What Happens While We Dream?

If we are very tired in the evening, we are happy to enter the land of dreams at last. During sleeping, we have a rest and gather energy for the next day. The body rests. But what happens with our mind?

If humans are prevented from sleeping, they have difficulties concentrating at first, and afterwards start to hallucinate. Animals die after an average of 20 days, if they are prevented from dreaming. Indeed, some animals like cats, dogs, sheep and monkeys dream in a similar way we humans do.

In western latitudes, the dream stands for fulfilment of wishes, it may bring about fears, and events of the day are digested with the help of dreams.

Humans are even capable of perceiving stimuli and processing these stimuli during sleeping.

In sleep, we pass through 5 stages, but only dream in one. This stage is called REM phase, and it can be recognised by the movement of the sleeper’s eyes.

Every human has several dreams per night. They have an overall duration of 90 minutes at least, and a single dream lasts between 3 and 55 minutes.

For primitive peoples, the dream has a totally different meaning than for us:

The Naskapi - an Indian people - automatically include their dreams into their lives and they are dependent on them. They have to have a hunting dream before a hunt, which indicates whether they will have a successful hunt in their inhospitable environment or not. The people of the Naskapi only survived in this area (the Labrador Peninsula), because they always used their energies in the right way and never had to return without bag - due to their dreams, which have always indicated the right spots. If they have no hunting dream, they don’t set off. They use their ability to dream in a way we use our reason to make decisions.

Most probably, humans have dreamt before they were even able to speak. Dreams were and still are vital. Some Australian aboriginal tribes - Aborigines - even believe that the "dream world" is in fact the real world, and the reality we live in is just an illusory world.