Throughout the ages dreams have frightened, awed, warned, mystified and guided mankind. Religion and literature have abundant accounts of visions in sleep and visitations in dreams. Even in these modern times, dreams continue to be an important part of our life.
Our belief in the spirituality of man may have originated mainly from our experience of dreams. We seem to see again, in our sleep, people who had already died. In some realistic dream states, departed loved ones even speak to us.
Some people dismiss dream experiences as simply fragments of the imagination. They say that dreams are actually productions of the memory centers of our brain. These memory centers, according to them, become active as soon as our conscious control of our thoughts is loosened up in sleep.
It is true that when set free, the brain’s memory centers – on their own – reproduce mental images of dead people and past events. Not only that, dreams also bring up matters of present concern. Unfinished activities during the day usually come up in our dreams at night. And, indeed, our physical condition and external stimuli can trigger a corresponding dream experience.
But what remains difficult to explain is how dreams are at times able to project us to some future time. We dream of friends and relatives we have not seen for a long time only to meet them shortly after. Many people have won in lotteries or avoided misfortunes by heeding the counsel of their dreams.
We dream an average of twelve dreams every night. We dream every night, without fail. The only thing is that we don’t always remember all of our dreams. On some mornings, we don’t remember anything at all. But it’s certain we had it, whether we remember or not.
Anything that happens with such unfailing regularity with us must have a purpose, a beneficial one perhaps. For instance, breathing, urinating, sweating and other bodily functions are all necessary for our physical well-being. On the part of dreams, psychoanalysts and psychiatrists are recognizing its importance in probing the mental and emotional disturbances of patients.
It is probable that dreams serve a much higher purpose, aside from simply being valuable aids for our psychological balance. The Bible, as well as other religious writings of all faiths, strongly suggests that the minds of men from the earliest beginnings have been influenced by certain external intelligences.
Today so-called dream readers or dream interpreters are making big money. Scientific dream researchers, however, believe that oracles and dream dictionaries are not necessary at all. They consider only one ultimate authority to interpret the meaning of dreams – the dreamer himself.
The emotional experience of a dream is an important clue to its significance for the dreamer. Such experience can never be fully told to, much less felt by, another person, including the professed dream experts. Therefore, exploring the meaning of a dream should be a very personal quest by the dreamer himself.
A single dream experience can mean many different things to different people. What matters is what it means to the dreamer. For instance, what rain means to the dreamer is more important than what a dream reader says rain represents. Seeing a deceased loved one in a dream could be a joyous experience for one dreamer but frightening for another.
Oftentimes it’s the first thought that occurs to the dreamer, when trying to discern the meaning of a dream, that reflects the true meaning of that dream for him. Dream researchers say the thought that spontaneously comes up seems to be tossed to the level of the conscious mind by its inner counterpart.
By far the scientific data on dreams are yet inconclusive. For the most part, dreams and the dreaming experience remain a mystery. But sleep itself is a mystery – where are we during sleep? While this question remains unanswered, we are content to know that sleep is necessary for recharging our vital energies.
Our lack of understanding about dreams should not dissuade us to think that this mysterious experience is insignificant. It should, instead, encourage us to study the subject further, to dig deeper into it – to break the mystery, in order to uncover the true purpose of dreams in our life.