We sleep sleep and dream, your inner mind is busy as a bee (and your body’s chemical factory is also active producing dozens of substances that affect your growth, your brain, your emotions, and everything else about you). This deep mind is called the unconscious, and it never sleeps. Entire books have been written about the unconscious mind and its activities and processes, and more than a few books have been written about dreams and their connection to the unconscious mind. However, when all is said and done, dreaming remains a mystery. That’s the complex part! The truth is that nobody, but nobody, really knows why we dream, where dreams originate, exactly what they mean, or much else about this most complex of human characteristics.
A dream is a succession of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations that usually occur involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep.
The content and purpose of dreams are not fully understood, although they have been a topic of scientific, philosophical and religious interest throughout recorded history. Dream interpretation is the attempt at drawing meaning from dreams and searching for an underlying message. The scientific study of dreams is called oneirology.
Dreams mainly occur in the rapid-eye movement (REM) stage of sleep—when brain activity is high and resembles that of being awake. REM sleep is revealed by continuous movements of the eyes during sleep. At times, dreams may occur during other stages of sleep. However, these dreams tend to be much less vivid or memorable.The length of a dream can vary; they may last for a few seconds, or approximately 20–30 minutes. People are more likely to remember the dream if they are awakened during the REM phase. The average person has three to five dreams per night, and some may have up to seven; however, most dreams are immediately or quickly forgotten.
Dreams tend to last longer as the night progresses. During a full eight-hour night sleep, most dreams occur in the typical two hours of REM. Dreams related to waking-life experiences are associated with REM theta activity, which suggests that emotional memory processing takes place in REM sleep.
Opinions about the meaning of dreams have varied and shifted through time and culture. Many endorse the Freudian theory of dreams – that dreams reveal insight into hidden desires and emotions.[qualify evidence] Other prominent theories include those suggesting that dreams assist in memory formation, problem solving, or simply are a product of random brain activation.
Sigmund Freud, who developed the psychological discipline of psychoanalysis, wrote extensively about dream theories and their interpretations in the early 1900s. He explained dreams as manifestations of one’s deepest desires and anxieties, often relating to repressed childhood memories or obsessions. Furthermore, he believed that virtually every dream topic, regardless of its content, represented the release of sexual tension.
In The Interpretation of Dreams (1899), Freud developed a psychological technique to interpret dreams and devised a series of guidelines to understand the symbols and motifs that appear in our dreams. In modern times, dreams have been seen as a connection to the unconscious mind. They range from normal and ordinary to overly surreal and bizarre. Dreams can have varying natures, such as being frightening, exciting, magical, melancholic, adventurous, or sexual. The events in dreams are generally outside the control of the dreamer, with the exception of lucid dreaming, where the dreamer is self-aware. Dreams can at times make a creative thought occur to the person or give a sense of inspiration.
References: Wiki / Dream
A dream is an event transpiring in that world belonging to the mind when the objective senses have withdrawn into rest or oblivion.
Then the spiritual man is living alone in the future or ahead of objective life and consequently lives man’s future first, developing conditions in a way that enables waking man to shape his actions by warnings, so as to make life a perfect existence.
A dream to the average or sensual person, bears the same relation to his objective life that it maintained in the case of the ideal dreamer, but it means pleasures, sufferings and advancements on a lower or material plane.
Just as words fail sometimes to express ideas, so dreams fail sometimes in their mind pictures to portray coming events.
When a person dreams of past events, those events are warnings of evil or good; sometimes they are stamped so indelibly upon the subjective mind that the least tendency of the waking mind to the past throws these pictures in relief on the dream consciousness.
Because the future of man is usually affected by the present, so if he mars the present by wilful wrongs, or makes it bright by right living it will necessarily have influence on his dreams, as they are forecastings of the future.
It is the subjective mind stored with the wisdom gained from futurity, and in its strenuous efforts to warn its present habitation the corporal body of dangers just ahead, takes on the shape of a dear one as the most effective method of imparting this knowledge.
There is no past and future to subjectivity. It is all one living present.
Because events are like a procession; they pass a few at a time and cast a shadow on subjective minds, and those which have passed before the waking mind are felt by other minds also and necessarily make a more lasting impression on the subjective mind.
A changed state from perfect sleep or waking possessed him.