What is a dream?

[Woodart]

What is a dream? Is it a story we tell ourselves while we are asleep? This seems like a more or less good hypothesis. So why do we tell ourselves stories? Do we want to send a message from our unconscious (subliminal) self to our conscious self? There is an assumption here that we have multiple selves. Do we have more than just two? What is a day dream? Is it some mechanism of wish fulfillment? Is a day dream a fantasy that we want to explore; while we are awake? Perhaps it is some kind of bridge between our conscious and subliminal self? Dreams can be pretty peculiar and/or abstract. Dreams can also be fairly mundane and run of the mill. I wonder why we dream – while asleep and during the day? Dreams can be powerful too. I remember the day my Father died – that night he came to me in a dream and said – “I love you”. That was it – short and sweet – I will never forget it.

There is also lucid dreaming - becoming conscious in a dream while we are sleeping. I have experienced this and it is powerful. Talk about going to the movies and/or virtual reality in your mind – this can be science fiction and pornography all rolled up into one. I remember a Buddhist or Hindu concept that all life is just a dream. Dreams are stories – maybe that’s all we have are stories. We are funny creatures – are we not?

So, why do we dream? Do you dream a lot or very little? Do you remember your dreams? I took a course once in how to record your dreams by keeping a journal and employing trigger techniques. I learned a lot about myself I did not know. Please tell us your dreams? What do dreams mean to you?

[Present awareness]

We are not the only animals which dream, as any owner of a dog or cat can tell you. Dreams must be the way in which a complex mind discharges energy through the stimulation of the visual, audio and tactical centres in the brain, giving rise to images, sounds and sensations which are self generated.

[Burning ghost]

Also, we don't know why we sleep let alone dream!

Something we have discovered is that we "practice" in dreams. We play out and perfect certain tasks so when we wake again we've improved in our abilities. This has been shown quite conclusively. So dreaming in this way serves a purpose to help us improve motor functions.

[Supine]

Sleeping--as a built in need--and the phenomenon of dreaming has perplexed me. As already noted, dogs can be observed while they are asleep, moving and making noise that suggests they are dreaming.

As for the OP and the dream and message of his or her father, it is good not to discount that. For any number of reasons. Even the emotional benefit it can or may have provided in processing the emotional impact of losing for good on this earth your father.

I have had three unusually powerful dream experiences. Dreams per se. Or two of them dreams per se.

Two involved the supernatural. In each separate case I awoke I instantly knew each experience was not a dream. Yet the encounters took place through the means of dreaming.

The third one, which actually occurred first and by many years before the other two, was a dream, a nightmare, but upon instantly awakening I somehow knew and understood this unusual nightmare was a dream communicating something important I should know, I should be aware of, for whatever reason (which is lost to me). And that would be that I would live through nuclear war I had this dream as a teenager as I recall.

I've had a few other minor nightmares or uneasy dreams which where dreams but symbolically represented a real problem I would come to face. That being betrayal by someone close to me that I would never have thought would, and that someone I would not suspect would rescue me. It was only after real life events that I understood those recurring dreams had been telling me this would play out in real life.

[Woodart]

It seems to me we have a dialogue of sorts almost continually in our consciousness. Is it coherent? Sometimes it is, but many times it is just fragments. Like little video clips. If I focus – like now – I can control the direction and content of my thoughts. However, I observe myself wandering a lot during the day. Can this understanding tell us something about dreaming? Dreaming seems like wandering – sometimes there is a direction – like sexual dreams. Most of the time my dreams seem unfocused; like my wandering during the daytime. The similarity does not seem coincidence – what do you think?

[BelieveNothing]

Dreams seem to be an altered state of consciousness. While sleeping, the eyes are usually closed but images are still observed and I get the impression external sounds and 'touch' sensations are mostly sort of ignored while sleeping, but I've heard that dreams are often heavily influenced by the sense of smell.

I have personally experienced a limited awareness of distractions while dreaming through like for example a loud noise waking me up and then something happens in my dream to sort of 'explain away' where the noise came from. I suspect dreams are influenced by memories of real experience. My own dreams mostly consist of things I can't explain or even describe while 'awake'. Sometimes while dreaming I try to explore or influence the dream deliberately and almost witness areas that are 'under construction'. I often float, fly or swim underwater and sometimes try to change the 'rules'.

[Oranssi]

For me dreams are a fractal part of reality. I consider each one of our consciousness as a driving force for what we humans agreed to call imagination. But what I'm attempting to describe is not any kind of imagination. It is the constant power of creating magical illusion. But it is not any illusion. There is no illusion, just the illusion there is illusion (hence being magical).

"Now I do not know whether it was then I dreamt I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly dreaming I am a man." - Zhuangzi

[Sy Borg]

Interesting posts and ideas. While you dream, that subjective experience is just as real (albeit surreal) to you as your usual waking self.

What of dreams in context with emerging VR? In my home ATM there's a few keen players of interactive online games. In a sense the players share a brief and limited experience in a directed dream world - a shared dream. As ever more realistic and satisfying VR is developed, the boundary between waking and dream states may be dissolved as interactions with avatars of others become more frequent and sophisticated.

It's not such a major step given how we all buy into (pardon pun) the myth of money - that these plastic notes and little coins are actually worth something. We buy into the fiction because it (at least for a while) improved our lives, and I expect increased forays will happen into VR for the same reasons. As the outdoors become increasingly polluted, congested and generally less hospitable for human biology, VR may become more attractive.

Then, after a day immersed in VR we'd probably dream of the VR at night, like a mirror reflecting another mirror.

[Woodart]

What is our life – our consciousness? It is a story we observe in our minds eye of what we add and what other people and events give us. It is an amalgamation of all we see and hear. We try and make sense of it as best we can. Sometimes we do and sometimes we do not understand what we are. Life is our story and our quest. Is it a dream, a virtual reality – the real thing? Yes, it is all these things and more. We share a kind of collective dream – we are never alone – not really. I take the universe with me wherever I go – I am alone in the universe with all of you. We live in a hall of mirrors that reflects everything. Thanks for partnering with me on my journey.

[Oranssi]

It is really something marvelous, being able to immerse completly in a situation be it a love drama or action adventure with adrenaline fueled feelings and live it genuinely, fresh and unmodified.

But then days may pass, and we remember it. Even try to write it down in a diary or in a conversation to a friend and find out that the description can never convey the initially experience. And this is equally amazing. Because in the description of our memories and derivative feeling we create something completely different yet seemilar. We as gods actually may create a new universe in the consciousness of whoever listens. This is like Nature itself, like dreams, like VR, or a book, or a book about a book. As said already, mirrors reflecting mirrors

These are fractals that shine as different but are embedded in the same pattern of mystery. And what is mysterious is awe-inspiring. To be near the fountain of all one is never far, because the pattern is always near.