Being overwhelmed when strong emotions take over

Dreams are mysterious, but daily life’s events are more bizarre than dreams. Many people say that dreams are a parallel life besides our routine life. Psychologists take stressors and concerns of dreamers’ routine life as connections between their dreams and waking life. It is said that dreams affect waking life, not only in extraordinary and gifted artists and scientists but also in an average population. Nevertheless, we know that a dream is a succession of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations that usually occur in mind during certain stages of sleep. Humans spend about two hours dreaming per night, and each dream lasts around 5 to 20 minutes, although the dreamer may perceive the dream as much longer than this. Three types of dreams are passive imagination, illusions, and hallucinations. Dreaming is passive imagination in waking condition, and also a passive imagination during light sleep. It is freer from control and criticism than daydreaming.

Images come of themselves owing to suggestive forces and are combined in various ways. They are the work of the subconscious mind. Sometimes dream images are vivid and distinct. They are projected into outer space and appear to be genuine natural objects of perception. The critical faculty is suspended chiefly during sleep. Hence dream images are often combined absurdly and coherently. Dreams are often broken images and concepts of real life. In our shared goals, we generally room around like a vagabond. Sometimes hungry, thirsty, tired, looking for some rest, searching some washroom, new location, old and fallen houses and commonly amongst unknown people. In most cases, they are the reflections or at least drawn from the events of our bed’s physical position, environment, and our last week or month’s activities. The dreams’ world can help creative people and amuse us in many ways. But we face more mysterious incidents in our life than a dream.

Mr Hasan was my colleague at the university, and he invited me to his wedding party, which was arranged on the lawns of the Punjab University. I had spent 38 years of service at this prestigious university. During this party, my colleague introduced me to his father who met me very warmly and embraced and uttered some words about the days we were continuously meeting at the Punjab University. Now, he was an administrative officer at IER institute. I looked at his face carefully but couldn’t guess where he was at that time about which he talked about and where we were having frequent meetings. I couldn’t ask him more about those days. But his love and warmth compelled me to keep on thinking about him for many more days. What I knew about the earlier admin officers of IER were Mr Khawar and Asif Malik, but where was this gentleman?

I guessed he was not there at IER. What is his name and at what other office of the university he could be at forty years back? Was the question that I carried on my mind for the next two-three day. Then one day, when I was sitting in my office, this question hit my mind suddenly and at a distance of seven-eight yards, I saw in the air around one yard a big image of Mr Hasan’s father in the same dress I saw him in the wedding party. His image started coming towards me. I noticed change moment by moment in the features and wrinkles of the face as it was coming close to me. The face was becoming younger. At last, it stopped at a distance of four yards from me and it was a neat and clear face of Mr Zakir Hussain who was working in the office of my friend Sheikh Abdul Sattar, deputy treasurer of the university.

He was the man who helped me dozens of times whenever I went to Sheikh Sattar’s office with any problem regarding university office. At that time, Zakir Hussain was a junior clerk in that office. This was the strange arrangement of nature for providing me with the answer to the question which kept me upset for three days. It was ‘Seven-D image’ technology used by the nature to show Mr Zakir’s face in the transaction and his real face as it was 40 years back. No one by any other method of information could have made this so clear to me. The last incident, I want to share today is about the World Punjabi Congress’s visit to India. It was headed by Fakhar Zaman, a prominent Punjabi poet, and president of the Congress. We visited Amritsar, New Delhi, Chandi Garh, Batala, Karnal, and Koro Shetra. Many functions were arranged for our delegation by the hosts.

There was a dream-like function, I hope that none of the hundred-plus members of the delegation had ever experienced something like that. It was in Karnal, where one educational institute had arranged a music program for the Pakistani delegation. A thin and simple girl with a dupatta on her shoulders came on the stage with a harmonium in her hands. She was not looking attractive anyway. A boy with a dholki was with her. After setting harmonium and dholki, the girl started singing famous Punjabi song ‘Bol mitti deya baweya.’ Suddenly, all hearts and minds were attracted to this voice, and it started penetrating deep. A flood of tears popped up in my eyes. My shirt was as if someone has dropped half a liter of water on it. These tears were something very strange. I had never been in such a position in the whole of my life. It was a feeling as if the whole culture of the land was addressing your soul and the blood was being converted to tears.

In our delegation, very high profile people of culture and literature were included and all were sitting around me. I was trying to hide my tears and was thinking what will these gentlemen think if they know my real position at the moment. But when I saw on my right and then left side, I took a sigh of peace. The position of the gentlemen on my both sides was not different from my own position. Then I saw back and at the end of the rows, I can swear that there were tears flowing from everyone’s eyes. It was a strange experience of my life. I felt some magic was attached with that Punjabi song, otherwise, I had been listening to the saddest songs in Urdu and Punjabi languages and was never affected that way. Prominent columnist Hasan Nisar was also part of that delegation. When we came back from our Indian visit, he wrote a column on that function and mention it, especially that during this Punjabi song, there were tears in every eye.

I experienced such a flood in the eyes in waking life only on this occasion, and second was in my dream when I experienced it on the demise of the death of Haji Sardar Muhammad, publisher of Lahore’s Ilmi Kutab Khana. I was in USA and on receiving his death news, I was sad and during a dream I faced a flood of tears. On both of these occasions, I was out of Pakistan and situations were quite different. In the Indian case, it was a sort of deep attachment with the culture and in the US case, it was a close attachment with a person and deep grief of his demise. Both cases can be interpreted as the distance from the homeland dilutes your heart and your soul is more sensitized in such cases. There can be many more questions but we are not supposed to study psychology of dreams in this column.

With 50 years of teaching experience, Professor Dr. Shafiq Jullandhry, a noted writer and author of award-winning books, is former chairman of Punjab University's Mass Communication Department (now School of Communication Studies); also heads Elaaf Club and Pakistan Media Guild as president. He can be reached at [email protected].