What are Dreams ?



"Dreams are what your mind does when you do not control it"
So who has this control if not us ?
This is a mystery.

We all know that dreams are the mental constructs exhibited by our Unconscious mind and they provide information on a lot of stuff held by our unconscious; like fears, aims, insecurities, fantasies, longings, belongings, and what not, but basically what is the Unconscious and how does it provide the sensation of dreaming, that is whats more important to know - since dreams are a big mystery only because the Unconscious is an even bigger mystery.

We divide the mind in two ways, Conscious and Unconscious. The Conscious mind makes use of the five worldly senses in order to experience anything while the Unconscious relies on the reminiscence left by them. The Conscious mind also accounts for critical thinking and decision making. Since in dreams we neither make use of the five senses nor do we think logically therefore it can easily be said that while dreaming we are out of tune with our Conscious mind.

What rules the dreams is the Unconscious mind that becomes 'conscious' during the dream experience. Since the Unconscious relies on the memories attained by the five senses, therefore,  people think that the  Unconscious is very much the memory itself - the memories that are deep rooted or hidden to us, including the various perceptions attached with these memories, thus leading to the concept that memory randomly plays bits and pieces of it during dreams - but the fact is that the Unconscious is not merely a collection of hidden memories, but rather, Unconscious is that part of us, of which we ourselves are unaware of.

All of the activities that our brains and bodies perform of which we are unaware are part of the Unconscious. For example, when our body cells fight with infections are we aware ? Do we know how to fight viruses that effect our body ? Do we dictate a strategy to win the battle against infections to our body cells ? No, we do not, yet our bodies have this knowledge ? How ? If you think of it you'll see that almost all of the body processes are performed in such a way that we remain largely unaware of them... What happens during dreams is all neurological, do we know how to extract information from the neurotransmitters that are given off by the neurons during neural synapse ? Do we translate them knowingly ? No, even though these processes take place within us and we are also utilizing them for our own benefits yet we are unaware of the details whatsoever and we have no hand in dealing with them. So what could probably be the cause for not being aware ? The answer lies in the limitations of our senses. We humans can only experience things with the five senses we have been provided, anything that exists out of perceivable bounds of these senses cannot be known to us. For example, the faintest hint we can get from the battle of white blood cells and infections is slight pain in the region, because pain is something that can be felt by the sense of touch therefore we can know about it, otherwise if something cannot be felt, smelt, tasted, seen or heard than we remain unaware of such things unless logic tells us to believe in their existence based on proofs that are again subjected to experimentation by the senses.

Now, coming back to our original topic as to what are dreams, in the light of the above we can say that dreams are the faint hints we can get about the processes going on in the Unconscious during sleep, and the faintness is due to the limitations of our senses. It has been observed that people who strengthen their senses - both mentally and physically, through meditation and spiritual awareness - can overcome this faintness to an extent as they are more in tune with their unconscious and therefore they have dreams that are far more revealing and beneficial.

Thus dreaming is an important platform for the Unconscious to express itself, because during wakefulness our senses are occupied by our conscious selves, thus the Unconscious cannot express itself fully. However, in dreams this barrier is broken and the Unconscious makes effort to communicate with us by the help of a language and a form that is comprehendible to our senses. Stronger the mind, stronger will be the message portrayed in dream. One can't really say that the Unconscious is part of the memory, but rather the memory is one tool among others that the Unconscious uses to communicate with us.


Our dreams relate to us, the message in them concerns us, and the Unconscious also belongs to us albeit in a strange way, as we remain unaware of what it is and how it is, and even though the Unconscious is obviously more powerful and intelligent than we are but it is we who utilize it. We do utilize it while awake and we should utilize it while asleep. However, since we are disconnected from our Conscious mind during sleep, therefore any communication that is made by the Unconscious mind is received and realized only on waking up. A dream in this sense is like a message left on the answering machine, its only that this message needs a little decoding before it can be answered. 

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