‘When I sleep I dream
and see animals, witches, beasts chasing me and I try to move my body to wake
up but I can’t or even shout Jesus but it seems like my tongue was tied but I
finally managed to call upon Jesus and woke up and was saved. Is it not God
that saved me?
A lady who stays on my street decided to argue
with me about my atheist views. She posed a questions to me, ‘when I sleep I
dream and see animals, witches, beasts chasing me and I try to move my body to
wake up but I can’t or even shout Jesus but it seems like my tongue was tied
but I finally managed to call upon Jesus and woke up and was saved. Is it not
God that saved me? She asked.
I find the questions rather amusing yet they were quiet
challenging.
I’ll take my time to explain it to you because I’m sure it
may have crossed your mind before. Let’s start with what we know. What we know
is that when we’re tired or when its late at night or early as the case may be
we fall asleep. What the woman, and we failed to understand is the phenomenon
called REM. Rapid Eye Movement, REM for short is a type of sleep.
And yes there are
different types of sleep. Just as there are different types of emotions;
happiness, sadness, anger and the like. There are low wave sleeps, paradoxical
and walking sleep as well as REM sleep. Several times we experience REM sleep.
It’s a type of sleep where we witness something scientists call muscle atonia.
Because if the high amount of neurotransmitters like acetylcholine or other
monoamines the muscles in our bodies become almost paralyzed. REM atonia, is described as an almost
complete paralysis of the body, accomplished through the inhibition of motor neurons. When the body shifts into REM sleep, the person may
experience dreams that almost seem real. I personally have experienced such
kind of sleep.
I guess what I’m
saying is you may not be too quick to say you were saved in from evil in a
nightmare by any supreme being. We may want to acknowledge that such dreams or
nightmares are not unique to any religious group. Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus,
and the like experience such dreams and also wake up.
It’s noteworthy to
explain here that the human is a highly creative organ. The brain has its
tricks and ways of telling you to act. For instance, if you sleep wrongly, say
on one side and your arm becomes numb. If the blood flow to the arm is too low
and you are extremely tired to wake up, the brain can draw up a story in your
dream to make you move away from that position. Now, the nature of the story
may be negative or positive. However, the tendency for it to be negative is
higher because adrenaline is likely to kick in easily in ‘fight or flight’
situations. So waking up from such a dream is not mystifying and needs no
spiritual reason attributed to it.
You may have seen yourself several times having sex in your
dream. Maybe with Beyonce or Kim Kadashian or some crush you have around you. A
religious person may attribute meaning to it like they do in white garment
churches, we all know such dreams are mostly experienced in puberty and had no
spiritual implication. The brain has it tricks, if you think or fantasize about
anyone, say a lady or guy as the case may be, the brain can pull up a virtual
and lucid story in its memory and simulate sexual intercourse during sleep.
It’s common if you have a fever to experience nightmares these are all the
brains way of saying ‘I’m in bad shape fix me’.
Secondly, it is also possible to sleep and dream about an
event which eventually happens in real life. Such kind of sleep may be termed a
revelation by some. However, it is not strange. Albert Einstein solved this
problem in the early twentieth century when he understood that time is an
illusion. The concept of time is an illusion created by our brains.
For instance, the first time you visit a place it appears far
and longer, a day at work suddenly becomes longer if there’s less tasks for the
day, return from a location back home appears shorted than when you are going
there etc. several experiments has proved Einstein’s time-space continuum over
and over.
Let me explain this properly, the fact is there is no past or
present or future. The past is not gone, neither is the future in waiting. Our
brains just make it seem that way. All three, present, past and future are all
occurring simultaneously.
Picture a loaf of bread, if you decide to slice it right into
two from the middle in a straight line you’ll observe nothing new. Wait, hold
on, the point is coming, label one side Ada and the other side Bayo, picture
yourself as Ada and that slice, the distance between you and Bayo who is in
America. Both of you are in the present. If you try to travel to meet Bayo, you
would not travel in that straight line to him but travel at an angle, which you
can show by slicing the loaf in another straight line but this time, slanting
your hand a bit. If you look at the loaf, the difference caused by slanting
your hand would widen and become large as to approach Bayo. That gap represents
time. By the time to get to Bayo, you would reach him in his future. Same
applies to going backward.
For more understanding of this Google ‘time is an illusion by
Einstein’ and watch the YouTube video.
The implication of this is, since all three are occurring at
the same time, I mean the past, present and future, the information of all
three is already in our brains. Yes, what it means is you can remember the
future, just like you do the past. So if you dream about it, it’s not
surprising. Why it isn’t, is because we use less than fractions of a quarter of
the capacity of our brains. There so much our brain can do that we haven’t even
tapped into yet. Recall, that our ancestors didn’t have the technology we have
now and that’s indicative of lower brain power. It shows we, humans are
evolving and getting smarter with each generation. I predict a time would come
when we would almost know the future consciously.
About
me
Kelvin
Ohiri is an atheist activist and scientist. He believes that religion has
deterred rational and creative thinking in Nigerian youths and advocates for a
better approach to life, centered on self-development, creativity, and
self-actualization. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Biochemistry and a master’s
degree in protein chemistry and enzymology from the University of Nigeria,
Nsukka. He has contributed to antimalarial development and sickle cell disease
research. His interest for teaching and preserving the truth has led him into
deep religious studies.
He
can be reached at kelvin.ohiri@yahoo.com
Really so this is the reasons for some of my dreams? Huh? ?thanks for writing jawe
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