Sleep and Dream

Author: Gerd Harms

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The dream may be regarded as a spiritual activity occurring while we sleep, which differs from thinking in the waking state. Numerous clinical studies have shown that the dream focuses more on perception than on reflection – in a dream you see and hear things, but hardly ever reflect upon them. The visual sense plays a role in nearly all dreams, the sense of hearing in 40% to 50% of the dreams, whereas the sense of touch, of taste and of smell and the sense of pain only feature in relatively few dreams. In general, strong feelings accompany the dream – as a rule it is a single intense emotion, such as fear, anger or joy, but not the modulated feelings occurring in the waking state.

Most dreams have the form of disrupted stories, a frequent change of scene being a typical feature. In recent years research has clarified many such aspects of the dream.

There are two clearly distinguishable states of sleep. The dominant state is the NREMsleep (non-rapid-eye-movement sleep) during which the pulse is relatively slow, blood pressure low and the autonomic nervous system is hardly activated. In this state of sleep barely any dreams occur. The second state in sleep, the “dream sleep" or REM-sleep (rapid-eyemovement sleep) occurs frequently during sleep. Typical for this stage of sleep is activation of the autonomic nervous system, also rapid eye movements and many reported dreams. As a rule, every person experiences four or five REM-sleep periods per night, irrespective of whether we remember our dreams more or less frequently or if we never do. These sleep periods occur in intervals of about 90 minutes and add up to roughly 25% of the total night-time sleep (even 50% in the case of newborns). It is known that as a rule a dream phase lasts 5 to 20 minutes.

If a person is intentionally deprived of his dreams or held in a dreamless state, a nervous disorder may well ensue. As to the question whether animals have dreams, it can at least be said that mammals definitely experience REM-sleep phases; we also have reasons to assume that they dream in these phases. For example during the REM-sleep the visual cortex of the brain in some mammals as well as in the human being is intensively activated. In the case of the human being such an activation is linked with the perception of pictures with the mind’s eye. In a research project monkeys were trained to press a lever if – on waking up in a dark room – they could see pictures on a screen before their eyes. These monkeys suddenly pressed the lever several times during their sleep phases.1

Research into Dreams Research carried out with test sleepers in sleep laboratories show firstly that they can remember only the dreams they had shortly before awakening or on being awakened. Secondly, they remember only the dreams that took place during a phase of increased physical activity (REM-sleep). When waking up without a transitional phase from a NREM-sleep with reduced physical activity (deep sleep), dreaming is reported seldom or not at all. It is odd that we cannot tell if we actually dream in the deep sleep phases. The fact that we cannot discern any physical reactions and have no, or hardly any, recollections can by no means serve as a proof that we do not “experience" during this time. Neither do we mostly have recollections of the REM-phases.

It is certain that we human beings are citizens of two worlds or that we move in two different realms of consciousness – day consciousness and dream consciousness. The writing and reading of these lines happen in day consciousness.

However, there is also the other state of consciousness, and many a thoughtful person is not at all sure which of these two states is entitled to the greater degree of reali- ty, as the intensity of an experience could also serve as a benchmark for the so-called reality. It is true that we regard dreams as unreal as long as we are awake; however, when in a dream state, we feel otherwise.

By comparison, let us imagine a person with a rich inner life whom his fellow human beings possibly refer to as a dreamer. Now in order to earn his living, this person is forced to compete with strict materialists. As a consequence, he has to adapt his mind to the prevailing conditions. However, in his leisure time he can follow completely different inclinations, thus adjusting his state of consciousness time and again to the changing demands. In this way the same individual moves continually from one state of consciousness to the next. And while he is in one state, the other one may thoroughly appear to him as dreamlike.

There is, however, one difference: The transition from day to dream consciousness, and vice versa, happens in a state of unconsciousness. The bridge between the two states of consciousness is lacking, as it were. That is why they are so distinctly separated, and while we are in the one state we know little of the other. We cannot cross over; the connecting link between the two states is “solely" the human ego. Even though we have no visible proofs on the material plane, we are nevertheless certain in the daytime that we were personally involved in the experiences we had in our dreams just as much as we are involved in our daytime experiences.

However, in our memory we get the impression of having less creative freedom in our dreams than in the waking state and of more or less having to accept what we experience, but this seeming loss of will may be an illusion, because we only see our ‘dream action’ or ‘dream passion’ with hindsight and we only judge from what we remember.

MANY DREAMS that we remember are probably, as is generally believed, a mixture of past and present daytime experiences as well as of our wishes, desires and anxieties. Our biology also plays a role. The contents of our dreams can for example be determined by pain, physical indisposition or sexual desire. For this reason the opinion is widely held that in his dreams man is watching the activities of his brain which, as a matter of routine, processes and rearranges all these inputs once again at night. Even if this view does not take the real happening sufficiently into account, it does imply the existence of an “ego" that has the experiences and – opposed to it, as it were – the existence of something this “ego" experiences, something it becomes aware of.

Consciousness is an enigma. It cannot be fathomed at the level of rational thought, but, as dreams show, it is present even when we are asleep. And as we can observe that animals also have dreams, they must also be endowed with a sort of consciousness. Yet it is not clear whether animals remember their dreams. Even our own memories are but sparse.

The human being can receive directives in a dream from other realms which reveal to him something of importance or relate to a future happening.

THE EXPLANATION sometimes cited for these sparse memories is that in our dreams we, in the main, meet the dark side of our “ego" which we prefer to ignore. But there are also pleasant dreams, which we seldom remember well either. Traditionally, much more significance is accorded dreams than is generally assumed today.*

The Bible, for example, relates several passages about dreams and their interpretation. Joseph interprets the pharaoh’s dream and his brothers are jealous. Also, Mary’s husband Joseph receives what could be called “divine directive" in a dream. The dream persuades him to marry Mary, although he is not the father of her son Jesus. Their flight into Egypt also took place on the basis of warnings received in a dream. Later, when Jesus was about to be executed, the wife of the Roman governor Pilate receives warnings in a dream, although, as we know from the reports, she could not act upon them. And this is still often the case to this day. An urgent warning received in a dream may fade in the course of the day or others may talk the person concerned out of it.

What a dream is meant to or able to tell a human being is often conveyed in symbolic images which he remembers after waking up. The interpretation of these images has been and still is regarded as an art. Whoever is unaware of a spiritual or heavenly reality will imagine that what he has to interpret are the images of a subconscious self. He who accepts spiritual realities naturally proceeds from the premise that the human being can receive directives in a dream from other realms which reveal to him something of importance or relate to a future happening.

AT THIS POINT it seems appropriate first of all to point out why we do not or rarely remember dreams later on which we are still conscious of at the moment of waking up. When our day-consciousness takes over on waking up, the dreams we experienced shortly before often still reverberate in our short-term memory – in the same way as we remember a sentence we heard or a painting we saw shortly before. Whatever we want to remember in the long run must be transferred to the so-called long-term memory. And there is not much of it, or else overcrowding our memories would confuse us.
We counteract our imposed loss of memory with the aid of written minutes, cameras, tape recorders and other technical devices. Such a procedure is recommended also for someone who wishes to review and evaluate his dreams. He has to constrain himself to write down his dreams immediately upon waking up. For this purpose one can even deliberately interrupt the sleep and each time write down what still lingers in the memory. Needless to say, many a dream is remembered automatically, especially if sufficiently impressive still to absorb the sleeper after he has woken up.

Falling asleep and waking up are odd events. In falling asleep, the dayconsciousness imperceptibly “dissolves" – and in just the same manner it builds up again on waking up. The only thing we remember is that we were suddenly “gone" and later on also suddenly “back". What happened to us in between, we usually do not know, apart from a few tags of memories relating to our recurrent dreams, the existence of which has been proved by research.