The human brain acts like an enormous sponge, constantly absorbing the information it receives throughout the day, from millions of sensors and senses. For the most part it works almost entirely on autopilot (for want of a better term), without our awareness.
My view of the human mind therefore, is separated into two distinct and completely separate entities, the Conscious and the Subconscious.
If we, as human beings, were consciously aware of the millions of processes our brain was going through, we would barely be able to concentrate on breathing, let alone hold a conversation over lunch.
To that end, we have developed a filtering method, that allows our brain to carry on working behind the scenes uninterrupted, whilst our conscious mind basks in the light of more leisurely pursuits, namely creative thought.
From an evolutionary perspective, this gives us a major advantage, in that our conscious mind is allowed the freedom to evolve ideas and invent new concepts.
Whilst behind the scenes our brain is frantically processing all the information its receiving, our conscious mind is only capable of performing a very small number of simultaneous tasks, and in reality, to do them thoroughly, it can only do them one at a time.
Whilst this may not seem a powerful tool, it allows us the ability to focus our attention diligently in one area, without being overwhelmed by everything else. Effectively the conscious mind has managed to filtered out all automotive functions of the body, and many of its senses, in order to concentrate without distraction, on a topic of choice.
The Subconscious mind, is therefore the rest of the brain that’s working on autopilot. From the millions of things its processing, it makes calculations and snap judgements incredibly quickly, and is capable of processing a multitude tasks simultaneously.
Whilst the conscious mind is separated from the subconscious mind, by way of these filters, the subconscious mind is capable of communicating to the conscious mind by way of emotional feelings, or general impressions. These chemical reactions in the body, are powerful enough to interrupt the conscious mind enough to concentrate on something else, namely what our subconscious mind is trying to bring to our attention.
These feelings or communications from the subconscious mind, in my opinion, are often misinterpreted as intuition, gut instinct, or even divine and mystical messages from another entity or plane of existence.
An example of how this conscious, subconscious split works, can be seen in say, a restaurant.
Whilst seated with a friend, you engage in a highly intellectual and absorbing conversation (ok just pretend its intellectual and engaging to humour me please). Whilst your conscious mind is fully engaged in the conversation, your subconscious mind is processing everything else... How to open you mouth and produce words, how to breath, how to regulate your bodies temperature, what the couple next to you are talking about.
Your conscious mind has filtered out those other voices, but your ears are still hearing what they say, and your subconscious mind is still processing it.
It is also aware of each individual noise emanating from the kitchen, the aroma of cooked food, and a pheromone emanating from a potentially suitable partner seated behind you.
For some strange reason, you get the urge to look around, and as your eyes fall upon the potential mate, your subconscious mind releases a good dose of hormones. All of a sudden your conscious mind looses all interest in the current conversation, and instead focuses its attention on the attractive person seated behind you.
The subconscious mind has done its job well. Whilst keeping you alive, safe, and breathing, it has also made an attempt to secure the future of the species, by focusing your conscious minds attention on the potential mate seated behind you.
It did this by first imparting the impression to look round, and secondly by way of releasing a chemical into your system, forcing you to be attracted to them.
The Conscious and Subconscious mind exist side by side, and communicate subtly with each other, helping us ascertain when people are feeling down or upset, what responses are appropriate to a given situation, how to move and breath, and basically how to conduct ourselves in everyday living.
When you suddenly receive a sense of dread or fear, its probably your subconscious digesting information you are otherwise unaware of, and sending a powerful warning signal to your conscious mind.
Because of the nature of our subconscious mind, processing information indiscriminately, it can sometimes send these emotions falsely. This is why when engrossed in a horror movie, we feel afraid. Or when we are alone in the dark we get anxious.
Regardless of weather there is any real physical threat, our subconscious mind, is processing the signals and feeding the results back to our conscious mind, forcing us to concentrate on a potential threat. When those threats are found to be genuine, we often attribute those feelings to be inspired, when in actual fact it is simply the natural process of the subconscious mind, alerting you to signals that you were otherwise unconscious of.
Whilst these analogies are simple example, I feel they holds merit for a great number of strange phenomena, such as intuition and instinct, even ESP.
So what happens when we sleep? Well the vast majority of all human behaviour is done without any conscious thought at all, muscular movement, balance, placing one leg in front of the other to walk, raising the corners of your mouth into a smile, blinking to keep your eyes moist etc. All these actions and events whilst seemingly having no impact on our conscious mind, take their toll on the subconscious actions of our brain that is tirelessly working very hard, every second of the day.
As with all exercise, there follows a required period of rest, and the only way for our brain to rest, is to processing all those movements, actions and senses, and enter the comatose state known as sleep.
To do this it sends feelings of drowsiness to the conscious mind, until the conscious mind can no longer concentrate on ‘any’ specific tasks. At this point it gives up being the boss of conscious motor control and thought, and shuts down. In other words, you fall asleep. Only then in this comatose state can the mind fully rest and recharge its batteries, for the following day.
During sleep, we go through five main stages. The first stage is a very light sleep from which it is very easy to wake up. The second stage moves into a slightly deeper sleep, and stages three and four represent our deepest sleep. Our brain activity throughout these stages is gradually slowing down so that by the time we reach deep sleep, we experience nothing but delta brain waves (the slowest brain waves).
After the fourth stage of sleep, we begin the stage commonly known as REM sleep (Rapid Eye Movement), which is the fifth stage of sleep, and is the stage where almost all dreams occur.
During REM sleep, several physiological changes also take place. The heart rate and breathing quickens, our blood pressure rises, we can't regulate our body temperature as well, and our brain activity increases to the same alpha level as when we are awake, or sometimes even higher. The rest of the body, however, is essentially paralyzed until we leave REM sleep. This paralysis is caused by the release of glycine, an amino acid, from the brain stem onto the motoneurons (neurons that conduct impulses outward from the brain or spinal cord). It is widely theorised that this paralysis is to stop us from acting out our dreams whilst sleeping and otherwise causing injury to ourselves.
The body then continues to cycle through these 5 stages of sleep, however the fifth stage becomes more and more prominent as the night goes on, whilst the deeper stages of sleep become les and less.
By morning we are virtually cycling through stages one two and five, with no deep sleep required at all. This is because our mind requires no further rest, and needs some means of reviving itself from the comatose state it has fallen into. It does this by providing more and more means of stimulation in the form of dreams.
So what about the dreams themselves? Well, the pictorial stories within our dreams could easily be created from the images and experiences we have stored away in our memory. The stories associated with those dreams, are our imaginations embellishments of the images based on our most prominent thoughts, our hopes and even our worst fears and insecurities (nightmares). I believe it is a significant point in time where our Subconscious and Conscious communicate more openly, and where our imagination is at its most active stage because it has no other form of external influence.
It is however mankind’s nature to always provide a reason to that which is unexplained, it is why we are the most advanced species on the planet and constantly pushing the boundaries of science and invention. However more often than not, when we encounter an event which is otherwise unexplainable, our brains force a contrived explanation to fill the uneasy and unpleasant void of the unknown.
These contrived explanations, are usually spiritual, mystical, or otherwise divine in nature. We perceive the unexplainable event to be miracles, when in reality there is a logical explanation, we simply aren’t aware of it. This reasoning, whist wildly contrived, puts our minds at ease providing an acceptable explanation, even if that explanation itself is illogical.
This may explain why people are inclined to believe in God even though there is no evidence of his existence. It may also explain why people are inclined to believe that our dreams are spiritual and prophetic even though we have thousands of dreams each year which have no meaning whatsoever. It could explain why some of our most coincidental actions are perceived as inspired and intuitive, and why so many people can be impressed and dazzled by the magicians illusions and tricks.
Having said that, the power of human imagination provides us with a means of invention and problem solving that would otherwise never be explored. Many inventors and scientists throughout time have attributed their inventions or solutions to various problems, from things they had dreamed about.
Elias Howe, inventor of the sewing machine in 1884, dreamed he was surrounded by jungle tribesmen holding spears which had a hole in the head. It was this dream that inspired the way needles work in sowing machines.
Mary Shelly, got the idea for "Frankenstein," from a dream (shudder).
Jack Nicklaus claimed the success to his new golf club grip was discovered in a dream he had, significantly improving his golf game.
So it would seem that there is much to be gained through the process of dreaming, but be careful not to trust in them foolishly.
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