Sumangali.org: In The Spirit Of Serendipity

Do you ever wonder why we have to sleep? I’ve always thought that spending a third of my life unconscious is a spectacular waste of time. But of course I must be mistaken, otherwise God wouldn’t have made us like this.

Not only does sleep give the body a break and a chance to recover, sleep gives us a chance to dream.

But…

Why Do We Dream?

The Dream World, is it really so Heavenly, or just an escape from reality like watching too much TV? Were my own dreams to come true, at least the few I remember, my waking life would probably be less interesting than usual, and maybe a bit more stressful.

So what’s the big deal about dreams? Apparently, even if they’re ordinary, they prevent psychosis. So sleep is obviously a wise investment rather than an indulgent squandering of time.

“In a recent sleep study, students who were awakened at the beginning of each dream, but still allowed their 8 hours of sleep, all experienced difficulty in concentration, irritability, hallucinations, and signs of psychosis after only 3 days.”

So says Listverse.com (a very cool and very interesting site) in Top 10 Amazing Facts About Dreams. Among those amazing facts are the revelations that:

• Everybody has dreams but that we forget 90% of them. “Within 5 minutes of waking, half of your dream is forgotten. Within 10, 90% is gone.” Those who claim not to have dreams are probably just better at sleeping: “If you are awakened out of REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep, you are more likely to remember your dream.”
• Blind people dream “People who become blind after birth can see images in their dreams. People who are born blind do not see any images, but have dreams equally vivid involving their other senses of sound, smell, touch and emotion.”
• Not everyone dreams in colour
• If you’re snoring you’re not dreaming. [Neither are you reading.]

ZZZzzzzzzzz

The average person spends a total of 6 years dreaming, according to Discover Magazine in 20 Things You Didn’t Know About Sleep. It’s obviously time well spent, even if they’re not very interesting dreams, and these facts are much more interesting than most of my dreams:

• The surgical procedure to cure chronic snoring is called uvulopalatopharyngoplasty.
• Counting sheep doesn’t work: According to research at Oxford University “The mental activity is so boring that other problems and concerns inevitably surface.”
• Oversleeping (like undersleeping) could permanently damage your health: ”A six-year study of a million adults showed that people who get only six to seven hours of sleep a night have a lower death rate than those who get eight hours.” [Unfortunately it doesn't say why, and this was probably the most interesting fact of all.]
• Fear of sleep is called somniphobia [maybe a more rational fear than you'd think, given the research above.]

Do Animals Dream?

Well I know the answer to this where dogs are concerned. One dog in my family has very active dreams that (like my own) seem quite similar to waking life. Going by the paw twitches and muffled yelps they apparently involve chasing, digging and asking (not very politely) for food etc.

According to Islandnet:

“Yes, animals dream. Researchers Dr. Matthew Wilson and Kenway Louie at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology selected four lucky rats. They implanted micro-electrodes into the hippocampus, the region of the brain associated with memory. Then they monitored the firing patterns of the neurons hooked up to micro-electrodes.

The patterns were the same whether the rat was dreaming about running around on a track or actually running around on a track. In fact, by just looking at the patterns, the scientists could tell whether the creature was dreaming about running or just sitting around. So why do animals dream? Probably to re-live and learn from experience.”

Which Plane Did You Catch?

As for humans, everyone I know likes to talk about their dreams, whether they’re funny, strange, scary, uplifting or full of symbols. Are they really symbolic? Can they instruct or inspire us, or are they just nonsense?

Sri Chinmoy gives a spiritual viewpoint in his book The Journey of Silver Dreams

”There are seven higher worlds and seven lower worlds. When we have dreams coming from the lower worlds, the subconscious worlds—or you can say, inconscient worlds—we have to feel that these dreams have no value. They cannot change our nature. They cannot inspire us. They cannot give us any hope for our future fulfilment. When we get a dream from the vital plane, we will see that the dream will be constant movement. It will be like a battlefield where everything is breaking and smashing and people are being killed. These dreams cannot help us at all in our spiritual life. The best thing we can do is forget them. If the dream comes from the mental plane, there will be some poise—not full poise, but a little poise, a little calm and quiet there. If it comes from the psychic plane, we will feel affection, sweetness, compassion and concern for the things or persons we are seeing. And if it comes from the soul’s plane, it will be all Light, Delight and Peace.”
—Sri Chinmoy

CREDITS

• Image 1: Flaming June by JWW Waterhouse: absolutely the finest fine artist, ever (polite disagreements welcome in the comments section below).
• Image 2: I don’t much care for cats, but I’m incurably addicted to Cute Overload (sorry, I know, I know) where I found this seemingly harmless variety.
• Title: Inspired by a spate of Shakespearean titles over at Thousandeye, a healthy habit always to be encouraged. This one is perhaps not as inspiring as it sounds, spoken by Hamlet in his most famous soliquoy. He contemplates the sleep of death as a solution to his problems, but then dreads the dreams that might come with it. Indeed, anyone would dread the dreams of such a troubled man. Not much of a bedtime story, but a cracking good plot nonetheless.
• You: Credit is amply due to anyone who got this far in the post.