Enter the absurd world of dreams: a lawless land where you can murder and get away with murder, see floating babies in the sky, or get chased by barnyard animals (not talking about Riverdale here). A dream is somewhere you can be anything or anyone you want to be, although it is not you who governs the bizarre plotlines and mystifying visions. You close your eyes for a good night’s sleep, and the next thing you know, you suddenly find yourself in the middle of the ocean, sitting on a boat and enjoying a conversation with a stranger whose cooking reminds you of your grandmother. Dreams take you on a journey of both the known and the unknown, amalgamated into one weird episode. This suspension of rationality and reality is what gives dreams the uncanny ability to intrigue and frighten.

However, dreams don’t hold the same level of intrigue today that they once held, and the credit goes to science. Historically, Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic theories on dreams were groundbreaking; he believed that dreams were a manifestation of our unconscious and repressed wishes. However, not all Freudian ideas have been substantiated by science today. Since dreams are subjective, there are no set-in-stone interpretations, but there is a consensus that dreams depict our emotional state: losing your teeth can signify stress or insecurities; seeing yourself fly is generally illustrious of the desire to escape the realities of life. Therefore, we can’t interpret dreams in literal terms. People who believe in their dreams are victims of motivated reasoning—a judgment based on personal desirability rather than truth. They believe they see what they want to see. 

Though far from confirming why we dream, over time we have started attaching less significance to them. In present times, dreams have become an inconsequential part of our routine and conversation. For most of us, a dream is nothing more than our imagination in a drunken stupor. Some of these dreams are eventually lost to memory, whereas those that tend to stick are often the most outlandish.  

Let’s take a look at dreamers throughout the ages. 

The Dilemma of Dreamers:

1865

Travel back to 1865, and we have August Kekule trying to determine the structure of a benzene ring. The task of writing a chemistry textbook proved to be too exhausting, so the esteemed chemist fell asleep in his apartment. In his dream, he saw a vision of a snake eating its tail, giving him the idea of how benzene has a hexagonal structure with six carbon atoms. Therefore, a dream led him to discover a fundamental concept of organic chemistry, bringing up the age-old dilemma: Should we believe that dreams have meaning or not? Luckily, Kekule did not have to undergo an existential crisis while answering these questions as he mainly used his dream for inspiration, and his theory was readily accepted by a range of scientists (A-level chemistry students, now you know who to thank).

Classical Antiquity: 8th-century BCE-5th century CE

In Classical Antiquity, we have the Greeks and Romans. Much of their religion was a product of their imagination, so they believed dreams held divine connotations. Historical accounts have shown that people believed dreams to be prophetic. The Greeks believed in the god Morpheus who was responsible for dreams. In Iliad by Homer, Zeus defeats Agamemnon by giving him a false sense of security; he commands the god of dreams to appear in Agamemnon’s dream and assure him of support from Zeus. Thus dreams were seen as a reflection of reality. Therefore, any morbid dreams related to death, such as falling from a cliff, were considered a literal foreshadowing of your death. The panic this would cause after an unfulfilling night of sleep is something we can only imagine.

Early Civilizations (4th millennium BCE forward) 

The early civilizations, namely the Egyptians and Mesopotamians, also believed in the divine powers of dreams. The Egyptians wrote the oldest book on dream interpretation which is still available to this date. Some of the most intriguing dream interpretations include that seeing yourself eating beef signifies an imminent fight with someone. Paradoxically, being buried alive signifies future prosperity. Furthermore, these civilizations also believed in dreams as a way to travel to different places (if only that were true). According to them, a part of a person’s soul traveled to the destination within the dream, even if that place was Hell itself.

Consequently, when we peruse the history of ancient civilisations, we tend to label them as foolish. But without the explanations provided by science, what other explanation did they have? When something is inexplicable, we tend to leave it up to divinity, just like dreamers throughout history.  Can we fault them for thinking dreams were gifts from God? Dreams are perhaps the closest Man gets to death—suspended in a purgatory between life and death, seeing otherworldly visions of magic and prophecy.

Given the mystifying nature of dreams, there is no doubt that humanity will continue to ponder over the psychology of them until science finds more definite answers. Until then, we are not so different from the dreamers throughout the ages. Or are we?

By Fiza Wasim
Culture Editor

Note: the views expressed in the article solely belong to the writer and do not reflect TLC.