The Prophetic Telegraph - No.4
Sleep & Dreams
January 1987
There has always been
within man a certain fascination about sleep and dreams. Even in the earliest
known literature we find writers posing questions and suggesting answers, but
not until 1953 did man really begin to discover a few simple basic facts about
sleep and the world of dreams. In this study we shall try to present some of
the results of modern scientific research, to see how these illuminate the
Biblical revelations, few as they may be.
We sing
"Go1den Slumbers, kiss
your eyes,
Smi1es awake you when you rise;
Sleep pretty darling, do not cry!
And I will sing you lullaby."
So says the old English
folk song. And when Thomas Dekker (1575 - 1641) wrote these words it was
generally believed that the sleep of a little child was the most peaceful and
undisturbed of all sleep. One still hears comments such as, "I
slept like a baby last night!", which, being interpreted usually
means a dreamless night. It is also commonly held that certain ingredients will
almost certainly make for a troubled night with bad dreams, such as late-night
horror movies, or cheese snacks just before turning in. These and many other
common beliefs have had to be abandoned in the light of recent scientific
research. And let it be said before going any further, that babies dream for a
far greater percentage of their sleeping time than adults, and
late-night-cheese is far more likely to give you a disturbed night through
indigestion than through dreams!
Dreams are related to
activity within the brain. The human brain is an extremely complicated
mechanism, too wonderful for us to fathom even by today's technological
advances. However we do know that the brain consists of two main portions,
known as hemispheres, and that these hemispheres behave somewhat differently in
their functioning. The left hemisphere is the one we use mostly during our
waking hours. It deals with the constant bombardment of facts that need to be
sorted, analysed, and judged as good, bad or indifferent. Whether we like it or
not ALL information that is received by the brain is stored within the memory
banks, but not all of it is available for recall. The type of information
available for recall is that which we give the most focussed attention during
the day. Hypnotists have found that the rest of the information stored is still
there, and may be recalled under hypnosis.
(As an aside here, the
authors of these notes do NOT favour the use of hypnosis.)
The right hemisphere of the
brain is concerned with perceived feeling rather than objective fact. And it
has been found to function more vigorously during the hours of sleep than the
left hemisphere. A psychologist in the
In 1953 scientists began to
study the behaviour of sleeping subjects and realised that at intervals during
sleep people go through phases where there is rapid eye movement under the
lids. If the lids are drawn back during these times, the subject seems to be
looking intensely at objects that move from side to side with amazing rapidity.
This 'rapid eye movement' became the first big clue to the
world of dreams, and has since become known as D-state sleep, or REM
sleep. By rousing subjects during or just after REM periods, there was
always a greater chance of recall of dreams than if subjects were roused at
other times. Hence the rapid eye movement was associated with the visual
appreciation of effects within dreams.
The next thing learned from
these studies was that if subjects were deprived of their REM type sleep, they
underwent subtle personality changes, showing symptoms of becoming increasingly
abrasive and anxious, and often unable to concentrate. After several days of
dream deprivation signs of paranoia develop, with subjects resorting to
behaviour quite uncharacteristic of their normal morality.
However, when sleep is
allowed to return to such people in an uninterrupted fashion, they go on a
'dream binge' to make up for what they had lost. And as a result normality
returns to them during their waking hours. This shows us quite clearly that
dreaming is an essential part of our lives. We cannot live without it. All
those nights when we are completely unaware of dreams are nevertheless full of
them, more full than most of us have ever realised.
When researchers tested
their subjects by connecting them to a machine called an Electroencephalograph
(EEG for short) they found out even more about the hours of sleep. The 'brain
waves' recorded by the machine were of fairly distinct types, and after falling
asleep, the waves changed their patterns or rhythm to reveal that there are
four distinct depths of sleep. One of these rhythms is typical of the REM
phase, and is nearest to the surface, in other words of being almost awake. It
has been found that dream sequences occur roughly at 90 minute intervals during
the night, getting longer with each successive sequence, until by the fifth the
dreaming seems to continue unabated until we wake up.
These 90 minute cycles are
an important element of research, because scientists have found more than one
hundred different body functions, from stomach contractions to normone
secretions, as well as many mental activities, that follow a repetitive cycle
of 90 minutes duration.
Psychologist Paul Bakan
said, "Every night for the brief duration of a dream, the
illogical emotional, highly visual right brain is almost completely freed from
the dominance of the rational left brain, and the result is the torrent of images,
sounds and feelings known as a dream." About 25% of our sleeping
time is spent in REM state dream-sleep. But the percentage is greater for
infants. Newborn babies show an average of 50% REM which declines steadily
until age 10, and then remains steady at 25% right through until we are about
60, after which there is some evidence that REM sleep tends to decline
somewhat.
And human beings are not
the only ones to exhibit REM-type sleep. All mammals that have been studied
show it, amongst which are dogs, cats, monkeys, rats, shrews, and elephants.
There is also some evidence that REM sleep is present in some birds and
reptiles.
I said that the fifth REM
cycle is as long as sleep continues. It is therefore quite significant that our
sleep duration should be ideally regulated by the knowledge of these facts.
Most people tend to wake by themselves during this fifth dream phase, but if
one 'sleeps on', say on a Sunday morning, then the dream sequences will
continue unabated, and this can become unnecessarily tiring, because REM sleep
requires energy for the brain activity. It is best therefore if one's waking
time can be kept tolerably constant according to the experience of the cycles,
and their length in a particular case. There used to be an old adage about
sleep, "Six for a man, seven for a woman, and eight for a
fool!" This is clearly an over-simplification, but in the
ordinary conditions of life, there is much truth in it. In these strange and
gruelling days of Satanic mind-zapping and insidious control of mental
conditions, many of God's people would be blissfully happy to get one or two
good nights of sleep each week. For them, all such 'sayings' would appear
ironic.
We have mentioned that
during dreams our eyes appear to be in rapid motion. If we try to move our eyes
at this speed during the day, we end up with bad headaches. And yet during the
night we not only do this, but continue to do it for about a quarter of the
sleep-time, and yet when we wake (for the most part) we are not aware of
headaches. Why is this? The answer must come from a little known and poorly
understood fact, one that most of the scientists who work on dreams would not
even contemplate, and that is "Time dilation".
If our eyes are in such
rapid motion, then we are watching events at a great speed. But to us, in the
dream, these events are passing by at a normal rate. Indeed, sometimes we find
that they are too slow. We might be trying to escape from something unpleasant,
only to find that our legs will not carry us fast enough. We seem to be within
a film that is being shown in slow motion. How can we account for this?
Unbelievably, the only
satisfactory answer is that during the night we are allowed to exist in a
dimension of existence where time moves at a different rate to that on the
earth. Subjects who are known to have been dreaming for say 10 minutes, often
report events which (for them, in the dream) occupy a much greater time. This
"time dilation" effect is most important to our studies, and in all
the books that we have read so far, not one has given a satisfactory answer to
the problem. Most of them do not even grapple with it. But if there is another
time-axis in existence in the universe, then who lives in it normally? To all
such questions, we shall have to delay giving any full exposition now, for fear
of creating a major diversion from the subject in hand.
Our next point of interest
concerns what are commonly called 'nightmares', so called from the female
monsters that seem to come and sit upon people, thereby to suffocate them in
their sleep. But the word is broadened to include any dream experience which
throws the subject awake in a state of terror. Nightmares and night terrors (pavor
nocturnus) occur mostly in children. Terrors seem to be present in
children from
To move on, we must ask the
question, is there anything that can reduce our REM sleep? In fact there are a
number of factors. And it is very important to understand this area of
artificial deprivation of REM sleep, knowing how personality and morality
change subtly when we are deprived. It has been found that certain man-made
drugs are responsible for deprivation of REM sleep, such as barbiturates,
amphetamines, and tranquillizers. These drugs are supplied by doctors very
liberally these days. (Not all doctors are quite so free and easy with the
pills, thank God!) From the records of the nation, the numbers of these drugs
prescribed annually is prodigious, and the effect that it is having on the
general public purely from the side-effect of REM deprivation must be
staggering. Too much alcohol is yet another way of reducing the REM sleep. When
people come off these drugs, or dry out after alcohol abuse they go on a 'dream
binge' with nights of exhausting and often nightmarish dreams.
It has been found that when
people are anxious, or have an important event on the following day, the
percentage of REM sleep increases. One might almost say that during the night,
the right brain grapples with the problems of the following day, and prepares
us for the ordeal or the challenge. This cannot be proved, but the evidences
seem to point in that direction. Certainly it would be a bad idea to take a
sleeping pill under such conditions. It would be better to 'dream on it.'
Whence come all these
dreams? Are they the product of our own fertile imaginations, using items
locked away in our memory banks? Are they the crazy mixed up world of floating
pieces of information, coming together in a random fashion during the night? We
must be able to find an answer to this question, because it is of great
importance to all who have faith in Christ.
Let us first of all recall
the classical work of the French physician Alfred Maury, who
over one hundred years ago did a lot of work on dream-content. He studied more
than 3,000 reported collections of dreams, and came to the conclusion that
dreams arose from EXTERNAL STIMULI, which instantaneously
accompany the impressions within the dreams. He wrote that part of his bed-head
once fell on the back of his neck and woke him out of a dream, in which he had
been brought before a French revolutionary tribunal, questioned, condemned, led
to the scaffold, bound by the executioner, and that the guillotine blade fell.
Various points arise from
Maury's dmam. In the first place, we should point out the clear evidence for
the 'time dilation effect' mentioned above. In the second
place, allowing for the extremely short time available, how could the brain
itself be considered responsible for the tragic events in his dream? Are we
supposed to believe that we are ourselves responsible for the things we dream?
And if so, how can Maury's dream be explained? How can a sleeping person be
aware of an event that WILL VERY SHORTLY transpire, and then, in a flash, THINK
UP a suitable train of events in such a way that AT THE EXACT MOMENT when the
bed-head fell, so also the guillotine blade made contact with his neck? It is
asking far too much of an individual to think up such a sequence, even given a
few minutes of his waking time. But to consider that we may be resonsible for
such sequences WHILST STILL ASLEEP is quite preposterous! And so we are led to
believe that Maury was right. There are external stimuli at work on us during
the night, and our brains are the subject of continual attack from outside, and
often very hostile forces, because Maury's dream could not have come from a
beneficent source!
To those who have read the
Bible, there is clear evidence that SOME dreams have been given by God, and
have a special meaning in their symbolism. Famous dreams in the O.T. and in the
N.T. come to mind, and on the Day of Pentecost, amongst other things that Peter
quoted from Joel's prophecy was the clear intimation that God was going to give
dreams to His 'old men'. Hence it was an on-going process. And today we still
find that believers have meaningful dreams.
We say these things because
they show to us that at least SOME dreams have been proven to be of external
stimulation. It is only one further step to take to accept that ALL dreams have
external agencies in their working. But if we accept this, then many other
questions arise, and they cannot all be answered at once. However, it does lead
us to look at my "brain-berg" diagram, which we believe to be of
great significance. The brain may be likened to an iceberg, and the sea-level
then represents the division between the conscious thinking world, and the
unconscious world of the memory and dreams.
You will see that there are
four levels beneath the waves, and these may very well correlate with the four
levels of activity recorded on the EEG traces. But the lowest level is shown to
be spread out sideways, and open at the edges. This is the presumed entrance,
or doorway, into which the external stimuli come, and they may be from God,
from angelic beings (of light or of darkness), of demonic agencies, and even
other human beings. Because of this idea, which we here present ourselves,
though the diagram is really a representation of many lines of thought put
forward by researchers, we have a device, a tool, a concept, for further
evaluation, not just of the dream world, but of everything germane to the human
nature.
Take the phenomenon of
telepathy as an example. We have read of a case where a man had a sudden vision
of his brother, known to be in some other part of the world. In this vision, he
saw him dressed in dripping wet clothes, and looking in a very distressed and
fearful condition. Within a day or so, this man received intelligence that his
brother was lost at sea, presumed dead, and that the ship went down at almost
exactly the time he was receiving his vision. The science of what is often
called 'nuts and bolts technology' these days, can hardly provide us with a
satisfactory explanation of this type of event, an event in fact which is far
more common than is usually realised. But by the use of our diagram, it is
possible to accept that there may be a device whereby thought transference is
made strong and focussed at times of great distress, and which is picked up by
someone who is genetically close . Clearly the 'communication lines', or the
'submarine cables' that connect people with each other, must be of a strange
and transient nature, and do not operate all the time, but they are
nevertheless there, and many will testify to the messages received. We are most
complex in our make-up. Doctors may examine us, surgeons may cut us about,
students may disect cadavers in medical school, but no one can lay hold of that
which is invisible and examine it. All research must proceed along lines of
circumstantial evidence, rather like the physicists who study the behaviour of
sub-atomic particles. It doesn't mean that we CANNOT arrive at the truth. It
does mean that our experiments often have to be subtle and ingenious in their
devising.
In the Bible, in Numbers
12:6 we read, "If there be a prophet among you, I the Lord will
make myself known to him in a vision, I will speak with him (lit. IN him) in a
dream." The Hebrew here shows clearly that the divine mode of
speaking is such that God is INSIDE the person, causing the dream sequence to
unfold. He is the Composer, and the Author of the intelligence. Isaiah was told
(30:21) "Your ears shall hear a word BEHIND you, saying, 'This
is the way, walk in it.'" In this reference we are shown that
in the waking state we shall be aware of the AREA in which the voice of the Lord
seems to emanate. We can literally validate this statement in Isaiah, in that
whenever we hear the Lord speak, it is indeed at the back of the head, as
though the Lord were addressing us from behind. Facts such as these need to be
marshalled in order to build up a.tenable understanding of the 'mechanics' of
'information transfer' in the unconscious as well as the conscious state.
Finally, quoting
Eccles.5:3, we have the following, "Dreams come from the
multitude of business." The Hebrew word translated "business"
is elsewhere translated "afflictions". This gives the verse quite a
different force. It isn't the result of the previous day's business, or
activities, that determine the dream-state, but rather, as Maury said, a
"multitude of (external) afflictions." An on that tantalising thought
we shall conclude this article, hoping that it will engender further research.
The Brain-berg Diagram
|
Conscious analytical thinking during our waking hours by
the use of the left hemisphere of the brain. The wavy line below represents
the division between being awake and being asleep. Hence, this portion is
like the visible part of an iceberg that rises above the level of the sea. |
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
|
This region we may call the "first memory bank".
There will be a constant interchange between this layer and the layer above,
during waking hours. |
|
This is the "second memory
bank", which allows for almost no recall except under strange conditions
like hypnosis. |
|
This is the region of deep determinative thought patterns.
It is the struggling region, where deep emotions of fear, anguish,
resentment, anger, and despair constantly vie with determination, courage,
vision and destiny. |
|
This is the very deepest region,
where the brain seems to be open to external stimuli, where telepathy occurs
between genetically related individuals, and where communication is possible from
external sources, whether it be from God, or from satanic or demonic
agencies. |