are taught how to conquer the

opponent they meet in their dreams. All the actions of the Temiar people are the result of the

dreams of one member or another. They live in long houses and cultivate land jointly. The

product is divided not according to the contribution of each member but according the need

of each family.

nother neighbouring tribe called the Negreto teach their children to use dreams to guide

their lives.

enoi is another aboriginal people in Malaysia who use dreams to guide their community life.

They try to have dreams every night and tell their dreams to their elders and get them

interpreted. It is a way of leading a harmonious community, without crime and violence.

ilton Stewart the anthropologist wrote a chapter in Tart's "Altered States Of

Consciousness"in which he describes Senois as the most adjusted people on earth. They

have no wars, no fights and are well adjusted psychologically.

WASHINGTON CARVER

ashington Carver, “The Man Who Talks with the Flowers” wrote, "One of my most

surprising answers to prayer came when I was a little boy of 5 or 6. I had no pocket

knife...So, one night I prayed to the Father to send me a knife and that night I had a dream.

I dreamed that out in the field where the corn rows joined the tobacco rows, there was a

watermelon cut in halves. One half was all gouged out. The other half, plump and full, was

leaning up against three stalks of corn. Out of it stuck the black handle of a pocket knife.

The next morning I could hardly wait till I got through breakfast before I scampered out to

the cornfield. There, where the corn rows joined the tobacco rows, I saw a watermelon cut

in halves. One half was all gouged out and the other half, plump and solid, rested up against

three stalks of corn and sticking out of it was the black handle of a pocket knife.

SELMA LEE

aster Sergeant James Lee of Shepherd Air Base was reading late at night in his house in

Witchita Falls, Texas, when his telephone rang. It was his mother-in-law enquiring about

her daughter. She lived in Clovis, New Mexico, 300 miles away. She had a nightmare and

woke up and phoned to ask about Selma, her daughter. He said that his wife was quite well

and said that he would get her to come to the phone. When he went to call his wife, he

found her dead in the bathtub.

ISLING

nother interesting dream is one that Mr. Isleng, Sheriff of Harris county had on January 2,

1966. For two days he was dragging Lake Houston for the body of 15 year old Jerry

Crosser. He dreamt that a youth's body was floating in the deep water of the lake away from

where they were searching. Next morning he insisted that they should search the area he

dreamed of and found the body.(105: p. 17)

JOE

he T.V. show "That's Incredible" reported the dream of Joe. Joe saw in his dream a

wooden house on an island being destroyed by a cyclone. He had the same dream a second

time. He told about this to the local radio announcer who had no idea which island it was.

After about six months, his brother asked him to come over to Dolphin Island. As soon as

Joe went into his brother's house, he knew that it was the house he had seen in his dream.

He told his brother and some fishermen. They did not pay attention. When hurricane

Frederick struck in August 1979, six months after he had seen it in his dream, the local

people remembered Joes's warning and left the island. Though the island was wiped out,

only six people died and the damage was limited to one and a half- million dollars.

CALPURNIA'S DREAM

t is probably true that Calpurnia dreamed of Caesar's murder by Brutus and Brutus in his

turn dreamed that he would die at Philippi, and he did, by suicide.

DANTE

t the time of Dante's death, he was writing the Paradiso of the Divine Comedy. His

children looked for this section of the Paradiso but could not find it . They searched

everywhere and finally Jacopo, his son, tried to write it himself to complete the manuscript.

Then, one day Jacopo had a dream in which his father took him to the house where Dante

died. He led him to the wall and said, "What you look for is here" and disappeared. His son

woke up from the dream, even though it was middle of the night he hurried to the house

where Dante occasionally lived and woke the man and told him the dream. They both

went into the room and found a curtain almost sealed to the wall in question. When they

removed it there was a niche. The missing Cantos were found in it. It was damp and would

have been lost for ever if it was not found at that time.

SUSAN B. ANTHONY

usan B. Anthony, the Suffragist leader was advised to go to Atlantic City for health

reasons. One day she had a dream of being burnt alive. The dream forced her and her

niece to return to Philadelphia the next morning. Later, they learned that the hotel and ten

other hotels in the area were burned the night they returned.

COLERIDGE'S DREAM

amuel Taylor Coleridge's Kubla Khan came to him in a dream. On awakening, he was

conscious of having composed two or three hundred lines during his three hours sleep. He

immediately sat to write them down. He was interrupted by a man from Porlock. One hour

later, he had forgotten the lines.

LOUIS AGASSIZ

gassiz, a famous biologist and paleantologist, was working on a fossil fish on a stone slab

in which it was preserved. He had a dream and thought that he knew how to expose the

fossil. He went to Jardin de Plante but failed to expose the fossil. The next night, he saw

the fish again but again failed to expose the fossil. The third night, he placed pencil and

paper beside his bed. When the dream appeared, he immediately woke up and made notes

while half asleep. The next day, he found the notes he made were accurate and he

succeeded in exposing and classifying the fish.

JAMES WATT

here is a story that James Watt, inventor of the steam engine, was concerned about

making lead pellets for shotguns. He dreamt night after night for a week of walking in the

rain but the raindrops were lead pellets. So, he got permission to melt a few pounds of lead

and cast it from the belfry of a church which had a moat. When he recovered the lead from

the moat, the lead had hardened into tiny, round pellets. Since that time, all lead shot has

been prepared by this method.

DREAMS OF FAMOUS PERSONS

olfgang Mozart received his inspiration in a semi-conscious state. George Frederick

Handel received the melody for the last movement of his oratorio, the Messiah, in a dream.

Niels Bohr, the Danish physicist, is said to have dreamed of the planetary system and thus

discovered that the atomic nucleus was surrounded by circling electrons similar to the

orbiting planets of the sun.

CROISSET

ack Pollock's book,

"Croiset, the Clairvoyant,"

describes dreams and quotes symbols

associated with dreams. The symbols mean different things to different people.

DESCARTE

n November 10, 1618, Descartes had a dream in which the Angel of Light visited him and

showed him the marvellous science of mathematics. He devoted the next 31 years of his life

to live this dream. He applied algebra to geometry and created analytical geometry. He

applied mathematics to physics. He applied physics to medicine and philosophy. He could

change everything including God, angels, space, time, plants, animals, and complex social

relationships into numbers. Descartes believed that all knowledge is in the recesses of the

mind. Those who grope there for knowledge will find it. If they are not there innately, they

come from God through direct illumination.

olfgang Goethe, the poet philosopher of Germany went for a walk to Belvedere at

Weimar. During his absence his good friend Frederick arrived from Frankfurt at Goethe's

home. He was drenched in the rain and there was no one at home. So Frederick

undressed and put on the dry clothes and fell asleep in his chair.

uring the sleep he dreamt that the poet was walking on the road to Weimar and went to

meet him. Goethe was indeed walking towards his home after visiting the belvedere and

he suddenly stopped as if he saw someone. His friend who was walking with him did not

find any one. Then the poet turned and said " If I was not sure that my friend Frederick

was in Frankfurt, I would have certainly thought that it was he. Again he turned and said

"Yes it is you Frederick and how is it that you are on the road dressed like this with your

gown and night cap and my slippers". His walking companion saw nobody and thought

that the poet was losing his senses but did not comment anything. When they reached

home there Frederick was. The Poet exclaimed “Oh, you Phantom". Frederick protested

“What a good greeting he gets from his friend”. Then he explained that he got wet and

changed and fell asleep and had a dream that he came and met him on the road. The

peculiarity of this dream is that during dream the spirit goes out just like when a person

dies.

MY DREAM

he only factual dream I ever had was in 1933. My mother-in- law had a hand operated

Singer sewing machine. For some reason I took it from the table and placed it on a

folding chair. The machine with the chair fell to the floor. I tried to find if anything was

broken. Nothing was broken but the handle would not turn. I worked for many hours

without any result. Finally I went to bed at about midnight. At 4 A.M. I had a dream. In my

dream which was as clear as something happening during the day, I took a screw driver

and loosened a screw of the sewing machine and the machine worked fine.

mmediately I woke from my dream and went to the machine took the screw driver and

loosened the exact screw which I had seen in my dream and the machine worked perfectly.

.W.H. Myers reported one such case in his book" Human Personality And Its Survival

After Bodily Death" p.90 of the revised edition, 1961. His report stated that one Mrs A. M.

Bickford-Smith on reaching Morley's hotel at 5 O'clock on Tuesday 29th January 1889

found a gold brooch missing. She thought that she might have left it at the fitting-room at

Swan Edgar's. She went there at once but was very disappointed that it was not there.

That night she dreamed that she will find it on a page of the "Queen" news paper that was on

the table. In her dream she saw the very page where it would be. Directly after breakfast

she went to Swan and Edgar's and asked to see the paper, at the same time telling the young

ladies about her dream. The paper had been removed from the room but was found and to

the astonishment of the young ladies she said " This is the one that contains my brooch" and

there at the very page she expected, she found it.

HOW TO UTILIZE DREAMS

o utilize your dreams, keep a notebook beside your bed so that you will be ready to record

your dream on waking. Suggest to yourself every night before you go to sleep that you

would like to dream and that you must wake up immediately after the dream and you want

to remember the dream. Be faithful to your own promise to yourself and as soon as you

wake up, note the dream down in a book. Through self-suggestion prior to sleep, create an

acumen in your observation of dreams. Try to observe the setting, people, action, colour,

feeling, and words. Work on analysing your dreams every day otherwise their continuity

and progress will be difficult to assess. Dreams are illogical because only fragments of the

dreams have been recalled or because the dream is reflecting something illogical in the

dreamer's life. Sometimes dreams are illogical because of mental blocks. If you are unable

to decipher an important dream, suggest to yourself for your next sleep that the dream

should report itself more clearly. Dreams of ill-health can be symbolic or literal.

o solve problems, ask for guidance through dreams. Be practical in your interpretation and

always look for a lesson. Recurrent dreams and serially progressive dreams indicate failure

of one sort or another. That shows no correction has been made for the existing

aberration. Dreams are reactions to the inner self (subconscious mind). Dreams come to

guide and not to amuse. If we do not use it, the clarity and remembrance will subside.

o not fear to converse with the dead in dreams. Dreams are primarily about self. Only

few dreams relate to family, friends, and world events. Be thankful for informative dreams.

Persistence is necessary to learn the meaning of dreams. Finally, before going to sleep tell

yourself "I want to have a dream that will contain information to solve the problem I have in

my mind". State the problem and say "I will have such a dream. I will understand it and

will remember it."

MEANING OF DREAMS

hose who believe in dreams see that their dreams come true. Dreams are not events

occurring in sequence. We are not able to decipher many dreams. To understand a dream,

one must assign his own meanings to words and phrases. To one person "raisins" will

indicate health, to another it will indicate sickness. Each one makes certain sense out of his

dream and believes in the dream and those who believe steadfastly, quite often see the

dreams come true. Perhaps it is not the dream that makes the dream come true it is the

belief . It is the mind of the person that makes things happen.

ry to remember the dream when you are half asleep before you wake up completely. Try

to go back to sleep and re-dream the dream. Very often we will be able to recall the dream

in all its details.