Thread: Belisarius' Take on Dream Interpretation

Originally posted by Belisarius
I had the concept of dreams as being a string of unstable, disconnected perception that our minds try to understand by impressing our a priori conceptions upon it. We dream of something entirely senseless, and then turn it into a familiar object. That is why dreams are usually in familiar places, with familiar people. We aren't equipped to make sense of dreams so we use our conceptions from waking hours and try to fit them onto the senseless flow of dream perception.

So then the interpretation of dreams can be thought of as finding out why your mind applies these a priori conceptions to the somewhat random flow of raw dream.

I know where you get this hypothesis from. Scientific Researchers, who are geared only for Quantitative Analysis and are not in the least equiped for Qualitative or Aesthetic Analysis suppose that Dreams are random firings of Nerve Cells. They suppose this because the can count firings of brain cells. They ignore Meaning because they cannot Quantify Meaning.

That is how nearsighted and myoptic Science is.

We KNOW Dreams have meaning.

Simply look at the Dreams of our New Japanese Friend in the Dream Interpretation Section and then try to convince us that Dreams are not Coherently Meaningful.

Now, you may have disordered Dreams, but this is because you have not yet established any progress in integrating your waking self into your Dream Self. Your Dreams seem disordered only because your Memory of what had happened was faulty and misfiring. With some experience in Dreaming, your Dreams can become just as Coherent as those of our Japanese Friend and many of our other Dreamers who would never suspect their Dreams of originating in random nerve end discharges.

Your idea on dream interpretation is very similar to mine, except, a little different.
My idea is that your conscience takes a hold of certain and sometimes very unexpected things in our waking life and replays it to us when we least expect it. That's why dreams never really make sense. But for the absolutely crazy, generally out of place things in our dreams, they may be a psychological way of telling you something you miss when you're awake. (Not you you, just all yous in general) Like, if someone you see everyday comes up in a dream, it could easily just be your unconcious playing it back to you. Rather if you see a (thinks quickly) crocodile and an alligator in your back yard dancing with your ex to Eminem, it could mean something.
Yes, it was a dream I had once.
Thanks for sharing!
~Lyra

I agree. Dream interpretation has been my internet hobby for a long long time, and after a long time I start to hypothesize that it's the nature of the mind to make something familiar by giving it familiar form, like a metaphor, and that's what dream symboligy really is.
You have to walk through it from that direction: first comes the meaning, then what it resembles to the part of the subconscious generating the dream, then the symbol formation.
I also suspect that dreams are closer to a leakage than a message. And that we evolved to not remember them because they are so subject to misinterpretation. People tend to take them literally.

Originally posted by Belisarius
I had the concept of dreams as being a string of unstable, disconnected perception that our minds try to understand by impressing our a priori conceptions upon it. *We dream of something entirely senseless, and then turn it into a familiar object. *That is why dreams are usually in familiar places, with familiar people. *We aren't equipped to make sense of dreams so we use our conceptions from waking hours and try to fit them onto the senseless flow of dream perception.

So then the interpretation of dreams can be thought of as finding out why your mind applies these a priori conceptions to the somewhat random flow of raw dream.

To understand the processes and discernments within dreaming is to understand the functionality of the spirit within the construct of the physical mind, and body, and its relationship to its respective parts.

The spirit is the part of man which transience the limited abilities of the mind, it is the part of man which can bring the carnal mind into the unseen realm of the eternal, thereby giving the mind the ability to commune with the spirit realm through symbolism and visional stimuli via dreaming. The spirit is without guile and can not deceive the soul or the mind of the dreamer.

It only speaks truth through a pure form of communication, (‘seeing is believing,’) but only if you can receive the interpretation from the ‘spirit of you’re mind.’

God has given man the ability to commune with His spirit directly through prayer, and through dreams,

Act 2:17 And it shall be in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of My Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams;

These are not- “a string of unstable, disconnected perception that our minds try to understand by impressing our a priori conceptions upon it.”- But they are a purposeful communicate of God’s spirit to our carnal mind by the unveiling of truth through the firing of designated synopsizes within the brain to produce the desired visional display to the visional cortex. This is not by chance, or is it a hap-hazard firing, but it is a multi-dimensional relationship between the spirit and the mind.

The Rev.

Originally posted by Leo Volont


I know where you get this hypothesis from. *Scientific Researchers, who are geared only for Quantitative Analysis and are not in the least equiped for Qualitative or Aesthetic Analysis suppose that Dreams are random firings of Nerve Cells. *They suppose this because the can count firings of brain cells. *They ignore Meaning because they cannot Quantify Meaning.

That is how nearsighted and myoptic Science is.

We KNOW Dreams have meaning.

Simply look at the Dreams of our New Japanese Friend in the Dream Interpretation Section and then try to convince us that Dreams are not Coherently Meaningful.

Now, you may have disordered Dreams, but this is because you have not yet established any progress in integrating your waking self into your Dream Self. *Your Dreams seem disordered only because your Memory of what had happened was faulty and misfiring. *With some experience in Dreaming, your Dreams can become just as Coherent as those of our Japanese Friend and many of our other Dreamers who would never suspect their Dreams of originating in random nerve end discharges.

That isn't where I got my idea from.

I was actually reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and one of the thoughts he explained was connected in my mind with his explanation of Kant and that brought forth this concept.

If you pick up an object next to your computer, and look at it from a different angle, it has a completely different form to your eyes, but you still identify it as the same object. You do this because you have natural notions of objects and models in your head of objects. Otherwise the pure sense experience makes the same object look completely different depending on your perspective. This same process acts in dreams which are much less coherent than waking reality anyway, and so whether the "pure dream" is completely random or not, how your mind views and classifies the dream experience gives you major insight into a person's thoughts, feelings, emotions, and subconscious(which is what translates pure experience into mental objects). If dream experience is truly random then it is the only significant meaning of a dream, but even if it isn't it's still very significant.