Dreams when hardened turn into reality

The Indian Scriptures talk of Brahma, the Creator sleeping on a sea of milk and He dreams. As he dreams, the Universe is created. Arthur Koestler in his book, The Roots of Coincidence talks of physicists discovering that the stuff of the universe appear to be mindstuff, which validates that which has been taken to be merely fanciful in the West, but but widely believed to be the Truth in the East. If one stops to reflect for a while on everyday realities one can conclude that Dreams indeed become reality. Henry Ford's dream created the automotive industry; Karl Marx's dream almost killed dreaming when he infected others with the idea that the material universe was all there is, and that Spirituality, or Religion was nothing more than an opiate. Mao tse tung said that power emanated from the barrel of a gun, taking Karl Marx's ideas to the extreme and he plunged a great nation to the brink of total bankruptcy of knowledge and ideals, nearly wiping out five thousand years of scientific knowledge unknown to the West.

When a man's dreams are taken away from him, he loses his creativity and reinforces the idea that 'the System' is too strong to oppose. It is a situation very much similar to a caged bird which refuses to fly away even when his cage door is opened.

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Dreams are played in the sub-conscious

Mind is commonly divided into three parts: conscious, sub-conscious, unconscious. Carl Jung writes extensively about the Unconscious which he characterizes as a portion of Reality where commonalities appear. He called these Archetypes or common themes appearing without regard to race or culture or locality. Ancient Indian and Chinese Philosophy also agree on this point while using different terminology.

It is said that dreaming occurs in the subconscious where the conscious mind has no control over. Furthermore, the unconscious sometimes reaches out into the subconscious as in the case of prophetic dreams. It is not only in dreaming that this can happen. The repository of all knowledge, the Unconscious sometimes in ordnary people but more often in highly evolved individuals, leaks into the subconscioius often in dreams and sometimes in waking visions and portray events yet to come.

Lucid dreaming is a method where the consious mind is made to observe and possibly participate in the dreaming process. Meditation on the other hand, is the conscious effort to tread into the subconscious while fully aware and conscious, and attempt to cross the bridge into the unconscious while fully in control of one's senses. It is as though the mind were reaching out to the Divine mind. This is called Sadhana in Sanskrit and Kung Fu in Chinese.

Remembering dreams

Dreams have always been fascinating to me and I suppose that everyone dreams or consider dreams to be of some importance in his or her life. But, the problem I had with dreams was that I could not remember them when I woke up. I often hear people talk about their dream the night before as though it was as clear as night and day. Some people also talk of dreaming in color and I thought, what a cool way to dream. Are people who dream in color somehow more intelligent or more creative and talented than those who just dream in black and white and maybe gray? Some dream experts suggest keeping a dream journal and I did just that.

I set aside a notebook and a pen close to my bed each night so I could reach out and write any dream that occurred that night. I read about Rapid Eye Movement or REM and how it signalled that the dreaming process was happening. Well, I just mentioned it because I think that's important to know. Anyway, I wrote down my dreams whenever I could wake up to write them. A problem with this is that it tends to drive dreams away when you wake up and interrupt the mental movie playing, so to speak. Going back to sleep and trying to continue the dream sems forced and contrived, and just doesn't work. In my teen years there were vivid dreams which were kinid of embarrassing when I wake up to find my underpants wet.

Everyone dreams, even dogs and cats

What is it about dreams that makes them universal to beings with suficiently-developed nervous systems? One can observe dogs to be behaving curiously when asleep as though they were dreaming. If this can be observed in dogs then I would conclude that other animals would have the same capability. We all know that dreams mostly occur in the brain and since animals have brains too then wouldn't it be reasonable to expect them to be capable of dreaming too? Do frogs dream of being princes? Are some princes really frogs at heart? Or, would that be insulting to a frog?

We human beings feel so superior to other creatures that we claim dominion over them as though everything is at our disposal. The bible proclaims that as our right. Does anyone question what the bible says? What if it is wrong? What if someone just made it up? There is really no way of knowing and so we go on thinking of ourselves as superior beings. Some of us human beings especially those with white skin think of themselves to be superior to those with darker skin. Can anyone just declare oneself to be better and greater than others? If we dream and if frogs dream can it be said that we are better than frogs? Maybe a frog's dream is more colorful than ours.

We know what the dream of most people are, that's something that's easy to enumerate: Money, cars, fame. adulation, power, beautiful women for men and maybe hunky men for women but these days even men dream of other men and women dream of other women so, who's to say?.Mostly we dream of being what we are not and of having what we do not have. It is of desiring more and more. Maybe this is the call of evolution: to raise oneself above what one is. Dreaming might not be such a bad thing after all.

Omens, portents...wouldn't it be nice to know the future?

The nicest thing about being a human being is having a conscious mind. We see and hear things outside of us and we also hear and see things inside our minds. Our thoughts can bring us to the past and the future faster than the speed of light. It is truly wonderful to have consciouisness. However, things are not so straightforward at all. Our memories can fail and we cannot readily tell the future. The present can often be something undesirable causing us to long for a more pleasant past and to aim for a much better future. In either case we utilize a faculty which never gets formally trained or developed: our imagination

We have a facility for dealing with a painful past and that is to forget it and pretend it never happened. This can be easy or hard depending on the person and the extent of the pain or unpleasantness. But, what we can rely on is the fact that our minds do help us cope with everyday situation. We see ourselves differently from the way other people see us. We can be forgiving of ourselves or hard with ourselves. We never see ourselves as we are hence, the need for analysts and support groups and life coaches. We need help to be ourselves.

In dreams we let go of the structures of the super-ego and just float away into pathways unknown to us. The Oracle at Delphi was an important destination in ancient Greece. Anyone seeking answers would go there and try to coax directions from the god. Psychics and mediums would fall asleep and see things which others could not. Edgar Cayce was called the Sleeping Prophet because he would of what he saw while asleep.

Recurring dreams, recurring themes....

I used to have recurring dreams of being chased or of flying and falling. There are many recorded accounts of dreams that make their way again and again into our subconscious wheere we have little or no control of what goes on in our minds. I read once of how dreams are dealt with in some parts of Malaysia, where dreamers are encouraged to take an active part in their dreams and to try to bring the dream to a conclusion which is desirable or satisfying to the dreamer. To take an example, if one is constantly menaced or chased by a tiger, the dreamer is encouraged to face the tiger and even to pet and stroke it.

My own experience deals with a very unpleasant dream of being chased by a witch or a demon flying easily through the air and terrorizing me. Sometimes I would make attempts at flying myself to facilitate an escape but to no avail because I wuld invariably lose altitude after a while and frantically flapping my arms would produce no tangible results. The funny thing was that nothing ever happened to me maybe because I would wake up in a sweat and discover it was all a dream.

Sweet Dreams are made of these...

About a third of every person's day is spent being unconscious, well more when you count the times when he is wandering off somewhere else while while you are talking to him. He can mask that and pretend that he is paying attention, a talent President George W, Bush is in short supply of. But to come to the point, everyone spends a great deal of time sleeping and in that span most likely he is also dreaming. What are dreams made of?

Are dreams a way of achieving what cannot be attained when awake, as in wish-fulfillment types of dreams? When you get the girl and feel every bit like Superman? Are they a way whereby God warns us of dire events or even to give us a hint of an impending death in the family? Are they a way for the mind to processi the vaeious inputs and stimuli of the day so that one is able to deal with another frantic, hectic day when one awakes?

What of dreams that we have when we're awake as in daydreams? When in reverie we recall some sweet long-gone moments that only seem sweeter with each recollection. What about dreams or visions of what we want our lives to be? The great things that we hope to achieve in our lifetimes? What function do they fulfill in our lives? Why are dreams so important? I presume they are because they pervade our lives in modern times as well as in the past when the first ape-man first flirted with Thought and began to be conscious of himself.