Fields of Dream

Ever drifting down the stream–
Lingering in the golden gleam–
Life, what is it but a dream?

-Lewis Carroll

WHEN our rational brains are all heated up, arguing life’s complexities, that’s usually the best time to kick off our shoes and give it a rest.

When faced with a critical decision, or stuck on a complex problem, sleeping or napping on it, researchers have found, often leads to the right answer.

The notes of a song, the smell of burning leaves, the babbling of a mountain stream, all open the door to the the non-rational, poetic mind. They can awaken dim recollections of childhood, and even intimations of immortality:

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting
And cometh from afar …

-William Wordsworth

A Dream within a Dream (WATCH VIDEO)
- Edgar Allan Poe

Daydreamers Are Smarter

ScienceDaily (May 12, 2009), reports that “a new University of British Columbia study finds that our brains are much more active when we daydream than previously thought.”

“Mind wandering is typically associated with negative things like laziness or inattentiveness,” says lead author, Prof. Kalina Christoff, UBC Dept. of Psychology.

Many famous daydreamers have gone on to change the worldviews of society. Einstein was one. Einstein’s “train ride on a beam of light” taught him–and us, his theories of relativity, which revolutionized physics.

“But this study shows our brains are very active when we daydream – much more active than when we focus on routine tasks.”

“This is a surprising finding,” she said.

“A dream led Elias Howe to beat Singer to the patent for the sewing machine,” writes Sandra Weintraub in “Cultivate Your Dreams to Find New Solutions:”

“The French mathematician Henri Poincaré once wrote about how he struggled for two weeks with a difficult mathematical proof. He set it aside to take a bus to a geology conference, and the moment he stepped on the bus, the solution came to him.”

"...surrounding space is not an empty void, but a reservoir filled to repletion with the models of all things that ever were, that are, and that will be; and with beings of countless races, unlike our own.” - H. P. BLAVATSKY

The Extended Mind - Rupert Sheldrake (WATCH VIDEO)