"The indigenous explanation for this extraordinary process, Pandya reports, is as follows. During dreaming, the inner self leaves the outer self (the body) and travels the island in order to recuperate the bits of being that a person has lost during the day. These bits of being are most commonly manifest as stray smells, marooned on bushes and trees by the body during its daytime passage around the island. As the inner self collects these smells in the dream, it retraces the path of the body, collecting and consolidating important memories and making observations. The harvest of this inner being is then woven, over the sleeping “body external,” into a spider web that holds in place all the smells, dreams, and memories of previous nights and days, and so allows them to be used in the coming day."

On Dream Sharing and Its Purpose | Matthew Spellberg