Vayeshev

He dreamed another dream…”this time, the sun, the moon, and eleven stars were bowing to me.”…His father berated him. “What is this dream you have dreamed? Are we to come, I and your mother and your brothers and bow low to you to the ground?”

37:9-10

Is not your mother long since dead? Jacob, however, was not aware that the matter alluded to Bilhah who had raised him as if she were his mother. From here, our rabbis derived the principle that there is no dream that does not contain invalid matters. Jacob’s intention in pointing out the invalidity of the dream was to cause his sons to forget the matter so that they should not be envious of him because of it. Jacob said to Joseph: “Just as it is impossible for the dream to be fulfilled with respect to your mother, so is the remainder invalid,”

Rashi (12^th Century)

To understand Joseph we must go to his first dream. “For behold we are binding sheaves in the field and my sheaf arose and stood upright; and behold your sheaves came round about and bowed to my sheaf.” What’s important here is not only the dream’s message that all the brothers shall end up obedient to the youngest brother, but the very use of sheaves themselves. If we look at civilization as a process moving from the stage of hunting, to shepherding, to farming, to industry, sheaves of grain represent a departure from the world of Joseph’s fathers, who were shepherds, to the more advanced world of Egyptian society, a culture of farmers. From his dream it emerges that Joseph yearns to leave behind his ancestral world of shepherding…in his next dream, the sheaves become stars, moons, suns. Joseph is dreaming of the cosmos, a long way off from the shepherd’s rock in the shade…

Joseph Soloveitchik (20^th Century)

Joseph's dreams contained inaccuracies. Joseph dreamt that the sun and moon would bow down to him - i.e., even his father and mother would acknowledge his greatness.  But, as his father quickly pointed out, Joseph's mother had passed away long before!
Why do dreams contain extraneous and inaccurate details? Rav Kook explained that this is due to the very nature of dreams. All dreams originate from our imaginative and emotional faculties. As a result, they are subject to exaggeration and nonsensical elements. Even prophetic dreams (or the elevated parts of dreams) may nevertheless contain details that do not correspond to reality. This is because the truth of prophetic dreams relates to the general reality of what should happen. It may be that due to circumstances, certain details in fact occurred differently. This does not mean that the dream contains fabrications. Rather, the dream's message relates to what potentially could or should have occurred. Joseph dreamt of his parents bowing down before him. In reality, his mother had died long before. Yet, the fundamental message of the dream was true. For had Rachel still been alive, she too would have bowed down before her son, viceroy of Egypt.

Rav A. I. Kook (20^th Century)

Now that the brothers had become guilty of being jealous of Joseph and hating him…they became victims of Esav in this world. Since ten of the brothers were guilty of such feelings, the Romans tortured ten outstanding Jewish scholars to death, the one commonly referred to in the Yom Kippur martyrology. The ten scholars involved were re-incarnations of the ten brothers of Joseph who had taken part in selling him…there is a group of kabbalists who do not include Reuben amongst the Ten Martyrs, but substitute Joseph as the tenth. Their reasoning is that after all Joseph was the root cause of the crime committed against him. It was Joseph’s tale bearing which triggered the brother’s sin.

Shney Luchot Habrit (16^th Century)