Dreams Come True - II

This I'd say is an extension to the previous article of mine on reason of dreams. Last time I said that dreams are nothing but uncontrolled thinking process of brain, and supported it by the fact that as other functions of body continue on their own while sleeping; the same way the thinking process of our brain does. Now I have something more to tell. The answer is same, but I have some other facts and observations to support that.

Let me tell that with a demonstration.

1. Suppose I told you to calculate 38x39, just by thinking, how you'll do that? While calculating, you'll probably close your eyes to concentrate better and visualise the calculation in brain. And yes it is easier to think of something by closing eyes and visualizing it. Agreed?

2. Again, if I ask you not to think of an object, then for sure you'll think of it, or rather that object will appear in your mind if your eyes are closed. If it's a tree, then most probably you'll think of that tree which you've seen most of the time, or recently. Also if you have that object a special place in your life, like a memorable moment associated with that, or an accident, or whatever that makes it unforgettable for you, that will come in your mind. Agreed?

Now let's merge the above two activities. I'll give you a situation in which the characters will be things or people you see often, or the most memorable ones. So it'll be much easier for you to visualise the scenario that I've created for you, by closing your eyes, if it's a bit confusing or takes effort to create it orally.

At every point in the scenario, whatever point I'm giving to you has something related to you in your mind in any way, even if I don't know about that, and only if we both are at almost same level of life experience. What I'm doing to you might be the same as what hypnotizers do with people to extract information that they don't even know about.

You start thinking about something while awake, and if you are a deep thinker, then you'll end up thinking anything else different from what you started at, not suddenly, but through sequence of thoughts related to one another, leading your mind to think something else that you didn't expected to think. This process is however under your conscious control, and you know where you started, and what thoughts you've been going through, and the conclusion.

While sleeping, you lose control over your thoughts. While dreaming, the thinking center of your brain picks up a random thought from your memory. And consequently, every thought, object, place, person or emotion, related to that first thought comes up sequentially after that. Say, you watched Stree(a Bollywood film) a night before sleeping, so most probably your first thought in your dream that night will be a random scene from that film, like, you might be at a temple at night in a jagran, and if you've attend any recent jagran in reality, then you'll probably see that in the dream. Now after this first thought, things become complex. Consequent thoughts have at least two ways to proceed: first, you might have the real fear of that film's ghost in dream, and in addition to this, you might have the other characters as your friends, or your own real life friends can be there. Second, you might have some memories of your real life jagran being the consequent event in your dream, like, that old Uncle slipping in front of you and still dancing at the beats; that lead singer whose mike just failed to work; that sudden blackout in the mid of the jagran, or any event in your real life jagran you remember the best. Apart from the two paths, many other thoughts related to the film or the familiar location can or will follow, and you don't have to think of any of them, since the brain itself knows which part of your lifetime you remember better. The random thoughts will arrange themselves like a motion picture, since every thought has some visual memory related to it, and also visualizing a situation makes it easier to think, as I demonstrated earlier above.

In addition to all this, you also can't hear any voices in dream, but still you get to know what someone is speaking in your dream. This is simply because it's YOUR dream. Sensation of voice is caused due to an external factor. Your brain knows what the other person is speaking in dream, because what is being conversed is itself in your memory, so you always know what a person will say in a particular known situation in your dream.

Now you're dreaming perfectly: a motion picture of your interlinked random but sorted thoughts, in the order of the strength of your memories related to each of them, with in-memory unhearable but relevant, known conversations, being played in your mind while you're sleeping, popularly known as dream.

When it comes to the end of your dreaming process, it can happen in several ways. But the common end is: waking up. Suppose you're in a deep dream, and it's 6 o'clock in the morning. Any person who wakes you will come and shake you, will say - 'wake up buddy', or any phrase similar to that.(Indian moms use many other fantastic phrases!). Well, if you're in a deep dream, and someone is present before you in dream, then it'll appear as that person is speaking the phrase to you in the dream. As I told earlier that sensation of sound is an external factor, your subconscious mind will treat it as an alien part, that is, it'll not be a part of your memory. This will make your mind little alert, leading to the end of your dream, and finally waking you up. Other than this, if you've ever tried this with your siblings that speaking something memorable in the ear of your sleeping sibling which might be related to what he/she might be dreaming, makes it appear in his/her dream, as the brain takes the voice input while sleeping, and if it finds the same phrase already in a recalable memory, then it'll treat that as a part of dream, leaving it uninterrupted. In any of the previous cases, if the external voice is louder enough to wake you up, dream will abruptly come to an end.

Remembering a dream is a hard nut to crack. Most of the time we only remember the last part of our dream. This is because of the reason that none of our consequent thoughts are sequenced by us in a dream. While thinking being awake, out thoughts are related to one another under our conscious control, and thus we remember what we've thought so far. But in dreams, we have no control over our thoughts, and that's why we tend to lose every scene in a dream once it's gone. The last part is the only part that we are able to recall. Also, the basic learning process of our brain is based upon interlinking of different memories with each other. Since no thought is permanently interlinked in a dream, we are unable to remember the dream.

So, dreaming is an easy process for us, but the way our brain accommodates it, is a complex one. This is just an attempt to unbox one of the oldest miracle gifts of our brain to us, i.e., the ability to dream. Why we dream is a common concern, but what we dream totally depends upon what we want to.