When we are awake, as we go about our daily life, our brains collect and store a series of sounds, images, and tactile stimuli from the outside world. We spend most of our waking hours in a state of external perception, focusing on everything beyond our own mind, as we connect to our surroundings, including other human beings. In other words, we mostly live our waking hours reacting to external situations and circumstances. When we are asleep, on the other hand, we enter into a different state, in which we experience dreams that we do not always remember the next morning.
Dreaming has always been a part of human life, to such an extent that even ancient peoples took their dreams very seriously, interpreting them for insight and guidance. Our dreams often resemble the plot of a film that we do not fully remember, as if they were made up of fragments of memories that are woven together in a seemingly random and uncontrollable sequence. They are not restricted by logic, or any of the other laws that govern our world, so one character in the dream may suddenly turn into someone else, the landscape may change completely from one moment to the next, and time may not follow a linear pattern.
So, why does this happen? What exactly are dreams, and what, if anything, do they mean? In The Oracle of Night, the author seeks to answer these questions, by analysing the importance of dreams throughout human history, and by exploring the mechanisms that regulate them.