Dreams

In The Land of Dreams


Dreams are pretty much the experience of visual images and other sensations that happen during one's sleep. No one really knows why they exist, only that they do, and that they have implications towards the sentiments of a dreamer, towards a particular or general situation or event in his/her waking life. The things that happen in dreams are very much unlikely to happen in the "waking world", and at most times are not within the dreamer's control.

For the longest time, dreams have had a long history of being the subject of inspiration and conjecture. They have been associated as reflections of one's subconscious, responses to neural processes at sleep time, as messages from a divine power, as well as forecasts of things to come.

They have played a major role in most of histories, myths, legends, and stories, as well as with most faiths and belief practices. Like the famous dream which "talked" about seven healthy cattle, followed by seven starving ones, crossing a river. It was interpreted as seven years of plenty, and seven years of famine, and enabled people to prepare for the famine. There are more "significant" dreams of course, each with major roles to play in their historical, as well as plot, developments.

When Eugene Aserinsky noticed the fluttering eyelids of sleepers in a sleep lab in 1953, he discovered REM sleep. From this, Aserinsky studied these eye movements, and even utilized a polygraph machine which recorded changes in the brain. Patterns were recorded by the polygraph machine, particularly during REM sleep. At one time, a sleep subject was crying out as he was sleeping, and Aserinsky woke him up, finding out, as well as confirming, that the sleeper was dreaming.

From then on, dreams are generally associated with REM, which is the state of sleep when brain activity is at its most. Studies reveal that the average human accumulates six years worth of dream time in his/her lifetime, averaging two hours of dream time every night.

Dream content vary from one to another at times, but Calvin S. Hall's studies reveal that most people pretty much dream about the same things. With a dream collection database of over 50,000 recorded dreams from the 1940's to 1985, an outlined coding system in studying dreams was used by Hall in his research.

All in all, no one really knows why we dream, let alone where they come from. Science has revealed that there is a connection between the psychological setting of a dreamer's mind, but at most, only have theories regarding the existence of dreams.

Bottom line, be these nighttime messages or a tableau of illusions and sensations hailing from one's subconscious, dreams may still be a long way from being fully understood, but "hearing" them out isn't such a bad idea.