It is in the level of sleep recognised as F, that is, deep REM sleep, that eye movement is greatest. It is known that visual dreaming takes place during these phases but what was not realised until recently was that when those in NREM phases were awakened, they too thought they were dreaming. Subjects who were constantly awoken during the night (in particular during REM sleep which meant they were deprived of visual dreaming), became irritable, nervous, bad tempered and behaved out of character generally. It can, therefore, be concluded that we sleep so that we can dream.
We spend approximately one-third of our lives asleep. This means that when we reach the age of seventy-five, we have been asleep for twenty-five years. Babies sleep for over fifty per cent of their first year and, since most of this is in REM sleep, it is presumed they are dreaming visually. In fact they sleep and dream even before they are born. Adolescents sleep for eleven to twelve hours a night, adults seven to eight and older people seldom sleep for more than six hours during the night. This suggests we need slightly less sleep as we grow older.
Towards the end of the day we grow increasingly tired, both physically and mentally. Our bodies are heavy, we cannot concentrate, our eyes close involuntarily and we know that the only cure for this is to go to sleep. We, as human beings, are not alone in experiencing this all-consuming lethargy. Virtually every living organism is similarly affected. All mammals and birds sleep, so do fish and reptiles, albeit briefly. Even plants follow the diurnal and nocturnal cycles with their flowers closing their petals even before the sun goes down, and opening them again in the morning just before it rises. These cycles, the circadian rhythms, are daily fluctuations which seem to affect not only creatures and plants, down to their living cells, but the whole of nature as well.
Examples of this phenomenon on a grand scale are the rising and setting of the sun, the tides and the four seasons which, in turn, affect the breeding, seeding and dying of all species. Circadian rhythms also control sleep. We sleep when an internal clock in our brains gives the signal to our bodies telling it to stop daytime activity and slumber for a precise length of time.
Our internal clock, in common with the birds and plants, ‘switches us off’ at night. If we alter this pattern – an example is travelling from London to New York – we experience jet-lag. This condition is caused by breaking our circadian rhythm and even if we sleep for eight hours, beginning six hours later than usual, we cannot immediately adapt to the different rhythm. Our internal time-clock keeps telling our body it is six hours earlier. A change of sleeping pattern, therefore, does not mean we have lost sleep but rather that our inner-clock is out of phase with local time.
It has been concluded that, since resting the body and mind do not depend on sleep, its specific purpose must be to allow us to dream. During sleep our awareness reaches out to undiscovered realms, the land of dreams or, as C.G. Jung called it, the collective unconscious. This could well be the source from whence we came before we were born, and the place to which we return when we die. Do babies, therefore, who dream for most of their early life, revisit this source, our spiritual home?
Not all dreams, of course, are profound journeys to the great beyond. Many are literal action replays of real-life events, but even these take on a different significance when viewed from this inner standpoint. When, at night, we do return to the source, we enter a dimension far more expansive than the limited outer world. Here, we recharge with vitality following a physically active day, and when we are ill sleep is often the only healing force we need to recover.
To combat the stress and strain of life, relaxation and meditation are often resorted to, but these practices do not mitigate or remove such stress and strain. These are the result of circumstances with which we cannot cope and daytime techniques such as these are an apology for insufficient sleep. Few adults have enough of this and wonder why they always feel tired and cannot cope with problems. It is impossible to recharge when awake, for only in sleep can we contact the source and receive that essential vitality.
Some people can manage with less than seven hours sleep each night but they are, along with those who need over nine or ten, in the minority. The person who is occupied physically and mentally throughout the day needs an average of eight hours sleep. The test to know if you are having sufficient sleep is quite simple. If the alarm clock has to awaken you, it means you have not completed a REM or NREM cycle, so you are depriving yourself of valuable sleep. And if this happens five mornings out of seven, this deprivation is considerable and would account for loss of concentration, irritability, depression and many other unreasonable reactions to outer-world encounters and problems.
‘Sleep’, as Shakespeare so wisely put it, ‘is the balm for hurt minds, nature’s great second course’.
dreams and things that go bump in the night
walking and talking in our sleep
During sleep we have dreams, but we also have other experiences which are not, in the true sense of the word, dreams. Physiological and psychological changes take place during sleep, so experiences we may call ‘dreams’ are, in fact, the manifestation of these changes in dream form. When the sleep pattern changes from NREM to REM, considerable physiological changes take place. The heart begins to pound heavily and there is a rise in blood pressure; muscle tone is also affected.
These sensations are transformed into scenes which either incorporate or symbolise the feeling. Sounds are also used in this way by our dreaming mind. An example of this is the dreamer who dreamed she was in a room with her husband listening to an aeroplane overhead. The aeroplane