My Views on Dreams

Dreams

Introduction

Think of exploring dreams like taking a journey through your own mind. It's a place where real life and imagination mix in mysterious ways. We've always been curious about what our dreams mean, and this blog is all about understanding them. Dreams are those fleeting things that happen when we're asleep, and they often make us wonder. In this blog, we'll try to figure out what are dreams and few frequently asked questions. Lets explore the interesting world of dreams and how they get into our lives.

Before topic

Our mind is quite interesting. The way it works is incredible and bizarre. Lets proceed with a small question: Is your body and what your mind thinks as body exactly same? The answer is No. Here is why I believe that it might be different.

• Perception and Interpretation: Our mind processes information from our senses to form a perception of our body. Sometimes, this perception may not align perfectly with the physical reality. For example, the way we perceive our body's size, shape, or position may not be entirely accurate due to factors such as optical illusions or cognitive biases. One more example of this is you can't see your face until you use some kinda object with which you can see yourself. 
• Subjectivity: Each person's mind perceives their body subjectively. This means that what one person experiences in terms of body image or physical sensations might not be the same as another person's experience. Our personal history, emotions, and cultural influences can shape our perception of our body.
• Neurological Factors: The brain is responsible for processing sensory information and generating the conscious experience of the body. Any disruption or alteration in the brain's functioning, such as in cases of neurological conditions, can lead to differences in how one perceives their body.
• Psychological Factors: Our emotions, self-esteem, and body image are influenced by our psychological state. These factors can lead to a divergence between how we perceive our body and its objective physical state of body.

So what we can say now is there is a body which is reality, lets call it physical body and there's a body which our mind perceives as. Both the bodies might be different. They can be close to each other but may not be the same. I am using "may" here because there is a rare case in which this deviations cancel out each other and we think what exactly our real body is. But even if that's the case, brain changes every movement with new sensory inputs it receives by our body. So lets make a theorem from conclusion so far.

Theorem 1: With a high probability physical body is not exactly equal to mental body.

Concept of Mental Body

As I have said, mental body is a structural framework of body developed by mind. And this construction is by various parameters like senses, movements of body, feedback received from surroundings, our own subconscious analysis...etc. If we be too mathematical while not caring much about the real world and treat both bodies as vectors by some encoding mechanism then we can formulate this. Let p be physical body, m be mental body and p(x) be the probability then I stupidly encode it using a following function:

However, this could be considered as mathematical framework of Theorem 1. Still calculating or encoding p and q is a huge issue here. So mental body can be thought as some sort of projection of real world effects(RWE) to a certain degree on physical body. Here by real world effects(RWE), I mean sensory perceptions and other perceptions by various parameters in living environment. Now we can theorize it as:

Theorem 2: Mental body is the projection of RWE on physical body.

This can be again mathematically done I hope. Let F(X) be a vector field function whose input is a vector of parameters having data of various perceptions. So at different values of X we have different RWE functions. So now we can define it as:

I know that, I am acting weird and crazy. I just want to show little math here to express how I think about it sometimes. Don't worry, I will not be too mathematical after this. I summarize this by saying that there is altogether different perception with which our mind views our body as which was  unnoticed. 

Sleep and Dreams

The process of falling asleep and experiencing dreams is a collection of transitions into different sleep stages. Here's a breakdown of a typical sleep cycle according to me:

• Falling Asleep: When you go to bed, just before getting into deeper sleep state, you loose track of when you got into sleep. Here your brain is active but not too much to do critical thinking. It can just take partial sensory inputs.
• Deeper Sleep: You progress through deeper stages of sleep to a point where you loose your track completely and your brain is not active. But not like dead. It functions but not too much.
• Dreaming stage: After taking enough deep sleep your brain enters this state and gets comparatively active. Here generally vivid and memorable dreams occur which you might remember a little bit in day. It's a stage characterized by increased brain activity(Not till the level of waking up) and rapid movements of eye. Also note that, most of the body's voluntary muscles are temporarily paralyzed, which is thought to prevent us from physically acting out our dreams (This doesn't mean that you can't wake up. Your waking up needs effort). This state depends of how enough is your deep sleep so its optional to have dreams.
• Morning Transition: Just before waking up to see real world, you often pass through a dream stage. This is why you may remember your dreams more vividly when you wake up in the morning.

The sleep cycle is not a one-way journey. It repeats multiple times throughout the night. You go from one stage to other and back several times. This all happens by various parameters including quality of sleep, sleep schedule...etc. Now I will refer to this again after I say my view.

Theory of Dreams

The imagery generated by interactions of mental body with mental perception of world is referred to as Dreams.

Here mental perception of world is similar as mental perception of body, just the difference is that it is about the world. This is the reason you will see unrealistic things sometimes, daily events, common events, recent events...etc. basically those events which left an impact on your brain such that these undergo some thinking back of your head for most of the time(consciously or subconsciously). 

Now coming back to sleep cycle, in the first stage we get into a dream before getting into deep sleep. Let me tell you with an example, think of sleeping looking at the decorations on the ceiling. First you will be clearly viewing it by your eyes connecting to your brain and you see it. Next what happens after certain point is you loose control slowly but your brain still has the image. A rough image of the decoration. At this point in case you try to focus you will end up waking up. And you will have too little interaction at that movement with your mental body and mental perception of world (also known as dream). In deep sleep your mind almost suspends these all activities and focus of things like restoration, repair, memory consolidation, release of growth hormone...etc. So you don't experience dreams. Whereas in Dream stage you again get dreams as you took sufficient deep sleep. Here, you interact with your mental body and mental perception of world. Then after this stage you comeback to reality.

Standard Results

• Dreams are limited to few thought systems that means you can't run so many thoughts in a dream and also there is a limitations on you remembering thing. This is because you can't use full capacity of brain at this Dreaming stage.
• You can't see accurate version of yourself in Dream. Generally you see only those parts of the body in Dream which you see again and again in your day. Example: Hands or legs(rare) or others based on your work in day.
• In any Dream, the actual controller of Dream is the dreamer.
• The flow of any Dream is similar to flow of thoughts. You might switch situations(you feel different dream has continued) as you switch topics during thinking.

Few related concepts

True Dreams

This is a interesting stage of dreams where you can predict real world events as you can do imagery at the same time as you think (that means approximately p(x)=0). Unlike other dreams, in this dreams you will be more sure of how you deal with a situation and then in real world you unknowingly respond in a same way. These dreams are rare because of reasons like the following:

• Accuracy of your predictions
• Your Mental Architecture
• Thought Flow patterns
• Amount of Deep and Quality sleep factors
• Your thoughts after the Dream

and various other factors. However, this is just an interpretation which this theory tells about True Dreams.

Astral Projection

This is a concept generally discussed in spiritual topics. It is claimed to be about "out of body experience". However this theory just looks it as mental body exploring mental perception of world. Thus, it doesn't explain it in the way the topic project itself.