Secrets of the Mind: When My Subconscious Spoke Out

The puzzling world of dreams

Years ago, I kept having a most unsettling dream. In it, I would wake up abruptly and try to make sense of my surroundings only to discover that I could not see. I would anxiously rub my lids for a while and then I would keep blinking frantically to no avail.

An indefinite amount of time would pass and my sense of panic would become more and more intense and highly suffocating. It felt as if someone or something was chasing me and I could not see what I had to protect myself from.

Time tends to lose contours and be amorphous in dreams and I cannot say whether this state of complete panic was lasting for long or not. It felt as if it did last for eons… but then, a second feels like hours when one is afraid in real life too.

The image would eventually start to form on my retina and my vision would come back. Everything around would first be blurry and then start coming into focus. The feeling of relief would gradually flood all my senses.

The weirdest thing of all was that the scenario of the dream was always the same. My subconscious, the director of this horror movie playing in my head, seemed to have become obsessed with it and was fervently working on perfecting the same scenes ad nauseam.

I remember this dream and the feeling attached to it really well. That year I kept having intense headaches and after getting tired of complaining about them and taking painkillers, I took someone’s suggestion and made an appointment with an ophthalmologist. He, of course, told me that I was nearsighted and had to wear glasses.

I have been wearing them ever since.

Immediately after this appointment had taken place, I stopped having the portentous dream and my hitchcockian subconscious could finally pick another production to dedicate its full attention to.

Jung considered that recurring dreams showed up to demand attention, suggesting that the dreamer was neglecting an issue related to the dream.

Before I went to the ophthalmologist, I had been completely unaware that the acuity of my vision had been faulty in any way. My subconscious seems to have known something was wrong however and had been repeatedly trying to compensate for my obliviousness through this warning.

This dream was fairly easy to interpret. If I had gone to a psychoanalyst back then, he or she would have probably been able to understand it easily.

Others however are a lot trickier and laden with symbols. They are like encrypted messages trying to convey something, but there is no universal key for them. Nor can one be invented as meanings are constantly shifting, taking into account the dreamer’s prior experiences, personal narratives, and views on things.

In the real world, laws of physics dictate how everything behaves. They establish what is perceived as normal around us. Objects fall down, not up, we don’t walk on ceilings, we can’t draw objects into shape (or can we now through 3d printing?!), and so on.

In dreams, however, nothing really seems impossible. Melting clocks, stairs that lead to nowhere, beds on clouds, or talking animals would be the norm. As would mirrors that one can pass through. Dali was really good at replicating dreamscapes in his paintings.

“Images that seem contradictory and ridiculous crowd in on the dreamer, the normal sense of time is lost, and commonplace things can assume a fascinating or threatening aspect.” (Jung — “Man and His Symbols”)

In real life, stories have a beginning and an ending. In dreams though, we never remember the beginnings and we jump from one episode to another. There is no transition and we never question this aspect while dreaming. Endings seem to constantly elude us as more often than not we wake up while the action is still unraveling.

As someone said in “Inception”, a movie that investigates the idea posited by many philosophers that reality itself might be just somebody’s dream, “the subconscious is motivated by emotion”, not by reason.

Many dreams can leave strong emotional imprints on our psyches. The feelings attached to certain nightmares can surreptitiously color the content of all our other thoughts for days and influence our actions in the most unusual ways.

I have always thought that dreams might be in charge of the connection between our inner worlds and the outer world. If so, they make sure that whatever we take in from the outer world is processed and understood.

One proof that would back up this theory is the fact that people who have been blind from birth do not have visual dreams. Their dream contents reflect what is perceived through their other fully functional senses: auditory, touch, smell, and taste.

I am not sure if the real purpose of dreams will ever be fully understood and this is what makes the subject really fascinating. One thing I am certain of though: we should consider ourselves lucky because we all have our own private cinema in our heads during the night.

As a bonus, all the movies are surreal, highly original, and adapted for each viewer. We might remember only snippets from what is being played, but what we do remember will never cease to intrigue us when awake.