To sleep, to dream, to wonder
Wonder
and mystery live with each of us and visit us regularly in our
beds.
My 6-year-old son came to my bedside recently in the dark, quiet
hours between midnight and dawn.
``Daddy,'' he complained, ``I woke up, and before I could get
back to sleep I had the feeling I was going to have a bad dream.''
I recall this because I had just read an article about dreams
that left more questions than it had provided answers.
The newspaper story provided neurological explanations of dreams
and completely ignored any mystery.
I cherish my son's phrasing. He wasn't afraid to dream; he feared
having a bad dream. Bad or good, I want my son to respect the
mystery of dreams.
During the years I thought of being a scholarly researcher, I
spent much waking time reading about sleep and dreams.
Since sleepwalking
my way into journalism, I retain high interest in anything written
about sleep or dreams.
The article I recalled reading that night my son climbed into
bed with me noted that what scientists now know about the human
sleep cycle is the result of a researcher studying the brain waves
of his 8-year-old son.
Which suggested immediately why I gave up on research. Who wants
to watch children sleep when they're constantly interrupting parents'
sleep?
That researcher in Chicago discovered what is now known as REM
sleep, or rapid-eye-movement sleep.
REM sleep, put simply, is the sleep of dreamers.
When a person is sleeping soundly, his or her brain waves are
transmitted to an electroencephalograph (or EEG, a brain-wave
reader) as smooth, even lines on a graph.
When that same person dreams, the lines on the graph become active
and erratic, very similar to the brain-wave pattern of a person
who is wide awake. This heightened brain activity while still
sleeping is accompanied by rapid jerking of the eyes beneath the
closed eyelids -- REM sleep.
Sleep occurs in cycles, beginning with a descent into deep sleep
and a return to near waking. One cycle generally lasts about 90
minutes, so if a person sleeps for eight hours, that person will
likely sleep through five or six cycles. (Children sleep through
a shorter cycle.)
On the rising
side of the cycle, about 90 minutes into a night's sleep, the
person experiences the first REM period and its accompanying dreams.
We dream, in other words, not when we are deeply asleep but when
we are close to awake. My son apparently awoke during one of his
REM periods and became anxious about returning to his dream if
he went back to sleep.
Some people claim they never dream. Experts argue that every person
dreams every night, probably five or six times during a full night's
sleep; most of us simply don't recall our dreams.
(Drugs, even those designed as ``sleeping pills,'' apparently
disturb the fragile REM sleep and prevent dreaming.)
Whatever else we make of them, dreams -- and the accompanying
REMs -- provide a sign of a healthful night's sleep.
Herein, however, is the problem. What do we make of dreams?
Everything
I've related so far describes the ``how'' of dreams, not the ``why.''
The typical newspaper article on dreams -- like the one I refer
to -- relies heavily on scientific sleep research, which describes
the sleeping brain processing images that come from inside the
brain itself rather than from the stimuli of the world.
My son and I, however, want to know what dreams mean. Science
too frequently answers our question why with an explanation how.
Meaning, unfortunately, has never been the strong suit of science
-- or of journalism.
The simplest and least mysterious theory of dreams suggests they
are the psychic waste of the brain. All the images that bombarded
the brain during the day are processed and disposed of in dreams.
This theory suggests the only meaning of dreams is that they mean
nothing.
This modern
theory echoes in part an ancient belief that dreams are curative.
Ancient Greece, Babylon and Egypt apparently provided temples
at which people dreamed away their ailments.
Ancient cultures put great stock in dreams. The Bible provides
several examples of this. The Hebrew Patriarch Joseph's fortunes
rose and fell on his interpretations of dreams. In the New Testament
story of Jesus' nativity, Joseph and Mary are warned in a dream
to avoid King Herod's evil intentions toward the newborn child.
Some contemporary cultures -- Hudson Bay Eskimos, for example
-- believe a sleeping person's soul leaves the body during dreams.
To wake such a person threatens his soul. The cultures usually
punish people who awaken dreamers.
Many cultural ideas about dreams meeting emotional needs were
promoted before modern psychoanalysis took over the notion that
dreams provide a pathway to our unconscious motives and desires.
How do I convey to my child what his dreams mean?
I want him to enjoy them because I think dreams are part of a
wonderful, mysterious world that defies all our logical and scientific
explanations and yet are experienced by almost every human person.
Dreaming
cannot be denied -- or explained. Scientist or sweeper, sleazeball
or saint, we all dream, and our dreaming remains a mystery.
Professor Wilse B. Webb of the University of Florida provided
about as good a confession as a scientist can provide in an article
in the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
``Among the plethora of theories ranging from those that assert
dreaming to be awareness of a god's voice to those that reduce
the dream to physical activity in the nervous system,'' Webb writes,
``no single, encompassing theory seems yet to be available.''
In other words, we don't know what dreams mean.
Perhaps, in this overwhelming age of information and explanation
arrogance, dreams are meant to preserve our sense of mystery and
wonder.
That's how I take them.
Come, son, let us dream and wonder together.
Allan R. Andrews can be
reached at arandrews@aol.com
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