Thread: Theories on Dreams

Cirvivor:

I forgot to mention in my post that you might want to get yourself a good copy of the Tibetan Book of the Dead,if you haven't already; I think you'll find it fascinating. Be sure to get a well-annotated one; the best version I've found is by W.Y. Evans-Wentz.

What I think:

A lot of stories that come from our ancient past as humans, have something to deal with dreams and FA. It's not difficult for me to find an explanation for those stories about gods, demons, angels, ghosts, etc. because of they all could have happened in this world of dreams.

It's some sort of reality inside our brains (curious that a brain says that). As long as our sense of sight is poor, during WL we use to compensate the blank information with our memories or what we already know from experience (i.e. the blind spot of the eye). Perhaps this brain activity is not limited just to our sense of sight but all senses.
Another interesting related brain activity that I see is Synaesthesia, because of perhaps it's common to all humans although in a different degree.
During dreams, we could be using these mechanisms and all of the information we have in the terms of memories, to build scenarios and experiences around the basic information that gets through our senses while we sleep, besides that it could be guided by our thoughts and emotions.
Apparently we do it all the time, but during WL the amount of information that gets in, is bigger than when we sleep, and perhaps we don't have the time or didn't learn to build long stories around it because of the speed it changes. Although when some chemicals are on the run, this could happen, and one could start dreaming during his/her WL in the way of hallucinations.
Just an experiment: look for any unknown door or window in your neighborhood (if there are houses or buildings around), then try to imagine what's behind it. There you have new unknown data to start building a story with both memories and feelings.

The scientific dilemma is why individuals use different memories to fill determined signal input, perhaps it could have something to deal with the neural network and the access to certain memories faster than others. The fact that their instruments cannot measure that, doesn't mean that they all happen in the same time. (A fly flap its wings around 200 times in a second, now we know that because of it was possible to see it thanks to slow motion films, long ago we just saw a blur there, but it didn't mean that they all happened in the same time).

There's a lot yet to be discovered, such as the role serotonin, melatonin, the pineal gland, etc. play in these mechanisms and how external chemicals which have similar molecular structures to our natural ones produce similar effects on the body, etc.

A theory that I have developed (I'm sure others have met the same conclusion) is that dreams are a vestigial survival mechanism used by early humans to learn and practice doing dangerous things before taking the risk of doing it in real life. After we, as a species, were able to form civilizations, we lost the need to enter the dream realm in order to survive. The skill of mastering dreaming, most likely being a genetic trait, was no longer a determining factor in the evolution of humans and consequently, we modern humans are dream-retarded.