Translator: Midori T
Reviewer: Tanya Cushman Have any of you ever dreamt on purpose, tried to dream about something, or maybe solved a problem in your sleep? If you have, you are in very good company, with the likes of Dmitri Mendeleev,
creator of the periodic table of elements; with Mary Shelley,
the author of "Frankenstein"; Otto Loewi, Nobel Prize winner; C.J. Walker, the first American
female millionaire; Federico Fellini, Italian filmmaker; and Abraham Lincoln. All of these people made
life-changing discoveries in their dreams, and you do, too, every night. Maybe you just don't remember. So my big message for you today is that dreaming is essential
to our creativity and to our health. It's a fundamental part of being human. Every night, whether you remember or not,
you have four to six dreams. Here's what that looks like: the purple boxes are dreams. And you'll notice the first dream
of the night tends to be very short; that's filled with a lot
of what we call day residue. It'll be almost a replay of an emotionally
significant moment during the day. As the night goes on, the dreams start to pull images,
experiences, emotions from earlier and earlier in the life span, until we get to the last
dream of the night, which is the longest
and oftentimes the most bizarre. I like to think of it
as our dreaming self is like an artist, just cutting and pasting
and collaging it all together to come up with really unique
visual and emotional idioms. So what would it be like
if you could dream on purpose? Actually, people throughout the world
have already figured out how to do this. In many cultures, there are different
rituals for dreaming on purpose, and you can find this throughout history. So, let's take a look
at Ancient Greece for a moment. Some of you may recognize this symbol: it's the Rod of Asclepius. This is also used as a symbol mark
for the World Health Organization. Asclepius was a god of dreams and healing, and throughout the ancient world,
there were temples devoted to him - where people would come and dream
and ask the god for help in their sleep, and they expected fully
that he would come and heal them. He also had a lot of kids,
and I think you know some of them. For example, Hygieia -
she went on to become hygiene, Panacea who became healing,
Meditrine became medicine, and Iaso was the goddess
of recuperation from an illness. Today we can still see Asclepius's
influence in the medical system every time you visit a clinic. The word for clinic, by the way,
comes from the Greek word "kline," which is the bench that people
used to lie down on in an Asclepian temple to dream and wait for the god
to come heal them. So even if you don't remember your dreams, they're still happening,
and they're still supporting you. They're a powerful ally. So, what do scientists
think about dreaming? What function do dreams serve?
Why do we dream? Well, there's a lot of opinions, but there's a few things
that they agree on. And that is that the dreaming brain
is incredibly active, as active, if not more so,
than the waking brain. And also that dreaming is our most
emotional state of consciousness, so while it may not be
rationally coherent, it is emotionally coherent. And in the absence
of four to six dreams per night, it's impossible to maintain
emotional balance. Ask any mom of a newborn -
she will verify this. (Laughter) Dreams are also where that learning
we do during the day is consolidated and woven together
with past experiences, so what we learned today
that's emotionally relevant can become useful in the future. So we can practice a lot during the day, we can do all kinds of things
during the day, but unless we get four to six cycles
of dreaming at night, we're not going to be able
to retain that learning. So how do you dream on purpose? The first thing is treasure your sleep, really value the gift that it is
and don't compromise on it. Then, pick something you're working on,
during the day already, that's really important to you,
that's emotionally meaningful. For example, maybe there's a project
you're working on, or perhaps there's a relationship
that's going through a bit of trouble, or you have a health issue. Push to the limits; you can't expect the dreaming
to do all the work for you, but really push it, and then allow yourself to get stuck. Go until you hit a wall, and that is the perfect time
to ask the dreaming for support. Then, create an incubation phrase. So, because dreaming is also one of
our most visual states of consciousness, I like to start with the phrase "Show me." For example, "Show me what the next step
in my project looks like," "Show me what good health feels like," "Show me what's getting in the way
of this being a great relationship." Then go to sleep and dream. Now, as you're starting to fall asleep, you'll notice your body
starts to feel warm and heavy, and you may have noticed the little jerks. Has anybody ever noticed that? Yeah. That's when you're shifting
states of consciousness from waking consciousness
into what we call the hypnagogic state, this delicious threshold
between waking and dreaming. And that's a great time to start
reciting your phrase to yourself: "Show me the next step," "Show me what health feels like," "Show me what's getting in my way." Now remember, the dreams are going
to answer in their own language, and that language
is going to be highly emotional, it's going to be very filled
with imagination and a lot of images, but just welcome it
like you would any new friend. Don't try to translate it or pin it down
to some kind of meaning. Instead, start a conversation. Just allow yourself to be in a place
of appreciation and wonder, and let the dreams come as they are. Speak as they do; start a dialog, just like Paul McCartney,
who woke up with this lovely melody, but he couldn't get it out of his head and was sure he must have
heard it somewhere because it was so fully realized. So he put a little working title on it.
He called it "Scrambled Eggs." And then, according to his biography,
he went around the music business, asking people, "Have you
ever heard this before?" because he didn't want to unconsciously
plagiarize somebody else's work. Well, after a few weeks of doing this,
nobody said they had heard it before, and he decided, "Okay, it must be mine." So, he sat down and wrote the lyrics,
which became "Yesterday," one of the most recorded songs
in the music business. So, what if you could dream
tonight on purpose? What would you dream about?
What are you already working on? What health issues are there? Is there something you'd like support for? First thing to do is form your phrase
and then sleep well. Try to wake naturally,
without an alarm clock, because if you can, you will wake naturally
from that last dream of the night. And when you do,
keep your body very still, because body position affects memory. Now you only have two to five minutes
of short-term recall to get this dream down. So, don't worry if it doesn't
make sense; just stay with it. I like Stephen King's advice - he is another author
who regularly draws upon his dreams. He says to limit sensory input. So, what I do to stay in touch
with the internal world of dreams is I put in a pair of earplugs
that I always have next to my bed, I put a cloth over my eyes, and then I hover
in the hypnopompic state - the state when we're coming out
of the dreams into waking. Now, after I have gotten a sense
of what the dream is about - remember it - then I turn over very carefully and start to write in my journal. At this point, focus on description. Don't worry if it makes any sense or not, because remember,
you've only got two to five minutes. Just describe. Just like Larry Page,
who woke up in the middle of the night with this bizarre dream about being able
to download the entire Internet into his computers that he had. Well, he stayed with the images; he started to write a lot of associations,
ideas that were flowing from that; and the next thing you know,
he's got the idea for what became Google. So, take time after you've written
your dream to reflect upon it, and as you're in the luscious state
of just waking up and savoring it, if any associations come up,
any feelings, just put them down, but don't try to pin it down
to meaning yet. Enjoy the images as they are, just like Einstein, who woke up with this wonderful experience
of having ridden on a beam of light. He stayed with that, and that eventually became the seed
that grew into the theory of relativity. Now, after you've woken from your dreams
and you've written something down, or even if you haven't remembered them, express gratitude, because whether you remember
your dreams or not, they're still supporting your learning, your balancing of emotions, your health, your creativity. They're always working on your behalf. Now, take a moment upon waking
to look back in your journal and pick maybe one image
to savor throughout the day, just enjoy it, just like Elias Howe,
who had an incredible nightmare. Now, sometimes nightmares
can actually be really useful. He had this nightmare of being chased. How many of you have ever
been chased in a dream? Right? It's the number one
most common dream. So, he was being chased by a group
of cannibals through the jungle - can you imagine that? - and they caught him,
and they were tying him up, and he was getting ready to be cooked,
and it was just terrifying. And at that point,
they came at him with a spear, and they went right up to his face. Well, they didn't kill him.
He was really surprised. He was looking at the spear, and in front of him was a spear tip
that had a hole in it. What a strange image. Carried that into the day,
and as he's mulling it over, he realized, "Aha! That's what I need to do
to create a sewing machine." Up until then, needles had always had
the thread coming in at the top there, and that when you try
to put that in machine, then it would trap the thread
and it couldn't move, but if you were to move the hole
down to the tip of the needle, just like those spears, then it could hold the needle in a sewing
machine, and the thread could move. That was the invention
of the sewing machine. Now, today is 3/11. I don't know if any of you
realize what that means. We all know what 9/11 is. My other home is in Japan. March 11 was a day that the great tsunami
and earthquake took place in Japan. Today is the anniversary. And I'd like to share
a very personal story with you about dreaming on purpose in community,
and what that can do for healing. So, a year after the great earthquake, I received an invitation to go up into the disaster zone
and meet with a group of women. They wanted to dream about, How can we
move forward after such an event? So, the first thing we did
was get together and share stories, and we all talked about,
Where were we during the earthquake? Who did we know? What happened
during the great tsunami? And then we went to a place
called Ishinomaki, and I know that many of you
know about Ishinomaki because you watched it wash away, that whole town
that went off into the ocean. At the edge of that district is a hill. And on top of that hill,
is a - was a small Shinto shrine, and one lone tree survived
when nothing else did. So, we went up there
to look over that whole scene and to give thanks that we were alive and to pray for the souls
of those who had passed. Then we went back to the inn, and we put out our futon bedding
to lie down and sleep and dream together about how to move forward
after such an event. That night, one of the women dreamed
that she was in a stadium, and she was in front of a crowd, deciding who should stay
and who should go. She was very good at her job.
She didn't have any emotion about it. But when she woke up, she was overcome with grief and guilt
about having survived. The next woman dreamt
that she was at home alone in her house, and that it was so filthy dirty, and she was just incredibly tired. It was overwhelming, and she didn't know
where to begin to start cleaning up. The next woman dreamt
that she was in the foundation of a house. Only the foundation
and the bare walls remained, and in those walls were etched
the black and white portraits of the children that had been
washed out to sea. But at the bottom of the wall,
in the bottom-right corner, was a red portrait of one girl, and she knew that girl was still alive. So, the next morning,
we shared the dreams with each other. We shared the feelings that they evoked,
and we shared our associations. And to our surprise, there was
an incredible message of hope there, and this is the message
that the women found: that none of us chose to be survivors anymore than those who left
chose to die that way, there's no reason
to feel guilty about that - it's just the way things are; that the mess cleaning it up
is going to take a long time, and the way to do that is to first
start taking care of ourselves, to get enough rest, and that's okay. And finally, those who have passed
are never going to be forgotten; they are etched into
the very walls of our being. It's time to focus on those who are alive. So, in closing, I'd like to remind you
that dreaming is essential to our health, to our creativity, to our communities. And I'd like you to also know
that by the time you're 80, you will have spent
almost 20 years in the dream world. Can you imagine living 20 years abroad and having no recollection
of the experience? (Laughter) So, I'd like to invite you all
to go home tonight and dream on purpose. Thank you. (Applause)
