You're not alone. But what is that "realness" we experience in dreams? In a dream, one moment you're flying, the next you're talking to your long-lost great aunt Mildred in a field of purple strawberries. The scenery shifts, the characters morph – everything is in constant flux. But even with all that change, there's a sense of… presence. But what are we really seeing?
It's not the actual objects themselves, is it? I mean, you're not really flying (unless you're a superhero, in which case, please tell me your secret!). What we're experiencing, according to ancient wisdom, is something manufactured. Something created by our own minds.
The Kalach Pitchei Chokhmah, a mystical text whose name hints at "garlands" and "openings of wisdom", delves into the nature of dreams and knowledge. It suggests that dreams aren't just random firings of neurons. Instead, they're a specific kind of imagery produced by the imagination.
Think of your mind as having an "image-making faculty." It's this faculty that takes the raw information – the anxieties, the hopes, the memories – and translates them into the bizarre and beautiful theater of our dreams.
So, when you "see" that purple strawberry field, it's not the actual strawberries you're seeing. It's an image, a likeness, a symbol conjured by your own internal artist. And it's through that image that we gain knowledge.
Now, that knowledge can be true or false, helpful or misleading. Maybe the dream is a warning, a premonition, a glimpse into the future. Or maybe it's just your brain sorting through the day's anxieties. Whatever it is, the dream uses the image-making faculty to communicate with you.
The mind, in effect, creates a picture. It's a picture woven from dream images and symbols, all corresponding to the knowledge the dream wants to reveal. And this picture is so convincing, so immersive, that we actually think we're seeing the objects themselves. We lose ourselves in the narrative, caught up in the drama.
Isn't that wild? It makes you wonder about the nature of reality itself, doesn't it? If our minds can create such convincing illusions in our sleep, what else are we "seeing" that isn't quite what it seems? And what does it mean to truly know something? Maybe, just maybe, the purple strawberry fields of our dreams hold more truth than we realize.