In this article I will not talk about sleep in the language of scientists, listing its phases and their duration - there is already enough information about this on the Internet. I would like to look at the dream from the other side - about which we know much less …
Even as a child, I realized that sometimes I can manage my sleep. As soon as I realized that I was dreaming, I immediately began to fly - for me it was a fun game. Later, I began to be able to change the scenery and dream environment, move from one place to another, add or "remove" certain characters.
However, until a certain time I did not take dreams seriously and considered them just "mind games." Everything began to change after the dream began to "carry" me into very unusual places. I got used to the fact that the situation in a dream easily changes and the sensations are muffled in comparison with reality - but here everything was different …
Once I found myself in an almost exact copy of the city, where everything was almost like in ordinary life - you could touch the leaves on the trees and feel their freshness, smell the flowers, there were quite ordinary streets and houses around. There was no question of changing anything here - I understood that I could not do it with all my desire. I had the feeling that instead of my usual sleepy "world" I found myself in another reality that copies ours. I could only be surprised, and after awakening, "digest" new information.
Soon other unusual things began to happen in my dreams - sometimes I dreamed of dead people with whom I had quite a conscious conversation, and often I learned interesting things from them. A couple of times I happened to fall into someone else's dream, and then check the details with those acquaintances whom I visited.
Having become interested in the topic of dreams, I decided to read on the Internet whether this happens to other people. To my surprise, I found sites and forums dedicated to lucid dreaming. As far as I understood, the fascination with these practices began after the publication in Russian of the books of Carlos Castaneda, in which a great deal of attention was paid to dreams.
It turned out to be very interesting to read reviews and stories about dreams - among the regulars of the forums there were those who, undoubtedly, advanced much further than me in the theory and practice of lucid dreams.
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As a result, I tried to generalize my own and others' experience in order to better understand what a dream is - where we go, whom we meet and why we sleep in principle. I do not pretend to be the ultimate truth, however, I think that many will be interested in my conclusions..
So, let's begin…
What is sleep?
It is generally accepted that sleep is a product of the imagination of our sleeping brain. I disagree with that. The brain is essentially a transmitter. We can access the Internet using a computer, but this does not mean that billions of files from the "World Wide Web" are stored on this very computer. It's the same with the brain - it is a complex biological device that connects to the information field and "downloads" information from there.
All events are recorded in the information field - past, present, future and many alternative options. In a dream, we also "look" there - consciousness wanders through areas close to those where past memories and impressions, and sometimes future events are stored.
That is, a dream is a journey of consciousness across the information field with "video broadcast" of the results.
Why is everything in a dream so bizarre?
Most of what we see in dreams seems to be a "parody" of reality. Familiar people look different, the streets of different cities are intertwined and so on. Why is this happening?
It's all about the processing of information by our consciousness. In the usual waking state, many people living nearby seem to be watching the same film in the cinema - our usual reality.
But when we fall asleep, then for a while we “leave the cinema.” We can say that at the moment of sleep we begin to shoot our own movie. But since at this time our usual "logical" consciousness turns off, the film is not very coherent. According to the principle "like to like", pictures and images close to ordinary life are attracted - associated with our activities, as well as with desires and fears.
At the same time, the "director" does not completely control himself, so everything is mixed with each other and looks strange. The senses, which in the normal state are tuned to reality and help us not to fall out of it, are disabled during sleep. Only thoughts are responsible for the perception of the "picture", but they jump from one subject to another and get confused - as a result, a kind of surreal and often meaningless cinema is obtained …
Author: Viktorya Nekrasova