Dreams

Dreams the word itself is enough to arouse surreal feelings. For a long time it has been connected with human power to perceive future, it has been connected with his/her previous life, a power to communicate with the almighty, alarms on things that one should be cautious upon and so on. When science was not developed, people didn't know about neurology and human psyche, dreams must have been fascinating. Till date people try to associate themes and objects seen in dream with luck and misfortune for e.g. seeing oneself taking bath is considered an ill sign, fire is ill sign and birds are good signs, books are good signs. May be this could be psychologically linked for e.g. a disturbed mind is likely to think of things that are restless like fire, wind etc. while calm mind meditate upon peaceful ideas. Dreams have always been considered god's omen and people tend to associate their success and misgivings with dreams. There have been many coincidences when similar events occur in our real life. I myself had few such experience, the one that I can't forget is that when my SLC results were to be published and I was to be given the mark sheet I saw in my dreams that I had only gotten seventy eight percent and coincidently the very next day I got my mark sheet and I had secured seventy eight percent. Mummy says she has been able to predict many events because of her dreams. One of my aunts always gives me a call whenever she happens to see dreams that are regarded as good omen just to know if something good has happened in my life. She claims her good dreams have always brought good news for her whether that is from her daughters, husband or from me. Many times after seeing bad dreams continuously, some devastating events are believed to occur. My father says before my grandmother passed away he had bad dreams for almost a week. Many believe if someone sees a broken tooth than they are fated to hear about somebody's death. Buwa says few days before my granny passed away he had seen his tooth falling. Mummy often looses her glory and lies grieved just because the dream was really bad. Once she saw something and she took it as ill omen the same day my father had an accident and he says he missed death by an inch of hair. Its not only me or my family who have had coincidences most of us have one or many similar experiences. Many times when anything occurs we think same thing had happened already. Usually these events are very trivial like some gesture, sentences etc. and we call it déjà vu. I believe many of them are from our dreams. I had read somewhere that we see many dreams in our sleep but forget most of them because not all part of the brain is active. Only when a major part of the brain is involved we are in half conscious state and those dreams are booked in our memories.

I have also had this experience that dreams have close association with darkness, with night. Yes we do dream sometime in our day's sleep but we dream a lot in night. Now again I believe when we sleep in the day because of the noise and activity around us do not fall into a sleep that can have dreams. More than that, however lazy we may be we sleep much lesser in day than in night. This could be one of the reasons why we dream less in our day sleeps as compared to night ones.

Many people have recurring dreams. It seems so strange to me but I have read about people who have recurring dreams in fact when I was a child I used to have one. I wonder what transpire these dreams, many elderly people say that they are memories from past life, omen from god who is trying to tell us something but its his way of encryption. When god chooses to encrypt his messages the algorithm he uses must be very complicated. Then I reason myself with something more convincing, a man does not know himself what he has in his subconscious. He is unaware of his fears, prejudices, likes and dislikes. They are buried deep in his/her subconscious because of societal norms and protocols he cannot bring them to conscious mind while they churn to come out and its in dreams they try to emerge. If we have deep fear about something than we see symbolical things regularly in our dreams. Most of the people who have led traumatic life or have been through traumas undergo these experiences. Even Sigmund Freud felt thus. We try to avoid those fear, prejudices in our conscious life but can't resist when we are in our sleep.

When I was a child, I used to see a huge bed with neat white sheet on it, the room used to be very peaceful but I would be the only one in the room. I used to feel suffocated, terrified and there used to be a knitted net on the bed. Nothing special will happen but I used to appear completely terrified. The dream would wake me up in the middle of the night, I used to be so afraid I used to be cuddled in my mother's arm. May be this is the reason for a long time I had to be embraced in my parents arm to sleep. I used to keep playing with the lips of mummy in my sleep, may be it was my unconscious attempt to feel that I was not alone. I must have been very young not even ten then but they used to recur so frequently and I used to be so scared that I still have the blurred memories of that dream.

I have never tried to interpret that dreams but dreams have always fascinated me. When I learnt they are associated with our personality and they help us know our real self I bought a book called Interpretation of Dreams written by Sigmund Freud which convinced me that we have different layers of mind and dreams are the result of the contents in those layer. One thing that wonders me is that sometime we see faces that we had actually forgotten they have been in our junior school or somewhere else but we have forgotten them. However in dreams they come with unusual assertiveness on their existence.

Once I saw a friend in my dreams quite often and few days later I heard from another friend of mine that he had died after falling from terrace while flying kite. What transpired that dream, more than awe I was rather scared. For a long time I wonder how come I see someone who I had no bleakest image in my conscious memory and I get to hear he has died.

As I struggle with depression, I have noticed that I dream a lot random dreams when I am in the blues. They are so meaningless, clueless but they occur one after other without any symphony between them. They are not something notable there I see myself doing regular stuffs, many faces are usually hazy and the only one who I can recognize is me myself.