The Mysterious World of Dreams

"We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life, is rounded with a sleep." (The Tempest)

      William Shakespeare's immortal, yet often misquoted, line brings to light the idea that we are what our dreams make us. Since the dawn of human civilization the fascinating world of dream has captured our imagination, and we have forever questioned if dreams mean anything. Are we really begotten by a series of mysterious and shifting images we encounter every night as we drift from the waking world to the world of sleep? If yes, then how significant are dreams in our lives? Popular myths have formulated the idea that dreams are anything but outrageous images conjured up by a sleepy brain. Modern day thinkers from Sigmund Freud, Henry David Thoreau to dream experts like Eugene Aserinsky and David F. Dinges have given ample thoughts and attention to the illusive realm of midnight reveries.  

      Dreams have been defined as a series of pictures, events, sounds or emotions that pass through our mind while we are asleep. The first records of dreams have been found around 3000 BC. Clay tablets belonging to that period included the dream-books of the Assyrians and Babylonians, discovered at Nineveh in the library of Ashurbanipal, an Assyrian emperor. Other similar tablets were discovered in Mesopotamia. Cave paintings in France from the Neanderthal Period have dreamlike quality in them. The ancient civilizations of Sumer, Assyria, Babylonia and Egypt gave oracular significance to dreams, and believed that dreams carried secret messages from their gods. In India and in several other Asian countries, dreams were regarded as having an inner source, and have been linked with philosophy and spirituality. Dreams have always been held up as an avenue to our unconscious mind. They have been said to be responsible for two Nobel Prizes, innumerable works of fiction and visual art and several ground-breaking discoveries, like the discovery of the Periodic Table. But are we giving more importance to dreams than we really need to?  

      Sigmund Freud was the first modern Western scientist to make a detailed attempt to understand the nebulous and controversial idea of dreams. Freud believed that all dream imageries are symbolic in content. Carl Jung, the Swiss psychiatrist, thought that dreams have an important role in our lives and have universal significance. However, contemporary psychiatric world has repudiated and disparaged Freud's hypothesis of dream. New theories and ideas have come into being, and it has been established that dreams are a reflection of internal experiences. They are transparent in many ways and if they carried any premonition that is purely coincidental. In the early 70's Harvard researchers Allan Hobson and Robert McCarley proposed that dreams are more physiological than psychological. They may have some pattern, but they never are a "doorway to the unconscious." The highly complex nature of human brain has been made responsible for the chaotic series of images that are played in the screen of our mind during sleep.

      While we sleep we pass through five different stages. We start with light sleep or non-REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep in stages one and two, then head onto stages three and four (deep sleep stages) when our bodies become relaxed and our brain waves become long and dreary. Each ninety minute sleep cycle passes through the four stages ending with the REM sleep stage. REM sleep was identified and defined by Nathaniel Kleitman and Eugene Aserinsky in the early 1950s. REM sleep is characterized by visibly detectable movement of the eye behind closed eyelids. REM sleep is also called dream sleep since we experience most of our dreams during this stage. 

      All our dreams can be ramified into five different types: ordinary, lucid, telepathic, premonitory, and nightmare. These dreams are often threaded together for greater effect. Archetypes or ordinary dreams are our unconscious responses to our waking hour experiences. Events of our past and future are projected vividly in this kind of dreams, and their significance is mostly literal rather than spiritual. The second kind of dreams are the lucid dreams, lucid dreams are mind controlled dreams where we actually decide what we want to dream about. Try thinking something you want to see in your dreams before you go to bed, and see if you dream about the very thing you planned. The third kind of dreams is the telepathic dreams where a mind-to-mind connection between two individuals is built. People having telepathic dreams might interact with beloved dead souls and convey or receive information in the process. Dreams in this category deal with profound issues, and are much less common. The fourth kind of dreams is the premonitory dreams, and they are similar to telepathic dreams in some respect. This kind of dreams allows an individual to see through the cloudy landscapes of past and future; out-of-body experience might also be common with people having premonitory dreams. The famous Moscow-born writer and shaman P. D. Ouspensky believed that such dreams "disclose to us the mysteries of being, show the governing laws of life, and bring us into contact with higher forces." The fifth and final kind of dreams is the nightmares. They are a series of bewildering, frightening, unsettling dreams that are so powerful they can jolt us out of sleep. One can never say why we have nightmares or who is the author of the nightmares? Is there a sadistic force creating unpleasant and morbidly painful images in our brain, and why is it impossible to fast-forward nightmares? We have no answers. Nightmares are often more excruciating in dreams than they are in actual life, that is, if they truly occur in real life, the chances of which are generally very slim. Dream experts have pointed out that nightmares are nature's way of preparing us for volatile situations that we might encounter in our future life. But there is no proof to that belief, as yet. 

      The properties of the innumerable experiences, ideas and faces we see in our dreams are highly important to decipher the meanings of the dreams. Dreams are often thematic, and they focus on certain dominant or distorted traits a person might have. Dreams that are personal may find different interpretations with respect to different individuals who encounter them. One third of our dreams tend to deal with unhappy events. A record of a series of lifelong dreams encountered by a person would show that most dreams we come across are reflections of preoccupations and concerns we face in our waking hours. Yet it is possible to point out certain recurring and popular dreams that have been haunting the gallows of human mind over a considerable period of time. One such popular dream is the exam dream. In it, the individual may find herself in a classroom trying, desperately, to look into someone else's paper, but the page is turned and the dreamer realizes that she has forgotten to prepare for the test. This dream could be associated with insecurities, fear of failure in life, etc. The other generic dream is the dream of being chased. Many people have this dream, and it is typically thought to be connected with hidden fear, anxiety or deep and secret emotions from which the dreamer runs away in real life. The actor's dream or a missed appointment dream may be related with one's regret over some missing opportunity or deep fears of failure and low self-esteem issues. The naked dream, where a person usually finds herself in a public place, nude, may denote fear of inculpation for one's activities and repressed sexual wishes. Dreams where one sees herself falling may indicate lack of control, insecurity, and lack of support in her rousing hours. Seeing animals in your dreams might signify primitive desires, uncivilized and hidden longings and sexuality. However, to see animals who can talk in your dreams may represent your superior knowledge. A dream of drowning can signify an overwhelming emotional situation where the individual is too much involved with certain things in one's life that are beyond her control. Drowning dreams may also signify loss of identity and over-dependence on something or someone. People stuck in bad relations tend to have this dream. If you see yourself surviving the drowning it means you might come out of the bad relationship, rejuvenated. 

      In our dreams abstract concepts, like time and space, take on identity and often work symbolically indicating a particular kind of personal emotion. A religious dream, like seeing a deity or a dominant mythological figure, may indicate your unconscious or conscious subservience to the will of others in your waking life. Dreaming of simple geometric figures, like straight lines or triangles, commonly signifies strength of purpose and/or lack of self-expression and predictability. Strength and weakness of character is usually defined by dreams featuring a series of common visionary motifs -- babies, flowers, darkness, labyrinth, etc. Seeing wide open spaces and expansive boondocks in dreams may signify a wish to break free.

      Often dreams and creativity have been hemmed together with inextricable thread. In our dreams, emotions rein free, creative ideas; thus, find better expression in the deepest depths of human dream. People with high level of creativity may find their inspiration, their muse, in a dreamy corner of their mind.

  The themes and images of a person's dreams may directly point at her own personal situation; therefore, before accepting the generic interpretation of dreams, the dreamer is advised to point out the personal associations that apply to her unique individual situation.

       Questions like "Why do we dream?" or "What purpose they serve?" are highly ambiguous, and have not provided any solid answers. Despite their being innumerable theories, assumptions, dream-tests, brain scans, the brain and the mirage it creates are still objects of great mystery. Some scientists feel that dreams are needless. Therefore, they serve no purpose, whatsoever, while other schools of thought vociferate that there must me some thought behind nature's wish to force us go through the painstaking cycle of dreams; that dreams are not just an epiphenomenon encountered during REM sleep, but have deep revelational powers. The Contemporary Theory of Dream, states dreaming is the last stage of the REM sleep cycle when connections between various neurotransmitters in the brain are loose and unfocussed. Emotions of a dreamer guide the process of dreams. It is our deep-seated emotions that dress up and play different roles and conjure up different kinds of images in our brain. Traumatic and stressful events often come back in dreams either directly or via different indirect motifs or themes, which could be easily linked to the original emotion. The mind meshes the upsetting sentiments to the texture of our memory system such that in case we face similar traumatic experiences our mind would know how to react, and response would not be extreme and unprepared. Thus, however much we might consider dreams as gibberish language of our somnifacient brain, we can never deny the illuminating and adaptive aspect of dreams. 

      Thus, keeping in mind the contemporary and veteran arguments about dream, it might be assumed that in many ways dreams usually form a connection between the conscious and the unconscious. They are a "hidden gate to eternity"; an unknown world of fascinating and mysterious images that has been dwelling inside us since the time our world was created, our civilization coined. The psychedelic emotions associated with dreams hold secrets to a mysterious future that is up to us to discover. Dreams have been springboards for great inventions and discoveries; they have been rulers of our mind, the real God-particle that exists in all sentient beings. Dreams, indeed, are an essential part of our lives. And they are certainly more important than a series of confusing, outrageous pictures we see every night as we drift off to sleep.

  NO PORTION OF THE ARTICLE MAY BE USED WITHOUT PRIOR AUTHORIZATION. DO NOT COPY.

References:

"The Dictionary of Dreams and their meanings" (book) by Richard Craze; Herman House (2003).

"The Dream Book-- Dream Spells, Nighttime Potions and Rituals, and Other Magical Sleep Formulas" (book) by Gillian Kemp; Little, Brown and Company (2001).

"What Are Dreams? Inside the Sleeping Brain: Nova" (PBS documentary); directed by Charles Colville and Sarah Holt (2009).

"Dreams Let Up on Us!" by Dick Cavett; Opinionator: New York Times (April 2010).

"Why do we dream?" by Ernest Hartmann; Scientific American (July 2003).

Love to write

The world of writing is so peaceful, so colorful, so enticing and exhilarating. It almost makes you lose yourself in the mystical labyrinths of words and phrases, dialogues and metaphors. Sometimes the ideas are so strong that you wake up from your sleep to write and once you finish...ah!! A perfect breath of delight comes out. Everything bad and ugly goes away from your view, and you see the words you wrote--like gems on a beach, clear and pearly white. It is such a wonderful feeling to be a writer and not whine about it. People take up professions that are financially remunerative, mine is intellectually wild, statistically indefinable, morally insane, yet it is so much a part of my little life that if I stay away from my diary for one day I start to think what if I can't write anymore. I guess this feeling is the same for all writers. We are all insecure and scared. We love our art so much that the fear of losing it is almost equivalent to death. There is no way art can embrace us; it simply doesn’t care. It is we who persevere, who wake up everyday and spent all the waking hours laboring over books and treatises, fiction titles and a blank page staring at us artlessly to see what we are able to scribble on its chest. But ultimately there is no greater reward than seeing your name in print, seeing your ideas transformed to words, painting portraits and landscapes with colors that were once part of the humid darkness of your brain. The brain is a jorum of ideas, allow it to blossom.

After you have started loving your art of writing you will encounter a deep satisfaction in your mind, you will automatically leave the mortal social-networking world and enter your library and read the masters. I have been doing this for a few months now, and I assure you that every bit of this precious time helps. Doubtless, you will lose your friends, but real ones are meant to stay, they won't leave you, and you can do without whatz-up buddies. I may not be a great writer, but I feel that you don’t have to be big to appreciate what you do. Several writers say that they are nothing, just mindless blokes not knowing what they are doing. I feel if you don't take pride in your art, you will never learn it. Your mistakes will leave you if you force them to, but if you undermine yourself you can never be a writer. Take pride and love your art. Love it like you love your spouse, and it will come to you slowly and steadily. Never hate what you write. You can never silence your critics, but stop turning into one.  Treat your work as gently as you would treat your child. Be gentle and strict at the same time.  But most importantly love it and enrich it with new experiences, new books and new ideas. Reading newspapers and taking part in discussions always help. I am but a novice when writing professionally is concerned, but I tell you that my life would be worthless if there weren't a new fiction to write, a new article to think about. The expectancy of completing my new fiction project is as exhilarating as getting a new gift.  I am willing to spend the rest of my life pursuing the insane ritual of waking up every morning and sitting with my laptop, the blank page waiting to be impregnated with my ideas. It is me that ultimately matters, not the world and what it thinks about me. May be my ideas will bear fruit and I may write something worth reading, but then there is also the possibility of me being imaginatively barren. There is no set map, no ideal writing life, it is just what I write and how I write it. Idealizing doesn’t help; love it or hate it there is no ideal writer's life. It is all a mirage which might be clear on a cloudy day and blur on a sunny morrow, you don't know what to expect; you just hope it works for you. 

Fiction at Work Publication

Fiction at Work :http://fictionatwork.com/dss1.aspx

Fiction at Work: http://fictionatwork.com/dss1.aspx

Indian women and the art of homemaking

Image Source : btvision.bt.com

To be a homemaker or not to be a homemaker that is the question. Well, personally I don't mind much being one, but there is this popular thought, rather an ignoble notion, going on in our market about this ancient profession being a member of that mephitic group of vocations which are known to project you in a sort of clichéd way. Don't take my word, just open your eyes and you will see homemakers presented in India as the over-dependent always-working-in-the-kitchen bunch, seldom having any life outside her culinary nook. These days women like us-- and by 'us' I mean girls having strong feministic views who find it difficult to interact with the fragments of the moribund society forever yearning to project woman in the subservient light-- are trying our best to make this job of homemaking look nitid and delectable. One can never learn to manage one's life unless one knows how to manage, or make, the home. The question that now arises is how do we change the notion of a whole country and make them see that women are much more than innate homemakers, and if given proper resources much fertile mentally than the male part of the population? I guess such a drastic change in popular opinion is due in the next century since a good chunk of India is still hidebound. Tradition teaches us to take our mothers as caring forces, and our male guardian figures as self-taught autocrats ruling the household with actual, meaty authority. And even though a large part of New-India vests equal rights to both men and women and condemns gender discrimination, as you step outside this ephemeral shadow of urbanization, you will catch the underbelly of the country as dark and fetid as it used to be a century ago. With the sudden (un) healthy growth of honor killings and sexual harassment of women in work places, it is more than clear that when female voice is concerned, India likes to see them spoken from the incarcerations of home. Shout as you may and repudiate this argument with well chosen words and expression, you, yourself, can hardly deny the fact that the whole country needs some brain washing machine to get it in their heads that women are the threads of the society that begot them, and in all cases deserve equal opportunity and respect. And homemaking is not the profession of the unintelligent.

When speaking about equal portrayal of women, a word or two need to be said about the ever growing movie industry. While Bollywood is showing much potential in developing somewhat strong female leads, the sas-bahu sloshes ruling the sitcom industry continually show women in the home, cooking and contemplating homely arguments. Unless the film and television industry of the country manage to emanate a good deal of patriarchal authority in the female thespians by presenting them in an equal footing with the male counterparts and giving them outside-home roles, merely calling actresses 'female actors' doesn't help.

Our aged relatives have undoubtedly drilled into our heads the idea that women are better off at home, and in the Mesozoic Era they might have been, but today they are not. Women need to reinvent themselves, and the roles traditionally entrusted on them need to be scrutinized. Nonconformism can never create positive results, it will fill us will gall, but tactfully living the problem can, ultimately, beget good results. Instead of avoiding over-pressuring girls to marry in the same caste why not give them the independence to start making their own decisions early in their lives using their own merit; a good level of independence will allow the growth of better judgmental powers in their cranium, thus when choosing life partners they will seldom make mistakes. The eye of authority needs to slacken now, and as India is getting ready to embrace the global Twitter generation, rural and urban India has got to make a treaty. I know teaching the second highest populous of the world the idea of something as paltry as female independence when then country is wrought by so many misgivings is not possible, but change, like charity, always begins at home. Remember home and homemaking is more important today than they were in the yesteryears. It is a challenging job as tricky and demanding as any other work-hard-get-paid-well jobs in the market. As women it behooves us to create better self-images of ourselves-- take on jobs you never thought women could take; get educated, it is never late to start anew; read books and articles and get into political discussions with the male members of your family; teach your kids to regard both their parents as equal parts of the home and always take pride in what you are doing. Such small changes will cumulatively add to the image of women, and may be someday we will see the real New-India where women, the spokesmen of country, are far more important than eighteenth century corny homemakers.

Article is copyrighted. Copyright  Barnali Saha. 

Low Fat Vegetarian Hamburgers

Serves 2

Ingredients:

Fat Free Refried beans -- 1 can

Mixed Beans: 1 can

Seasoned Bread Crumbs: 1/4 th cup

Egg-- 1 (can be substituted with 1tbsp of corn flour)

Worcestershire Sauce-- 2 tsp

 Garlic-- 1 clove

Finely Chopped Red Onions: 3 tbsp

Low Fat Hamburger Buns: 2

Cheese: 1 slice for each burger.

Salt and Pepper: As per taste

Good Quality Extra Virgin Olive Oil for Frying

Method:

In a bowl mix refried beans and mixed beans and mash them. Three tbsp of beans from each can should make 2 burgers. You can use more if you want. Mix chopped onions, finely chopped garlic, salt and pepper and mash again. Add egg (if you are using corn flour you should omit this step). Add breadcrumbs, and using your hands sculpt two burger patties. Dust with corn flour. Heat 2tbsp of olive oil in a non-stick pan and fry the burger patties in medium heat for five to six minutes each side. Allow them to cook thoroughly. Turn them every five minutes, add oil if needed. After the patties have browned considerably allover, carefully take them out and place them on a bun with lettuce, tomato and cheese.