Dreams - Pujya Gurudev

Dreams - Linkage between the visible and the invisible worlds

=Pt.ShriRam Sharma Acharya

As most of us might have experienced, dreams appear to be arbitrary reflections of memory and abrupt creations of the agility of mind. We can hardly find any truth and logical basis or purpose in the broken sequence of what we usually dream in sleep. Interestingly though, when we are watching a dream, every scene appears real! We experience every bit of it as if we are living in it. Many a time dreams appear to be quite amusing and entertaining. Quite often they are frightening nightmares too. 
The imaginary world of dreams may sometimes be supernatural and soothing fairylike "dream land". Some dreams are scary and they stress our mind with unprecedented fear and worries Usually, these diversified experiences occur because of the influence of the semi-conscious state of mind. 
Desires, apprehensions and inquisitions of the conscious (external) mind, and the perceptions and conditioning of the sense organs induce corresponding influences in the subconscious state of sleep. For example, concupiscence at the time of sleep would generally result in vulgar scenes of sexual indulgence in the dreams. Active dreams of this kind might even stimulate the genitals and cause night-discharge. The heaviness of stomach, indigestion, headache, anger, mental stress tension etc, also bear associated negative effects on dreams. 

Bites of mosquitoes, bedbugs, lice, etc may be depicted in the dreams as the incidents involving experiences of injuries, pains, irritation, etc. Unfulfilled desires, suppressed emotions and psychosomatic complexes, are also reflected in the variegated experiences of dreams, which would normally be beyond the imaginations of the conscious mind. Most of the above kinds of the active (subconscious) dreams are hazy, haphazard, and difficult to be remembered. Often the dreams of this category do not bear any meaning or purpose. Such dreams cannot be analyzed or interpreted scientifically and these hardly have any connection with the hidden messages of the unconscious mind. However, frequent occurrence of the dreams of similar kinds may have roots in some psychosomatic disorder or disease. 

Analysis of whatever is remembered from repeated experiences of same sort of dream during sleep might be useful in diagnosis and cure in such cases. Correlation of mental tendencies and response of active dreams sometimes becomes apparent from the specific reactions of the semi-conscious (subconscious) mind during active sleep. For instance, look at the following experiments conducted in the Dream Research division of the California University. As part of the studies of the effects of surrounding environment on dreams, a candle was lit and kept for some time in front of the closed eyes of a sleeping person, who happened to be a sportsman. The latter felt in his dream at that moment that a white bat and a golden shining ball are kept in front of him which he is about to pick up for a play. 

When the same experiment was repeated with a coward clerk, he dreamt as if some unknown enemy is coming towards him with a thick stick and a lamp to beat him in the darkness of night. 
Napoleon Klettman and Eugene Aserensky of the Chicago University had attempted to investigate and identify the part or state of the body or brain responsible for experience of dreams. Despite long-term dedicated research they could not find any clue to proceed further. Their unperturbed motivation however brought fruits one day when they saw rapid movement of the eyeballs and variation in the face expressions of a sleeping child. 

This observation gave rise to rather focused hypothesis that the rapid movement of the eyeballs makes watching a dream possible. 

This had set the direction of modern research on dreams, which has come a long way since then. Dreams appear to be the mode of transmitting subtle messages of the mind through a rhetorically coded language. 

 Whatever one sees in the dreams is a reflection of the subconscious or unconscious mind. The active dreams of the kind illustrated above are expressions of the thoughts, sentimental currents and bodily functions in general. 

Thanks GOD, Thanks Sadguru,

Shiv Sharma