Paradoxically, the vast majority of people do not remember their dreams. Occasionally, only scattered scraps of dreams that sweep through the memory without any logic, but sometimes the dream is etched into the memory as if it was happening in reality. And then amazing things happen.
Probably any creative person - writer, artist, composer, scientist - eventually ponders the question: how do I do this? How are scientific ideas born? How do simple words form into the enchanting harmony of poetic stanzas? How do new melodies, constructive solutions, and ingenious paintings appear? In short, he tries to check harmony with algebra …
Alas, all these attempts end in nothing. No wonder Pushkin sighed: "An accidental gift, a priceless gift." But when scientists began to find out under what conditions this gift manifests itself, they discovered some patterns. So, having interviewed dozens of famous creators, French researchers stated with amazement that some of them had gotten their best ideas … in a dream.
This allowed them to assume that somewhere deep within us is hidden a brilliant "director" who builds before us pictures of amazing dreams, so to speak, completing the creative work that we began, unable to reach the end. Anyone who has researched dreams has been amazed at the ease with which this director sometimes proposes solutions that we tormented in reality. Who is this mysterious genius living in us? To what extent is he our real self? Or maybe he is our real self? But then who are we? And is it possible to establish permanent contact with him?
It is widely believed that during sleep the whole body rests and gains strength. But only ordinary people think so. Experts know that the brain never rests. And some of its sections work most intensively at night, analyzing the events that happened to us in reality, and, constructing bizarre images, develop a line of behavior for the future. Well, this is quite consistent with the findings of the French researchers. Moreover, as one of the examples they mentioned Coleridge. And his story confirms the most daring hypotheses about the capabilities of the brain.
In the summer of 1798, the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge dreamed that he was writing poetry. Wonderful stanzas flowed easily and naturally from under his pen, as if someone dictated them. Coleridge woke up, but all two hundred stanzas sounded in his memory, and he immediately began to write them down, chilling with delight, because the masterpiece, which he had dreamed of writing all his life, lay on paper. This was the famous poem "Kubla Khan".
Fifty stanzas had already been written, but then there was a sudden knock on the door. As Coleridge himself said, some stranger came on a completely incomprehensible visit. Impatiently sending the uninvited guest out, the poet again rushed to the paper. But alas! He could no longer remember a single line. Everything was erased from memory. The genius poem remained unfinished. Moreover, Coleridge lived for another 36 years, but was unable to write another poem. No one! The poetic gift seemed to be cut off. But the poem lived in his memory, but the poet's access to it was closed.
The Coleridge case is by no means unique. History knows many facts of this kind. Let's say, a well-known fact - Dmitry Ivanovich Mendeleev saw his famous Periodic Table of Elements in a dream. I woke up and drew a table. And about Albert Einstein, there is a rumor that the idea of the theory of relativity visited him in a dream. And this is quite possible. But there are even worse riddles.
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If you have played Sportloto, then remember with what painful hesitation you chose the numbers. How to guess? But I. Marchuk from Yoshkar-Ola did not hesitate for a minute. She saw all the numbers in a dream, and all coincided. Marchuk received a large sum.
And K. Klementyev from Pskov dreamed that he was in a car accident because of the failed brakes. In the morning I rushed to my car, and for sure - the brake pedal was about to come off.
There are many such cases. People dream of accidents with their loved ones, which then really happen, they see where the lost things are. But the most extraordinary case happened with M. Tarasov from Rostov-on-Don, who 35 years ago, while vacationing in a Crimean resort, fell in love with a Kharkiv woman Luda. The girl reciprocated, and the young people decided to get married. Parting, Lyuda wrote down her Kharkov phone number in a notebook and gave it to Mikhail, and he, without looking, put it in a suitcase. The suitcase was stolen on the train. In those days of widespread scarcity, this was not uncommon.
Mikhail was terribly worried. How can I find my love now? And once he had a dream that he was dialing a phone number and talking with Luda. When he woke up, this number literally "burned" in his brain. Not hoping for anything, he went to the telephone booth and ordered a conversation with Kharkov. I have already prepared exculpatory phrases: they say, sorry, a mistake. And Luda answered the phone. Since then, they have lived happily ever after.
The point, of course, is not in your dreams, they are a product of our brain. Until recently, scientists were surprised to note that out of 30 billion neurons (according to other sources, 60 billion), which our brain is equipped with, a person uses only a tenth of his life. And the rest, they say, is wasted. It seems that now scientists will not say so. A person really uses only a small part of the brain potential in his daily life, but the brain itself loads all its neurons. We just don't know that. The brain "releases" to us exactly as much as is necessary for life, and puts everything else in its immense pantry "in reserve".
Try to remember in detail how you spent yesterday. You probably won't succeed. Several important events, conversations, observations - and nothing more will come to your mind. Or try to retell the content of a book that you are not interested in and which you skimmed carelessly. It’s good if you can roughly remember what it’s about.
Meanwhile, both yesterday and the book are completely imprinted in the storehouse of your brain's memory. Moreover, all the days of your life are fully captured there, all the books that you read, all the plays and films that you saw. And if necessary, or if forced to do this, the brain will tell about all this even after many years. This is confirmed by a number of facts. In particular, the experience of the famous Canadian neurosurgeon Wilder Renfield.
During one of his operations, he inserted an electrode into the human brain, sending a small current through it. Some serious illnesses are treated this way. And the patient suddenly began to recall episodes from his past, and in such detail, as if a film about these events was being played before him. Moreover, he acquired a "new" memory - he spoke about events that he could not have witnessed, since they had occurred before his birth. But he told in the way that only an eyewitness could.
Apparently, the so-called gene memory played a role here - the memories of ancestors, inherited. Both this case and many others suggest that the brain contains a complete record of all the experience of both our life and the life of our ancestors. But getting to this "safe" is not easy.
They say geniuses are born once every 100 years. This is certainly not the case. There are many more people who can be called brilliant in this or that area. But what is genius? Oddly enough, even scientists have not yet found a definition for this. However, it is not strange: genius is a property of the brain, which for us is still almost the whole mystery. Perhaps Pushkin came closest to the truth, saying: "Genius is a friend of paradoxes." If you think about the philosophical context of this phrase, then it means the ability to see phenomena from a completely new, unexpected angle of view.
Such a genius is Truman Stafford, who was already a professor of astronomy at the age of 20. And, of course, he knew mathematics well. Once, in a circle of friends, he was jokingly asked to square an 18-digit number in his mind. Eyewitnesses said that Stafford was at first confused, and then he suddenly found inspiration. He began to walk quickly across the room, biting his nails, humming something. And the answer - a number with 36 characters - was given. Subsequently, he was never again able to repeat his "feat".
It was exactly inspiration - a special state of the brain, when it suddenly begins to act as if independently, and a person can only write down or repeat the result after him. By the way, inspiration is not such a frequent state as people think. As one of the writers wittily remarked, if you hope for inspiration, you can die of hunger.
And yet scientists are looking for ways to evoke inspiration at will, how to make the brain solve problems of the highest complexity. French mathematician Henri Pointe called this ability of the brain the unconscious "I". In his book Science and Its Methods, he wrote about the role that the unconscious self plays in mathematical discoveries. And he is probably not mistaken when he says that "sudden insight" is the end result of a long chain of previous unconscious stages in the accumulation and processing of information.
But the mechanism of this transformation, when something hidden in the subconscious suddenly comes to the surface, remains a secret behind seven seals. And this image is not accidental at all. Some scientists make this analogy: our brain has something like a lock with a secret. Type in such a code, and it will open the entire depth of its memory. The only question is how to get this code.
Meanwhile, the brain itself gives us a hint on how to get to this code. Dreams are the clue. Keyhole to the pantry door with secrets. Indeed, it is not just that Coleridge dreamed of his poem. It's not just that Mikhail Tarasov saw the phone of his beloved girl in a dream. We do not know how the brain managed to do this. But one thing is certain: he did a titanic job to add poems and calculate the phone number. Did he himself produce, or did some cosmic forces help him?
This is not an idle question. For thousands of years, people have pondered the most vivid dreams and associate them with subsequent events. And over these millennia, clear connections have been established: if in a dream I saw this and that, then such misfortunes will happen to you. Or, on the contrary, luck will come. And it comes true. No wonder that earlier dream books were so popular - interpreters of dreams.
And here we can draw the following conclusion: if the same dreams occur with different people, and then they are comprehended by the same events, then each brain acts not only by itself, individually. This means that it is really connected with that mysterious area, either in space, or around the Earth, where the past, present and future are merged into one. Where information about everything is stored and there is an answer to every question.
Is it so? Not yet known. But one thing is clear: while dreams are the only key to a mysterious lock, behind which a secret code is kept. And someday science will master him. But when is unknown.
