Why do we dream? What does it mean? Does it mean anything?

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It’s an unfamiliar word that refers to something familiar to all of us – dreams. It’s pronounced: o-near-ick. Its origin is from the Greek word for dreams: Oneiroi. The Greeks considered the Oneiroi as blood-relatives of Hypnos, or as we would say, sleep. Ancient Greeks typically thought of impulses, emotions, and concepts as living, influential beings. I find no fault with this. We still connect sleeping and dreaming in much the same way, only less poetically.

A lot of people have devoted a lot of hours to dreams and dreaming. I don’t intend

to review it all. An enormous amount of writing has already been done on the subject. But

I wonder?

I wonder why we are so concerned with something so unsubstantial.

I suppose it’s the mystery that intrigues us. Why do we dream? What does it mean?

Does it mean anything? Does it have some purpose beyond the dreaming?

Many answers have been offered.

Few have been altogether convincing.

Have you ever wondered if that dream that seemed to take hours was really that long? The researchers say that our estimates of dreamtime are generally accurate. Their answer is based upon measurements of R.E.M. (Rapid Eye Movement) in test subjects. R.E.M. is the physical manifestation of our looking about at the everchanging dreamscape in our head. Despite considerable research on the subject of dreams, there is only modest agreement on the findings. R.E.M. being one exception to the rule.

How many species of dreams are there?

Who knows? But many are well known. These are: sweet dreams; nightmares; prophetic dreams; jumbled dreams; and a rare type known as a lucid dream. In lucid dreaming, people assert that they can control the content, action, and length of their dream. If true, I wonder why they would ever want to wake up? Oh yes, of course, eating, making a living, and all that.

Years ago, I had a nightmare that was different in magnitude, and sort, from any I have ever had - before, or since. I was living alone at the time. I was suddenly awaked, in the middle of the night by a cold terror that set me bolt upright in my bed, quivering in dread. Of what?

I don’t know. I can not recall any dream associated with this terror. It seemed to be a force unconnected to anything else. I jumped out of bed and turned on every light in my apartment.

I stayed up all night. It took a full day for the horror to wear off.

I have no explanation for any of it.

I think the most common dream is the jumbled dream. In this type of dream images and events seem to flow without rhyme or reason. When dogs dream, we can see their legs pedal, and hear them whimper or yelp; possibly reliving some episode of flight or fight. We likely do the same. Many suppose the jumble is the result of the brain re-processing the events of the day in random surrealistic fashion. That seems right. Sometimes I can even understand what the crazy disjointed images represent.

Often enough, the re-processing includes memories from long ago. This is the kind of dream that is most likely to be recurrent. I know that I’ve had many dreams of homes, places, and people I’ve never seen, except in recurrent dreams. I somehow understand these dreams as muddled versions of real people, places, and homes that I have known.

They are usually about stressful situations such as being lost in a city ,trying to complete a project already late, or some conflict with dangerous outsiders. In these dreams we are often kept from doing what we want to do - sometimes by paralysis. Medieval dreamers, especially young ladies, were occasionally attacked in the night by incubus. These were male demons’ intent on having their way with nubile girls who were rendered unable to resist by sleep paralysis. Pregnancy sometimes followed, perhaps because of the dream, or, perhaps because of other reasons.

Most dreams are rewrites of what was. Prophetic dreams are about what might be - usually disasters. A lot of people dreamed about the catastrophic unfolding of 9/11. I think this sort of dream happens too often to be completely dismissed as coincidental. Moreover, some dreams related in the Bible (Daniel, Jacob, etc.) connect to actual events. Does that reveal an actual linkage between dreams and reality? Maybe. I’m not inclined to refute the Bible.

There are many instances of art being inspired by dreams. Less known, there are many scientific discoveries that have also been inspired by dreams.

The Danish physicist, Niels Bohr, had been trying to understand the structure of the

 atom without success for some time. One night, with thoughts of atoms dancing in his head, he dreamed of something like a solar system with planets whirling around a central Sun. Upon awaking he realized this dream was an analogy for the atomic structure he had been wondering about – electrons whirling around a central nucleus. He was certain he was right. Further research proved he was right.

William Taylor Coleridge (1797) dreamed of a fantasy palace called Xanadu. Next morning, he wrote about his dream in one of his most famous poems, Kubla Khan. Coleridge did allow that the opium he had enjoyed before retiring may have played a role in his dream. Nonetheless, the dream inspired the poem.

Examples abound, but these two examples should serve to make the point.

Aristotle had a word for this entanglement of dreams and the occasional products that result from them - whether of art or science. He called it: Entelechy. (in-tel-ah-key) Its meaning is, “that which makes actual, what was potential”. There is no equivalent word in English; no doubt because most people have little use for the niceties of metaphysics. But it is a useful word, and concept, when musing on the peculiar nature of dreams.

We are all familiar with the phrase, “I’ll sleep on it”. The implication being that some process of the sleeping mind will provide certainty for some question you were uncertain of when awake. Is that process entelechy? Probably, though it doesn’t necessarily come from a dream. In fact, it doesn’t even necessarily come from sleep. When faced with a complex problem, I generally don’t try to solve it immediately. Instead, I gather as much relevant information as I can. After a few days a solution begins to reveal itself. Did I think of it, or, did some process beyond my conscious mind think for me?

The latter, I believe – entelechy. It’s a useful word for all the mysteries of dreams, inspiration, and revelation.

We live in a welter of multiple realities. Most of which we do not understand. Dreams included. Although many try. I have seen a variety of “dream books” that purport to interpret dreams. If you dream of this, it means that, and so on. I doubt them all. Yes, we respond to symbols, but the meaning of these symbols varies from culture to culture, as well as from person to person. The only dream book that would have a chance of making sense would be one tailored to yourself.

Well, if we can’t really know the meaning our dreams mean, maybe we can round them up, and corral the ones we want. Hence devices like, “dream-catchers”. Google attributes dream-catchers to a single photograph from 1900 of an Ojibwe Indian holding something that looks like a dream-catcher. That’s odd? I’ve read a lot about American Indians.

I don’t recall anything about dream-catchers until the late 1960’s, when they suddenly appeared in incense clouded, “head shops”, run by starry eyed, “flower children”. And yes, I know, Native Americans of every tribe sell these things by the truckload. So, what. I have no objections to either commerce, or innocence.

“Dream, dream, dream”, sang the Everly Brothers. That’s the aspirational use of the word. Technically it should be, “Hope, hope, hope”. But that would sound silly. What would we do without dreams and the metaphorical possibilities they portend. Our lives would be gray, barren. and without poetry.

I say, it’s less important to understand dreams than it is to have them.

Dream on!

By K. L. Shipley

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