Brain Surgeon REVEALS the PURPOSE of Dreams & What They TRULY Mean! | Dr. Rahul Jandial

37:11It could be a psychological thermometer that things aren't going well for you. That's a big topic. And I I think other people are in that space. I'll leave that one there. Yeah. The one that interests me is having three sons. And is each of them at one point, I had to say to them, it's all right. It was only a nightmare. It was only a dream. So the first thing I thought was, does that mean they didn't? And I'm looking at, I'm looking at now, I'm looking at neurodevelopment. To understand this, I went into a whole different space. like how you know we're not born walking and talking right so you see kids they're putting things together the movements become fluid you're physically mature not born made and you're cultivated physically right i believe the mind is also being cultivated internally and one example would be you got to remind kids it's only a dream so that means at some point when they're young likely they're confusing or cannot separate dreaming thoughts and waking thoughts.

38:18And at that time, when you ask them what they think about it, it's very, in general, I mean, this one kid might tell you the wildest thing. I'm not telling that person or that parent that that's not what they're experiencing. But the pattern is the dream reports of children, and some families signed up for this. I studied it. They follow their dream reports from like age 2 to 20. Wow. Longitudinally, like, what are you dreaming about now? What are you dreaming about now? And their dreams are simple. It's like a table or a blanket. Interestingly, when they dream of animals, they're not often pets.

38:53They're like beasts and monsters and teddy bears. So I can't explain all of that, but that's what they're describing. It's not the pet that they have that's in their dream. And as we're learning to walk and talk to age two, three, four, something's going on in the mind. There are some structures. I need a moment for this one. There's a type of cognition that's developing. First is visual spatial. And then these developmental scientists, they looked at it that the wildness of kids' dreams correlates more to the complexity of how they navigate visual spatial things. They have a test called block design.

39:36It's not how well they can spell or remember. The more three-dimensional they are, that parallels complexity of dreaming in a child. So all the parents out there, you don't make them memorize, you know? In my opinion, I had to like cultivate their sense of gymnastics, classics, music, art, whatever you can, different foods, different diversity experiences, it's not being correlated to logic. Right. So that also makes me feel like that guides a little bit. And then what happens is they develop this thing called, at some point they realize, it's just an example, that teacher or that uncle or that person that they're smiling and saying, hey, I want to help you.

40:25But the capacity develops. It's called theory of mind, where you start to read the other person's intention beyond just what they're saying. Interesting. Yeah. That develops. Kids are gullible. That develops. Theory of mind. Yeah. T-O-A. People can look it up. Theory of mind. So that's just like there's a, I mean, I could throw the ball. That develops at a certain age, around five or six, seven. and the idea of that person's intentions may not be completely clear or they might be misrepresenting their intentions or maybe I shouldn't trust them or maybe they would hurt me. These important concepts arrive in the brain at the same time as nightmares arrive.

41:09Wow. So I think if I were to say why do we and then these nightmares all go away for kids and then as adults we get them if we have trauma they come as a wave interesting it's crazy wow i might be completely wrong but i you know i would love to hear somebody come up with a better so you're not just gullible all the time what everyone says i think nightmares make the mind nightmares make the mind yeah they make you sharp they give you a sense of self versus other they make you less gullible they create a sense of threat they they the fleeing and the terror I think it guides the cultivation of this thing called theory of mind, where you realize just because the person's smiling, that doesn't mean they have good intentions.

41:52Interesting. And that is, it's cool, right? I mean, that's, they, they're not arriving for all of us at age eight, six, seven, eight, and then fading for most of us as we get into adolescence without a reason. like that's not that's not a glitch in the system wow my belief i wonder again with humility and i'm taking on big things here so if that's not what it is for you i i believe it i'm not saying i got it all figured out but i'm just here to show you like and then people and that we are in many ways still that dynamic as adults so whatever you're at the grounded level you're struggling with your lover or you struggle with your partner, like you're a dynamic ecosystem of mind and body.

42:37And I just want to take people back to like, look at that. Like we're not, and there's a certain part of the brain that gives you that capacity. Like there's, it's, we'll get into that some other day, but in that part, the newest part of the brain that pushed the forward forward, there's a part that when it's injured, it doesn't work well. We can't like make new opinions or we become gullible like this. There's some cellular basis to the theory of mind. Wow. But again, I think nightmares arriving for all of us at the same time as we're becoming like, oh, that person might hurt me. Or what do I want?

43:10Self versus other. I mean, self in italics. I think that's all happening in parallel for a reason. I think that's all happening in parallel. Chapter two, right out the gates. So if nightmares make the mind, what do erotic dreams do? Okay. So these are my, that's why it's just chapter three. I know everybody's going to want to hear about this one, but it's, you know, it's PG-13, but I think the concepts are, you know, very mature. So, again, we return to our primer that there's this, we are waking brain and dreaming brain, and they intersect. We stab. I think everybody knows that. It's a matter of to what degree and how.

43:53That's the other universal dream. you know i've never had a dream of teeth falling out but it's been reported for centuries i've had it yeah yeah a few times so their dreams follow patterns right um people have dreams of falling but that's like 20 60 like you know i had that too yeah but but i've had dreams of falling but not you know but everybody's had essentially i mean there'll be some people say no i've never had a sexual game okay i'm not here to a majority majority i mean the way in scientific terms everybody yeah yeah so I call those two universal dreams nightmares and erotic dreams universal universal dreams and I think when something is universal a part of our this awesome feels out there like evolutionary psychology like the gifts their strengths and weaknesses today aren't just physical that we're inheriting thinking patterns, dreaming patterns.

44:53This is mind blowing, but this has been well known. I'm just able to put it, I think, into a framework now is falling teeth dreams. They don't follow. They don't teeth falling out. It doesn't follow a pattern in people. But nightmares cluster in families. When I say exactly how the same. Yeah. And I've known that because I went to medical school and they said that i just didn't have a understanding of it but i believe and there is evidence that we inherit not just our physical traits but our cognitive traits oh yeah and if we inherit our uh risk aversion or or probability to risk if we inherit our uh our parents coping mechanisms or failure to cope um you know we may be inheriting dreaming pattern interesting and i think that that we have to be open to that that that's why nightmares arrive for every kid man that's not happening by chance I may not have the explanation for it I think it cultivates the sense of self uh and sense it gives you mind reading ability with somebody else uh that's called theory of mind that's my opinion then the next one comes is uh sexual dreams and this one is is uh interesting because let me break this down for you it's different because when when my sons were born and we're born with like the marble you you know it's and what you you've heard this use it or lose it you know like if you cover a child's eye because they have some health issues that part that goes to the right side of the brain the left side one each eye goes to both occipital lobes.

46:33It's not this one to this one, it's this crossing. If you cover those parts with or they repurpose, it's an adaptive system. Use it or lose it. You got the neurons, the 100 billion neurons, they're like microscopic jellyfish. Use them or you're going to lose them. That makes sense. And that's what happens for vision, hearing, taste, movement. If you wrap somebody's arm, the motor area will wither. Wow. Okay. So that's, that's built in, but this is, but how does a touch become a caress? That's a capacity from the same, from the same sensation. Now it can become erogenous. Right. Right. There are new nerves being laid down in our fingertips.

47:24Right. But when a lover's touch is different than an intention, even it touches. So that capacity develops in the human brain around the time of 11, 12, and 13. Interesting. And it's not after puberty. It's not like puberty, however people conceive puberty. But you don't go through bodily puberty and then say, I think I'm turned on. It's different. your brain develops the ability to be turned on I believe through erotic dreams that erotic dreams are again the mind's cultivation for desire and then you start to see changes in the sensation part of the brain where now it's not just now erotic touch is possible without getting too deep into like child rearing and all that but sensuality arrives it's not prepubescent it's not it's not there it must come at a certain time and around that time people who have never had intercourse people who have been castrated chemically for cancer treatment people who have had chemotherapy people have had their ovaries removed they still have erotic dreams really it's not the body saying i like it let's think more about it i think it's the other way around wow and that it arrives and the biggest sense wouldn't that be an important thing for for people to procreate that desire arrives and the fact that it arrives before so here it's not use it or lose it, you know, it's here you go.

49:18It's time to use it. It comes before it's ready. Very good. Yeah. So it's something that I would love a conversation at a different time with somebody else with that. That doesn't follow normal neurodevelopment of pathways. Usually it's like, yeah, I can see. And if I cover an eye, I lose that ability. You're sort of equipped and then you cultivate. Here it arrives. And the, again, erotic dreams, like in that j cole song wet dreams he says he i think i'm smashing but i'm but i'm sleeping wow so before he has his first relationship intimate relationship with this person uh he's he's rapping about like he's he's performing the act in his dreams and his erotic dreams before they even happen in real life that's not the usual order of how the brain and nerves work.

50:06So again, my humble opinion is erotic dreams are the embodiment of desire. They make sure that we want, and that's advantageous for us as creatures, species, and people. Do you think the brain and the mind have to dream something first before it can actualize it in real life? That's a big question. Do they have to dream something or think something first before they can actualize it? I think there's two ways to think of that. There's the things you, there's the things you want and you pursue. And the way I would look at that is, returning to another example is that the the dreaming brain and the waking brain is one is one way to understand it but the structures in the brain during waking life they're called the executive network the one we talked about are dampened down so if you have a goal pursue it this conversation is not to be like hey just dream around all the time like you got to get after stuff.

51:18You got to get things done. And that's the executive network. And that's what drives you to your goals. You can think about your goals. You can choose your desires. And I, that's, that's been most of my life. Um, but then the role of dreams in that, I think are twofold. One, cause I have thought about this for myself and it's, again, it's my story. I, with respect, I believe that if I have chosen a goal with my waking brain, contributions are coming from my dreaming brain. I'm incubating thoughts. It's feeding me. It's feeding some aha moments. I'm using sleep entry. I'm using sleep exit. And then the bigger one for me is, are there things I want?

52:03Are there things I hope for that my waking brain just does not have access to? and that's the big question the beginning like what's the meaning of dreams and then you know if we look at what is happening in the dreaming brain returning to our is that it's hyper emotional it's hyper visual and this is some real profound stuff when I was learning about this and reading about it the and I can't get into brain anatomy too much but I would just say, if you flatten out your brain, the executive network would be like different continents and countries revving up a little bit. And the imagination network, which is liberated in the dreaming brain, is other countries coming up.

52:54It's like Bellagio Waterfall. Some come up, some comes down. Yeah, sure. It's a toggle. um and so your brain at its most emotional metabolically electrically is in dreaming you can't you can't rock that hard during the day really yeah by measurement so then it says to me so if there is a meaning if the if if i can gain further insight into myself I must look at the ways my dreaming brain is exceptional. I'm not going to look at my dreaming brain for a math solution, but I might look at what my dream brain is putting forth for an emotional solution, an emotional insight, right? Like that's the thing that really, I mean, a lot of this is um but the meaning of dreams is that the act of self-examination with the recognition that i hope you leave today is that's a hyper emotional state what is the value of emotion yes it's profound when people have injury to these areas they can't even make any decisions like decision making requires emotion instinct requires emotion my my dog Frankie she knows when I'm sitting the booby trap like hey we're going out for date night Frankie come here she's like there's some brilliance to emotion right and we have become again don't get me wrong you got to wake up you got to go to work you got to get it done like that and that takes the waking brain and that takes the executive network.

54:33But if you want insights that can't be gained through the executive network, through always focusing outward, then you are getting glimpses of your own brain, your own life's hyper emotional states through dreaming. And I think there's insight to be found in that. And that that is the way to dream interpretation is to recognize the ways that your dreaming brain is exceptional. So the way I look at dream interpretation, if I could just jump into that, that's like the last chapter. We could rock all day, but this is like, if it fits nicely here, is there are dreams, you know what they are. It's like naked behind a podium when you had a speech to get late for a flight.

55:20There's no dream interpretation there. You know what that is. There are dreams that make no sense at all. There's no emotional stamp on them. It's just clutter. We have thoughts during the day we don't pay attention to. There are dreams that parallel your life. And the two most important ones are end of life dreams and pregnancy dreams. Really? If, as reported, when people are pregnant, patients are pregnant, they have a lot of dreams about babies and rolling over babies and everything, you know. So that doesn't need interpretation. And people at the end of life with a cancer diagnosis, and then my patients tell me that they're thinking about like finish lines and visiting people from the past.

56:00Really? The dreams are accompanying you, right? Because you're making those dreams. So of course the dreams fit what's going on in your life. Wow. Again, those don't need to be interpreted. You know what's going on. Sure. You're dying and your dreams are comforting you. You've worked on a lot of people who've only had a year or a few years left to live. Right. Cancer patients. What are most of those dreams of people who are dying? Okay, that's a big question. That goes back to the last conversation we had. I am surprised by how valiant most cancer patients are. When I look at cancer patients in general, I would think most of it would fall apart, right?

56:38Because it's quite the word. It's quite the journey. But it's overwhelming. Not all. Some suffer. Some handle it poorly, understandably. But they do well. They show up for their appointments. they're brave. They dig down for strength and composure and they find meaning. Sometimes they are able to enjoy some things more knowing that the finish line is in view. They're not encumbered, as I mentioned last time, with fuss. And those patients, when you talk to them, they will report again not all i'll make a simple statements here but a lot of them report that the dreams they have are positive wow they're helpful they're not of being eaten alive they're not of what did i do to get this interesting it's reconciling with lovers and family it's having an expansive view of their life the dreams in these cancer patients and this is reported in other other people study this uh dreams comfort you toward the end of life wow and so again um the hyper emotional dream um so if we have dreams that don't need interpretation because you're falling or you're flying you're flying and you're falling or you're giving a talk and you show up naked or you're you're it's end of life and it's comforting you or it's just there's no emotional feeling to, I believe, if you are to go after a dream to really reflect upon, you wake up and that intense dreaming life gives you a little glimpse, a little peek at something.

58:23Don't waste that. And the one to choose is the one with a powerful central image and a powerful emotion. And that to me, that makes sense with what's going on in the brain. Hyper-emotional, hyper-visual, right? I'm trying to make sense of it. And just be aware that a lot of times it's symbolic. It's not going to be literal, right? Because we talked about the executive network is dampened. And hyper-emotional, hyper-visual brain, it's a storyteller. You want to extract the meaning out of the story, much like a good movie. And it's not, hey, why am I... So, for example, some veterans, when they're having trouble with a marriage, will have dreams of war, but they don't generally dream of war.

59:14So you have to be able to think about it and try to... I can't give you that answer. I don't know if you're a veteran or not. I think that's where it's hard to go online and say, I dreamt of a leaf or a bridge. What does it mean? No, it's different for its individual. And you may not be able to figure it out, let alone somebody else. But if you have the luxury to remember your dream, or through auto-suggestion and journaling, you're trying to remember dreams more, which can happen, those are the ones to go after. The hyper-emotional ones, the hyper-visual ones. And just keep them here. You know, you got 15 things in front of you.

59:56you're focusing out where your executive network is on, but don't forget about that glimpse you got into your hyper-emotional brain and what it produced about you, for you. Wow. That was fascinating. I feel like we're like 1 % of all the things we could be talking about right now.

1:00:18Why do some people have lucid dreams? Why are lucid dreams important? and how can we enter lucid dreams faster? Okay. That got two chapters out of nine. So that's a big one. And just to be clear what lucid dreams are, I have not had them, but Aristotle wrote about them 3 ,000 years ago. So this is not like, it's not some current thing. Okay. What is new is the understanding. Again, we return to your body's locked down, executive network and logic are dampened, emotions are up, vision's up. When your body is locked down in lucid dreaming, what happens is there's one part of the body that's still not locked down, one of those eyeballs.

1:01:16So when you're waking up in the morning, it just happens that the muscles to the eyeballs are not locked down and the muscles to the breathing of course right because you're still breathing in lucid dream or in dreaming in general so what lucid dream experts and people looking into that have started just recently after 3 000 years of many different cultures and books writing about i felt i was awake in my dream and i could steer the direction of the dream so not only were you an actor in the dream you're the director interesting right that's been written about for thousands of years. Right, right, right.

1:01:51But what they can do now is in these sleep laboratories, they put the stickers on their head to measure the electricity to prove they're asleep. Because I could imagine like, you know, some of my friends, they'd be like, I just, I woke up. How do you know you didn't just wake up? Right. How do you know you're awake in a dream? So you have to prove you're asleep through the whole time. Because otherwise you might just wake up and say, yeah, I'm lucid dreaming and then fall back asleep. Right. So some essential questions to be asked. So the electrical measurements or the stickers on the head, the sleep spindles is a certain spike that proves your sleep.

1:02:28You can't fake being asleep to the EKG of your mind, if you will, right? The EKG. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And then, you know, they started communicating with them. They'll say certain things and they'll, they come up with this technique called left, right, left, right. And they'll move their eyeballs left, right, left, right, answer simple questions. and that's progressed to some people being able to demonstrate when they enter, when lucidity arrives within their dream, they will signal to the people standing outside the window. And so there are these back and forth experiments going on. So far as even basic things like, oh, what's two plus two?

1:03:12And they'll try to do a left, right, left, right four times. And some of you might say, well, I thought you couldn't do math, but that's part of the magic and the mystery of lucid dreaming is that the executive network is coming back online a little bit. So for that awareness to happen inside your dream, proven by sleep spindles on an EKG, EEG you can't fake, when the awareness comes back, that primer we're talking about, the executive network comes back too. So they can do a little bit of basic math. So it's like when you talked about the beginning, what is it called? Like 49, 51. Yeah, so where is that when the lucid dreaming is happening?

1:03:49What is happening? Is it kind of rocking back and forth like this constantly, or is it one side and then it goes back? That's a good question. It's fragile. That's a very good question. So you've gone from dreaming brain, you've gone from waking brain to dreaming brain, and what happens is a little bit of the waking brain returns, but it a little flourishes. It's not like, hey, I'm lucid dreaming. I got 90 minutes let's ride this like I get it like I just you know somebody might be able to but I want to I want to leave you with the fascination like these overlap states which are really fascinating sleep entry sleep exit a bit of awareness returning and with improved in sleep that it's that it is something that it's something it's something fragile it's something fleeting think Think of like birds and murmurations and aurora borealis.

1:04:44We're not talking about... And that's also the lesson for people who are listening is stop thinking that your brain is wires and on and off. Think of it as dreaming brain, waking brain, waking brain, dreaming brain. Think of it as executive network mostly interacting here. A little bit of imagination network returning because I'm daydreaming while we're talking, a little bit of blend, right? Well, lucid dreaming is coming to awareness that you're dreaming within your dream and for some people being able to steer the content of their dream. That's crazy. Stuff like Christopher Nolan likes to talk about in movies and stuff like that.

1:05:22But what I'm here to tell you is it exists. They have proven that it exists. I'm not saying you lucid dream. I have not. Aristotle wrote about it, but they have proven with responses from preserved eyeball movements, documentation that that person is asleep with the electricity of sleep that they're they have been able to communicate with people uh who are in dreams it's crazy that they can steer their dreams that's what they report isn't that crazy yeah but if you if you step back a little bit and stop thinking of it as the brain on off wired hardwired not if you start to think of it as states as tides, as flows, as seasons, and every night there's the waking brain and dreaming brain, and there's sleep entry, and there's sleep exit, and sometimes lucidity returns, it starts to make sense of a lot of the stuff I've been seeing in the hospital.

1:06:16Really? Well, I mean, people wake up from anesthesia. People are awake. They communicate in anesthesia during our awake brain surgery. Really? People wake up, and they're dreaming gnarly stuff. You can give people certain medicines and they have more lucid dreaming, something based on acetylcholamine. The reports of lucid dreaming go up with galantamine. So what that tells me, not to get too medically about it, is that when you mess with pills and drugs and the dreams change, this is a biological process. Wow. It's not coming from the heavens. It's coming from our brain. Really? Yeah. Speaking of the heavens, when we dream, are our dreams in our brain or in our minds?

1:07:00And is our mind on this earth and planet or is it in another realm? Big stuff, man. We could be like around a fire 500 years ago. 3 a.m. I mean, that's why this is so special for me. And you may not have the answers. No, I mean, I have some direction to those questions. I mean, if somebody told me, just the fact that you asked me that question means like I'm doing all right. No, no. But I am fortunate to have people ask me just to weigh in on that. And what I'm trying to do is build it on science, but bring it to you in a way where you can go home and talk to your family about it. What is your thoughts on that?

1:07:48So the first thing is the brain and mind thing can't be separated. It's not like software hardware. The brain, that's a whole big topic, but the mind is an emergent phenomenon that comes from the brain. One example would be like we see it, the crystals form. We see it in organic matter, right? It's a self-organizing thing. Termites can make mounds. Stadiums with a roar outside is more than the 80 ,000 individuals inside. That roar is my best way of understanding what 100 billion neurons do. The mind comes from it. Wow. Now, what we think can go back and shape the brain. So it's a reciprocal interaction.

1:08:32Our habits can shape the brain. Our brain creates the habits. So the brain-mind, I don't think you can really separate it out. The ultimate gift of the human mind, I think, is dreaming. love and all those things yes but the process of dreaming um so let's let's for one second say we're talking about brain and mind is one thing okay we just call it brain slash mind um and i was reading about this oh this is this is great um here's a story of course they had to come from the heavens till about our understanding till about 100 years ago You plop down. You're not doing anything. And then you wake up and whether you tell somebody or not, you're like, man, I was on fire last night with my thoughts.

1:09:18Right. So if you're asleep and you're hibernating or you're deactivated or whatever the phrase was, it had to come from something external. It's in there. How could inactive flesh of the brain, the resting brain, the brain doesn't rest at night. It's active. Brain doesn't rest at night. Brain rests when you're dead. Right. There's no, there's no, like, like I said, the electricity in sleep is so similar to the electricity during waking. They call it paradoxical sleep. Like you're, you're on when you're asleep. Okay. So, but they didn't know that. Nobody could know that until, and so this is a great story.

1:09:59I don't think it's been told, but it's the story that I've come to understand. so that makes sense it had to come from something outside of us you're out cold and you're thinking that kind of stuff monsters and pterodactyls and erotic dreams and nightmare okay so that came from the heavens or the gods they're omens but what happened was somebody about a hundred years ago did a surgery for a brain tumor then there was a physician there and they had just figured out at that time that you could put a wire wasn't just for sending electricity, it was for measuring it. So when we put a sticker on your heart and you know the electricity of a heart, it's from the nerves on the surface of the heart, it's not from the muscle.

1:10:42Interesting. EKG is the measurement of the electricity in the nerves on top of your heart. When we shock you to recharge your heart, we're just shocking the three nerves not the muscle muscle just listens um well what if you put 96 stickers on your brain you would get a measurement that's called eeg okay what he did was he put a sticker on right on top of the hole like a skull had a hole but the stitch work the flesh was covered we do that still sometimes but in that area where there was no skull but the size of coin he put a little sticker on there a little wire on the brain no or just on the skull yeah But there was a hole.

1:11:19Surgeons do it on the brain, but. There was a hole. And healed flesh. He put it just on top of the flesh with the hole underneath. He thought he's going to get better readout, I guess, right? The hole that would be a direct line to the brain. Yes. But not touching the brain. Well said. And then he got squiggles. And that was where the EEG was invented about 100 years ago. Wow. The interesting part was when they all left the room or whatever they were doing and person fell asleep nobody paid attention to it but the squiggles were happening at night it was a squiggles during the day and a flat line right at night so somebody could have said at that point like wait a second that flesh is not inactive then 60 years ago somebody in Montreal Dr.

1:12:06Penfield, he was... So now he's numbing up the scalp, laying it open. Patient is on relaxing medications but not on a machine. Drills the hole like ice fishing, takes it off, sees the covering of the brain called the dura and sizes it. The surface of the brain is there and then they lighten up her medication. And he's got like a little fountain pen that delivers a little electricity. and he's mapping it and he's trying to find the thing the patient has seizures and says before the seizure I always get this feeling this aura he thinks if he can find where that feeling originates dissect out a little bit of that tissue he can break the seizures and he ended up being right it's a massive field now major centers around the world seizure surgery but at some times when he would zap because he's marking, you know, the patient reports desire.

1:13:07And one patient reported a night, a recurrent nightmare that they had been having. Interesting. You zap the surface of the brain with a little faint electricity. The brain doesn't have nerve endings of its own, so you can touch it, you wouldn't know. Wouldn't feel it. Yeah, not you, but this is known, and I've done the surgery, this is established stuff. Awake brain surgery, you can cut the brain. You won't feel the pain. No. You only feel it only feels through its tentacles So when you're doing an awake brain surgery you only only the scalp feels it But we numb it up the patient is awake And you're in there and they can talk to you and you can dissect the brain and they don't feel a thing Is this the one what I mean you see the videos of like I guess yeah We got play our violin or guitar where it's like okay, you know connecting.

1:13:51It's so crazy, but when he was mapping it a Nightmare which is a type of dream was her turn and he took the pen off. The nightmare broke. Wow. At that moment, we knew that dreams, the only thing I can say with certainty today is dreams come from our brain. They do not come from the heavens. Wow. That I can say with certainty. Everything else, this has just been a fascinating ride. And the ride will continue, you know. But that we can say with certain. Dreams are an electrical process of the human brain. When you've done brain surgeries, have you noticed people six months later saying, I used to have this type of dream and now those are gone or I have these different dreams now after brain surgery?

1:14:39Have you ever - That's a good question. A lot of dreaming changes. Very good question. And I've tried to keep the medical world out of it, even though it informs dreaming quite a bit but the patterns I saw from like drug dreams, anesthetic dreams are just I couldn't find a way and that's also again to let you know like if it didn't fit if there wasn't a if it wasn't going to be a thoughtful um love letter to dreams and dreaming I'll tell you and I'll tell you I can't the the pattern of dreams that happen with anesthetics and stuff I can't say, aha, this one causes this and this could mean, I can't find meaning in it, it's that wild.

1:15:24The ones that you're seeing here, I feel good about. But patients with brain injury, brain surgery, on medications, on steroids for swelling, their dreams change completely. There's a brand new dream life. And what it says to me is, again, dreams come from the brain. If you take a pill that goes in your blood to your brain, chemicals change, it's great different dreams. Electro, yeah. Interesting. That's yet another example of dreams must come from the brain. Interesting. Yeah. Not from some other realm. Right. What about the pineal gland? you hear a lot of this in you know ancient texts and mystics and meditators and yogis talking about the pineal gland like the power of the pineal gland to activate the mind and the brain and create more powerful visions and and i'm happy to get into all of these things like aura is a thing a-u-r-a people look it up that's a that's a hunch so i'm not i think a lot of this stuff is real, I just think it's muddy and it's easy to manipulate.

1:16:39So I would say be careful. So the pineal gland has been, because of its location, people thought it's the mind's eye. I think our philosophers have commented about it. What I can tell you is - As a brain surgeon, what is it for you? I can take it out and the person is exactly the same. Really? Pineal gland surgery. Pineal cytomas, pineal gland - Have you ever taken one out? Yeah. It's part of neurosurgery. You've taken one out of her. Yeah. You come in through the back here. It sits between the lobes. So people can look that up is pineal gland. It's a gland, whether it's got cancer in it or whether it's just a cyst, non-cancerous but growing and pushing, whether it's normal pineal or abnormal, when you remove it, they have almost no significant consequences.

1:17:30Really? And the melatonin is bottomed out and they still sleep okay. So I'm not here to go against the whole world of things that are out there. But again, if we're having a conversation, you come into my house, we're hanging out, we're taking a walk and you ask me that question. I'm trying to come to you both with things I can't make sense of, anesthetic dreams. Pineal gland, no, they're being removed across the world, and there isn't the pituitary gland. If you take that out, you got to take a bunch of hormones in medicine. That's a big deal. The pineal gland, the ones that has been given sort of this transcendent value, that comes out and goes in the canister.

1:18:15It's fine. And the next day, we don't change the stuff the patient's on. They don't need some replacement thing. And it makes melatonin, and I wrote about it in my last book, when the melatonin drops to zero or nothing, they're still sleeping all right. Really? I'm not going to say don't take melatonin or take melatonin. We're not doing health advice. I mean, I don't mean like we can't go there, but where I'm at is concepts, exploration. And what about, and does the phenyl gland impact dreams or dreaming? Do you know? after you remove it, people still dream? It doesn't have those kind of connections.

1:18:52Interesting. Back to the dreaming. When I talked to you about like if the brain was laid flat and different continents and countries are up, the imagination network liberated in the dreaming brain. Different countries and continents and oceans are up for the executive network trying to get the day's work done. The pineal is like, it's irrelevant in that map of things that come up when you sleep. Huh. That thing that goes 51 % when you sleep, pineal gland has it. Not even a bench warmer. What's the primary purpose of the pineal gland? We don't think it has a primary purpose. Really? We can look it up, but there are parts of the body, it's like the appendix of the brain.

1:19:34We can remove it and it doesn't change much. And people still live long lives. Oh, yeah. You don't have to... What part of the brain, if you remove it, is going to be, you're not going to be able to perform the same way? Well, okay, that's a bigger concept. And how much of the brain can you still have? Yeah. Can you remove or have left to still live a great life? Yeah. So let's take that. That's an interesting question. When you, if you think of the brain laid flat as different continents and countries, right? It's like a mosaic. It's like a puzzle. If you cut out half of the continent. Well, we do surgeries in children where we remove half the brain, hemispherectomy.

1:20:16Half? Half the brain? Yeah. Not the reptilian and not the emotional instinct, but half the hemisphere, the two walnut. So what that points to is this. It's what we call some areas you bump into it with a suction at 20x and it leads to a change. some areas um nail gun injuries happen and you take out that part of the brain you know like carp like you know like framers they use the pneumatic nail guns and when they kick up a little higher they'll spray a nail through the thin floor the rear yeah this part of neurosurgery is taking out the penetrate it's called penetrating trauma depending on where it goes they can handle a nail in one frontal lobe or the other, but hitting both frontal lobes, it changes the person.

1:21:07So some areas have redundancy. Other areas can't take a joke. Some areas, you could take one occipital lobe and you basically just lose your rear view mirror. You don't lose sight, but if you take both or injure both. So that's what neurosurgery is about, is knowing what you can go through, what to expect in the person waking up after you do that. That's neurosurgery. But it It also informs that we have to stop looking at the brain as some homogenous thing. That you return to like a slice through and you'll see all different shapes in there. It's not like cake. It's not like flour. Right, right, right.

1:21:43Like liver, it looks the same. Yeah. This is diverse. Brain is diverse. Oh yeah. Structures and connections in there is beautiful. So, I mean, how many people have you seen have a nail gun like in their brain? Six. Six? When I was training, yeah. Really? Really? Gunshot wounds, nail gun injuries, fights, you know. So you learn with trauma what parts of the brain can handle trauma. Because you're not doing those types of surgeries. You're doing cancer removal. Now it's cancer. Right. But that informs me if I'm getting to a deeper tumor and it's inside and it's got a normal brain on the outside, that has informed me along with mapping, what is the route that I can get to the tumor - This is fascinating.

1:22:23But not injure the person. That's neurosurgery. It's not the chopsticks in a jar. Like, the hands, it requires skill. But there's something more to it that I love. And the stories from the patients informed the last decade and a half and still are informing this book. And so it's the patient stories and the neuroscience on top of the nail gun. That's what we open with. Look, I'm trying to come at you with, like, Petri dish stuff, nail gun stuff. Wow. Heavens, networks. I'm trying to bring it all in. to have done a real proper look at dreams and dreaming? This is why you dream, Dr. Rahul. This is powerful.

1:23:06I want to do a two-part with you. Okay. Because I feel like there's so many more questions I want to dive into that we've gone like 5 % of what I want to talk about. But I want people to get this book because I think this would be a great baseline for you to understand a lot more about the neuroscience and the remarkable meaning behind your dreams, understanding your dreams better, and having a better roadmap for navigating your dreams for the future. But I'd love to have you come back on and do part two of this. I think it'd be really powerful. Well, I think, you know, you said something really important there that in trying to understand dreams and dreaming, I understood myself better.

1:23:48in trying to, if you read this book and you find something interesting, learning more about your brain and mind will inform your waking life. So then when people say, the brain is this, you'll say, wait a second, because you're going to walk away learning about neuroscience. You're going to walk away learning about art and literature, nightmares, erotic dreams. And more importantly, you know, for me, it was, it's sort of my, it's my gift. This is my legacy that somebody tried to put together something that, like, how is somebody going to do it, you know, take a proper shot at this? And I'm very happy with the honesty there.

1:24:34And you'll see phrases like, could it be, I wonder. I'm tempted to speculate. So I'm not just telling you. I'm taking you through how I'm thinking. And so, you know. How long have you been a brain surgeon for now? Wow. 25 years. 25 years. And what it sounds like is you've had 25 years plus your residency, so 30 plus years of researching the brain and as a PhD in neuroscience and understanding the mind. when you first came on, you talked about the brain as kind of these waves and patterns. I remember you talking about like birds moving in waves and patterns. The electricity does move like that.

1:25:16It's not on off. Exactly. It's not a switch. And then to me, it sounds like, you know, last 30 years, you've been able to interpret these waves and patterns through all the different operations you've done, through the different case studies you've seen of people coming in before and after, and now deepening your research in understanding the brain, the mind with dreaming. And so I'm so excited for people to get this book, This Is Why You Dream. And I'm excited to dive in more with you. I think we got to do probably multiple episodes on this because I'm fascinated by this. I want to know more about how also, you know, the health benefits of dreaming, how much we should be sleeping to maximize our dreams and our optimal health.

1:26:00and so many other questions around this. If you guys have a question on dreams, leave a question below and we'll try to get to that in our next episode in the future whenever we can get you back on. Pleasure. But Rahul, this has been super inspiring. How can we get a copy? How can we support you? And what else can we do to support this? Yeah, I'm feeling good about it. And I think the usual things, where to get a copy on Amazon on where the publishers are just doing a massive thing. They sold it. It's already picked up in 22 translations. I think they believe in it. And they've been reading this material and the two things that really touched me were, this can never be explained.

1:26:44Like, you know, cause I, I'm a surgeon. I want answers. I want to fix, but they're like, this can, it's dreaming Rahul. It'll never be fully explained. We want to know what you think and pull from everything you've lived through it. Amazing. And then the New York publisher just was like this email and just the first sentence just took my breath away a little bit. It just put, this book is important. Wow. Period. I was like, okay. It's a mic drop moment for me. I'm excited for this. Where are you spending most of your time online? Should we follow you on social media, your website? Instagram, Dr.

1:27:22John Deall, but you know, I'm an old timer, man. Dr. John Deall. You're a young old timer, right? You're still young. Do you have a website also, though? No. Okay. I mean, I... Instagram. Yeah. Instagram. Follow you there and get the book. This is going to be powerful. For anyone that you know in your life who maybe talks about dreams, they're going to be fascinated by this as well. So get a couple copies. Give it to a friend. Again, Rahul. I'm very excited about this. This is Why You Dream. Make sure you guys get a copy. Appreciate you very much for being on. And for part one of hopefully many on this topic, because there's so many more follow-up questions I have, but I want to let people start with this first.

1:28:05So we can take each chapter deeper. Well, let's do it. I appreciate you being here. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally, as well as ad-free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts as well. Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review.

1:28:39I really love hearing feedback from you and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward. And I want to remind you if no one has told you lately that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.