Why Do We Write?
When I was in college I attended a lecture by the head of our psychology department, who had worked at the newly-opened Stanford Sleep Center the previous summer. This is the first time I heard about the sleep cycles, and how we experience different depths of sleep. This is also when I first heard the theory that REM occurs during our deepest sleep cycle, and this is the time - the only time - that we dream.
When I heard that I thought that the scientists at the Sleep Center had made that common error: we dream when we sleep, we do REM when we sleep, therefore we dream when we do REM. And I assumed it would be corrected in a few years, when constant annecdotal correction would force them to revise their theory. But thirty years later, this has not happened. It is still built into the accepted theory of sleep that REM is when we dream.
But this is not true. The fact is, we dream all the time. And I don't mean this is some metaphorical way. We slip from sleep into dreaming as soon as we let go of consciousness. How many times have you been yanked back from dreaming just as you started to fall asleep? How many times have you been woken, and then gone back to sleep and slipped right back into your dreams? And how many times have you experienced dreaming while you were still conscious? A number of times when I was quite sick, and kept awake by discomfort, I've been conscious and observing dreams at the same time, sometimes while my eyes were still open.
I think it is a weakness of our academic structure that once the chiefs of the Stanford Sleep Laboratory lay down what the theory is, no one can question their conclusions. I suppose if I were a graduate student working at the SSL, I'd keep quiet about my experiences. After all, I didn't talk to my psych professor after he lectured on the theory.
We have evolved our levels of consciousness as we developed as an animal. We still possess pretty much the same automic nervous system as we did when we were a weasel-type creature. The next layer of our brain, which takes in sensory perception, feeds it to the brain as images, and reacts accordingly lies above that, and probably there are several more layers piled up under the consciousness from which I currently organize my thoughts into words.
All those different layers of consciousness are all taking in our experiences and responding accordingly. Dreams are the means by which we communicate up and down those different layers. Everything that happens to us, everything we experience, is interpreted by each layer of consciousness, and in our dreams, we process this information and integrate it among all our levels of understanding.
Thus, when life is difficult, we experience hard-edged dreams that leave a bad taste on the soul upon waking. And when we have had traumatic experiences, we go over and over and over the information in the form of nightmares, until all of the layers have stopped reverberating to the event. The purpose of dreams is to process the information of our lives, and so integrate all the levels of our consciousness. In our dreams we translate all the information and experiences into metaphores, the common language of all our layers of consciousness. We are dreaming all the time; this process of integration is ongoing. Occasionally when we dip into sleep and up again, we are aware of it, or if we are ill and experience dreams while we are awake. But there is never a time our busy minds are not intercommunicating by means of the dreamscape.
Just as we have evolved our layers of consciousness, so have we evolved as storytellers. Probably the first stories were anecdotes told around the campfire when the extended family met together at the end of the day. Eventually the most important stories were put into rhyme to be more easily remembered, and passed down from one fireside to another for thousands of years. We created masks, acted out our hunts and our battles. We called the gods to our fires and so received their blessing on our endeavors.
Learning to write allowed the storyteller to pass along his exact thoughts to minds that were not present when they were written, even for thousands of years.
When radio was invented, it was declared that this would spell the end of live theater. Instead, radio flourished across the nation, and theater grew. When film arrived shortly after, it was declared that theater and radio would die, but instead, we have more radio than ever, more theater than ever, and more films than ever are made every year. Video games now sell more than movies. Electronic books are expanding even as failing bookstores struggle to reinvent themselves. Podcasts and blogs, fan sites, e-publishing; the explosion of media reflects the frenzy of the human kind to tell one another stories.
I think that plays, films, books, are the means by which each of our minds connects with one another's, compelled to integrate one consciousness to another across the whole species, as our own mind by necessity communicates up and down our layers of consciousness through dreams. The metaphores of fiction is our tool of integration. So we must tell one another stories.
When I heard that I thought that the scientists at the Sleep Center had made that common error: we dream when we sleep, we do REM when we sleep, therefore we dream when we do REM. And I assumed it would be corrected in a few years, when constant annecdotal correction would force them to revise their theory. But thirty years later, this has not happened. It is still built into the accepted theory of sleep that REM is when we dream.
But this is not true. The fact is, we dream all the time. And I don't mean this is some metaphorical way. We slip from sleep into dreaming as soon as we let go of consciousness. How many times have you been yanked back from dreaming just as you started to fall asleep? How many times have you been woken, and then gone back to sleep and slipped right back into your dreams? And how many times have you experienced dreaming while you were still conscious? A number of times when I was quite sick, and kept awake by discomfort, I've been conscious and observing dreams at the same time, sometimes while my eyes were still open.
I think it is a weakness of our academic structure that once the chiefs of the Stanford Sleep Laboratory lay down what the theory is, no one can question their conclusions. I suppose if I were a graduate student working at the SSL, I'd keep quiet about my experiences. After all, I didn't talk to my psych professor after he lectured on the theory.
We have evolved our levels of consciousness as we developed as an animal. We still possess pretty much the same automic nervous system as we did when we were a weasel-type creature. The next layer of our brain, which takes in sensory perception, feeds it to the brain as images, and reacts accordingly lies above that, and probably there are several more layers piled up under the consciousness from which I currently organize my thoughts into words.
All those different layers of consciousness are all taking in our experiences and responding accordingly. Dreams are the means by which we communicate up and down those different layers. Everything that happens to us, everything we experience, is interpreted by each layer of consciousness, and in our dreams, we process this information and integrate it among all our levels of understanding.
Thus, when life is difficult, we experience hard-edged dreams that leave a bad taste on the soul upon waking. And when we have had traumatic experiences, we go over and over and over the information in the form of nightmares, until all of the layers have stopped reverberating to the event. The purpose of dreams is to process the information of our lives, and so integrate all the levels of our consciousness. In our dreams we translate all the information and experiences into metaphores, the common language of all our layers of consciousness. We are dreaming all the time; this process of integration is ongoing. Occasionally when we dip into sleep and up again, we are aware of it, or if we are ill and experience dreams while we are awake. But there is never a time our busy minds are not intercommunicating by means of the dreamscape.
Just as we have evolved our layers of consciousness, so have we evolved as storytellers. Probably the first stories were anecdotes told around the campfire when the extended family met together at the end of the day. Eventually the most important stories were put into rhyme to be more easily remembered, and passed down from one fireside to another for thousands of years. We created masks, acted out our hunts and our battles. We called the gods to our fires and so received their blessing on our endeavors.
Learning to write allowed the storyteller to pass along his exact thoughts to minds that were not present when they were written, even for thousands of years.
When radio was invented, it was declared that this would spell the end of live theater. Instead, radio flourished across the nation, and theater grew. When film arrived shortly after, it was declared that theater and radio would die, but instead, we have more radio than ever, more theater than ever, and more films than ever are made every year. Video games now sell more than movies. Electronic books are expanding even as failing bookstores struggle to reinvent themselves. Podcasts and blogs, fan sites, e-publishing; the explosion of media reflects the frenzy of the human kind to tell one another stories.
I think that plays, films, books, are the means by which each of our minds connects with one another's, compelled to integrate one consciousness to another across the whole species, as our own mind by necessity communicates up and down our layers of consciousness through dreams. The metaphores of fiction is our tool of integration. So we must tell one another stories.