The 35 percent

I have spent much of my life feeling like a bridge between two worlds. Like many people, I have often found that my internal landscape feels just as significant as the one I walk through during the day. This is not merely a poetic sentiment; it is a mathematical reality. Lately, I have been looking at the actual figures of a human life, and it has shifted my perspective on what it means to be alive.

We spend roughly 35% of our biological existence asleep. If a person lives to be eighty, that equates to over twenty-eight years spent in the dark. For decades, the scientific consensus treated that time like a binary light switch where waking is on and sleep is off. We viewed sleep as a passive recovery phase, which is a biological tax we pay for the privilege of being awake. We were told that dreaming was merely the brain firing off random neurons as it cleared out the metabolic waste of the day. But the more we look at modern neuroimaging and the discovery of the default mode network, the more we see that this is a fundamental misunderstanding of the human experience.

There is no off switch. There is only a continuum of consciousness.

The concept of the default mode network, or DMN, is perhaps the most significant discovery in neuroscience regarding our inner lives. Research by M.E Raichle et al. (2001) in the paper "a default mode of brain function" published in the proceedings of the national academy of sciences revealed that when we stop focusing on the outside world, our brains do not go quiet. Instead, they light up in a specific, highly organised circuit. This is the same circuit we use for self-reflection, imagining the future, and understanding the perspectives of others. Crucially, as noted by G.W Domhoff (2011) in "the neural substrate for dreaming: is it a subsystem of the default network," the DMN is heavily active during dreaming.

When I am daydreaming, mind-wandering, or lost in a deep creative flow, my brain is using many of the same circuits it uses when I am dreaming in REM sleep. The reality of these moments is not found in physical objects I can touch, but in their biological tangibility. If my heart is racing in a dream, it is racing in my bed. If I am solving a complex emotional puzzle or healing a hidden trauma while I sleep, the chemical shift in my body is real. I wake up as a different version of myself than the one who laid down.

Why do we assume reality only counts when our eyes are open?

Consider the work of Professor Matthew Walker in his seminal book "Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams" (2017). Walker argues that dreaming is essentially overnight therapy. During REM sleep, the brain is in the only state where it is completely devoid of the anxiety-triggering molecule noradrenaline. This allows us to re-process upsetting memories in a safe, calm environment. If this process is successful, we wake up with the emotional sting removed from a memory. This is not just a psychological trick; it is a structural change in the way our brains hold information.

If I spend over twenty-five years of my life in this dream field, I refuse to treat it as a void. It is a quantum interface. It is where my deepest intuition does its heavy lifting. In the world of quantum mechanics, we speak of superposition, which is the ability of a particle to exist in multiple states at once until it is observed. Perhaps the dreaming mind is the ultimate observer. When I wake up with a sudden clarity, a shifted mood, or a solution to a problem I did not even know I was carrying, that is the dreaming self delivering a payload to the waking self.

This brings us to the idea of thoughts as things. If a dream can trigger the release of cortisol or dopamine, then the dream has a physical, tangible footprint in our biology. History is filled with examples of the dream world creating the physical world. The chemist august kekulé discovered the ring structure of benzene after dreaming of a snake biting its own tail. His dream was not unreal; it was the birth of a discovery that changed modern chemistry. The dream was the catalyst for a physical reality.

The idea that we are only living during our waking hours is a relic of an industrial mindset that values us only for our outward productivity. If we reclaim the 35% of our lives spent in sleep, we double our capacity for growth. We begin to see our lives not as a series of disconnected days, but as a single, flowing experience of consciousness that moves between different frequencies of being.

Our dreams are not a break from reality. They are the laboratory where our reality is authored. I am starting to realise that to be truly awake, I have to respect the 35% of me that lives behind my eyes. I have to acknowledge that the person who walks the streets in the day is only half of the story. The other half is busy in the dream field, merging with alternate versions of self, healing old wounds, and preparing the ground for the next day.

I invite you to consider your own dream field tonight. Do not just see it as rest. See it as an intersection. When we approach the night with the same intentionality as the day, we stop living a fractured existence. We become whole. We start to see that the I who dreams is the very same I who creates, and that the continuum of consciousness is the most powerful tool we have for navigating our reality.

Nigel John Farmer ~ Sweet Dreams

references and further reading

Domhoff, g. w. (2011). the neural substrate for dreaming: is it a subsystem of the default network? consciousness and cognition, 20(4), 1163–1174. ~ This study explores the anatomical overlap between the areas of the brain that produce dreams and the default mode network.

Raichle, m. e., macleod, a. m., snyder, a. z., powers, w. j., gusnard, d. a., & shulman, g. l. (2001). a default mode of brain function. proceedings of the national academy of sciences (pnas), 98(2), 676–682. ~ The foundational paper that identified the default mode network as a distinct system of the human brain.

Walker, m. (2017). why we sleep: unlocking the power of sleep and dreams. london: penguin books. ~ A comprehensive look at the biological necessity of sleep and the "overnight therapy" provided by rem dreaming.