Dreams

I have always paid a lot of attention to my dreams. Unlike most others I speak with, I also tend to remember my dreams in quite a lot of detail. Dreams fascinate me. Their significance in our lives and their role as a product of true psychological make-up fascinates me.

Most people seem to agree on what dreams actually are, but there is no single scientific or biological explanation for why we dream, or what we dream. Dreams are attributed to random electrical pulses that the brain stem sends to the forebrain when we sleep. These random electrical pulses are then processed by the forebrain (possibly according to what experiences we have had- this is the interesting part), and here a dream is born.

There is a huge gap between what Biology says we are (chemicals, molecules, DNA, electrical impulses), and the world of the subconscious, the world of feelings, moods and emotions (which I will call the "other" world). The most that science can do is to map each of our moods or emotions to a chemical structure, to an excess or lack of something. But I don't think science will be able to reach deep enough into the "other" world to construct a whole theory that explains why our "other" world is so complex when all that we are is a set of molecules. This yawning gap exists in the study of dreams as well. There is no science that pinpoints exactly the cause of a particular dream, be it through brain impulses or psychological observations.

I still look for an explanation. I have neither the inclination nor the resources to line up a hundred people, put them to sleep and form my own scientific theory based on tracking what goes on inside their heads. The scientific/biological quest I shall leave to others. Here is my more abstract take on dreams, similar to the Freudian approach. When we are awake, we always suppress our emotions to some extent- this suppression is a result of how we have been conditioned by our upbringing, our society and in general what we believe minimizes the amount of chaos and disorder in our world. But when we are asleep, we are "off guard". Our subconscious lets out all that has been suppressed- our greatest desires, our worst fears, things that fascinate us the most. Dreams are in a way journeys of self-discovery. Dreams are where we tell ourselves the truths that we choose not to hear otherwise.

Dreams have played a great part in history, mythology and literatre, most often as a sign of events to come. In the Mahaabhaarat, Gaandhaari dreams of a hundred dead bodies around a berry tree, signaling the war of Kurukshetr, that was to follow. In Shakespeare's Julius Caeser , Caesar's wife has a dream of something terrible happening to Caesar, and begs him not to go to the Capitol. He does not listen to her, and he is killed.

Finally, the image here is a painting that I find very beautiful. It is Jacob's dream of a ladder to heaven with angels on it.

Randomness

THIS has been one of my favourite topics of late. A couple of months ago, I played poker, and yesterday I played monopoly. Honestly, games like this that involved chance and decision-making at the same time always intimidated me. They intimidated me because once I started losing money (or chips) I would go into a freeze, and treat it like the end of the world. The last two times though, I have realised what a roller-coaster these things are. The person who wins is quite often the one who is getting thrashed at the beginning. And then one crucial round, one crucial throw of the dice, and the winner's graph goes up from there. It is all randomness. We can never tell what is going to happen- whether we will come crashing down, or end up with piles of cash.

I see a connection to our lives too. Randomness reigns supreme. There is no telling what may happen next week, tomorrow, or even the next hour. We plan our professional lives, have perceptions about our personal lives, but the course is always changed by something completely unexpected. Fluctuating fortunes, people entering and leaving our lives when we least expect something to happen. Even great nations have made and make plans- and then there is a random spark that sets fire to them, and razes them to the ground. The control we believe we have on our life is an illusion.

What makes the difference between winners and losers then? The ability to keep cool when you are on the slide, take it in your stride, and lookout for the first chance to bounce back; the killer instinct: to make the most of your profits, to extract as much out of life as possible when it is being kind to you.

On the large scale, our lives are just a series of random experiments with random outcomes. The world collectively is just a giant random process, which we will always try to explain with science, religion, philosophy and social sciences.

But we will never get there, because we ourselves are the experiments, not the experimenter.