Sometimes scary, sometimes silly, they’re a nightly theater of the mind

By BILL WIIST
Special to The Courier-Journal

Have you ever flown like a bird above the highest trees? Have you ever been chased around your school playground by a T-Rex? Have you ever eaten 12 peanut butter sandwiches, six foot-long hotdogs, and a diet soda and still been hungry? Maybe ... in your dreams!
Dreams are wonderful things where anything can happen. Sometimes they are scary and sometimes they are silly. Sometimes they seem real, but often are illogical.
Who dreams? Everyone. Even people who have been blind since birth dream. They don’t see pictures, as people with sight do, but they smell things, feel things and hear things.
Every known mammal dreams, except for two: the echinda, an Australian anteater, and the bottle-nosed dolphin. Animals such as horses and cows can sleep standing up, but only appear to dream while lying down.

DREAMY EYES
Whether you remember your dreams or not, you actually do dream every night. By closely watching people as they sleep, scientists have discovered that everyone dreams about four or five dreams a night. How can anyone tell if you’re dreaming? Your eyes give you away.
About an hour, after you fall asleep, your eyes begin to move back and forth. Your eyelids are closed, but your eyes are moving back and forth as if you were watching a movie. In a way, that’s what’s going on. Your dream is a movie in the theater of your mind. Scientists call this REM sleep. REM stands for ‘‘rapid eye movement.’’
Even when your body is asleep, your brain becomes active every so often throughout the night. This is when you dream.
The first time, you dream for about 10 minutes before falling back to regular sleep for about 90 minutes. The dream state returns three or four more times, about every 90 minutes, and, each time, the dreams last longer and longer. The last dream usually lasts about 30 minutes, but can last up to an hour. You spend about 20 percent of your sleep time in REM sleep.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS
During its dream state, your brain is thinking about things that happened during the day, and about things that might happen tomorrow. As the Bible says, ‘‘a dream comes when there are many cares.’’
So why are dreams often so weird? Scientists think it’s just the way our brains are wired.
Your brain is made up of two halves. The left half is logical. It’s good at reading, writing, and talking. The right half is creative. It’s good at solving problems in an imaginative way.
Which half controls dreams? The right half. That’s why dreams often don’t make much sense.
Dreams exaggerate our fears and our hopes. If tonight you dream of being chased by numbers, it may be because you are dreading tomorrow’s math test. On the other hand, if tonight you dream about a cake as tall as
Mount Everest, it may be because you’re excited about your birthday party tomorrow.

DEEP MEANINGS
Some people believe that dreams can foretell the future, or put us in touch with God or other spirit beings.
Alex Lukeman, the author of ‘‘What Your Dreams Can Teach You,’’ thinks that your dreams provide clues to your true self. Dreams ‘‘are an incredible resource for self-understanding and should be seen as such,’’ he said. ‘‘Dreams can offer you direction in your life, information about your health, inspiration and the feeling that you are on track, he said.
Robert T. Carroll, a
philosophy professor from Sacramento City College in California, takes a more down-to-earth view. Carroll, author of the upcoming book, ‘‘The Skeptic’s Dictionary: A guide for the New Millennium,” (available on the internet now),’’ said that there is no scientific evidence that ‘‘dreaming is a gateway to another world,’’ that dreams foretell the future or that they reveal much about the dreamer or God.
‘‘I once had a very vivid dream of an airplane crashing nose first in San Diego, where I lived for 20 years,’’ Carroll said. ‘‘About 10 years after the dream, an airliner went down in San Diego. Am I clairvoyant? Would the case be stronger for clairvoyance if the airliner went down the day after I had my dream? I don’t think so.’’
Carroll thinks dreams are just a by-product caused when the brain’s electrical impulses stimulate memories in different parts of the brain.

DREAM A LITTLE DREAM
Most people don’t remember their dreams. However, you can help yourself
remember more of them.
Experts — whether psychoanalysts, dream interpreters or New Age — recommend that people wanting to remember more of their dreams should keep a dream journal.
Get a small notebook and a pencil and put them by your bed next to a lamp. Next, before you go to sleep, keep
telling yourself to wake up after your first dream. When you do wake up, turn on the lamp and write down everything you remember about your dream. Go back to sleep, but only after telling yourself again and again to wake up after your next dream. Be sure to write down each dream. People tend to forget their dreams 10 minutes after they wake up.
But before you try this experiment, you better get your parents’ permission first. They may not want you waking up four times during the night!
Sources: ‘‘Sweet Dreams and Monsters’’ by Peter Mayle & Arthur Robins; ‘‘Dreaming and Dreams’’ by Patricia A. Stafford; The Tiger’s Nest, Frequently
Asked Questions (http://www.frii.com/tigrnest/
faqs.htm);The Skeptic’s Dictionary (http://www.skepticdic.com); Counterpoints in Science (http://www.calacademy.org/pacdis/issues/current/counter.htm); ‘‘The Lucid Dreamer’’ by Malcolm Godwin.