What is sleep and why do we need it; more precisely why do we dream?

To give world war a break.

"the dream is a shadow of something real"

Some aboriginal said that in the movie "The last wave"

Sleep is an evolved action to conserve energy especially during darkness.

Dreams are presumably subconscious recreations to events and fantasy to help us come to terms with situations inside and outside our control.

Being that dreams are only recounted when awoken during the process, it suggests that the function will never be understood.

seen avatar?

The Human Body is an efficient machine. Unfortunately, the law of diminishing returns even applies to us and our efficient bodies need a break to allow our liver, kidneys and other systems to catch-up and refresh.

Cellular death causes our blood and lymph system to begin to get backed up as the day progresses. This back-up requires a slowing down of the bodies systems for the filtration to catch up.

As for dreams, I honestly believe our brains "defrag" nightly. Think about it, our brain is a storage device and it needs to be organized for us to work properly.

You defrag your PC and it will run slowly while the process is occurring. As for the content of the brain...

The pre-frontal cortex in unison with the thalamus and brain stem "watch" the data flow past during the defrag... the moment you switch to REM sleep; the pre-frontal cortex takes a snapshot of the data flowing past and builds a story based on this.

Your dream can last a long time in perception but in reality is only going for a few minutes at a time.

Frankly, I think the purpose of dreams is because we'd get bored doing nothing for 8 hours every night.

Nobody could ever convince me that we evolved to sleep, to put ourselves in an especially vulnerable state can't possibly increase survival. In fact, just the opposite would happen if evolution was real, we would rest the body with our eyes open so we could keep an eye out for predators.

I think it is also part of a system of keeping the brain from completely shutting off thus allowing a fast response if suddenly woken.

Like how it is easier/faster starting a computer from hibernate than from a cold start.

Excellent point...

Dreams are our one eye open.

In fact, you could say they are our third eye open.

Notice how the real world can appear in dreams right before we wake up? Sound of a phone, voice of a person or other loud noises?

I think dreams (not sleep) are a way of keeping us alert enough to respond to danger.

I honestly believe you are on to something.

Maybe sleep is the default state. Babies just born do not have any memories.

Voted with the majority. I'm probably still asleep

This thread reminds me of the movie Waking Life

i voted for the dreams being essential for higher animals

you travel outside your body in your dreams

i'll tell you a true story

a few years back I had a cat, which i loved, but she used to piss me off big style

she'd go out hunting, and bring back dead and half dead animals

this annoyed me, because she'd often kill beautiful birds, and on one occasion, she'd taken a blackbird, you know one of those song thrushes, who sing those beautiful songs in the evening? well, it was half dead, and she just dropped it on the floor in front of me, in the living room, and I didnt have the heart to throw it over the fence, or down the toilet, or in the bin

i watched that bird slowly die, until it took it's last breath, right there in front of me, and I looked at the cat, who was lovingly gazing at me, and THOUGHT, i didnt say it, I THOUGHT it 'why don't you go under the wheels of a car?'

i was angry, OK? I know they do it as a gift, but i was angry. rats i dont mind, but beautiful song birds, no, just no.

fast forward a couple of months, and as usual the cat was let out, and i put a dish of food down for her when she finished her nightly roaming. about midnight, I woke, in a cold sweat, panicking. heart racing. I had just had a dream, that my cat was knocked down by a car. i SAW her lying on the ground, stomach squashed, but another her got up out of her, and slowly walked away. I called out her name, and she stopped, took one last look at me, and turned away, walking into the darkness, at which point i woke in a complete panic

following morning, no sign of her, and we didnt find her for another 5 days after, when some teenagers who had witnessed her getting run over told us where she was, they'd kindly taken her off the road and put her in the verge, to stop her being obliterated by the traffic. the accident happened at the EXACT time of my dream.

she came to me IN MY DREAM and she READ MY FUCKING THOUGHTS! she was basically saying to me 'ok, you got what you wanted!' when she walked off into the darkness.

there is more, much more to this life than most of us can POSSIBLY imagine.

Carl Jung was not a clone of Freud. His view on analytical psychology was very different than Freud's. I hate it when they kick Mr. Jung to the curb by tying him to Freud or just simply dismissing him.

After hearing Jung's life story in his own words, I cannot say I am blessed the way he was to be able to discover and know what he did. Only after hearing his story was I certain that I could never be.

*Sigh*

do you upload, or download, during dreams?

Wow! I am impressed. Some very good posts here. When I started the Thread I was hoping for some good discussion but this far exceeds my pre-conceived expectations!!!



Last Edited by George B on 08/14/2016 02:13 PM

I hear ya. Life sometimes indicates that it births itself from our thoughts and ideas, like we literally create the world with our minds. Just this morning I had a dream about finding cash in the pocket of my jeans. First time ever dreamt something like that. Later in the afternoon my father drops by unannounced, and suddenly he starts searching his own pockets for whatever reason and exclaims wow great, I found a bunch of money in my pocket! I never saw or heard him do that before so a pretty odd coincidence as well. I think the poorest thing to do is to think we know enough already, I mean at this point we probably havent even begun to grasp what this reality is or why it is for that matter.

POLL: Dreams accomplish what? Choose the best single response.


12. Dreams are universal to all higher animals including dogs, cats, etc so they must be essential for survival. 28.8% (67)
2. Dreams allow us to communicate with the spiritual realm. 21.9% (51)
3. Dreams help us figure out complex problems. 9.9% (23)
4. Dreams keep us sane and balanced. 9.4% (22)
1. Dreams allow us to cope with life. 6.0% (14)
10. Dreams are our own personal movie theater where we can create a fantasy world. 4.7% (11)
8. Dreams warn us of to avoid things, people, events, etc. 4.3% (10)
6. Dreams help us face our fears by practicing survival without being destroyed by reality. 3.9% (9)
7. Dreams allow us to test many variations to problem solving without risking failure in reality. 3.0% (7)
11. Dreams are useless because I cannot remember any of them. 3.0% (7)
5. Dreams allow us to escape to a better world. 2.6% (6)
9. Dreams fulfill our deepest needs and desires that reality cannot. 2.6% (6)

Blank (View Results) (102)

Non-Blank Votes: 233



Last Edited by George B on 08/14/2016 02:21 PM

For years DH said he never dreamed. A few years back he had a sleep study done and found out he quit breathing 90 times an hour and never went into REM sleep. That is the deep sleep where you dream. Now that he is on a Bi-Pap machine he dreams every night. The headaches he had been having all his life are a thing of the past. He loves that damn machine. I, on the other hand, hate it. It's loud.

I couldn't use the machine but use a very cheap mouth piece that has worked for the last five years. It cured my sleep apnea, snoring, acid reflux disease, and cracked and broken teeth. I had the worst case the sleep study people had seen. I roused over two times each minute of the night. I never really slept for 30 years.

here is a whole list of them . . .


[link to www.sleepassociation.org (secure)]

Last Edited by George B on 08/14/2016 02:34 PM

Science has no definitive answer for why we dream or even have to sleep. Studies have shown that brain activity in REM sleep states is the same as when we are awake. The are many forms of life that never "sleep" as we define it.

^^^Im feeling this

Sleep is when we get our firmware upgrades

Wrong. REM is the shallow sleep phase...where you dream, true. What we name dreams don't occur in the 3 deeper sleep phases although there's some brain activity there that might trigger some neural impulses in sensory awareness areas. Last time I updated myself on dream/sleep studies they weren't far getting into that yet.

Dreams are nice and we have them because they're nice..

I'm sure there are multiple answers. That being said, they definitely also allow us to communicate with the spiritual realm.

I didn't read the thread but if you study alien abduction, which is real and true without question, then you know that off Earth entities who are billions of years more advanced than we humans, also need sleep.

It is well documented in tens of thousands of abduction cases around the world. Aliens also need sleep. They require far less sleep than us, like 4 hours a month (when they also eat) but they still sleep.

A real good invention they should come up with is a device that refreshes your body in say, 15 minutes, to be the equivalent of a full night's deep sleep. I'm surprised someone hasn't thought of it by now.

This.