Ashutosh Sahoo
Dreams are a universal human experience that challenges the very nature of reality.
Ancient civilizations like Mesopotamia and Egypt believed dreams predicted the future and interpreted messages from the gods
Biblical figures like Joseph and Daniel interpreted rulers' dreams that foretold future events like famine and the rise and fall of kingdoms.
The Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi famously questioned reality after dreaming he was a butterfly.
Aristotle was a skeptic, arguing that dreams are simply natural results of the body's residual sensory experiences during sleep
Descartes made dreams the foundation of skepticism, stating we cannot distinguish dreaming from waking with absolute certainty
Sigmund Freud viewed dreams as a "royal road" to the unconscious mind, revealing repressed desires in disguised, symbolic form.
Carl Jung believed dreams contain symbols from a "collective unconscious," a shared reservoir of universal human experiences.
St. Augustine argued that dream events are involuntary "happenings," not actions, so one cannot be held morally responsible.
The Threat Simulation Theory suggests dreaming evolved as an ancient defense mechanism to rehearse threat perception and avoidance
Some modern philosophers propose that dreaming is best understood as a realistic, world-simulation constructed by the brain.
The phenomenon of lucid dreaming, being aware and sometimes controlling your dream, challenges all past views on agency and reality.