Dreams (souls, hell, reincarnation, quote)

[Cyrano941]

Do you believe that dreams can be more than just windows of your sub-conscious? I've had some experiences with powerful dreams that seemed to have predicted events that happened later on that week. Never anything important. Once it was the ethnic origins and gender of a doctor my father went to for a check up. The other time it was a blizzard that shut Atlanta down this year. Anyways do any of y'all have experiences like that? Or what do you believe about the concept of precognitive dreams? I am not really religious but I respect religious belief and believe in a power much greater than myself. (for what that's worth)

[ditchlights]

God forbid some of my dreams ever happened in real lfe, because that would severely taint my reputation as a decent upstanding citizen! I've done things in some of my dreams that would damn a person to hell for sure. I could never even begin to explain them to someone. They blow my mind, and many activities in them are illegal in most parts of the world.

[ShiftFn]

Originally Posted by Cyrano941

I've had some experiences with powerful dreams that seemed to have predicted events

'seemed' it is the best word, these precognitions are too broad and too inexact so they can't be useful at all

but I respect religious belief and believe in a power much greater than myself

read this thread:
//www.city-data.com/forum/relig...ark-souls.html
and don't do this

Originally Posted by ditchlights

They blow my mind, and many activities in them are illegal in most parts of the world

typical, because it is state of unconsciousness

[Nozzferrahhtoo]

Originally Posted by Cyrano941

I've had some experiences with powerful dreams that seemed to have predicted events that happened later on that week

Seemed is indeed the most important word in that sentence. A lot of people will subjectively reinterpret their dreams retrospectively when future events occur, and interpret them in such a way as to make them look like better prophesy then they actually were.

However that said, it is also important to mention statistics. There are billions of people on the planet, all having random dreams every night. If you have that many random sequences, then statistically some of them somewhere have to be accurate. It would be a miracle if there was not some. If people keep playing the lottery, someone eventually has to "predict" the right numbers statistically. It is no different with dreams. If you have billions of dreams (random numbers) then eventually some of them have to match real events (the lotto results).

Having a dream which matches the reality of your future therefore is no more magical, or amazing, than simply getting lucky with your lottery number choices. Pure probability states you will always have a chance of getting it right.

Dream prediction is, in fact, less magical and special because unlike the lotto numbers, the brain does have information you may not even know it has with which to work with. You might not know you have information in your head about certain things, but something you heard or saw subconsciously will inform things in your dreams that you think you otherwise did not, or could not, know. This leaves many of us thinking our dreams gave us information magically, when in fact there is often very good reason why.

[Cyrano941]

Originally Posted by Nozzferrahhtoo

Seemed is indeed the most important word in that sentence. A lot of people will subjectively reinterpret their dreams retrospectively when future events occur, and interpret them in such a way as to make them look like better prophesy then they actually were.

However that said, it is also important to mention statistics. There are billions of people on the planet, all having random dreams every night. If you have that many random sequences, then statistically some of them somewhere have to be accurate. It would be a miracle if there was not some. If people keep playing the lottery, someone eventually has to "predict" the right numbers statistically. It is no different with dreams. If you have billions of dreams (random numbers) then eventually some of them have to match real events (the lotto results).

Having a dream which matches the reality of your future therefore is no more magical, or amazing, than simply getting lucky with your lottery number choices. Pure probability states you will always have a chance of getting it right.

Dream prediction is, in fact, less magical and special because unlike the lotto numbers, the brain does have information you may not even know it has with which to work with. You might not know you have information in your head about certain things, but something you heard or saw subconsciously will inform things in your dreams that you think you otherwise did not, or could not, know. This leaves many of us thinking our dreams gave us information magically, when in fact there is often very good reason why.

Hmmm. Fascinating. That is true that simply by playing the numbers dreams would have to show some significance. But the thing that struck me with both is the clarity. Most of my dreams I've forgotten by the end of the day. Even the wildest ones but those stuck. Well into the next week. The moment I woke up I was telling almost everyone about them because they had something extra to them. Perhaps through that I FOUND meaning sooner or later or perhaps not. So beyond the realms of magic do you believe in the possibility that there may be something to parapsychology? Something that may have scientific roots instead of metaphysical roots?

[Nozzferrahhtoo]

No I have seen nothing to lend any credence to parapsychology at all.

What I do see is lots of evidence for is the human propensity to find pattern where no pattern exists. We are a species that has evolved very much to pattern seek. It is paradoxically both one of the best and worst things about our species that we do this.

It makes us the species we are, with the skills we have, but it leads us to massive errors in judgement and opinion too. Much of religion and religious belief comes from finding patterns where none exist... especially due to our subjective need to center ourselves within such patters. We think... for example... that the universe is fine tuned to produce us because it seems so good at producing us. This error has been likened to a puddle waking up in a hole and thinking that the hole is the perfect shape to fit, as if the hole was designed specifically for that puddle. The puddle does not think that had the hole been different, there would still have been a puddle, just in a different form.

What I also see evidence of is people obtaining and processing information without even realizing it. You could, for example, be walking down a particular road and without even realizing it note that an ethnic minority well dressed man was walking into a medical practice. Later you dream that someone is going to the doctor and you "predict" the ethnic minority the doctor will be... without realizing that this was in fact information you had.

Another popular example is children who seemingly have information no one can figure out how they had, so they attribute it to parapsychology or reincarnation. However often the explanation of this is simple. Our ears hear a LOT more than we think they do, our brains have just been trained from birth to filter most of it out and not tell you about it. Conversations you think are out of ear shot, you are actually hearing without realising it.

Children however, and some people with mental abnormalities, do not have those filters as strongly. They glean, maybe without even realising it, conversations no one things they could possibly have heard. When they regurgitate this information later, people are aghast and wowed. Rabbi Shavit Artson for example talks of how his autistic son is able to hear, and repeat, conversations that happened many rooms away, through a number of walls. Many of us have this ability, but filter it out at a conscious level, but our subconscious can obtain information we do not know we obtained. When we guess or dream something with this information we often think it some kind of parapsychology or magic.

It is very much worth watching some of the you tube videos from people like Derren Brown, Micheal Shermer, James Randi, Daniel Dennett, Penn and Teller and more who all show just how many ways our brain tricks us every day. Our brain obtains and processes... and in some cases wholly invents, information in ways that will shock you. How our brain works is a massively interesting area you could lose hours on you tube or in books learning about. That we fail sometimes to understand what our brain is doing, and attribute some of it's work to magic and parapsychology is to me no surprise at all. Some of the things our brain does really is indistinguishable from magic at times. I very much understand how people can have genuinely baffling or revelatory experiences and become passionately convinces they are psychic, or can exist on magical astral planes and all kinds of other things.

[Hawkins]

Originally Posted by Cyrano941

Do you believe that dreams can be more than just windows of your sub-conscious? I've had some experiences with powerful dreams that seemed to have predicted events that happened later on that week. Never anything important. Once it was the ethnic origins and gender of a doctor my father went to for a check up. The other time it was a blizzard that shut Atlanta down this year. Anyways do any of y'all have experiences like that? Or what do you believe about the concept of precognitive dreams? I am not really religious but I respect religious belief and believe in a power much greater than myself. (for what that's worth)

All I can tell is, a "meaningful" dream is usually divided into two parts, more like a 2-part puzzle. The first half will be given in the dream. The second half is given in reality. You need to combine them to know the answer. It works in this way such that 1) you know that the dream is for a purpose. 2) such that you can figure out this patten by successive dreams of this same "meaningful" kind. 3) the reality part usually somehow confirms the dreaming part.

[Nozzferrahhtoo]

Sorry to but in with a PS post, but I am aghast that I did not include... at the head of the list of names above, the name of VS Ramachandran. So make the list of names VS Ramachandran, Derren Brown, Micheal Shermer, James Randi, Daniel Dennett, Penn and Teller.

[SeekerSA]

The thing about dreams are they happen in the transition state of falling asleep but mostly when waking up, for me anyway. This is where the mind plays tricks on you transferring info from your subconscious to your conscious state. I know the experts say different but in REM sleep, I am dead to the world and have absolutely no recall.

Based on my personal experience, when I was in my teens I had many vivid dreams I could recall, now at 53 just this transitional stuff that lasts mere seconds as I awake from some external noise or stimuli. They say the brain is only fully developed around 20 something so maybe this is a reason for young dreams being more vivid.

When do dreams occur

ETA: My wife tells me I talk in my sleep so something must be happening

[mysticaltyger]

Originally Posted by Cyrano941

Do you believe that dreams can be more than just windows of your sub-conscious?

Yes, absolutely.

A really good and practical book on this subject called Living Your Dreams by Gayle Delaney was written about 30 years ago. It's still the best book out there on the subject, IMO. The author actually has a PhD in psychology but also studied religion at Princeton.

The author describes how you can actually "incubate" dreams to solve problems and also teaches a method of dream interpretation called the "dream interview" method.

It's a very worthwhile book for someone who's interested in improving their understanding of dreams to solve tough problems.

Amazon.com: Living Your Dreams: The Classic Bestseller on Becoming Your Own Dream Expert (9780062514462): Gayle M. Delaney: Books