Dreams

Dreams for me are those vibrant, mysterious nocturnal vacations I indulge in each night. I do not so much indulge in them; they are bestowed upon me, several times each night. I may not remember every dream. Every one of us has several nightly sojourns into this mysterious experience. Dream researchers tell us in an average life span a human being dreams for about six years. Can you imagine six years of vacationing in diverse exotic experiences? The dictionary definition: Dream: (noun) a sequence of images that appear involuntarily to the mind of someone who is sleeping, of a mixture of real and imaginary characters, places and events. They come involuntarily to my mind. I wonder who bestows this vacation on me each night. My Creator, I would unhesitatingly say, but why, I also wonder. Dreams are replete with mystery. It is the mystery of this biological phenomenon that might have woven itself in the cultural history of religion. We desire to know how and why of all things mysterious.

Our fascination with dreams are about as ancient as our ability to dream. Do the blind dream? If they are born blind do their dreams have visual images? Do babies dream? The dreams of the blind are a mixture of the experience of their world from touch, smell and sound etc. Babies spend 72 percent (compared to 15% in adults) of their sleeping time in the REM stage of sleep. This is the stage where dreams occur. From our studies with adults we know 10 to 20 percent of the REM time incubates dreams. So we can conclude babies dream. We also know that as the baby grows REM stage sleep length decreases. This is because the stimulus needed to “exercise” the emotional growth of the baby comes from the external environment. To me a dream may be a refreshing vacation each night bestowed upon me by my Creator to revive and refresh me emotionally. To a physician a dream may be a biological mechanism of communicating with the conscious and subconscious states of the human body. To the religious a dream may prophetic or revelatory significance. Dream researchers tell us that the content and purpose of dreams are poorly understood. This is why or in spite of which there exists a sizable industry of dream interpretation.