Neriman Sensev Dissertation Blog
"What if the answer to a problem at work was revealed to you in a dream last night, but; you didn't know it? Understanding dreams can give answers to life's problems, if you learn to grasp their meaning" John Paul Jackson, Dream Expert
"I've always used dreams the way you'd use mirrors to look at something you couldn't see head-on, the way that you use a mirror to look at your hair in the back. To me that's what dreams are supposed to do. I think that dreams are a way that people's minds illustrate the nature of their problems. Or maybe even illustrate the answers to their problems in symbolic language." Stephen King, a lucid dreamer & storywriter
"I've always used dreams the way you'd use mirrors to look at something you couldn't see head-on, the way that you use a mirror to look at your hair in the back. To me that's what dreams are supposed to do. I think that dreams are a way that people's minds illustrate the nature of their problems. Or maybe even illustrate the answers to their problems in symbolic language." Stephen King, a lucid dreamer & storywriter
Inventions that came in dreams!
The idea for Google
Larry Page and Sergey Brin got the idea for "downloading the entire web onto computers". Larry Page dreamed it one night when he was 23 years-old. Page is quoted as saying, "I spent the middle of that night scribbling out the details and convincing myself it would work."
The sewing machine
Elias Howe invented the sewing machine in 1845. He had the idea of a machine with a needle which would go through a piece of cloth but he couldn't figure out exactly how it would work. He first tried using a needle that was pointed at both ends, with an eye in the middle, but it was a failure. Then one night he dreamed he was taken prisoner by a group of natives. They were dancing around him with spears. As he saw them move around him, he noticed that their spears all had holes near their tips.
The periodic table (Chemistry)
Insulin
(Treatment for Diabetes 1921 [Frederik Banting, Charles Best]. It came to Banting in a dream one night: the Nobel-prize winning idea of how to treat diabetes with insulin. With the help of Charles Best, he finally isolated the compound that has changed the lives of millions of diabetics ever since.
Twilight Series (books and movies)
Parts of the Twilight story are based on a dream that Meyer had. In her dream, the vampire sparkled in the sun. She included this detail when she transcribed her dream, and wove it into the storyline as she turned the account of her dream into the novel.
Chemical transition of nerve impulses
Otto Loewi (1873-1961) won the Nobel Prize for medicine in 1936 for his work on the chemical transmission of nerve impulses. In 1903, Loewi had the idea that there might be a chemical transmission of the nervous impulse rather than an electrical one, which was the common held belief. The idea had come to him from a dream he had.
Madam C . J . Walker Manufacturing Company - From Dream to Millionaire
Dream of a Cure for Scalp Infection
Madame Walker founded and built a highly successful African-American cosmetic company that made her a millionaire many times over. Walker was suffering from a scalp infection that caused her to lose most of her hair in the 1890’s. She began experimenting with patented medicines and hair-care products. Then, she had a dream that solved her problems: “He answered my prayer, for one night I had a dream, and in that dream a big, black man appeared to me and told me what to mix up in my hair. Some of the remedy was grown in Africa, but I sent for it, mixed it, put it on my scalp, and in a few weeks my hair was coming in faster than it had ever fallen out. I tried it on my friends; it helped them. I made up my mind to begin to sell it.”
Madame Walker founded and built a highly successful African-American cosmetic company that made her a millionaire many times over. Walker was suffering from a scalp infection that caused her to lose most of her hair in the 1890’s. She began experimenting with patented medicines and hair-care products. Then, she had a dream that solved her problems: “He answered my prayer, for one night I had a dream, and in that dream a big, black man appeared to me and told me what to mix up in my hair. Some of the remedy was grown in Africa, but I sent for it, mixed it, put it on my scalp, and in a few weeks my hair was coming in faster than it had ever fallen out. I tried it on my friends; it helped them. I made up my mind to begin to sell it.”
Hannibal - one of the greatest military commanders in history
Hannibal, who many described as a military genius, based his battle plans against the Romans on his dreams. Hannibal invaded Italy based on a dream. Even the idea to use elephants came to him in a dream. Hannibal prayed to pagan gods, and was told one of them would go with him on his attack in Italy. In that dream, he was told, "Do not look back." He did, and saw a scaled dragon laying waste to orchards, towns, and villages. He asked what it was and his guide told him it was the destruction of Italy.
H.P. Lovecraft books
H.P. Lovecraft Hears the Title of "Necronomicon" in a Dream.H.P Lovecraft also dreamed many of his books. He began to suffer nightmares at the age of 5 following the death of his grandmother. H.P. wrote many horror books based on his nightmares. One of these is Beyond the Wall of Sleep(1919). Other pristine examples are The Statement of Richard Carter (also 1919) and Nyarlathotep (1920).
Jonathan Livingston, Seagull
This book by author Richard Bach came in two phases. First, a voice whispered the title to him while he was piloting a plane. Bach produced much of the book following that event. After eight years, he saw the remainder of the book in a dream, and finished the book. It became the best-sold book of all time. It surpassed even Gone with the Wind for hardback sales.
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Robert Louis Stevenson dreamed the storyline of this dark tale. Allegedly aided by large amounts of cocaine, Stevenson finished the first draft in just three days.
Henri Rousseau’s 'The Dream' painting
Salvador Dali's 'Persistence of Memory' painting
'Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening' painting.
Salvador Dali used dream incubation techniques to pre-program his dreams, and produced many dream-inspired works.
The Beatles 'Yesterday' song
According to the Guinness Book of Records, his Beatles song "Yesterday" (1965) has the most cover versions of any song ever written and, according to record label BMI, was performed over seven million times in the 20th century.
The tune for "Yesterday" came to Paul McCartney in a dream... The Beatles were in London in 1965 filming Help! and McCartney was staying in a small attic room of his family's house on Wimpole Street. One morning, in a dream he heard a classical string ensemble playing, and, as McCartney tells it: "I woke up with a lovely tune in my head. I thought, 'That's great, I wonder what that is?' There was an upright piano next to me, to the right of the bed by the window. I got out of bed, sat at the piano, found G, found F sharp minor 7th -- and that leads you through then to B to E minor, and finally back to E. It all leads forward logically. I liked the melody a lot, but because I'd dreamed it, I couldn't believe I'd written it. I thought, 'No, I've never written anything like this before.' But I had the tune, which was the most magic thing!"
The tune for "Yesterday" came to Paul McCartney in a dream... The Beatles were in London in 1965 filming Help! and McCartney was staying in a small attic room of his family's house on Wimpole Street. One morning, in a dream he heard a classical string ensemble playing, and, as McCartney tells it: "I woke up with a lovely tune in my head. I thought, 'That's great, I wonder what that is?' There was an upright piano next to me, to the right of the bed by the window. I got out of bed, sat at the piano, found G, found F sharp minor 7th -- and that leads you through then to B to E minor, and finally back to E. It all leads forward logically. I liked the melody a lot, but because I'd dreamed it, I couldn't believe I'd written it. I thought, 'No, I've never written anything like this before.' But I had the tune, which was the most magic thing!"
Albert Einstein's 'Theory of Relativity'
A young Albert Einstein conceived the theory of relativity in a dream. He dreamed that he was sledding down a steep mountainside, going faster and faster, approaching the speed of light, which caused the stars in his dream to change their appearance. Meditating upon that dream, Einstein eventually worked out his extraordinary scientific achievement, the principle of relativity.
James Cameron 'The Terminator' film
In Rome, during the release of Piranha II: The Spawning director James Cameron grew ill and had a dream about a metallic torso dragging itself from an explosion while holding kitchen knives. When Cameron returned to Pomona, California, he stayed at Randall Frakes' home where he wrote a draft for The Terminator.
Stephen King 'Misery' book
In an interview with UK reporter Stan Nicholls on the inspiration for Misery, King said: "Like the ideas for some of my other novels, that came to me in a dream. In fact, it happened when I was on Concord, flying over here, to Brown's. I fell asleep on the plane, and dreamt about a woman who held a writer prisoner and killed him, skinned him, fed the remains to her pig and bound his novel in human skin. His skin, the writer's skin. I said to myself, 'I have to write this story.' Of course, the plot changed quite a bit in the telling. But I wrote the first forty or fifty pages right on the landing here, between the ground floor and the first floor of the hotel."
Richard Feynman 'Surely you're joking Mr Feynman' book
He dedicated an entire chapter to his experiments with lucid dreaming where he gave a detailed account of how he influenced his dreams:
"I also noticed that as you go to sleep the ideas continue, but they become less and less logically interconnected. You don't notice that they're not logically connected until you ask yourself, "What made me think of that?" and you try to work your way back, and often you can't remember what the hell did make you think of that! So you get every illusion of logical connection, but the actual fact is that the thoughts become more and more cockeyed until they're completely disjointed, and beyond that, you fall asleep.
"...I kept practicing this watching myself as I went to sleep. One night, while I was having a dream, I realized I was observing myself in the dream. I had gotten all the way down, into the sleep itself!
"I discovered that I could turn around, and walk back through the train I could control the direction of my dream. I get back to the car with the special window, and I see three old guys playing violins but they turned back into girls! So I could modify the direction of my dream, but not perfectly."
"I also noticed that as you go to sleep the ideas continue, but they become less and less logically interconnected. You don't notice that they're not logically connected until you ask yourself, "What made me think of that?" and you try to work your way back, and often you can't remember what the hell did make you think of that! So you get every illusion of logical connection, but the actual fact is that the thoughts become more and more cockeyed until they're completely disjointed, and beyond that, you fall asleep.
"...I kept practicing this watching myself as I went to sleep. One night, while I was having a dream, I realized I was observing myself in the dream. I had gotten all the way down, into the sleep itself!
"I discovered that I could turn around, and walk back through the train I could control the direction of my dream. I get back to the car with the special window, and I see three old guys playing violins but they turned back into girls! So I could modify the direction of my dream, but not perfectly."
Richard D James/ Apex Twin ' Selected Ambient Works Volume II' album
The electronic musician also known as Aphex Twin, Richard D James has publicly stated that the sounds from his album Selected Ambient Works Volume II were inspired by lucid dreams. Upon waking, he would attempt to re-create the sounds and record them.
Lucid Dreaming is the ability to become aware while you’re dreaming… to consciously “wake up” inside the dream world and control your dreams.
Films on Lucid dreaming
Inception 2010, written and directed by Chris Nolan
The hit movie, Inception, has popularized lucid dreaming. It was written and directed by a real life lucid dreamer, Chris Nolan of Memento and The Dark Knight fame.
The Matrix 1999, written and directed by The Wachowski brothers
The creators of The Matrix, Larry and Andy Wachowski, are lucid dreamers who drew on this notion to create a virtual reality world in which we are all mentally enslaved, not recognizing that we are merely "dreaming". It depicts a dystopian future in which reality as perceived by most humans is actually a simulated reality called "the Matrix", created by sentient machines to subdue the human population, while their bodies' heat and electrical activity are used as an energy source.
directed by Richard Linklater
Live action rotoscoped movie 'Waking Life' 2001 written and directed by Richard Linklater
The director of the live-action rotoscoped movie, Waking Life, Richard Linklater is very familiar with the concept of lucid dreams. The movie is an intriguing philosophical jaunt into the world of dreaming and asks the question: "Are we sleep-walking through our waking state or wake-walking through our dreams?"