Q:
What is the purpose of dreams nowadays?
A:
The answer is who says there is a purpose of dreams nowadays?
However, I’ll cite to you what Iyov says on that subject. In Iyov it says that sometimes Hakadosh Baruch Hu sends a dream to a man for the purpose of giving him important information: so that he should do teshuvah. Sometimes a man dreams such a dream that changes his attitude towards life. It has happened. Because a dream brings forth subconscious thoughts.
Now, not all subconscious thoughts we would like to bring to the surface. A lot of them are better when they remain buried. But there are some things that are deep down in our minds that we covered; we buried them because of our guilt feelings. We wanted to get them out of our memory, out of our consciousness, so we pushed it into our subconscious. But sometimes we dream about them and then we’re expected to pay attention. It’s for the purpose of reminding us of that which we would like to forget. It happens many times. Dreams could be useful.
Of course like the Gemara says אי אפשר לחלום בלא דברים בטלים – every dream has some things that are not pertinent to reality (Brachos 55a); things that are put in only as a background for the dream. And sometimes dreams are only אין מראים לו לאדם אלא מהרהורי לבו – what he thinks about by day he dreams about by night (ibid. 55b). But it sometimes comes for a purpose and when it does come for a purpose it should not be ignored.
TAPE # 227 (August 1978)
