Dream the magical realm, Brain the scientific landmine

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Brain is a fascinating thing the more you try to understand it, the more it leaves you confounded.A mysterious and unexplained aspect of brain is DREAMING. Dreams are such experiences that are involuntarily felt by us during our sleep.

The science of studying dreams is called oneirology. Dreams occur in the phase of REM( Rapid-Eye Movement) sleep. It is that phase when we are the most conscious in our sleep. In many religions,  dreams are said to be the messages from God, that is why ancient Egyptians believed that people who dreamt were blessed, Mesopotamians, ancient Indians and ancient Chinese considered that some aspects of soul leave the body while dreaming.

Many famous artists have found ideas from their dreams. Paul McCartney found his famous number “yesterday” through a dream, Srinivasa Ramanujan, a great Indian mathematician was inspired by his dreams. Stephen King, Albert Einstein, Hitler and many more used their dreams to become what they are known for today.

Some dreams are common to most of us because they carry a hidden meaning. Being naked in public symbolizes the fear of getting exposed emotionally, being lost relates to unpreparedness, flying relates to sexual ambitions and being able to rise above problems. 

Brain is a puzzle

Its very comical that men tend to dream more of men while women dream equally of men and women and another interesting factoid is that the people we dream of are actually real people and not creations of our mind, It’s hard to believe that because we simply don’t remember those faces!

People who are blind by birth have dreams involving senses other than sight, like sound, smell, touch etc. Not only this, but a very few people dream in black and white, earlier the proportion was more but linking this with the development of coloured televisions, since the 1960s people have started having more coloured dreams.

Our parents,mentors keep telling us to dream big but is this really in our hands? Actually science has proven it quite is. Not fully but yes we are somewhat able to control our dreams. It can be done while lucid dreaming. It is a state when a dreamer is aware that he/she is dreaming! In this state we can control some aspects of our dream like the characters, environment etc. The director of hits like Avatar, Titanic, The terminator, James Cameron was inspired by his own subconscious and went on to make these blockbusters immortal movies.

Our brain uses the external influence in our dream. For example the sound in reality can be incorporated and we can hear it in our dream too. But some danger and alert sounds are not incorporated instead we are awakened by those sounds like a mother is awakened by the sound of a crying baby as that is an alert as well as an annoying sound for her as she would have to climb out of her bed to change the stinking shitty diaper.

Brain indeed is a mysterious realm, I can never understand my dreams but I am always left awestruck by them. I’m sure I’ll have an interesting one tonight and maybe you’ll have one too, Sweet dreams :)