What Causes Dreams?

Did you ever wonder what causes dreams? Dreams are an interesting phenomenon, and the topic of much debate. Do dreams reveal hidden desires, or are they merely a conglomerate of random thoughts? What is the purpose of dreaming, and does it provide some type of psychological benefit to us? There are many questions to consider about dreams, but first we must understand the cause behind them.

Dreams are a series of images, emotions, sounds, or thoughts that occur during a specific portion of when you sleep. Your sleep is divided into two main blocks: rapid eye movement sleep (known as REM), and non rapid eye movement sleep (Non-REM). Dreams almost always only occur during REM sleep.


REM Sleep

REM sleep is only a small part of your sleep, usually taking up only about twenty percent of our overall sleep. Your sleep cycle is broken up into different stages—the first four stages are Non-REM and include your deep sleep stages, and the last stage is REM sleep.

During any given night, you will usually go through the sleep cycle at least three or four times, which means that you will have three or four periods of REM sleep. For example, if you sleep for about seven hours, you will have a little over an hour of REM sleep.

During REM sleep, your breathing is irregular and your heart rate is irregular as well. During Non-REM sleep, your breathing and heart rate is much more regular and much slower. Although scientists still aren’t exactly sure what causes dreams, it’s clear that REM sleep is very important to human beings


Theories on Why Dreams Occur

Even though there’s agreement about what causes dreams, there have been a lot of different theories about the topic. The physiological theory about why dreams occur, for example, is that dreams replace the functioning of transmitting messages that ceases because our brain is not active during sleep.


Psychological Theories About Dreams

Famous psychologist, Alfred Adler, believed that dreams were a problem solving device. The problems and questions that individuals were confronted with in their daily lives presented themselves again during sleep, and individuals continued to try to solve them

In fact, Sigmund Freud proposed that dreams were a combination of our daily activities, and suppressed wishes. In fact, Freud felt that dreams were the key to understanding our subconscious thoughts and desires.



More thoughts

Dreams come from memories in your mind (usually memories from the past three days). Your brain mixes up the memories and comes up with a dream.

Dreams are accumulation of events that have happened in life. It is the subconscious way of possible warning the dreamer of anxieties or as a way to relieve the anxieties. For some people, writing their thoughts out on paper makes them feel better about stress, issues, or events that have happened. This coping is related to the dreaming processes in that the subconscious of the person needs to "sort out" these things as well - thus causes dreams.

How does Money and wealth bring Enlightenment?

Money and wealth are the first steps to enlightenment. It looks strange to hear that but it is a truth. It is because till you do not have enough money, you are not going to realize that money cannot make you happy. It is very less likely that people who are struggling for money and power would have attraction towards spirituality and enlightenment. Most of the people currently think that when they will be rich, they would be happy. So, they struggle for money and power in search for happiness. When people become rich, they realize the misconception they had in their minds. Money proves to be useless in bringing happiness in life. Then, big questions pop out in their minds. It is the point when they start thinking about other dimensions of life.

You may not have noticed that lots of great spiritual leaders were sons of kings. We can take example of Mahatma Buddha. He was born in Lumbini in the family of a king. He enjoyed all the luxuries of life before moving to the other dimension. Rama who is considered as the seventh avatar of Vishnu in Hinduism was a son of king Dashratha. Mahavira was born in a royal family of king Siddhartha. Not only Mahavira but all the other 23 Tirthankars of Jainism were born in the royal families.

I am not saying that we have to be rich first to be enlightened but I am saying, it is less likely that we will go for other dimensions of life before realizing that money cannot make us happy. Money and power are going to be our main priorities till we do not taste it. Also, There have been people in the world who were born in the ordinary families but still they were great spiritual leaders. I am just talking here in the terms of probability.

Interpreting Your Own Dreams

Dreaming is a natural, biological function. Everyone dreams, although some people say they cannot remember their dreams. In some cases, a person may remember his or her dream when they first awake, but forget it as the day passes. Dreams are often a clue to our subconscious and can help us understand and even work through problems we are facing during the waking hours. But, it is important to be able to analyse those dreams to see what they really mean.




Prepping for Dreams

Some people just naturally dream a lot and have vivid memories of their dreams, even years after they occur. Others need a little help to bring dreams out. One of the best ways to ensure a night of dreaming is to get a good night’s sleep. Exercise before you go to bed to ensure that you are tired and will fall into a deep sleep. Some people find they sleep more soundly in a dark room, with no distractions such as television, pets, or others nearby. Some people find a warm glass of milk helps calm them before sleep. Think about the best night’s sleep you have had in the past few weeks - a sleep where you had dreams - and try to replicate the events that led to that sleep.

A Dream Journal

One of the most important steps to being able to interpret your own dreams is to keep a dream journal. If you have a scary or disturbing dream and it wakes you up in the middle of the night, you need to write it down. Chances are you may not remember it in the morning when you wake up. A dream journal can be something as simple as a blank notebook and a pen kept beside your nightstand. It is possible to purchase a dream journal at a local or online bookstore that may help guide you through journaling your dreams, but the really important thing is to get down as much as you can remember when you awake.

Write down where you were in your dream, other people that were in your dream, and what you were doing. Write down if you remember any sounds or colors, anything unusual that happened in the dream. Try to write down your dream as soon after you dream. Much of our thoughts and feelings come out of our subconscious during sleep, they seem to seep right back into our subconscious during waking hours. Note it down if you have a lucid dream, one in which you know you are dreaming, but the dream continues anyhow.

Keep writing your dreams in your dream journal. You may find that you have reoccurring themes in your dreams. The only way to prevent this is to recognize it and understand what is causing it.

Interpretation

Once you have a dream or a series of dreams, you should think about what they mean. There are several common dreams that usually have the same interpretation. For example, dreaming you are naked in public has nothing to do with sexuality and everything to do with feeling vulnerable and exposed. Think about your life – work, relationships, school, and friendships – and see if there is one area where you feel weak or defenceless. Maybe your new boss is overbearing, maybe you’ve always had good grades, but are now fearful of failing, or maybe you feel like a spouse is cheating on you.


Many dreams are anxiety driven. You may think you have your act all together during the waking hours, but deep down, you are fearful of something or someone and that is revealed in your dreams.

Another common dream is flying. Unlike anxiety driven dreams, a dream of flying may be a good thing. You may feel free of a formerly constricting situation. Maybe you just complete a big project at work and find yourself dreaming of flying because you feel on top of the world. However, if you feel like you are falling while flying, you may feel out of control and like someone or something is holding you back.

After a while of writing down your dreams and trying to interpret them, you will do what seems impossible – become more familiar with yourself and get to know you better. If you come across a dream that makes no sense at all, there are plenty of dream interpretation books and online resources to help you figure it out as it relates to your situation. If you cannot figure out what a dream means at first, don’t fret. Just keep it in the back of your mind. It may take several days or weeks to begin to make sense to you.

Concentration is One directional but Meditation is Multi-directional

It is one of the significant difference between meditation and concentration. You would have noticed that when you concentrate on something, your direction of consciousness points towards that particular thing. For example, if you are concentrating well in reading a book, your whole consciousness would be pointing in the direction of book. You will just remember what you are reading in the book and you will forget about yourself.

In meditation, whatever you are doing, you are aware about the act and also you are aware about the fact that particular act is being done by you. For example, if you are reading a book, you remain aware about what is written in the book. If, you can also remain aware of yourself in those movements then it would not remain concentration but it will become meditation. So, meditation is bi-directional in this context.

We can take another example here. Osho Rajneesh often used to illustrate this example. Concentration is like a torch light whereas, meditation is like a lantern. Torch throws light in one direction but lantern does not throw light in one direction.

We can notice from the above examples that during concentration we can have thoughts. You are reading a book then you can also think about the matter present in the book. It is without being aware of yourself. In meditation when you do anything, you are aware about the act and yourself. So, there is no space for thoughts. Thoughts can only be there if the arrow of awareness which points towards you is not there any more. When we are thinking about anything, it can also become meditation but only if you are aware that thoughts are being thought by you.

Osho Rajneesh says Meditation is Voluntary death

Once, I was listening discourses of Osho Rajneesh. I do not know exactly title of the discourses in English but in Hindi the title was "Mein Mrityu Sikhata hoon". In English it means "I Teach Death". Osho Rajneesh covered lots of points regarding death, meditation and past lives in these discourses. I found them one of the most interesting discourses given by Osho Rajneesh.

During these discourses, he said that meditation is voluntary death. I agree with his explanation completely. In my own words he said something like that

"In meditation, we have to leave ourselves. We have to get rid of whatever we are thinking and desiring. But we are having a strongest bond with our thoughts and desires. So, It requires tremendous courage to leave ourselves because according to us, our existence is only till we have mind. How can we get rid of our thoughts and desires? We feel that because of them we are here in existence. When there is no mind, we would not be there any more. It is same as entering into death. The only difference here is that when people die, they become unconscious at the moment of death. On the other hand, meditation is death in full awareness. In meditation, one can realize that you are not body alone but you are pure consciousness. It is not like after entering in meditation, you have to leave your body but once you enter in meditation, your life will be transformed. You will have sense of other dimension from then. You would not be able to see life as you are seeing now."

Does it appear scary to enter in meditation? That is why Osho Rajneesh called it voluntary death.