The Stuff of Dreams

What is the stuff of dreams? Random flashes of subconscious bric-a-brac, discarded brain bits and pieces? Are they journeys to another plain of existence? Is it the brain’s way of sorting out problems — reaching deeper into our mental capacity to reason and create? The truth is: we really don’t know. How a person might answer any of these questions out of their own personal experience relies heavily on their cultural background and spiritual beliefs. Whether it’s a scientific or spiritual approach to these questions, there is a common thread of agreement: creativity and our dream life are often linked.

The Scientific Explanation: Most dreams take place during REM sleep when our heart rate and breathing quickens and our blood pressure rises. We can't regulate our body temperature as well and our brain activity increases to the same level or even higher as when we are awake. The rest of the body, however, is all but paralyzed. This paralysis is caused by the release of glycine, an amino acid, onto those neurons that conduct impulses outward from the brain or spinal cord.

Common scientific theory believes that dreams are the result of random electrical brain impulses that, during REM sleep, pull imagery haphazardly from experiences stored in our brain’s memory. It claims that these images don't form the stories that we remember as our dreams. Instead, our waking minds want to make sense of these images. In order to do that, it makes up stories without us realizing it—attempting a kind of mental sorting and justification for what our mind has ‘seen’ in sleep.

Often for the writer or artist, the brain uses art as a translator, or its sorting tool for explaining what it has seen. In his article, “Artistic Creativity and the Brain”, professor of Neurobiology at University College in London, Semir Zeki said, “A major function of art can thus be regarded as an extension of the function of the brain, namely, to seek knowledge about the world.” The creative mind finds commonalities and parallels to what we have experienced.  The resulting poem or work of art helps the reader or viewer make the mental leap of understanding. It is that moment of recognition, that sudden ‘aha’ that pulls the audience in and a connection is made. Dreams, in their imagery and storytelling qualities often act as a creative bridge for these mental leaps.

North American Indian Beliefs: Many North American Indian cultures share a common belief that dreams are a type of journey where the dreamer crosses over into another reality or dreaming place. Here they seek guidance from ancestors and benevolent spirits.

The Naskapi Indians, who live in the Labrador Peninsula in Canada, believe that the soul is simply an inner companion or friend. They call their soul Mista peo which means Great Man. They believe that if they pay attention to their dreams, if they try to find meaning and truth in them, they become closer to the Great Man. In doing so, they win the Great Man’s favour who sends them more and better dreams. Not only do The Naskapi Indians follow the instructions given to them in their dreams by the Great Man, they give permanent form to their dreams through their art. By continuously honouring their dreams and their relationship to the Great Man, the Naskapi Indians believe that they become more complete human beings.

Life is But a Dream: Poet William Wordsworth (1770-1850) wrote:

'Our birth is but a sleep and forgetting:

The Soul, that rises with us, our life's star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,

And cometh from afar.'

Woodsworth had a more extreme idea of what our dream life really meant. He believed that this life we live is merely a dream and that when we die, our dream will end and we will awake.

 

Photo Courtesy:
mosaicmoods.wordpress.com

Dreams and Worldmaking: Worldmaking is a term that refers to the alternate realities that writers and artists create as part of their storytelling. Though they differ greatly in their descriptions and the means in which they are communicated, these virtual worlds all serve a similar purpose: they create a better understanding of our “actual’ world. Nelson Goodman, in Ways of Worldmaking, said, "the arts must be taken no less seriously than the sciences as modes of discovery, creation, and enlargement of knowledge…(about our world).”

The worldmaking that takes place in our dreams often defies the laws of geography and time, mixing and matching the present and past; land, air and sea. The mind pays more heed to associations than facts. Some of these associations or mental leaps require close scrutiny in order to interpret their significance. In his article, Dreams, Art and Virtual Worldmaking, Bert O. States said, “Just as poets are constantly displacing our accepted uses of the words in our vocabulary into new arrangements ("in Just- spring when the world is mud-luscious . . .") so dreams are devoted—in fact, have no other choice in the matter—to pressing possibilities as far as they will go.”

Dreams and Creativity: Many writers and artists believe that much of their creative inspiration comes from their dreaming place. Some believe that we all live a separate life in the realm of our dreams—others that our dreams are the keys that unlock the doorway to our true selves. In walking through that doorway on a journey to self, we find our creative impulse. At those times when our waking lives and dreams align, creativity reaches its peak. Author, Clive Barker once said, “Do I believe however that in certain states of consciousness the body becomes almost redundant and our spirit takes trips, visits states of being which are absolutely as valid as the reality which we are occupying? And that these can be arenas of education and healing? Yes, absolutely, I believe that.”

There are numerous examples of the link between dreams and creativity. Mary Shelly, author of Frankenstein, got the idea for the story from a dream. Musicians Beethoven, Paul McCartney and Billy Joel found inspiration from their dreams. Some reported hearing musical arrangements or lyrics in their dreams.

There are more examples of writers who have found solutions to problems with plots or characters in their dreams. Stephen King said, “I think that dreams are a way that people’s minds illustrate the nature of their problems. Or maybe even illustrate the answers to their problems in symbolic language.”

 

Left:Dattatreya Siva Baba on the meaning of Dreams 

Science or Spirituality? Does the meaning and creativity from our dreams come from science or spirituality? I’m inclined to believe that it’s both. In a world that is constantly changing and reinventing itself, the brain searches for points of reference, commonalities to what it already knows so that it can continue to learn and grow its understanding. Our spiritual selves and our creativity are like Siamese twins, joined at the hip, seeking the meaning and connections to a truth that is more than the sum of its parts. In the freedom of sleep, the creative mind creates its own world of understanding. The key is to pay attention, to remain open to its possibilities.

All artists and writers have felt it: that moment when a poem almost writes itself—where the poet feels more like the instrument of some greater existence rather than the creator. Whether or not they are spiritual people, whatever their belief system, few can deny the spiritual pull of such an epiphany.

 

 

Citation:

Bert O. States, Dreaming Arts and Virtual Worldmaking, 2003 http://www.asdreams.org/journal/articles/13-1_states.htm

Lee Ann Obringer, How Dreams Work, http://health.howstuffworks.com/dream.htm

Naomi Epel, Writers Dreaming, Vintage Books, New York 1993

Nelson Goodman, Ways of Worldmaking, 1978 Indianapolis, Cambridge: Hackett

Semir Zeki, Artistic Creativity and the Brain, http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/293/5527/51

 

 

 

 

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