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DREAMS CAN CHANGE THE WORLD

John Lennon once sang, “You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.” The former Beatle couldn’t have been more right. Dreams are a universal human experience. Yet the jury is still out on what their true purpose and significance are.

Sigmund Freud considered dreams to be a doorway into the realm of our unconscious. It is a realm rich in symbolic imagery where not everything is what meets the eye.

Others believe dreams are our brain’s attempt to make sense of the sensory overload of our waking life.

What happens in our waking world can echo in our dreams. What happens in dreams can help us view reality in a different light. In some instances, the power of dreams can help change the world.

Srinivasa Ramanujan was born in a rural village in South India. At the age of two, he survived a severe case of Smallpox. Over four thousand children in the district in which he lived did not. As he grew Srinivasa became a keen student. His first love was mathematics. His passion for numbers and equations would consume him for the rest of his short life.

By the age of 11, Srinivasa had a higher understanding of math than most college students.

By the time he turned 16, his peers considered him a mathematical genius. Srinivasa was a devout Hindu and he credited his talent solely to dreams of the goddess Namagiri.

Srinivasa said he received visions of complex

mathematical content from the goddess. These equations would unfold before his sleeping mind.

English mathematician G.H. Hardy invited Srinivasa to study at Cambridge University. Srinivasa packed his bags and took the plunge.

While at Cambridge he published more than 30 papers and was inducted into the Royal Society.

For a brief spell of five years, he lit the world of math on fire with his outstanding ability.

Britain’s cold climate took a toll on his health. He returned home in 1920, a dying man. On his deathbed, Srinivasa dreamed again of the goddess Namagiri. In visions, she revealed to him mysterious mathematic equations.

He frantically scribbled these strange patterns down.

Srinivasa believed he had discovered 17 new equations.

Srinivasa had a hunch how these equations behaved.

Sadly, he died before he could prove their purpose. He was 32.

Srinivasa Ramanujan was a man ahead of his time. In 2002, more than 80 years after his death, mathematicians finally made sense of his equations. Scientists now use his findings to understand and measure black holes.

Srinivasa’s claim is not so strange. Human beings have long thought of dreams as a message from the divine. In ancient Greece, they even had a God of dreams. His name was Morpheus.

The Greeks said that when a person was in the arms of Morpheus, they would enjoy a sound sleep. They could also dream about the future. Morpheus was said to appear in the dreams of mortals in any form he desired.

He possessed the ability to send divine messages to humankind.

Google co-founder Larry Page is all too familiar with the power of dreams. The dot-com billionaire once said, “When a really great dream shows up, grab it!” Page is speaking from experience. The idea for the Google search engine which made him famous came to him in his sleep.

As a 22-year-old student at Stanford University in the 1990s Page had a vivid dream. Upon waking, he immediately wrote down what he had dreamt. During the dream Page had somehow managed to download the entire World Wide Web but just kept the links. The algorithm inspired by this dream would go on to become the search engine known as Google.

The idea of harnessing the power of our dreams is as old as the hills. Sleeping on a problem is a familiar expression. It means that hopefully when we awake, we’ll have a solution to our dilemma.

Arianna Huffington points out how it works in her book, ‘The Sleep Revolution.’

“During sleep, the neurons of the brain are reorganized, so we see new patterns. We see solutions, where before we could only see obstacles.”

When Albert Einstein was a young man, he had a peculiar dream. He was wandering in the misty mountains of the Alps one beautiful Spring morning. As he strolled alongside a mountain stream, he stumbled across a breathtaking view.

Below him, he could see many fields. Some were cultivated and divided by fences, and some were not.

Einstein noticed a small group of cows near an electric fence in one of the fields. The cows were happily eating grass and at peace.

Suddenly a sadistic farmer appeared and activated the electric fence. Einstein told the farmer he saw all the cows jump in terror at the same time and scamper to safety.

The farmer insisted they got up one by one before running away. The argument about who had seen things correctly became heated. And then Einstein awoke.

Einstein was confused as to the meaning of the dream.

Why had he argued with the farmer? Could time and space be experienced by different people in different ways? Was it all a matter of perspective? It was certainly food for thought. Einstein would spend years pondering the questions inspired by the dream of electrocuted cows.

In 1905, a 26-year-old Einstein would outline what would become his world famous theory of relativity. It had its roots in what at face value appears to be a nonsensical dream.

Srinivasa, Page and Einstein’s dream discoveries we’re unintentional. The surrealist artist Salvador Dali was a deliberate dreamer. The great painter’s creations were taken directly from his subconscious. Dali harnessed the power of dreams with a method he called ‘sleeping without sleeping’ or ‘slumber with a key’.

Dali would sit on an armchair and allow his head to tilt and his arms to hang. The goal was to reach a state of perfect relaxation. In one hand he would hold a heavy key between his forefinger and thumb above a plate. When he fell asleep, the key would drop, and the noise would immediately wake him.

This process would allow Dali to enter what is called the hypnagogic sleep state. In this fluid space between wake and sleep creativity flourishes.

Dali benefited from insights within his dreams, but he didn’t control his dreams in the way lucid dreamers such as Peter Maich can.

Ever since Peter was a young boy, he had vivid dreams. He knew they were not normal. He felt like an outsider.

About eight years ago the 55-year-old Kiwi learned about lucid dreaming on the internet. He realized he wasn’t alone or suffering from a major illness. He was one of a small percentage of people who are lucid dreamers.

In lucid dreams, the dreamer can control their dream. In a nutshell, they are aware that they are dreaming. And they can bend the dream reality to their own will.

Peter now applies lucid dreaming to problems in his everyday life. He said they allow him to get rid of all the psychic rubbish. When he split with his long-term partner lucid dreaming helped him immensely.

Peter described how he dreamt of a door. He chose to fill the room behind the door with ten people he knew and trusted. These dream friends helped Peter hammer out strategies to end the relationship in a way that benefited both himself and his partner. The next day he called his divorce lawyer and figured out an agreement he had reached in his dreams.

Some scientists believe we are all capable of having lucid dreams. In one recent study at the University of Adelaide, Dr. Denholm Aspy taught two techniques for lucid dreaming. One technique is called ‘reality testing.’ Participants frequently check to make sure they are awake throughout the day with the hope that they will repeat this reality check in their dreams.

The other technique is called the mnemonic induction of lucid dreams. This technique involves using alarms to wake people five hours after going to sleep. They are then asked to recite, “The next time I am dreaming, I will remember that I’m dreaming.” They then return to sleep. They are also asked to imagine what it would be like to be in a lucid dream.

Throughout seven days, 50% of 169 participants experienced a lucid dream. These results indicate that lucid dreaming could be a skill we can all master.

Dreams are an integral part of the human condition. They can console us, enlighten, inspire us, and help us make the world a better place. Without them, the world would be a real nightmare.