I want to talk a little bit about dreams today. There are two basic categories that dreams can fall into, each with its own subset of endless variations. So first, let’s tackle the traditional views of what dreams are in the scientific community. 
The following information comes from my training in college courses in psychology and neuroscience. I feel that I should preface this by explaining some of the history of psychology and the context through which they perceive such intangible phenomena as dreams. It really is a tricky subject in many respects, because we honestly don’t know too much about what dreams really are in a scientific sense. First things first though, let me label the two categories I was talking about in regard to how dreams are classified:
1. Traditional Psychological/Hard Science Definitions, Theories & Explanations
2. Metaphysical Theories & Explanations
I’m going to tackle the “scientific” perspective first, because it’s considered to be the more “factual” and therefor acceptable explanation of anything that deals with mental states. However, like I alluded too early on in this mini-essay, there are some contextual considerations that must be taken into account when regarding any mainstream scientific explanation of any phenomena that is considered abstract, intangible or immeasurable by conventional tools. To understand what I mean by this, we have to take a stroll down modern psychology’s memory lane. Funny enough, this all starts with…you guessed it, RELIGION!
Once upon a time, long before modern psychology planted roots and began making a name for itself in the world of “hard sciences” [we’ll come back to that hard science thing in a minute], mental health and anything of a psychic [of or pertaining to mental action] nature was the sole domain of the church. You can only imagine what the prevailing beliefs were when psychological well being was in the hands of the clergy. You probably guessed that often, mental illness was seen as some sort of influence by Satan. Whether that constituted full on possession or just a little bit of the evil inside someone. Regardless, the typical diagnosis usually involved some form of corruption of the spirit.
This was a very Middle Ages perspective, very evangelistic. Prior to that era, we had great thinkers and philosophers who speculated, theorized and researched such ailments from a mostly secular perspective [e.g. the Greek and Roman philosophers, the Eastern philosophers and spiritual leaders]. However, once Europeans became the uber-conservative Catholics and later Protestants that we associate with the Middle Ages, the wisdom of the great minds from the past seemed to hold little weight. I guess that’s why some of that period is called the Dark Ages. We shut down our analytic minds that deduced truth by way of reason, logic and good old fashioned intuition in favor of the dogmatic church and their answers for everything. I mean, why hurt you brain trying to think for yourself when the church can tell you everything you need to know?
In the 1800’s or so, psychology started to develop as a science in its own right. Naturally it had a very hard time prying the church off of the domain of mental health; it had been their area of expertise for generations. Then semi-abruptly, a new group of scientists wanted to take over and make the study of the mind a cold hard science, driven by data and experimentation. It was quite a large shift in perception. So remember, for as long as anyone could remember, mental and/or psychic phenomena were the domain of the church and therefore tended to carry a sort of supernatural quality. This was hard for most people to come to grips with, especially in the scientific community at large, and this skepticism is where were get the labels, ‘Hard Science” versus “Soft Science“. Many other scientists [to this day] see psychology and psychiatry as a Soft Science because it deals largely with abstract concepts. I mean the main subject matter of psychology is the mind, and how much more intangible can you get? If you compare that to something like geology, particle physics, meteorology, astronomy, etc., you can see the difference, as pretty much every other scientific discipline handles measurable, tangible objects that can be observed, categorized and filed away. Some scientists don’t recognize psychology as being in the same arena of study because it focuses on things that can rally only be inferred by behavior.
Needless to say, this stigma has left psychologists and psychiatrists with some sort of psychological complex all their own. Call it jealousy, inferiority, a pressing need to prove the validity of their work, whatever. Th fact of the matter is, psychologists have spent decades trying to distance themselves from the old religions and superstitions that accompany those beliefs in whatever way they can. Unfortunately, I feel that this deeply ingrained need to prove the validity of psychology as a hard science with measurable data and statistical analyses has left the field barren and without the abstract awesomeness that makes the study of the mind so cool. In my opinion, it’s those other Hard Scientists that are missing out by denying a fundamental aspect of research; intuition and the infinite nature of the mind. I suspect that in another generation or so, psychology will have a rebirth to become the field of study it was intended to be.
On a side note, regarding the abstract, even metaphysical nature of mental states, the psychic realms of consciousness that are currently being neglected in their entirety. Modern psychology is trying so intensely to prove themselves as Hard Scientists that deserve the respect and admiration of other fields of study, that they have taken on a purely materialistic philosophy regarding mental states and most importantly the source and nature of consciousness. They are achieving this by relying on advancements in neurology. What this means is that they are attributing ass mental function to the brain and denying the possibility of a non-local consciousness. Meaning, they see consciousness as a sort of ‘ghost-in-the-machine’ that was coincidentally generated when neural connectivity in the brain reached a certain threshold. No one knows what that threshold might be, but for the most part, that is the ‘common knowledge’ taught in psychology courses. I fully disagree with that notion, opting instead for a consciousness that inhabits the whole body, but exists in a ‘dimension’ beyond the normal 3D physical reality we perceive with the sensory organs with which our bodies are equipped. While this may not be completely accurate, a fair analogy would be that the body is a vessel designed to provide consciousness with an operating mechanism so that it can interact in 3D physicality.
Now, as for dreams. First let’s consider the mainstream, or commonly accepted scientific understanding of what dreaming is in a technical sense. In your typical PSYCH 101 [or in my case, high school intro to psych] class, you are taught that the prevailing understanding pertaining to dreams, is that they are the result of random neural firing across the brain during times of rest. So, when you are sleeping, you brain goes into repair mode and cleans up anything that is no longer needed. This includes a whole host of things, from small bits of data gathered throughout the day, like a random phone number that you don’t need to remember anymore, or the people you saw walking down the street, anything that doesn’t need to be committed to long term memory for later retrieval. In the same process, it may decode useful information, analyze it, encode it again and store it away for future use. In this scenario, dreams are the result of all this clean up activity. While your brain is running through all of these processes, neurons are firing like crazy, which produces perceived experiences in your mind that feel incredibly real at the moment. That kind of says something pretty interesting in regards to reality itself. it would seem that reality doesn’t really exist on its own, but is actually dependent on our perception of it. It’s that age old quantum mechanics question. If I’m not observing something, perceiving it, does it even exist? Like the old Zen Koan, “If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”
That was the benign, meaningless explanation of dreams. What they are, where they come from and how meaningless they actually are. Now some psychologists who believe this scenario still believe that just because dreams are the result of random neural firing, doesn’t mean there isn’t any subconscious meaning in them. Kind of like a Freudian Slip while you’re sleeping. And so, some therapists, especially psychoanalysts [how ever many of those are left] and socialist type counselors…sorry social worker type counselors, still use dream interpretation as a valid means of exploring some aspects of a person’s psyche to discover repressed experiences and the like.
The other category of dream perception is more in line the the transpersonal/metaphysical/Jungian type of psychology. This form of psychology decided to embrace the spiritual aspects of psychology’s roots and run with it to see ‘how far down the rabbit hole’ they can go. This perspective on dreams places much more weight on what dreams are and where the originate from. There is no denying the increase in neural activity in the brain when someone is dreaming, that is fact, measured by powerful equipment that can measure brainwave fluctuations during sleep periods. However, from a metaphysical perspective, those random neural firings may not be the cause of the dreams, but rather a by-product. When you take on the perception of an intuitive dream analyzer, you disregard the taboos of Soft VS. Hard Science, ignore the scientific community screaming that what you’re doing is “plain old superstition that has no basis in scientific fact!”, and follow your gut as it were. This brings me back to a statement I made two paragraphs ago. If we can experience fully immersive realities without receiving any sensory input from the outside world, who can say that the outside world exists at all? If reality is simply electrical signals being interpreted in our brains to produce an environment, and we can accomplish the same feat without ever exposing ourselves to an external stimuli, how can you say that dream environments aren’t just as real as waking environments? That simple fact implies that dream realities are much more than just the result of some random neural firings and hold not real substance of their own. In fact, I’d say that dream realities are maybe even more real that waking reality, because the sensory inputs come entirely from within ourselves, unbiased by the contexts of the outside world. Food for thought.
That pretty much wraps up my short little rant on the two major perceptions regarding dreaming. I could say more, and I may in the future, but for now I’ll leave you with one more thing.
If dreams are based solely within your mind, they are entirely subjective. They are functioning on your own biases and beliefs. They are populated by yourself, different aspects of you. And because you have a lifetime’s worth of personal experiences that subtly shape your perception every second of every day, only you can truly understand what a dream means. So throw away dream interpretation books, don’t pay some “psychic” to interpret your dreams for you. You must figure it out on your own for the simple fact that the beings and situations in our dreams have been populated by YOUR MIND, YOUR BIASES, YOUR PERCEPTION, YOUR BELIEFS ABOUT THE WORLD and no one else can fully understand what it means to be you [unless they’re legit telepathic]. So take some time, sit quietly, think about your dreams and just see what floats into your mind. You may be surprised at hoe much you really know about yourself. And I truly believe that paying attention to your reams can do a lot of good in healing your mind in many ways.
-@egodetox
rusty
Shades.Of.Consciousness 