The land of Dreams – Ronjoy Bordoloi
The land of Dreams
One night, I had a strange dream. Or was it early morning? I forgot the exact time, maybe it was that moment where night and day converged into each other and became one. Whatsoever, the dream went like this:
“I was stuck on the edge of a sliding roof on top of a building. It was broad daylight. My whole body, back side up, was stuck on the roof and I was unable to move. I was neither falling down nor was I able to force myself up. So, the best thing I could do was to accept myself in that weird position. I stopped struggling. At that point of the dream, I had a vision. It was a vision of the Hindu God, Nataraj (a representation of Lord Shiva), falling down from its pantheon in a small temple and nobody noticing the statue falling.
I woke up from that dream and found myself standing on a flat platform between two white buildings. The platform was actually a sidewalk, a place for people to walk. Those two buildings were temples. At that instant, a person, probably a temple-goer appeared before me and I remember accusing him of not doing something they were supposed to do inside the temples. I warned him about the wrath of the Gods. He was caught unawares and immediately left the scene. However, after a moment, another person, the temple priest appeared before me accompanied by that temple-goer and other persons. He was praising my name and started spreading flowers over my feet. He said I was God sent and told me that once every year they used to bathe the temple Gods, but they had forgotten to do the same that year due to which nasty things had happened. According to him, I was a messenger of the Gods. I was dumb-struck.”
The dream ended finally and I woke up to the real world, lying on my bed, half awake. I had two dreams. A dream within a dream with two dreams intertwined into one. Maybe the dream depicted too much self sarcasm or was it really a hidden message, I know not.
Undoubtedly, we all have had many dreams during our lifetime. All kinds of dreams. Some we remember, some we forget, some leave faint images in the mind etc. Even animals are said to have dreams. So this bought into my mind the quintessential question: Why do we dream? What are dreams? Etc.
Therefore, I went through many platforms, like the internet, books etc and came up with three possible aspects of the definition of dreams. It is in fact a vast subject and I am no expert in it. However, I have just tried to give a small summary of what may constitute a dream and its different interpretations.
We always think that we are sent here on Earth for a higher purpose and dreams are a way to know what that purpose may be. But still we linger on the outskirts of our dreams, never willing to take action and dig deeper into their hidden meaning and ignoring them as just imaginations of a wondrous mind!
The three possible aspects of dreams can be explained as Scientific, Psycho-analytical and Philosophic or Mythological.
The scientific observation usually revolves around the different phases of sleep. Dreams are said to be “successions of images, ideas, emotions and sensations that usually occur involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep.” It is during the REM (Rapid Eye Movement) stage that dreams usually occur and are likely to be remembered. However, 95 % of our dreams are lost and we do not remember anything once we wake up. Scientific research has speculated that dreaming is 1. Offline memory reprocessing and consolidates learning and memory tasks, 2. Cognitive simulation of real life experiences, which happened during the day or week before, called as “dream lag”, 3. Psycho analytic in nature.
The third observation mentioned above brings us to the Freudian psychoanalytical universe, where he explains that dreams are manifestations of one’s deepest desires and also represents the release of sexual tension. They are said to be “meaningful reflections of unconscious mental functioning”. Dreaming is also said to provide a “psychological space where overwhelming, contradictory and highly complex notions can be brought together by the dreaming ego that would be unsettling while awake. This process serves the need for psychological balance and equilibrium.” Dreams are also said to incorporate three temporal dimensions: past, present and future.
Another influential figure, Carl Jung, on the other hand agreed with Freud on dreams being the dreamer’s unconscious desires. However, he postulated that dreams had a higher purpose and were in fact ‘messages’ from the sub conscious mind to the dreamers. According to him, dreams were ‘revelations’ and each and every symbol and image depicted in it were messages, to be paid attention to and learned for own good.
Henceforth, we arrive at the philosophical or mythological dimension of dreams, put forward by our ancestors in books, paintings etc.
In ancient history, according to Babylonians and Assyrians, dreams were considered as Bad, representing Demons or Good, signifying God. All ancient civilizations, including Sumerians, Egyptians, and Mesopotamians believed that the soul left the body while dreaming and brought back messages from the Dream God. Thereafter, all throughout history, from the Chinese to the Greeks, from Aristotle to Herodotus, from Judaism to Genesis and Buddhism, from the indigenous American tribes to Pablo Picasso, from Louis Carroll to the ‘Inception’ movie, dreams have been associated with so many fantasies and theories, that it is difficult to mention each and every aspect. Dreams have been associated with the Devil, contact with ancestors and aliens, telepathy, conversations with God, Art and creativity, a link between conscious, unconscious and sub-conscious minds etc.
Also, in Hindu Mythology, there is an interesting concept mentioned in the Upanishads. And it is the concept of ‘Maya’. According to this concept, everything we feel, see, hear etc in nothing but an elaborate illusion, a dream of the maker. With death, this dream is broken and we wake up in to another dream, another Maya, another illusion and the cycle goes on till we attain Nirvana or Enlightenment, where we become free from this ‘Maya Jaal’, this web of illusion. Here, we become one with the creator.
So, this Reality we are living right now, is this real or just a dream? What if dreams are not just manifestations of reality, but in fact another kind of reality we are living in another life or lives, in another dimension? After all, in average, we sleep during one-third portion of our lives.
Whatever it might be, but if we reconcile these different theories about dreams, we find an interesting connection. Interestingly, science has, through Quantum Physics, explained different types of dimensions. This quantum field can be compared with Universal Consciousness, Akashic fields, Kingdom of Heaven or Jannat etc.
Consequently, we may not know why we dream, but if we do some soul-searching, we will understand that dreams are, after all, our own manifestation of the Universe. And the Universe is so mysterious that a billion lifetimes may not be enough to understand it. Maybe dreams are our own quest to understand ourselves, understand life and understand the cosmos in its entirety. For dreams are the means through which the Universal Consciousness mirrors itself and creates our Reality or layers of different realities!
Ronjoy Bordoloi
