The World Within: Dreams

A passage from the Upanishads describes our subconscious realm; "when on goes to sleep, he takes along the material of t his world and dreams himself tears it apart, himself builds it up. There are no joys there, no pleasures, and no delights. But he projects from himself joys, pleasures, delights. There are no ponds there, no lotus-pools, and no streams.  But he projects from himself ponds, lotus-pools, streams. For he is a creator."

The kaleidoscopic images of dreams are windows into the subconscious mind. During the day, the mind is agitated by many sense impressions which are, as we have seen, stored in the subconscious mind. This every night, we have a tremendous backlog of partially -processed experience; and during sleep when these accumulated unsorted impressions are revived in the brain-cells, the disjointed images of daily life appear in the subconscious mind as dreams. Dreams help us to process our daily experiences, or to satisfy deep desires which do not find fulfillment in our conscious, everyday lives.

But the process expands tremendous energy. Dreaming is indeed a kind of "internal frenzy" the closed eyes move rapidly in their sockets, the pulse and breathing become erratic, the blood pressure soars, oxygen consumption is increased, the hormones in the blood rise sharply, and the brain temperature soars alarmingly. And this bodily ferment may occur five or six times in one night! Little wonder that we often wake up as tired as when we went to bed!

Dream stimulation may become even more agitated if the nerves are tense or weak, the brain is overtaxed due to the anxiety or intense mental concentration, or the digestion is disturbed (over-eating or eating too late at night produces gases which may disturb the mind during sleep).

M ost people have to dream to discharge the waves of nervous excitement which build up in their bodies each day, and if they are deprived of dreaming for several nights they may become severely mentally disturbed. Only those who practice deep meditation do not need to dream, for meditation performs the same function of psychic catharsis for them that dreams do for the dreamer. If they maintain purity of thought and restraint over their diet, they will remain in a deep, relaxed, dreamless state throughout the night - and wake up feeling completely refreshed, even after a few hours of sleep. The average person spends about a third of his or her life in sleep and a fifth in dreams; the Yogi spends only a f ifth of his or her life - or less - in sleep, and little or none of it in dreams.