What is the dream?

It looks like a great theater. Like a modern movie. It’s always different. Every night renewed. Sometimes is nice, sometimes carrier of tensions and anxieties. 

Such is the dream, which Aimé Michel has described as "enigmatic nocturnal activity of thought."

Since ancient times, so much that they lost in the origins of humans, we have tried to interpret dreams. 

Sometimes they have been taken as premonitions. Other times, as repressed desires. Sigmund Freud, who may be regarded as "Father of the Study of Dreams", conceived them as the expression of repressed sexual desires.

For the Greeks, dreams were very important. Dreams contained messages from the gods, the advice of geniuses; they're sacred and obeyed.

Professor Louis Massgnon says the Muslim rite of Istiqhara, is a remnant of an ancient Islam custom based on the interpretation of dreams. In Istiqhara, Muslims sleep after to raise a prayer to help them to have a dream with the solution for a problem. And usually it is accompanied by success.

In the initiation temples of the Egyptians, incubation is practiced since the sixth century Before Christ. Greeks also practiced it. The meeting consisted of thousands of initiates in sacred places where they all implored an illuminated dream. It was the search of a dream to find God.

DREAMS OPENING ROADS

In the course of history there have been many cases where the dreams have influenced the fate of mankind.

We know, by the way, that dreams of Descartes influenced his philosophy.

It is also known that dreams of Bismarck, the Iron Chancellor, influenced the war against Austria, on which his dreams had conceived a victory.

The famous chemist Kekulé said that he found the cyclical nature of benzene’s molecular structure because he got a dream.

Through a dream, the physicist Niels Bohr found the essence of his theory of the atomic cloud.

There are many cases of mathematicians, physicists, poets, novelists, painters and politicians to whom his dreams inspired solutions.

This "theater represented nowhere" has given great contributions to the progress, to science, to technology.

But ... WHAT IS THE DREAM?

We make reference to dreams and their interpretation but … ¿what is the dream? Can humans live without dreams? Have dreams interpretation? Questions seem easy to answer, but it isn't so. The human mind never rests. Neither when you sleep. It has been scientifically proved that a normal man has among six and seven dreams every night.

In the dream, verifiable by the mobility of the eyes every time there is a dream, man can perform moves, or mentally making the effort from his dreamed character. So you can wake up tired, without having enough work yesterday to make that happen.

The dreams are usually forgotten. To remember it better wake up and write them down. Is likely to read the note the next day and not remember ever to have scored.

Some dreams seem a soap opera, a series. They continue from one night to another, or among awakening and another. There are also dreams that seem to haunt us, as if they wanted to announce something.

Sigmund Freud was the first to try to interpret dreams. Later on, C. G. Jung did it. Nathaniel Kleitman even established a "detector of dreams" and sought physiological explanations.

Since biblical times humans have searched to interpret dreams. At that time they were at risk, like the wise men of Babylon, when Nabucodonosor threatened to cut them to pieces if they did not interpret his dream.

The reality is that a dream, every dream, has an explanation. For some people is just physiological. For psychologists, dreams are expressions of wishes, desires, frustrations and projects. For the specialists, dreams contain symbols and desires as well.