Hi there tmerc8

Good questions    If I may offer my thoughts as best as I can;

I think the biggest thing with dreaming; are they conscious or are they random unconscious thoughts.  By saying conscious; to be conscious of the unconscious.  And the unconscious expresses itself through symbols.  Whether to say it is a realtime happening is the debate.  The unconscious is our soul.

It is my thought; in developing the Ego one becomes conscious of the unconscious while dreaming.  So instead of random thoughts the Ego is trained to become aware of its own unconscious and the unconscious world (while asleep)

If we look at the science of the spirit (Rudolf Steiner work) in order for the spirit to perceive itself and what is around it, it must bring itself and whatever is in that person's life, bring it up from the inside to the outside.

Therefore if one has a dream about a car travelling fast - the Ego is bringing up the unconscious in a symbol of a car, the car representing the Ego and travelling fast may represent being busy or going towards a goal of achievement, for example.  

So what this is saying - we don't just float around and bump into things which may cross our paths it is saying I create my own world - it comes from me.  However, you are also in my world therefore we are not seperate - I know you and to perceive you I bring you up from within myself.  This may be what the collective consciousness is - we are part of the same substance therefore the law operates within this substance.

Also with this, there is different levels to dreams.  Dreams would either be within our earth realm, that is under the Moon level or the more intense dreams would be beyond the Moon that is the start of the true spiritual realms.  When we sleep we do, in fact, go to our spiritual home every night - this is a phenomena - it is two lives that we live. Our waking life reality and our sleeping life reality.  And here we may look at an inversion of sort.

In this state of being in our second home is very rarely conscious as here we are not using any of our mental faculities in order to perceive us being there - it really is in our deep sleep, almost as if dead.  I believe in exercising our Ego to be in a conscious state while in our deep sleep we may perceive our second home- this is rare though and I would say the art of the ascended Masters (or Madams).

Also, some dreams may be memory recall, some dreams are visions and some dreams come from our senses.  We must always trust our intuition when trying to decipher anything asleep or awake.

Memory recall dreams would be flashbacks into a past life or the last year etc.  When waking one would have a strong feeling that this was an past event.  This is carried by our Ego retaining memory. Here we might say the past, the present and the future are rolled into one and therefore the memory recall relates to the present just as much as it does to the past.

Vision dreams are very strong in their nature and is the awakened Ego perceiving events and itself truthfully i.e. not randomly.  For example; if you need to know an answer one would use the 'twilight' time - that time just before feeling asleep when the un-conscious mind comes to the front and the rational conscious mind slips into a different state. Again the Ego will use symbols to communicate to the rational conscious mind.

Sense dreams happen in the state of being semi awake - that is our spirits are very close to our bodies.  Because our rational mind is in a state of being dormant our senses take over and randomly choose pictures to interpretate our feelings that come from our sub-conscious mind.  These feelings are normally our supressed anxieties, fears or the opposite of happiness or joy.  Therefore if we were anxious about an circumstance our sense will randomly choose pictures that we identify with.  As well if, say, a picture would fall off the wall while we are sleeping our senses would hear it and create a whole dream about this one sound of a picture falling.

Indeed, dreaming is a very complex subject and this is my studies to-date.

I would say prophets are the same as psychics - both using an awakened Ego.  Clairvoyant or Seer is a similar term.
Though, I would say a Prophet is a sacred word denoting an Ego immersed in the Holy Spirit.

Good question who was Edgar Cayce; the sleeping prophet whose work it was to allow himself as a vessel for spirit communication.  Although, I have a feeling it is Edgar Cayce's Ego talking.  He is a phenomena and it is easy for us to be blaise and say .. oh I think about this about Cayce and any other great spirit worker when .. these people are the giants and our opinions upon them are drops in the ocean.  It has been said Edgar Cayce is the reincarnation of Ra from ancient Egypt.

So there you go now; I'd appreciate any comments.


Caryn

Dreams are simply showing us what the next life will be like. Also, they are used for guidance for you now.

A strange oddity with dreams that I have experienced is randomly remembering a past dream that I may have had years ago in great vivid detail for no apparent reason. I have just been sitting there before having experienced what is almost akin to flashbacks of long ago dreams that I hadn't remembered since the day that I had them. It is a truly surreal experience beings the dreams were so faintly remembered when I initially woke up from them and then completely forgotten until years later.

Maybe diamonds aren't the only things that are forever!

PUL,
Cosmic_Ambitions

PUL is an acronym for Pure Unconditional Love.  It relates to things such as accepting somebody for who they are without prejudice, possitive attitude, self-less acts, etc.  Depending on perspective, one might see it as a very powerful fuel/resource in the afterlife but I am sure it is far more than just some energy that one would put into a fuel tank.

Happy Feelings,
Steve Ed.

I am presently in the process of forming a synthesis for myself on dreams and consciousness.  Ok, its not done yet, but when it is, I will post it on this thread.

My feeling is that life and spirit  are all centered around conscious awareness.  In that sense, waking consciousness and dream consciousness are simply two different states of awareness.  For those who believe that our subconscious is external or separate from what makes us an individual, I must respectfully disagree.  Whe you dream, and when you do remember the dream, the "you" that was there was truly there as an observer/participant.  You feel your personal self experienced it.  Brendan has his "bot" hypotheses - that the subconscious is some mindless drone copy of ourselves that can't escape from its dream symbolism and can't use rational thought or will.  I myself don't see it that way.

I believe that in dreams, we do connect to the universe, and in that arena, one must speak a different language.  This is where symbolism comes in.  Our awareness is flooded with signals and data while dreaming, and in order to make sense of this "non-language" data in our subconscious mind connection, we attach symbols to the data via our own personal interpretor (star trek universal translator).  Sometimes the data comes from thought in the physical world; other times we are getting data from what Jung called the collective unconscious or what I call the all-that-is.  This would include messages and spiritual communications from deceased loved ones. 

Researchers in sleep believe that thoughts need to be processed a certain way to enter into long term memory.  For this reason, it is common to forget dreams upon awakening since they are not physically processed the same as waking thought.  It is interesting that with the statement of intent of to remember dream as one is falling asleep, that waking memory may be altered - to me this is less from a scientific physical basis, and more of a spiritual one. 

Some feel cheated if, instead of visions of the afterlife or dead loved ones, the dream is about a topic from their waking lives during the day.  To me, it is no less important.  Our waking thoughts, or our subconscious thoughts are influenced by events in physical reality as well as from beyond the physical. 

Many here, such as Vicky, are interested and knowledgeable about dream symbology and interpretation.  There are certain universal themes in dreams that Freud/Jung and others picked up on (dreams of houses usually represent the person themselves), and certain archetypal symbols have universal meanings (snakes) when analyzed. 

So, in a nutshell, I believe that dreams are subconscious awareness expressed in symbols.  The topic of dreams, either something from your physical daily life or from a deceased loved one (or other realm), is purely dependent on where your thought is going - what direction, and what has meaning to you.

The exception to all of this may be dreams of deceased loved ones who have passed.  My sister had a dream at age 11 of our grandmother Frances, smiling, looking at her in a loving way and waving goodbye.  The next morning, she told my father, who drove to her apartment, and found her dead in her bed.  This to me is an example of communication, as there was no way my sister could have known in her waking consciousness of her passing.  Our grandmother was not thought to be sick or ill.  It appears that given the right lines of communication, love and circumstances, that some dreams may be direct communications from the afterlife.  However, these dreams, at least for most of us are few and far between.  Unless it is just our "interpretor" getting in the way of interpreting the message.

Matthew

Caryn:

Regarding the below, I have similar thoughts.  My feeling is that all of time exists at the same time just as all of space exists at the same time.  If we look at the earth from outer space, we'll find that there is much more to it than what we can see from down below. Despite what people used to believe, the World is round, not flat (there are tribes of people who still believe it is flat). If we look at time from a higher perspective, we'll find that it isn't linear. 

Non-linear time could be an explanation for Deja vu. I've heard of another one. Before we incarnate certain moments of our life are designated as "wake up" moments. When we experience them milestone like memories come to life. Not necessarily at a conscious level.



augoeideian wrote on Feb 16^th, 2007 at 7:50am:

Da_Bears 

Matthew you made a very good point

Quote:


And symbols are non-language.  That's a good statement.  We should discuss whether we can actually talk in the unconscious realms. 

Unconscious realms = when we not there
Conscious realms = when we are there

And what you say Recoverer we don't live in a linear world; so either in the waking state we process a linear world or we register a non-linear world.

Waking consciousness = linear state with a sense of the non-linear
Dream consciousness = non-linear state with a sense of the linear

Both are states of awareness and possible both may be experienced via versa.   I suppose it's the word sense either it's a sense or it's real. That is it's not sensed through the five senses but the .. yes the sixth sense. maybe?