Sleep: When we dream beyond

Introduction

As we drift away in the embrace of sleep, our consciousness retreats, the body rests and the mind relaxes to find solace in the warm embrace of dreams. As each breath recedes deeper than the previous, the feeling of freedom gently unravels, as if the dawn makes way to the first ray of sun, bringing light and warmth to the dark-cold earth, waking up all the living of the day... finally ...  Deeper and deeper, letting go of worries and uncertainties of the harsh reality, no more is the commuter constrained or restricted, dreams give way to imagination whereby we pass through the darkest black hole to the brightest star, galaxy after galaxy, universe after universe, the mysteries lay bare to the mind that perceives beyond the awareness of the five senses. We see the reality with the eyes of a child, hear with the ears of a newborn, feel with the hands of dreamers embracing each fascinating sensation, without critical mind, just being true with self, one with every moment. We live lifetimes in the stories so imagined in the nexus of our being, without care for the laws of reality, though awaken intermittently when bodily functions call us and then we submerge in the adventure of imagination as sleep welcomes us with the familiarity of lifetimes.

Even an old wrinkled woman scarred by the non-spatial continuum; time, looks as innocent as a child. Even a cruel madman reverts to rare moments of surprising sanity as any normal man when he takes a peaceful nap. Or a homeless man who lives comfortable life before being destitute in memories of a life long gone. Look at their faces and ponder why sleep is so magical? Is it not because we feel that what we have is always not in our complete control or as we want them to be? Is it not because in those dreams we let go of our need to control things and people and situations flow naturally from one event of a dream to another like river giving way to the sea. There is no room for unrequited desires that shackle the body to physical limitations. We relive our childhood memories, rediscover lost souvenirs like revisiting old friends or recap the mundane things of the daytime with new eyes. Nothing is impossible. Ever...  

The Science of Sleep

Some of us wonder, why sleep?  In short, it is just a biological need. Like any needs; food, clothing, and other essentials, it is a necessity for survival. The body needs to recuperate every now and then. Being diurnal most of us sleep during the night, yet due to professional work and perhaps the internet/insomnia, sleeping patterns has changed.  Besides that, when we talk about the internet, it is closely related to vast networks of information created each day. The beauty of sleep is its magic to create long-term memories, organizing the important information out of all the massive mundane data we surf through the internet as well as that our senses perceive during the waking hours. 

"Get your beauty sleep" 

This was not said in vain. If you look closely at the different faces of people who have not got enough sleep, you will find dark circles around their eyes, a kind of tiredness in their aura, and a disturbance in their span of attention. (with unconscious random yawning). Whereas when you sleep properly, your body boosts blood flow to the skin while you snooze, which means you wake to a healthy glow. Skimp on sleep and your complexion can look drab, ashen, or lifeless. Also, you will have fewer wrinkles, puffy eyes, and so on

Immunity 

The most important thing in the world is health (after or before money vs happiness). When your body gets the proper sleep it needs, your immune cells and proteins get the rest they need to fight off whatever comes their way — like colds or the flu. Even vaccination works well after a night of proper sleep. Don't need Horlicks to do that for you 

A better mood

Better sleep provides more energy throughout the day. Difficulties are simpler and the capacity to handle annoyances is boosted. The feeling of being well-rested keeps the mind at ease and the body energetic to face any challenge though how tough it might be 

Increased Productivity

Sleep is the natural method of balancing the body after going through a long and tiring work-day. Even though coffee and other alternatives may keep you awake till late hours, they hardly have an effect in the long-term due to side-effects. As said, the devil is in the details, productivity entails quality and quantity in the work, when you start to really pay attention to the details rather than be monotonous, new ideas and innovation are born to make your productivity efficient, effective, and longlasting

Protection from dangers

Indeed! Lack of sleep causes to lose attention that is a must, to be at the moment especially while traveling or while attending a lecture or meeting. Tired people are prone to accidents lacking necessary attention, more so when you are competing in physical games. Ample sleep is necessary for being at the moment to face any adversaries whatsoever be it a threat to life due to carelessness (accident) or bad review due to lacking performance

Anti -depression

Depression is growing more and more in the populace. As expectation rises from oneself and parents/spouse/children, it gets harder and harder to meet them. The expectation in terms of time or finance or social formalities, due to work which leads to shorter sleeping hours, makes depression a reality. To fight depression, time is to be managed to the optimum, you need to get the sleep you need, as sleep is the natural cure to depression. Sleep keeps one rejuvenated to properly take care of the time, money, and social necessity to meet the expectation at least to the minimum and feel no more depressed  

Dreams and Nightmare

Beautiful dreams accommodate whereas Nightmare devolve. Dreams are known for our desires mostly unfulfilled in reality yet sleep takes us magically to the world where no desires are left unfulfilled. In contrast, nightmares are like guerillas, specialized in deadly skirmishes, the darkest fears of humanity. Stalking shadows, feeling of pressure from all sides, inability to call for help through the voice inside of us calls for help, family members leaving you as you call out to them- running after them but never reaching them, and many other fears defines parts of your personality. It can predict how you behave in certain conditions/variables or even your response to certain stimuli's 

 In psychology especially Freudian, there exist ego superego, and id which is the division of the mind. Dreams and Nightmares are thereby the manifestation of the mind in these different stages. By realizing the dream, it can be interpreted, we know ourselves more, like never before. We understand what our weaknesses is and strength as well. Make your own dream diary, find yourselves.

Dreams include trivialities of the day, unremarkable but very important. The ego may not notice but the id almost always does. Considering dreams and nightmares as the superego that bridges the conscious with the unconscious, we can then understand and decide that which seems beyond yet controlling our life for better or for worse

Wish Fulfillment

Dreams are the unconscious mechanism to desire fulfillment. As mentioned above in Freudian Psychology, ego and super-ego repress the id. Often taboos and guilt following in their footsteps as societal values are imposed. Dreams are the attempts of the unconscious to resolve the repressed conflicts. As mentioned in "The Interpretation of Dreams" by Freud, wish-fulfillment occurs in day-dreams or dreams as a kind of illusion whose fulfillment requires dream interpretation to really understand.

Deja Vu

The situation is new and yet familiar with it is still there without any clear memory or experience to it before, it is deja vu. In dreams, we revisit the house we lived before, the places we are familiar with, the workplace, and experiences from memories of before. 

One study of memory consolidation explored how sleep may promote the creation of false memories through feelings of familiarity. Payne et al. (2009) asked subjects to study a list of words that are conceptually related [glass, pane, shade, sill, curtain, etc] before sleep. The word lists are conceptually organized around a "critical" word that is purposely absent from the list [in this case, window].

The authors found that after a daytime nap, subjects reported nearly 50% greater false recognition of unstudied critical words compared to wake controls, ie, subjects claimed to recognize the word "window" despite never having studied it. Thus, sleep led to a false feeling of familiarity (false memory) for the critical concept, the "gist" of the information. This is, in essence, a déjà vu experience: a feeling of familiarity in the absence of a true memory.

Just as the word list leads to the consolidation of the "critical" word during sleep, dream images may utilize multiple memory traces centered around a particular, "critical" feeling. Dreaming of the home may involve a composite of memory traces around the core feeling associated with being home; thus, the details are not necessarily important, because the feeling of familiarity is constant. Perhaps at the heart of the imaginary cottage in the woods is a unique feeling of peace, an experience you can only truly visit in your dreams. It's easy to see how such places hold a certain mystical charm and personal significance for the dreamer.

Good news for dream travel: Just as studying the word list before sleep led to its activation during sleep, dream incubation, a method of focusing on the intent to dream of a certain place before falling asleep, may activate critical memory traces and increase your odds of arriving at the desired dream destination.

Mysticism

From ancient times, dreams are entwined with the mysteries man/woman strives towards unraveling. Those mysteries are the beacon towards his/her path through understanding the path s/he intends to take, to find the self hidden in the clouds of time. Mysticism entails an altered consciousness or being one with an absolute i.e. god. By being one, one can realize the laws that govern the stars, planets, and the unforgeable fate unique to oneself. This may be all factious to many who adhere to the rationality of material justification but in a way the belief is something other than mundane has been passed down as realities long forgotten

It is said not all dreams are mystical for we usually dream around ourselves, our ego; what impacts our lives and those we care about. From premonition that may or may not comes true to those confusing memories stitched together by unconsciousness, dreams take half of our lives without being realized. Yet some of those dreams act as deja vu and incites us to find the meaning if it resonates with us. Mystical dreams are closely connected with faith or shamanism wherein messages of deities or spirits are bestowed to the 'chosen' ones. In legends, kings and warriors are inspired to take great undertakings in their dreams. Maybe the august aura could not be endured by the mortal, in reality, the messages were transpired through dreams.  

There may or may not be accurate on those statements and yet human cultures have prospered in those beliefs. They have taught us, we cannot or are not in control. There are forces beyond us that control our lives. Though the conscious part of us ignores those forces, to function normally in everyday life, when we dream the unconscious manifests its acuity as our self realizes part of it in the memory of the present

Problem Solving

As we dream, our conscious part of the mind lets go and unconsciously takes the control or command. The mind never stops and that works on problems that we deem difficult during the waking period. Before sleep, if we really think of the problem and enter in the dream, the solution might just come up to solve it. Similar to the time when you kind of do not find the perfect word to summarize/describe a story/movie/topic, and later after some time the word just pop in the mind, so does dream can work as a way to finding the crux of the problem and lead toward the how to solve. 

One  perfect example is:

Mendeleev’s periodic table"

Mendeleev wrote names of the different elements along with their properties on cards that he laid out in front of him on his table. He arranged and re-arranged the cards on the table trying to figure out a pattern. Exhausted, he fell asleep, and in his dream, he saw the elements getting arranged in a logical pattern according to their atomic weights. Thus the periodic table was born.

Creativity

Ideas that are far-fetched or not possible at the present reality are found in the dreams. In other words, science fiction or fantasy worlds imbue the creativity of authors and their imagination which cannot be constrained by impossibility. Some famous artists were inspired by the dreams. Like, The Terminator, created by James Cameron, was also inspired by a dream. Paul McCartney of The Beatles one day ‘woke up with a tune in his head’ and the song ‘Yesterday’ now has the Guinness world record for the greatest number of covers. There are times when writers get ideas in the middle of the night or during a conversation. They try to catch as many ideas as they can during the time when their conscious start to take the control of the mind or when they realize that they have found the inspiration they have been searching for so long and yet undiscovered right next to the corner

Conclusion

Sleep is not only about resting i.e. deep sleep during the night and siesta during the daytime. It is not only about fulfilling a physical need, it is also about exploring possibilities for this thing called life. If we really think, we spend a lot of time sleeping and yet we talk less about the dreams we see or nightmares we face because we don't have time for such nonsense, or feel stupid to share with someone, or our rational mind is using all its capacity to survive in the real world. Yet sleep is part of us, the living. To understand our needs, a reality beyond the constraints of the values ingrained by society or even just experience the supernatural part of the world, the dream can be the door. The door towards imagination where imagination is only the limit to minds great or small. 

Reference

https://www.webmd.com/beauty/features/beauty-sleep#1

https://www.sclhealth.org/blog/2018/09/the-benefits-of-getting-a-full-night-sleep/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wish_fulfillment#:~:text=Wish%20fulfillment%20can%20occur%20in,titled%20The%20Interpretation%20of%20Dreams.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/dream-factory/201410/dream-d-j-vu

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/post_b_7149982

http://centerforsacredsciences.org/index.php/Articles/the-mystical-interpretation-of-dreams.html

https://www.psychmechanics.com/problem-solving-in-dreams/#:~:text=In%20dreams%2C%20while%20our%20conscious,consciously%20in%20our%20waking%20life.&text=This%20happens%20because%20as%20soon,solving%20it%20behind%20the%20scenes.'

Gif and Photo Credit:

https://www.verdict.co.uk/singapore-gif-festival-a-party-for-the-humble-gifs-30th-birthday/

https://giphy.com/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Id,_ego_and_super-ego

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/230035493444109327/

http://www.lowgif.com/view.html