| Dreaming is a facet of human experience which most | | | | it! Fortunately, he had the dream again the next |
| of us never stop to ponder upon, busy as we are with | | | | evening; he was later to win the Nobel Prize for this |
| waking life, and yet the average human dreams for a | | | | work. |
| total of six years during his lifetime. In ancient times, | | | | Just as dreams might have two or more of the |
| dreams were given tremendous importance as a | | | | functions above, so also there is no reason why the |
| means of premonition and of communication with the | | | | hypothesis that dreams can reveal deep truths about |
| Divine. Modern schools of thought differ on the | | | | our waking life cannot lie side by side with the |
| purpose of dreaming, but most of them do not give | | | | physiological and psychological hypotheses above. |
| the same credence. Some people think that dreaming | | | | One important factor to take into account is that not all |
| is a mere by-product of random neuron firing, to which | | | | dreams might originate in the same way. In addition to |
| our waking mind then tries to give meaning by | | | | dreams generated by the subconscious in a |
| fashioning these random images into a story. Other | | | | haphazard fashion, there are also dreams in which the |
| hypotheses have been formed as to the role | | | | dreamer wakes up with a tremendous feeling of joy in |
| dreaming fulfils in us: | | | | his heart, or an inner sense that the dream was |
| - dreaming is simply a way of rinsing the body clean of | | | | somehow real; perhaps oneirologists (those who study |
| any accumulated mental garbage during the day | | | | dreams) would benefit from looking at these kinds of |
| - dreaming is a way of dealing with any unfulfilled | | | | dreams differently. As Sri Chinmoy, a meditation |
| desires that may have arisen during the day | | | | teacher who advocates this approach, puts it: |
| - dreaming acts to transfer memory from short-term | | | | "When we have dreams coming from the lower |
| to long-term memory | | | | worlds, the subconscious worlds, or you can say |
| - dreams are excitations of long-term memory which | | | | inconscient worlds, we have to feel that these dreams |
| also occur during waking, but which during waking we | | | | have no value. They cannot change our nature. They |
| have some control over | | | | cannot inspire us. They cannot give us any hope for |
| - dreaming helps us prepare for the tremendous array | | | | our future fulfilment....If it comes from the psychic plane |
| of stimuli we encounter during waking life, especially | | | | (i.e from the heart), we will feel affection, sweetness, |
| when we are young The astute reader will see that | | | | compassion and concern for the things or persons we |
| none of these hypotheses are conflicting, and that | | | | are seeing. And if it comes from the soul's plane, it will |
| dreaming might indeed have two or more of these | | | | be all Light, Delight and Peace." |
| functions. | | | | Of course such a hypothesis is rather difficult to prove |
| These modern-day discourses have rather cast aside | | | | to the world at large; these psychic dreams occur on |
| the long-held possibility that dreaming might function as | | | | a much rarer basis than subconscious dreams which |
| a source of premonition and intuition. However | | | | happen every night, and it is not clear whether the two |
| modern-day accounts still persist. Beethoven heard | | | | kinds of dreams can be resolved physiologically. There |
| some of the musical arrangements that were to | | | | has been some limited research into dreams as a |
| immortalise him in a dream, and groundbreaking insights | | | | method of problem solving, but results have been |
| into carbon bonds and the structure of benzene came | | | | rather mixed, perhaps as a result of failing to distinguish |
| to Fredrich August Kekule in dreams. Abraham Lincoln | | | | psychic dreams from random subconscious dreams. |
| dreamt of his assassination a few days before it | | | | However, difficulties in proving the hypothesis does not |
| happened, and Elias Howe got his inspiration in a | | | | mean it can be dismissed out of hand: after all, the |
| dream for the sewing machine. Srivasan Ramanujan, | | | | dream theories of Sigmund Freud are manifestly |
| one of the 20th centuries greatest mathematicians, | | | | unprovable, and yet they remain perhaps the most |
| would have dreams where proofs to theorems would | | | | influential contribution to oneirology. In any case, many |
| be written for him by Namagiri, a Hindu deity, and he | | | | people who believe that dreams can contain deep |
| even delayed publishing certain theorems on her | | | | truths are content not to seek scientific blessing, but |
| advice. The physiologist Otto Loewi dreamt of an | | | | merely to offer this hypothesis to be tested against |
| experimental test for chemical synaptic transmission, | | | | the internal laboratory of human experience. |
| and frantically spent the next day trying to remember | | | | |