What is dreaming all about? Where does it occur? Why is it so odd, and disconnected from the reality of our waking life? Glad you asked, because it is a very interesting and even fun subject. And although dreaming is somewhat related to our thoughts and beliefs, there are some odd twists and turns. But why is dreaming so different than being awake? Science cannot figure out the sleep and dreaming issue, although they have tried very hard to do so. That is because science does not believe in a human soul, and dreaming occurs in the soul. Therefore dreaming helps to further reveal the presence of a soul in humans, for those willing to see it.
The Reader knows from experience that dreams often include many distortions of reality. Some truly bizarre. Memories may not be accurately recalled, even though we know the reality very well when awake. Time may be distorted, with the dreamer at a previous point in their life, or in the future. Things we know very well do not seem to prevent us from dreaming about a very odd set of opposite and unrealistic circumstances presented during the dream. Scary things happen but we cannot yell or run away. We go from one place to another without transportation. Things and people randomly appear and disappear. People we knew who have died appear and may even speak. We do odd, hazardous, and bizarre things which we would never do in real life. We go out in public stark naked and think it is OK and assume no one will notice or care. We try to perform tasks which are easy for us, but we cannot. Silly and ridiculous situations presented in the dream are taken seriously. Absurdities abound. We get caught in do-loops. The laws of physics are suspended. We hardly recognize the person who is posing as us in our own dreams. What is going on inside our soul?
Humans are not animals as we have discussed, but let us start with how animals dream, which is very different than humans. Animals can have "brain dreams" because they have no soul, but only about instinctive activities such as running, climbing and other muscle memory activities. But since humans have almost no instincts except for a few in newborns, we cannot dream from the brain. In fact, the human brain is basically shut down during sleep, but can be aroused in case of emergencies. For humans, dreaming is a soul activity, even though it seems like the soul has missing pieces. In fact, it does have missing pieces during sleep and dreaming. Actually, parts of the soul go offline during sleep, but not the entire soul all at once. That is why dreams can be so bizarre and contain scenarios which confuse us, since the entire soul is not available during sleep. So dreams often contain sequences which are foreign to our waking thoughts and beliefs, because parts of it are offline at various points during sleep. The first conclusion we reach is, once again, dreaming is a soul activity, not a brain activity.
The soul requires a form of rest just as the body does, although for somewhat different reasons. The soul does not become tired, but it does need to reorient its resources and perform maintenance and storage tasks. These tasks can include sorting out and storing the recent memories, analyzing information it received during the past day, and sometimes just having some fun by inventing and trying out new thoughts. Dreaming allows individual components of the soul to operate under a reduced set of rules, which are less restrictive than waking rules where the soul must get through the day in an orderly and sometimes boring way. Dreaming is, among other things, a soul vacation. It is artistic. It is escapism, an escape from toil and repetitive boredom. If that means dreaming is about doing something different, then that is an understatement.
Therefore dreaming results when individual soul components begin exerting some flexibility to operate without full supervision from "The Boss." That "Boss" is the Heart of the soul, the primary component of the soul which shuts down during the majority of sleep. We have already discussed the Heart as the integrating engine of the soul, since it brings together all the various inputs from the various advisory parts of the soul, makes sense of the inputs and then decides what to think and believe (determines thoughts and beliefs). The Heart is the part of the soul which is in charge. It makes the decisions and sends out the orders. It is the controller of the soul. But when it shuts down to rest and do maintenance actions, the various other parts of the soul have some vacation time. There is no one to tell them what to do. YIPPEE! No one is in charge! So like the old adage says: "When the cat's away the mice will play." And play they do, as the various soul components do what they please, but still within a somewhat reasonable limit -- that is, if you call dreaming about public nudity "within reasonable limits."
Therefore the answer to the questions posed at the beginning of this chapter regarding why dreams can be so bizarre is that when we sleep certain parts of the soul shut down, or at least go into a power saving mode where they doze off, sometimes taking turns. And sometimes more than one soul component goes offline at the same time. This is why REM sleep dreams can be so different than dreams just before we wake in the morning. Different parts of the soul are offline at different points of the sleep cycle.
Now for some examples to explain the previous assertions. The soul essentially rotates which soul components are allowed to go into power saving "Eco" mode. At one point it will be the Memory, or at least portions of it. Sometimes the short term Memory is down, then other times longer term Memory, and other times archival Memory is down. This is why our memories during dreaming can be so far off from reality. Soul components go into a "power saving" mode during sleep, including Memory which does not function as well during sleep. In our dreams we may remember that we are in a certain job, but that might have been years ago. But that does not stop us from dreaming about being in that job at the present time, but it may be mixed with later memories, such as being married. Then people who are now dead appear. So dreaming memories are not always aligned with the correct timeline of our life. And this disorientation to time is a major factor regarding why dreams can be so odd.
To further explore this issue, for Memory to work accurately it must also relate to time, which is not a direct Memory function, although it does use association of like memories to relate to time. Time and location orientation are in the Mind, so when the Mind is in Eco mode, the Memory may have difficulty knowing where memories fit in the timeline of our life, unless the associations between certain memories is very strong. Therefore during sleep we can be at many different times and locations which occurred during our life, or at no time or location we have ever experienced. Reality becomes distorted because accurate time and location are not available to the Memory at all times during sleep, since the Mind goes in and out of resting mode. If the Mind does not supply accurate time and location data, the Memory will invent it. This makes for some very odd dreams about time and location. And often we do not remember very important information at some times during sleep as certain parts of the soul become unavailable for interaction. Couple all this with a Heart which is generally shut down during sleep, and it can be quite a circus act as the various parts of the soul invent alternate realities.
The primary reason for sleep is the physical side of the human, especially the brain, which needs to rest and recharge. The brain goes into various levels of power saving "Eco" modes during sleep, but can be aroused by noise or physical contact such as shaking. But it is not the same as being truly unconscious, where waking is difficult or even impossible. Being unconscious is not sleep, and dreaming while unconscious probably does not occur, or maybe rarely based on the level of unconsciousness, which are not all the same. During sleep the brain shuts off most of its sensory inputs, although for safety reasons we are designed to wake up under conditions of unexpected noise, physical contact, smells, etc.
Awareness of self is in the soul, and there are various levels of thought awareness, including alert, resting, diminished (drowsy or impaired), sleep, and unconscious (totally unaware). Since the soul cannot get to the outside universe except through the brain (until eternity where a different form of body will exist), the soul is highly dependent on the brain for awareness. Those things which affect the brain affect soul awareness, including sleep.
As mentioned earlier, we know that animals can dream. Well, sort of. But not as humans do. Animals dream in repetitive motion and instinctive ways from their sensory center, which is in the brain, and mainly as muscle memory. They run away from danger, or chase other animals. They dream instinctive actions. But human dreams are not based on instincts or repetitive motion. God designed both animal and human brains to shut off most major muscle motion while sleeping to prevent harm. If we bolt upright, we are awake when it occurs.
On the issue of dreaming and repetitive motion, I am an avid golfer, but my dreams never allow me to actually swing a golf club. I often must wait for what seems like hours in my dream (time is distorted in dreams) to tee off as one event after another prevents proceeding, only to be foiled by sudden darkness. Why? Because my soul does not know how to swing a golf club, so it cleverly avoids the subject. It does not want to try because it would fail. The soul cannot swing a golf club, but the brain can. It is the same with any complex repetitive motion sport. The dream may include having done the action, but it does not include doing the action, not in any detail, at least. If the brain were doing the dreaming, then all dreams would be repetitive motion and sensory only, just as with animals. It would not be the complex scenarios humans dream about which cannot happen in real life. The brain has never seen unreality through the senses since everything is real, although some things are misinterpreted. But the human soul can invent some seriously outlandish scenarios when the Heart is shut down and not in charge of the soul.
And so that explains the public nudity thingy. But only men admit to it. Women seem to have issues about the subject. So did Adam and Eve in the Garden dream about public nudity? Trick question.
We mentioned several chapters ago that there is no subconscious mind in the soul as a separate component. That is true, although the shutting down of various components, sometimes taking turns, acts like a subconscious as it is generally defined which is "existing in the mind but not available at the conscious level." That definition is OK to define the concept that such things occur, but there is no separate subconscious mind. Dreaming is somewhat related to this issue, whereby the various soul components express what they are working on without the Heart coordinating their inputs, although they go through the Mind as thoughts which are not fully vetted. But since the Mind is not always active during sleep, the other components must either wait or invent an outrageous set of bizarre circumstances to fill in the blanks. That is why dreams are so odd, because the thoughts are simply thrown out randomly without coordination or full processing, otherwise most would be discarded as non-compliant with good thinking processes. The Mind is capable of working on multiple tasks at the same time, and many of them are done in the background, but during sleep these background thoughts can escape without being properly processed. This background processing in the Mind is what some would call a subconscious, but it is actually just background processing inside the Mind.
Although different than dreaming, a human soul can become disoriented to reality during waking time in much the same way as in dreaming. The Heart can be subverted, corrupted, or may abdicate its responsibilities while awake. Other soul components may abdicate their responsibilities. The soul can become dysfunctional. We will discuss these issues next.