Bruce seems to say there are similarities and indeed direct connections between dreaming and afterlife planes. As far as I can see dreams are just what happens when the mind starts to play and free associate and make things up, jumbling together fantasies, fears, hopes, recent experiences etc in bizzarre illogical ways, becasue it is not getting any sensory input from the outside. It seems clear to me that is what is happenning in most/many dreams I recall - I see no reason to suggest that dreaming I have gone to some other reality that is objectively real in the way waking reality is. I'm not sure I see this as a great endorsement for the spiritual worlds being factually existant themselves if they are like a dream, even though a dream sees real at the time you are having it I guess (as, somehow you critical/logical faculties seem to be  largely switched off).

I remember in the Denis Wheatley occult novels he used to claim dreams were astral journeys and, for example, friends or enemies could meet up in them and have adventures which they would each recall afterwards. It makes good fiction, but does it happen in reality?

Or re. dreams, have I exagerated this, and all that Bruce was saying is that for some reason it is easier for a spirit to contact a living person while they are dreaming because, perhaps, they are not focussed on sense experience in this world - therfore open to input coming from some other source (but not that that all dreams are hugely significant or connected to the afterlife or other journeys OOB).

Alysia - Dreams are like an exhaust system? Having gone through several years of Freudian training, including "On The Interpretation of Dreams", I particularly like your analogy. But I can almost hear the ground rumble as Freud rotates in his crypt. LMAO.

Orlando- The confusion that we experience in the dream state seems to come from two or three simple sources. First, the function of dreaming appears to be a memory device by which incoming data get universally related, to yesterday's rain shower, Aunt Maggie's pots and pans, and your left shoe.

Second, according to Freud, the motivation to have specific dreams is (Trumpets please ... Ta Daaa ) wish fulfillment. Freud's example is a case in which he dreamed of vigorous horseback riding. However at the time, he had a boil on his scrotum which totally prevented any such activity. (Hey - it's in the book.) Thus he was fulfilling a wish by symbolizing himself to be capable of bouncing about on horseback. To view this as an exhaust system for unsated desires absolutely tickles me!

Third, it seems to me that we are not generally very stable in the face of upsetting events, relying typically on external circumstances to save us. Thus, when we turn off the "exhaust system" and wander through our dreamworld in meditation or sleep, which is the same state of mind in which we are open to being aware of spirits and other subtle influences,  we tend have a wash of sensory inputs, upsets, and counter upsets, all mixed up in a confused manner. For meditators, this goes away with development of meditation and stabilization of focus. My experience is that as my meditation became more clear and focussed, so did many of my dreams.

The Bardo Thodol tradition tells us that this same kind of confusion is what we face at death, having no specific grounding, and being at the mercy of our own interpretations and exaggerations of what's happening. The solution is to either recognize the totality of everything at the moment of death (which is why Tibetan monks tell you that what they are doing is preparing to be dead) or to adopt a path by which universal accord with everything will occur, so that you work it out on the spot in spirit or in a later life.

Your criticism about functioning while switching off critical faculties is to the point - that would solve it all, of course, but the majority of our critical faculties fall off with the dead body. What remains seems to be made up of life energies and changes in the world, all ending in the corpse. The "viewpoint" generally seems to identify with expanding cone of influence of these energies and changes, and "rides on them" by superposition as they move outward into the world, mixing with other states etc. The core energy with which we would infinitely prefer to mix is obviously the essential nature of reality, hence the "core vibration" of the Creator, which is the fundamental of all the overtones and harmonics that make up the world. 

Based on my experience in regressions, it seems that for this "urge to merge" we retain a sense of nominal logic, capable of concrete operations, but not much more. So we more or less can follow any sequence of steps that do not involve self-contradictory elements, providing that we can find a place in the collection of energies and forces of the everyday world onto which we can project (or more literally, superpose) this sequence as a "secondary interpretation" of the patterns of activity that we see.

A "stuck soul" is like the Dutch boy with a finger in the di ke, fearful letting in the flood of "other stuff".  OR, in Alysia's terms, maybe his finger is stuck in his "exhaust system" (Ummm - honi soit qui mal y pense, hein?) and he is totally dedicated to preservation of his beliefs and fearful to move, because there is no visible logical escape path. As an extreme example, in everyday life we see such people pushing shopping carts full of cans and bottles down the street, fighting with unseen enemies, stuck with definitions of reality that don't fully work, with no way out. In spirit it only takes a sense of embarrassment, or dedication to duty, or fear, love, guilt etc - strong emotions that override the limited critical abilities remaining. But this is just like dreams in which the ghost is chasing us, and the harder we try to run the more we feel paralyzed, barely able to move an millimeter  - until we slide downhill toward a regenerative panic - and awaken. (Spirits can't wake up - they either get eaten or keep running, feeling terrible existential dread.)

It's a bit awkward to try to deal with all the possible "worlds" at once when we try to envision them as "places", as opposed to states of awareness.  Actually, there seems to only be the everyday experience of the physical world, and the place you see when you close your eyes. All the rest is some modification brought about by focus of the "viewpoint".  Some people, like Bruce, are sensitive to more subtle events, and easily see beyond the afterimages of the day. Others take mind-altering substances and tell horror stories of being chased by "ghoulies and ghosties and things going boomp" in the night, others meditate and work our way into greater awareness. And then there are the ones who buy a copy of Bruce's "Home Study" and learn to perk up their mediumistic skills.  It's all very similar.

dave

Thanks everyone for these different insights about dreams. Some food for thought (from the sublime to the ridiculous... thinking of boils and exhaust systems.. )

Dave - what did you mean by this: Spirits can't wake up - they either get eaten or keep running huh? they get eaten?

Thanks Alysia and Vajra - the meaningful stuff is indeed clear.

In the everyday world, when we are chased we eventually either are caught, or we escape or we call a cop or something. If a person feels that they are guilty, and becomes paranoid because they have done some evil deed, then they are at liberty to (a) admit their guilt, (b) disown the act and any profits from it, (c) do some damage control if possible, and (d) resolve to do something else next time. That means that they are detached from the act and can go on with life - providing that they are truly and deeply sincere. (Compare to Catholic Confession.)  I use this same routine as a clinical technique.

In the spirit world, a person who is convinced that their License To Exist is about to be revoked, perhaps because they just cold-bloodedly shot someone before they died, has no really comfortable escape path.  To admit guilt implies negation of their own existence, they can do nothing to control damage, and their resolve for the future has no bearing on the past. So they're stuck in an existential self-contradiction. The dramatization of this awareness may reasonably be projected as some kind of attack against which there is no defense, and the ego-self-definition, which includes the benefits of killing the other dudes, gets lost, burned away, cut off, chewed off by critters, or otherwise removed. In that sense, they "get eaten". The "good guy" core of self remains, of course, assuming that there is one.

The solution for these people, since they're stuck in either perpetually escaping by clinging to the world and becoming earthbound ghosts, or running forever away from God, because they view God as the source of their own immanent destruction, is to abandon their previous nature and literally throw themselves on the mercies of God to forgive their past, and to "repair them" so they won't do it again. At that point, selection of the next life seems to occur. They might return as earthbound spirits who are also embodied - often a crazy and frightening life initially - or if they gave up to God, they return with some karmic loading that will alter their attitude so that they will no longer go around shooting people.

As an example of the last case, I recall having something to do with poison gas and WW I, ending in getting blown up. In this life I had thought about some options for vesicants that might have been useful in Iraq against dug in troops, and the idea called up all manner of psychic ghosts that tell me, to this very moment, to stay completely away from that kind of thing, even through professional channels. That was emphasized by a nearly fatal case of toxic pneumonitis - very similar to what gassed troops experienced. I got the message, and have no further interest. Karma is very helpful in keeping us out of trouble.

dave

Greetings,

Can I throw in my old saw about the inadequacy of some of our words?  'Dreaming" has to stand for so many different states of consciousness that we experience while our conscious mind is asleep. We are just beginning to discover how many variations there are and what is possible in each.

Bets

some common symbols can be used for dream interpretation for anyone: these I have compared with other dreamers and saw they are basically the same for all: they can be interpreted to be a link to afterlife conditions, such as getting some brief insight there, as Bets points out, it's still a new area, and Freud, bless his heart, we need to expand on some of his conjectures as well.

house: (dream, not an obe, but can be both circumstances)
house is most often a thought structure, your consciousness that you navigate within, it is where you find comfort, habit and rest.

kitchen: kitchen dream areas are used for different reasons. a kitchen I use as a planning center, I cook up schemes there, etc. work out plans for the future.

Flying, moving, walking, treading as on treadmill, floating..all these images of doing that moving thing is self explanatory. I once saw myself doing a treadmill walk in order for a friend to catch up to me while obe. movement signifies the energy body is now active and your emotions are involved in this movement. your emotions can be in a form, or body, the energy body. or as some call it the astral body.

heres a funny one: feeling exposed with no top on. for men, this would be no problem. however, shortly after having this dream, my convertible top mechanism failed and I found myself driving about town feeling quite exposed. exactly as in the dream was the feeling.

Feelings: which brings us to feelings in a dream or obe: these are most noteworthy for causing growth in a person if paid attention to, the emotions will lead to observe your own belief systems which may contain conflicts to solve.

Meat: this is interesting symbol in dream as I'm a vegetarian. however, I finally figured it out. when I first started my book, it was symbolized as a baby boy. I fed the boy milk until he refused the bottle (writers block) I wandered into a group of forum members here within dream. a lady who was prominent here saw me taking some of the meat for my kid. she spoke and said there was not enough meat here, meaning the board as it was then. she was having a cook out on the forum. I told her I would go to the store. so the symbol my unconscious used was body building protein was needed for the book, spiritual meat in other words.

so you see the symbols were very instructive if meditated on enough and can point to real events which will occur, as the lady did leave the board because she was doing all the cooking at the time. things have changed. wish she was back but we still have some fine folks here, plenty of meat now!

I think it is the meaning we apply to them personally within patient reflection that is the reason for dreaming and other paranormal events such as obes and phasing, and altered states.

I'm glad my exhaust system pleases your fancy Dave, probably as much as your tube worm has had me in stitches too. yet I didn't mean it to sound negative for any that took it that way, but it's true that in the same way we ingest food daily, we must pass the waste product out daily also, there is a certain amount of negativity we need to cleanse from the mind daily too, and some dreams will enable that cleansing, but some are on a much different level such as precognition dreams or retrieval dreams.
as a matter of fact, everyone knows I enjoy laughing, according to some aliens I met once, laughing is also an exhaust system, so, ok, I think I can deal with that. keeps me healthy anyway. love, alysia

EliteNYC wrote on Aug 9^th, 2007 at 4:49am:


I don;t think all people claiming to be psychic are lying. But I am not sure if theri experiences are always exactly what they believe them to be either.

A lucid dream is where you are dreaming but realise you are dreaming - right? And it apparently allows you to take control of the dream environment.

What context did your astral projections occur in - were they deliberate? How did they differ from the lucid dream?

i don't think these new age authors are saying that ALL dreams are afterlife dreams.  obviously many or most are just the brain doing crazy things, processing information.

but people have predicted future events from dreams.  i've had lucid dreams and they were so different from  a normal dream, that after waking, i considered them just as much a "reality" as everyday life is.