DREAM

 Bibek Dahal
Dream has always been an important topic around the whole
glove.
Everyone dreams but no one exactly knows why and how does it
occur.
"Sigmund Freud', Father of psychology, explained dream as a play
of the unconscious mind. But what is unconscious? Unconscious
is a storehouse located deep into our mind which stores our Fears,
guilt, desires, pain and many more. It stores all this unpleasant
feelings in a deep state of a mind and represses it through the
Defense mechanisms of our identity.
Before moving forward let's understand about defense
mechanisms.
Defense mechanisms are psychological strategies that are
unconsciously used to protect a person from anxiety arising from
unacceptable thoughts or feelings. According to Freudian theory,
defense mechanisms involve a distortion of reality in some way so
that we are better able to cope with a situation.
There are many types of defenses but we will get into that later.
Repression also include these two principles
Pleasure principle and Reality principle
Pleasures principle occurs mostly when we are child. There are no
limitations; you can get whatever you want. You might eat
whatever you like. You ask for many toys. You may talk whatever
you want. In other words, your desires getting fulfilled without
any restriction is called pleasure principle. In this state you only
seek pleasure. Like, wanting to have a physical relation to
whichever girl you feel attracted to, or eating whatever food you
are intensely craving.
But Reality principle is just opposite to pleasure principle. It
restricts or limits our pleasures, according to the rules or values of
the society. For example you may see some women and feel lusty
and have arousal, if it was pleasure principle you might have went
to that girl and got your desire fulfilled. But in reality principle
due to the rules of the society, you repress that feeling and that
feelings get repressed into the unconscious.

So that the repressed feelings doesn’t comes out in regular basis;

when we are aware and conscious. But whenever we are in some
unpleasant situation like "in an argument" or at fight; due to the
extreme pressure in mind, our consciousness fades for sometimes,
And the unconscious takes over allowing us to play out all of our
suppressed emotions; that we may say something without being
aware . Or we may do some actions that even defense mechanisms
cannot control.
Let's look at another example. You are a man of 23 and you are
unmarried or don't have any romantic partner .whenever you get
an urge for a physical bond; you get attracted to plenty of women.
Or one who is the cause of your arousal. But due to the taboo of
the society or restriction; you can't go out and express your
feelings to those women because of fear. So you repress that
emotion. And this process continues for a long time. Until one day
you meet some girl alone and you get that same urge but this time
you are alone and she is alone too and due to that extreme urge,
your consciousness fades and pleasure principle gets active
unconsciously breaking all the limitation and restriction which
causes the things like " RAPE" . After that incident you get
extreme fear and because you are out of your senses you commit
crimes like murder.
So these types of things might occur because of the unconscious.
Now let's move on to the main topic "dreams",
When we sleep our consciousness also sleeps which makes our
defense mechanisms get weaker causing the Unconscious to get
active to play out freely.
Freud's method for interpreting dreams was very simple.
He called this method "free Association". The method of free
association led Freud to the conclusion that dreams are the
disguised fulfillments of repressed emotions.
Freud distinguished between the manifest content of a dream
(what we remember upon waking) and the latent content (the
hidden psychological meaning).
The manifest content is often a distorted version of the wish that
the dreamer’s mind tries to fulfill, while the latent content is the
underlying wish itself.
Freud also introduced "dream work" in his interpretation of
dreams .The process by which the unconscious mind alters the
true meaning of a dream into something less disturbing .“
This includes mechanisms like displacement (shifting emotional
significance from one object to another), condensation
(combining several ideas into one), and symbolization
(representing an action or idea through symbols).

Freud also talks about how we remember dreams after waking up

by two types of revision."Primary and secondary".

Primary revision occurs when we wake up just after having

dreams. Where we remember only the main events and the
characters we see in that dream. But even in that state also, we
cannot remember the whole dream. We just remember the main
event that happened in that dream. Our brain filters that memory
and only store dreams that are acceptable in this society.

Another state is known as Secondary revision where we only

remember little bit of events occurred while dreaming. Which
doesn’t even exceed 1 minute of time? And while telling others
about that dream; we just use made up words to stretch it. So
while telling our dreams to others only fraction of the story about
that dream is true and the rest is just a mixed or made up words.

According to Freud; our dreams contains some deep message

about our current situation. That message is conveyed through
symbols or events we see in our dreams. For example some
symbols like Towers, umbrella, pen or everything that goes up or
straight can be interpreted as a male sexual organs. Or symbols
like cave , walled garden, water, lake ,football, or everything that
is round or has a hole is symbolized as women's sexual organs
and topics related to them.

Dreams about teeth falling out are one of the most common. The
ancient Greek Artemidorus believed these dreams could be
interpreted based on which specific tooth or teeth a dreamer
loses. The early twentieth-century psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud
theorized that dreams about teeth had a sexual basis. Other
experts have proposed that this type of dream represents anxiety
around aging.

Recent research suggests that dental irritation from tension in the

teeth, jaw, or gums while sleeping may contribute to dreams
about teeth.

This was all about western perception about the dreams.

Now let's move on to what ancient Vedic scriptures have to say
about dreams.

According to the Vedanta philosophy there are three states of

sleep, 'Jagrat'(the awakened state), 'swavpna' (Dream state) and
'susupta'(deep sleep state).

Beyond that state is 'Turiya'(which is beyond our consciousness

and which cannot be described and can only be experienced.

Vedic philosophers explained dreams in greater ways.

Adisankhara's philosophical poem "moha mudgaram" has one
stanza that really makes us think about this awakened state or the
dream state is real.

The sloka is as follows:-

"kastwam ko hum kuta aayata;

ka me janani ko me taatah,

iti pari bhawaya sarva masaram ;

viswam tyaktwa swapna vicharam."

"Who are you? Who am I? Who is my mother? Who is my father?
Thus enquire and realize this entire world is essence less and
reject it like a dream land.

This Sloka really makes us think deep about our existence.

It talks about what is your real existence? Where did you come
from? Who is your mother, father or creator? Some might say that
you came into existence through your parents but before residing
into their body where were you? Were you on the food that they
ate? If you were on that food how did you came into that fruit and
that tree? Were you on the water? Or air? Or earth? Or the energy
of the sun, the answer to this question doesn't have any answer.

So when we dream that dream state may be real and this world
may be a dream to that dream state we are talking about.

If dream is just an imagination or fake; than how can we feel all

the emotion while dreaming? We feel pain, sorrow, happy, sad
and everything in that dream. Until we wake up, it feels real. We
forget all that memory of who we really were in dreams and only
remember a fraction of things. Time may also differ in dream vs.
reality. The event occurred in dream feels like real in dreams and
it feels like we are in that dream from a long period of time but
when we wake up ; all we remember is just a picture of that
dream; fragmented and scattered.

There are many myth and theories about having parallel universe
or Multiverse. One theory suggests that when we dream we see
our other version living in another universe. And the dreams we
see are actually a reality occurring in other universe.

There is no beginning and ending in a dream. We don't remember

when that dream started and how we came into that place .we just
remember being in a dream and that's it.
In this topic a question too arises; do animals also have dreams?
And if they dream than what is it like?

Same is with the infant. What do they see in a dream?

Well there isn't any fixed fact about this topic too.

There is lot of myths, theories or facts about dreams but nobody

actually knows a real meaning about dream. So let's enjoy while
we see dreams until we cannot.

 works cited : "sankharacharya"."Bhaja Govindam",8thcentury, Kalady, India.

 Freud, Sigmund. "The Interpretation of Dreams ", November 4, 1899.
Germany.