Seasons

I dream of people I love but somehow have lost contact with quite often. When I think about it, it's always about people I didn't have the chance to stay in touch with, so they're kind of 'stolen' from me in one way or another. Those dreams always leave me feeling very sad and almost heart-broken when I wake up.

I think it's pretty easy to understand the 'meaning' of those dreams.

Sure, many dreams will have a thrust that is fairly obvious, but by understanding the metaphors of the minutia you could probably zero in on very specific instances in your past that made you feel this way- perhaps even in lights that you had never realized consciously before

I sometimes wonder if we don't easily over-analyze our dreams. Dreams is, mostly, your brain's way of processing and analyzing information. Maybe it's better if we look at them as some kind of (vital) nightly entertainment to make sleep less boring

There is a theory that as protoprimates we didnt sleep but merely went inactive for a bit. As our eyes developed and also lost a bit of night vision ability it became wise to remain perfectly still throughout the night. Meaning: those that could become so engrossed in their thoughts that they did so lived and those that stumbled around or bolted blindly at the sound of a predator died. Jump forward a 10 or 20 million years and lo we have sleep and dreams.

I dont completely buy it- but its a thoery.

It's a nice theory But when did snoring and talking in your sleep start?

Most of the stuff I've read suggests that dreams are a by-product of the mind sorting through the day's memories. That's not to say that they have no other meaning, but I find that stuff I've seen during the day often works its way into my dreams.

I kind of agree with both Ulrike and Irina. I think dreams do contain messages from our subconscious (maybe even our unconscious minds too, although I am by no means a diehard Freudian!) outlining our anxieties and insecurities, but I think experiences from the day creep in there too and mix things up. If dreams are the body's way of reshuffling memories then it makes sense there would be a mixture of conscious and subconscious thoughts. People often say, "Oh, but I dreamt about someone I haven't seen or thought about in years," but you don't know that the day before you went shopping and on the radio in the store, they were playing a song you once danced to together at the school disco, and you thought you'd forgotten about it but your mind is taking notes all the time.
One thing I cannot explain, however, is a recurring dream I had for about six weeks last year. It was a short conversation with my Music teacher. But over those six weeks and for a few weeks afterwards, my teacher kept saying things in real life that he'd said in my dream. I'd put it down to the fact that I know him very well and could possibly predict the kind of things he'd say, but the scary thing was that he actually said each part in order over that stretch of time. Weird.

A scientist once told me that there are no such things as recurring dreams and that it's only our mind playing tricks on us. He said that you might think you're having a recurring dream, but as a matter of fact, you don't. I don't believe him, though.

Are you sure the conversation with your teacher wasn't just Deja vu?

Which brings me to that subject: Has anyone ever heard a (more or less) scientific explanation of what Dejavu actually is? I'm so curious.

Yes: for some reason the body switches for a moment into a survival mode just long enough to accelerate certain perception skills, but the process is aborted before the heavier stuff like adrenaline is kicked in. The result: you know how when you are in a accident everything seems to slow down? De ja vu is the half realized state of that. Normally the data from your senses is scanned (for arguments sake) 100 times before it feeds a more cohesive stream to the consciousness; however since it has just kicked into this survival mode for a milisecond it scans the data 10,000 times in order to feed not just basic info, but excrutiating detail to the consciousness. The process is aborted before the "I" even realizes it so all it gets is the sense that it has way too much information about what seems to be occuring than is possible. Normally its correct as this kind of deep scanning speed is usually reserved for ooooh like flying off of a motorcycle at 90mph so that you have 'time' to try and land right perceptually speaking

Its a theory at least

I think I heard something about a theory of it being the result of your dominant eye (dominant in the same sense of dominant hand or dominant brain hemisphere) putting info through a little faster than the other eye. Thus you're getting the same bit of info twice, leading to a sense of it happening before. Cannot remember the source so I have no idea how solid a possiblility it is.

I like the rev's explanation too.

A theory of my own (just a thought that occurs now) The brain works by stimulus firing of neurons which fire off associated meurons in a huge network. Thus thought doesn't lead directly to thought, it leads to a whole lot of them simultaneouly. The brain does a lot of work through these associations. Perhaps deja vu is nothing more than a weird lateral association by the brain that creates a feeling of familiarity with a current situation even though we can't see a direct link to it in any specific memory, thus giving you the odd I've been here/done this before even though you haven't.

I'm not sure if that makes sense, but I get the feeling that if I go back over it and try and edit, I'm going to start bleeding from the ears.

I've had dreams about people who have died that I missed coming back to talk to me and tell me they're ok. Do I really think it's a message from the grave? Nah. But I still feel better.

As far as saying that there's no such thing as recurring dreams, that it's just a fancy nighttime deja vu, I totally don't buy that. I often dream that there are fish in my pool, or that I'm pregnant (but never that I'm giving birth, oddly). I've told people about these dreams and then had the dreams again since telling people about them. So I'm not having a dream and then mistakenly believing I've had the dream before. I suppose it might be possible that I'm waking up and believing that I've just had a dream I didn't have, but I don't get how that would be possible. (If I'm thinking about the dream in my sleep to the point that I think I've dreamed it, well, I've pretty much dreamed it, haven't I?)