Since Freud published The Interpretation of Dreams sending the world of psychology into a psychoanalytic tailspin, many people have wondered what in fact is the significance of dreams. Freud himself thought dreams to be a representation of wishes, and their relationship between the unconscious and conscious mind as a bridge of sorts. With the strange representations often encountered in dreams, however, this opened the door up for Freud, and many other dream interpretors to follow, to speculate on the actual meaning of those strange representations.
As psychology has shifted paradigms, and only the most staunch believers in psychoanalysis adhere to general interpretive symbolism that has emerged through the years – an example of which would be to say that if someone dreamed of water, they were actually experiencing wishes for homo-erotic interactions – the interpretation of dreams and questions of purpose or meaning are still quite up in the air.
Many volumes of proposed theories and inferences on dreams are available to thumb through, and it’s no doubt that the general public holds their own opinions on their personal dream experiences. However, as far as psychology is concerned, there seems to be only a biophysiological explanation that may hold water without any presumed inference or conclusions.
Dream state is achieved during the fifth stage of sleep, or REM, named this after the rapid eye movements externally observed occurring in the sleeper. That’s not the only part of the body moving so rapidly at that stage, though. Electrical currents of the brain during REM sleep are at the same frequency and wavelength as currents found in wakeful persons. To put it another way, your brain is just as active during REM sleep as it is when you are awake.
What’s the implication of this? Well, taking into consideration that the body in a sense “shuts off” sensory organs and holds the body in a state of paralysis during REM sleep, making it difficult to initiate the sleeper in conscious interaction while in REM, it appears that the brain is using this time to “recharge.” It is talking to itself.
Neurally speaking, the nerve cells of the brain, called neurons, are firing synaptic charges across the brain at the same rate they would if a person was fully awake. With no outside sensory input, the brain is effectually either reviewing with itself as a way to sort of strengthen synaptic connections already in place, or communicating to itself to process new information from short term to long term memory and then “categorize”new information in with the old schemas of thought. Maybe it’s doing both. Either way, if you’ve ever dreamed, it’s almost safe to say that you have never dreamed of anything you have not experienced already, even if the experiences and input are completely jumbled within the dream. You may see your grandma riding a jet ski in the middle of a baseball game and ask yourself the significance… or dream about a fish who’s hobbies were eating ice cream and chatting with your uncle Stan, who is represented in your dream as an overly grouchy mule, and wonder what that meant. All in all, you’ve encountered your grandma, jet skis, baseball, fish, ice cream, your Uncle Stan, and mules in your life, but perhaps not at the same time. Those are synaptic impulses playing along the vast network of themselves which make up the gray matter that makes up the majority of your brain. These synaptic impulses are the pathways to thought and action. It makes sense that they would need time to rehearse, communicate, and organize themselves properly. Thus, REM sleep is imperative for full mental capacity, and at least three cycles of sleep that include a full fifth stage of sleep.
To be honest, these are my own theories on the significance of dreams, and I have a lot of research ahead of me to continue to answer this question. I gathered most of my information from historical research on dream theory as well as my own analysis of behavioral, psycho-physiological, and neuronal information.
And in conclusion, my opinion is that although they are interesting and sometimes incite emotional query and existential scrutiny, dreams are merely the process of your brain organizing itself without any stimulation to interfere.
Now, the question is, if we are all energetic beings, who are connected on an energetically quantum level, is it possible to have prophetic dreams based on past and future energy circulating in present consciousness?
