Prophetic Dreams: Dream Up Solutions With A Focussed Mind

By ANIL K RAJVANSHI

In 1953 three major events took place: Mount Everest was 'conquered' by Edmund Hillary and Tensing Norgay, scientists Watson and Crick discovered the DNA's structure and a young American PhD student, Eugene Aserinsky, discovered rapid eye movement in sleep. During REM sleep the brain is extremely active and generates dreams. This was the beginning of a whole new area of research in sleeping and dreaming. Fifty years later there has been tremendous progress in mountaineering and genetics but the subject of sleep and dreams continues to mystify us.

Most religions and cultures view dreams and sleep as mechanisms to connect the present physical world to that of the supernatural. Before Buddha's birth, his mother Queen Maya dreamt that a white elephant has entered her body. Similarly, Ramakrishna's mother dreamt that a small green figure, whom she identified as God, was telling her that He will be born in her house. Mother Mary, too, learnt through a dream about the impending birth of Christ. There are innumerable such instances of prophetic dreams.

Often, people have come up with innovative solutions in their dreams. Kekule's benzene structure, Mendelyeev's periodic table, Howe's sewing machine, Neils Bohr's model of the atom and Gandhiji's Dandi March were all ideas that had their genesis in dreams. Many scientists, inventors and technologists have literally dreamt up solutions which they could not arrive at in the waking state.

How does the mind produce such prophetic dreams? During dreaming, sensory inputs are blocked and the ego-sense 'I' is absent. This allows free reign to random thought patterns, emanating from existing memories from different parts of the brain, which produce dreams.

The dreaming process therefore follows the Maxwellian distribution (the bell curve), where a majority dream about a day's events or activities. Scientists claim that the day's learning process is consolidated in our memory during sleep. This dreaming process sometimes produces disjointed dreams and at other times, nightmares. Sometimes, however, the brain synchronises random thoughts into a powerful single thought.

Imagine 100 billion neurons of the brain synchronising in a laser-like fashion to produce a higher dimensional thought signature. This thought connects us to a higher dimensional space-time continuum from which we get the knowledge and powers of clairvoyance. The probability of this type of synchronisation is very small but it is there.

Can we deliberately produce prophetic solution dreams? Since the ever present director Ñ the ego sense 'I' Ñ is absent during the dreaming process, we have no control over our dreams. We can, however, control our day's events which are ultimately reflected in our dreams.

Yogis claim that non-REM or dreamless sleep is possible. This is achieved through sanyam or contemplation and reflection and samadhi or focused deep meditation. Scientists, too, have discovered that REM and non-REM sleep are totally dependent on how active the brain is during daytime.

The MRI brain scans of sleeping volunteers show that most of the dreaming activity takes place in the region of the brain which was most active during the daytime. Non-REM or slow-wave dreamless sleep occupies the central position in the sleep process, when information and memory consolidation process takes place. Hence REM sleep is simply a mechanism for the brain to check whether memory consolidation has taken place. Besides, it also helps us remember dreams.

So to produce happy, productive dreams, you need to be active mentally and physically Ñ in a positive way Ñ during waking hours.