Dreams, are there anything special about them? What is a dream? The dictionary defines a dream as a series of mental images and emotions occurring during sleep. Some people dream several times a night and can remember some of their dreams, other remember maybe one and still others can't remember anything at all. As far as the last category of people are concerned, they didn't dream at all, yet they did. Science tells us that we all dream. Ancient peoples placed much significance on their dreams. Just reading the bible will prove that. There are passages that state that God came to someone in a dream or that a prophet appeared in a dream or so on. Today you don't hear much of that type of thing. The dreams that are said to be the most concerning are those that contain dead relatives or even dead people that we have never met. Why do these types of dreams trouble some people so much? It is said that some people feel that the deceased person is trying to send them a message. It is also said however, that some types of dreams are so realistic that when people dream them, they believe what they are dreaming. An example of this is a dream of some past time in which the person dreaming is inserted. If it seems real enough, the person dreaming it will believe that it is a memory. This may not be as unusual as one would think.

Premonitions, which are also called precognitive dreams, are dreams in which we dream that some event is about to happen. With this type of dream, the event may or may not occur. There is a good chance that the event may be one that was going to happen anyway, but when it is seen in the dream, some people believe that somehow they have seen the future. Someone may claim that they dreamt that a couple that is going out together for some time got married. Hey this is not exactly predicting the future, if you get my drift. On the other hand there may be some event that everyone knows about that can only have one of two outcomes. This would give the dream a 50% chance of being correct. We might have two teams playing in the world series of baseball. If you dreamt that one was going to win you would have a 50% chance of being right. As you must have noticed I am not taking into account which team has more talent, it is just simple statistics. How many times have you heard a friend talk about such a dream? I think that women are a little freer with discussing their dreams than a man, so you might be more likely to hear it from a woman. Many men feel uncomfortable discussing their dreams because they feel it is not the manly thing to do.

Sometimes people have clairvoyant dreams. These dreams are of the audio type. You might hear people talking or sounds coming from somewhere. The sounds themselves relay different types of information to the dreamer. You might be in a situation, after one of these dreams, where you feel unsafe doing a certain thing because of a sound you heard in a dream. What if you dreamt of going through a white door and then heard the sound of someone hollering and falling. If you came to a white door you might decide not to go through it or even if you did, you might be much more careful than usual. This would mean that the dream had some influence over you. Since we are all human and most of us have the same basic fears, we might all have some sort of reaction to seeing that white door, even if we hid it well. Even people that show no reaction to a situation such as this, might still feel a little uncomfortable.

Do we always have to be asleep to dream? You would think so, wouldn't you? This is not the case, we could be awake and have a daydream. While daydreams do not occur while we are asleep, they do occur in a state between sleeping and consciousness and some experts say the the average person will daydream between a little over an hour a day up to two hours a day. Another way to think about daydreams is that you mind wanders. Think of it this way, you are in church during one of those extra long sermons and it is not particularly an attention getter and you begin to think of other things. Before you know it, you get so deep into those things that you even forget where you are for a second. You have been daydreaming and didn't even realize it. Anything that you have daydreamed about has just as much of a chance of coming true as anything that you have dreamt about while asleep, on a dream for dream basis. Could daydreams contain premonitions such as normal dreams? There is no reason why not.

In ancient times there were some people who thought that magicians and wizards might be able to make dreams come true. You could go to one of them and give him a sum of money and he would tell you to dream about riches and that you had to try very hard to concentrate on the dream while you were sleeping. When the dream didn't come true and people went back to the wizard, he would simply blame them by saying that they didn't put enough effort into it. We have similar bunkum schemes today such as when someone goes to a fortune teller because they are having problems and the lady tells them that their money is evil and the cause of all problems and to withdraw it all from the bank and bring it to her and she will burn it in front of them thus releasing the evil spirits that are torturing the family with bad luck. Yeah, you guessed it, paper is substituted for the money and that is what is burned.

There are some things pertaining to dreams that just can't be explained. One couple swears that when then met and got to know each other they found out that they both had the same dream. I am talking about a dream that was identical down to the smallest part. It took place in the middle ages. Everything about the location was identical. How could this be and even more important is why should this be? Some people might say that this dream was a reincarnation dream and these people had met before in a previous life. If you believe in reincarnation then I guess that is one possible explanation. Could another be that somehow one dream got broadcast to the other person? Sounds crazy doesn't it, but there are a lot of crazy things we are finding out about. Scientists found out that if you do something to an atom, it could instantly change another atom even if it is at the end of the universe. Maybe there is something in both of the brains of these people that makes them closely identical and therefore the chance of having the same dream is greatly increased? Well, if it is true, it is still strange.

Some people place much weight on their dreams. They analyze every one and look for messages in them that they are supposed to heed. As some of our ancestors of old did, they regard dreams as messages. Some think they are from God or angels while others give them a more sinister connection. It is only natural that early man felt that dreams were supernatural. He also believed there were spirits in the trees and God was the Sun or Moon. The main reason for these beliefs was that he had less of an understanding of things than we do now. As man progresses and understands things even better than we do, I am sure someone will look back at us and give a similar hypothesis. As man understands more of the workings of nature and the universe it is only natural that many of his ideas will change, including his ideas about dreams.