Mind's Eye Re: Dreams, Why we dream and how to interpret our dreams.

Another function of dreams- and one could add daydreams, imagination,
drugged states, etc.- it to buffer one agaiinst life's realities and
the myth of "unconditionals". Perhaps that is what created the myths
and religions, all powerful gods and paradise, in the first place.

On Aug 21, 4:42 am, andrew vecsey <andrewvec...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Anyone interested in dreams and would like to give their opinions and vent
> their ideas about them????
>
> Below are my opinions and ideas in both video and text format. Video format
> is found at  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xk6lpV-rWPc
>
> A summary of my essay is:
>
>    - Dreams are like the cleaning-up operations of computers when they are
>    off-line. Like defragmenting a fragmented memory.
>    - * *In your dream you are putting your memory of the day in short term
>    memory into your long term memory.
>    - Dreams are like when we put a picture away and see an old photograph
>    of a long forgotten event that raises our interest.
>    - Dreaming of our past lives makes each human brain a cosmic eye for the
>    cosmic brain allowing it to experience the cosmos.
>
> Text of video:
>
> Our personalities are split into a conscious part that we are aware of and
> a subconscious part that works automatically without our awareness. The
> conscious part dominates when we are awake, and our subconscious dominates
> while we are sleeping. When we go to sleep, the conscious part, having
> recorded all our reality as we experienced it disconnects its sensory
> inputs and also goes to sleep.
>
> This happens over our entire life time. Whenever we sleep, we dream every
> couple of hours. The dreams last from about 10 minutes at the beginning of
> the sleep and increase to about 20 minutes at the end. We remember our
> dreams only 5% of the time, if we wake up while we are dreaming or if they
> are sufficiently vivid with emotions and sensations to be worth
> remembering.
>
> Our dreams can feel so real that sometime we do not know for a while if we
> were dreaming or not. Whenever we are surprised by extra ordinary luck, we
> pinch ourselves and hope it`s not all just a dream. When we are shocked by
> real horror, we really hope it`s only a nightmare. When we wake up from a
> nightmare, the terror or anxiety is so real to us that our body reacts as
> if it was real by increasing heartbeat, breathing and hormone production.
>  As realistic as dreams are, once we are fully awakened into reality, we
> have no problems in knowing what is real and what was only a dream.
>
> Dreams are like the cleaning-up operations of computers when they are
> off-line. Like defragmenting a fragmented memory full of holes and
> rearranging to make more space, we dream to be able to forget and in this
> way make room to record more information. In dreaming, we move short term
> memory to long term memory compressing it, keeping only certain information
> that we want to remember. This could be a smile, a wink, or the color of
> dress, type of shoes, hairstyle or smell of perfume. All other data in our
> photographic mind is greatly compacted or erased, for most, except for some
> autistic savants who can retain long term photographic memory like it was a
> photograph. Some, like the man Kim Peek, depicted in the movie Rain Man,
> was able to recite by heart entire telephone books he has scanned thru in
> the past.
>
> While we dream, our eyes move in a way called rapid eye movement or REM.
> All mammals experience REM. Dolphins experience minimum REM, while humans
> remain in the middle and the opossum and the armadillo are among the most
> prolific dreamers. A 10 minute event we dream about takes 10 minutes of
> dream time. Time is not sped up or slowed down or distorted during dreams.
>
> Sleep deprivation, depriving dreams, results in rapid deterioration of
> physiological functioning.  During our dreams many external stimuli may
> bombard the senses and the brain often integrates them and makes them a
> part of a dream to ensure continued sleep and continued dreams.
>
> People all over the world dream of mostly the same things- their personal
> experiences from the last day or week. Most people dream in color.  The
> visual nature of dreams are generally reflective of a person's memories and
> experiences, but often take on highly exaggerated and bizarre forms
> blending into each other.
>
> The most common emotion experienced in dreams is *anxiety*. Other emotions
> include abandonment, anger, fear, joy and happiness. Negative emotions
> dominate positive ones. Sexual dreams occur no more than 10% of the time
> and may result in orgasms or nocturnal emissions called *wet dreams*.  *
> Sleepwalking* is where our subconscious part, like a hypnotist hypnotizes
> our conscious part to do certain things without our knowing and remembering
> them. *Lucid dreaming* is when we have a certain level of control and
> awareness while dreaming because our conscious part is still awake when the
> subconscious starts to move short term memory into long term memory. Many
> people experience *recurring dreams*.
>
> *Example of a dream and how it can be interpreted.*
>
> You went horseback riding in the morning and attended a surprise birthday
> party for your friend in the afternoon. In the evening you saw a film. You
> go to sleep and the next morning the alarm wakes you up. You wake up
> sweating and your heart is beating as if a lion jumped at you. You realize
> that it was all a dream. You dreamt you were with your brother waiting for
> your sister to come home for dinner. When the doorbell rang, you opened the
> door just to find a lion jumping at you. Then you woke up.
> **
> *Why such a dream?  *In your dream you are putting your memory of the day
> into your long term memory. The horse you rode was put into your animal
> compartment, the birthday event into the surprise compartment and the film
> you saw into the film compartment, filled with the many films you saw with
> your brother. And the alarm was the doorbell. As your brain opened up the
> various compartments, items that were previously stored there were
> re-examined. This is like when we put a picture away and see an old
> photograph of a long forgotten event that raises our interest.
>
> Vivid and colorful dreams can give a creative thought or a sense of
> inspiration. Sometime we dream about people events and places that are
> totally unfamiliar to us. In some cases it has been discovered that people
> dreamt about unknown people in unknown places who turned out to be real
> people who had died long ago. The simplest explanation to this is that
> memories of our past lives are uncovered and shown to our conscious part in
> dreams. This is the greatest gift of dreams. It opens doors to newly found
> treasures of remote memories beyond the short term and long term memories
> found in the brain.  This makes each human brain a cosmic eye for the
> cosmic brain allowing it to experience the cosmos.

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