Dreams, the Unconscious Mind, and the Subconscious

When I awoke today, draped in the remnants of sleep, I thought of the strange nature and process of dreams. There is so much we have yet to learn about the mind. What is the purpose of dreams, and what does it teach us about our subconscious? I've always been curious to see if a phone number from a dream is actually a real phone number or whether recurring symbols, themes, or feelings reflect my responses to events in real life. We know so little about the unconscious mind, despite spending a third of our life in a dream state. And, in the same vein, I know little about the experience of a brain under anesthesia. We look at the EEG, understand the kinetics of our drugs crossing the blood-brain barrier, and see the outward manifestation of how patients act. But I wish we knew more about what we were doing to the subjective experience of the mind when we give propofol or sevoflurane. The mind, to me, is beautiful in spite of and because of how little we understand of it. The heart, the kidneys, the lungs, the liver - they carry little mystery for me and little intrigue. I've always been enraptured by the fact that we manipulate the brain so much under anesthesia yet only have a rudimentary knowledge of what we do.