After this life and Dreams:

[Praxius]

Now I didn't say Afterlife in the title for the main reason that everybody has a very different belief of what comes after this life. The most common thing that comes to mind when someone says Afterlife is a Heaven, or a paradise with multiple virgins and what not. And other believe everything just goes blank.

And there are those far in between with many other various concepts, especially in this day and age.

So I present a concept and question to ponder in your minds. Do you think there is a level of connection between our dreams and what might lie beyond this life we are living today?

I ask this question not seeking some super scientific explination, or some scrolled poem from a couple of thousand years ago, but if you have those explinations you believe in, by all means post them. I hope to have a collective of various beliefs, as well possible connections between dreams and that other side of things.

I ask mainly to see what you yourself belive based on your own personal logic and understanding. Your own belief. It is not right or wrong, as nobody can actually say in this day in age. The scientific and the religious solutions are as provable as any other.

So..... what do you think?

Is there some sort of connection between dreams we experience every night and what may come in the end of this? Why?

Remember, really think about both. Every day of our lives we are awake and we are asleep. Pretty much everything on this planet has an active state and a passive state right up until their deaths. We ourselves can not go too long without sleep or we go insane or worse.

 

[dancing-loon]

Hi, Praxius;
an excellent topic, a well thought-out question!

Since about eight years I belong to a very small group of dream interpreters. We get together and with the help of books we analyze our dreams which we have written down in our dream journals. Even shreds of a longer dream has a meaning. We found that a lot of what we dream comes from our subconscious mind. But every so often we also get the feeling, we are being guided! Where does this guidance come from? It has to come from the spiritual realm, from another level above the material life on earth.
Example:
Once, I found myself having to evict a tenant. Just a day before we went to court I had a significant drea:.
Ccoming out of a house with my long-time girlfriend, we saw an umbrella leaning in a corner by the door. She grabbed it, I objected... we don't need it, but she insisted. Outside, we saw a dark, almost black sky overhead touching almost the horizon. She opened the umbrella, it was a large, colorful sun umbrella, we both could have fitted under it. I looked at the horizon and saw a thin, but intensely glowing golden sunset line. The black clouds over us were actually just beside us!

In court the next day the tenant withdrew her claim and offered to move out in 3 months. I agreed!
Where did the wonderful, comforting and uplifting sun fire come from? I believe it came from the source that is looking after me!

Once, as a teenager I came home from school. I had gotten a bad note. I was sad and downcast. Walking beside a field of grain I saw the soft waves of the slender green grain stalks as if the wind had moved them.... except there was no wind. Instantly I felt better, I was not alone... a relief came over me and I felt good again.

 

[mrgrumpy]

Hi Praxius.
I have a story to tell you. It is true, happened to me when I was ten or so and all these years later I still think about it, and can make no more sense of it today then I could then.

My older brother, my mother and another sibling drove to Calgary to attend a wedding next day in Edmonton. Stayed overnight at a relatives. That night I had this powerful dream which stayed with me from then till now. I dreamt the scene that awaited us next day In Edmonton - the family of my brother's fiancee meeting us - standing on their lawn as we got out of the car. In the dream I saw everything in detail - the house, neighborhood, their faces , what they wore, even the weather and heat, how they were standing and even the smiles on their faces.

Next day the dream was made exact reality, and in that reality I was confused and almost speechless. How could I have dreamt exactly the scene before me, correct to every detail?

That is really the only event like that I have experienced in my life and I think of it occasionally and try to understand what it might mean. Of course, I am as perplexed today as I was then.

 

[karrie]

I believe there are few human minds that don't sense that there is something more Praxius. Something hinted at in prophetic dreams, something hinted at in waking phenomena of visions and the unexplained.

It's why humanity has built religions, in an attempt to discuss these tuggings at our minds, what we think they might mean and where we think they might eventually take us.

I'm enough of a scientist to not presume to know where such premonitions, such intuitions, originate. But I'm spiritual enough to feel they come from an intelligent place, be it a collective consciousness or a deity. It's a mystery to me what they might mean for an afterlife, but, I have hope and faith that glimpses attested to by people and prophets throughout time will prove true in the end.

 

[mrgrumpy]

Recommended reading for our moderator -

The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind".

Explains many, but not all things.

 

[karrie]

Recommended reading for our moderator -

The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind".

Explains many, but not all things.

I'll pass thanks. I've got psych texts and such needing my attention much more. :smile:

 

[mrgrumpy]

If you're reading psych texts , believe me, this book will provide a significant insight to the human psyche.

 

[karrie]

Is there any book ever written which doesn't provide such insight? :lol: By their nature they're all glimpses into human thought process.

 

[s_lone]

Great topic Praxius...

I've been paying closely attention to my dream world for about 6 years now and am constantly impressed by the depth and richness of material they provide.

From my own experience, I believe dreams are multi-functional... Freud definitely had some great insights saying dreams were the guardians of sleep. They help us evacuate repressed feelings and badly aknowledged desires... But I think they can be much more than that...

While dreams are used by the mind/soul/spirit/body (whatever you want to call it) to deal with the past, it also uses them to prepare the future. In dreams, we can experience possible future scenarios to which we are likely to be confronted. With that idea in mind, we can see how premonitions are possible... The mind/brain projects a possible future outcome based on the dreamer's past and present, and sometimes actually guesses right as to what WILL happen... No magic there. That's not to say authentic premonitions aren't possible... If we have a soul and if that soul originates from a place which is invulnerable to space and time as we commonly experience it, then authentic premonitions could very well be possible...

Dreams are great to give you different point of views, on any given situation
Example: Your love relationship is going through a hard time... Lack of communication... badly expressed frustrations.... You dream about fighting with your ex-girlfriend... The 'ex-girlfriend' in the dream really represents your actual girlfriend, but your dream used a another well known figure/memory to trick your half-consciousness (dream consciousness) into looking at your relationship with some form of detachment... Because you're dealing with your ''ex-girlfriend'' you might express some emotions that you wouldn't dare express to your actual girlfriend... It's a dream strategy to get you to consciously aknowledge some repressed feelings..

I'll have more to say in coming posts...

 

[mt_pockets1000]

Thank you for putting this topic forward Praxius. I've had a few bizarre dreams in my time but the strangest would have to be this. It was in the early '80's and my wife and I were ready to retire for the evening. We were both very tired and went straight to sleep. I started to dream that I was running down a dark alley and I had a sense that something or someone was chasing me. It was raining. Suddenly, my wife was right beside me. I stopped to talk to her. I said, hey what are you doing in my dream? She said, yeah it's freaky huh? I remember taking her hand and feeling the warmth of her skin. Then we both continued running down this alley, hand in hand. We were both having the exact same dream. We were fully aware of it, while sleeping. We were communicating and experiencing the same visions...the rain, the alley, the running. We woke up shortly afterwards, around 2am in the morning. We just looked at each other and said wow that was totally bizarre. We had just experienced a shared dream. To me it showed the power of the human mind, the untapped potential of our brains.

I've had other dreams where I actually float out of my body and hover around the room. That type of dream scares the bejeesus out of me and I force myself to wake up. Apparently this is a common phenomenon. It's called astral projection and if you give yourself over to it you can have some wonderful experiences.

 

[Dexter Sinister]

It's called astral projection and if you give yourself over to it you can have some wonderful experiences.

No, it's properly called hypnopompic or hypnogogic hallucination, depending on whether it happens when you're just falling asleep or just waking up, and it's very common. Read this.

 

[L Gilbert]

Being aware of dreaming while you are dreaming is also known as lucid dreaming. I did that for a while and my dreams became quite mundane. Now I have no memories of dreams at all except those that I dreamt before I started lucid dreaming.

Anyway, back to the topic: I am convinced that people rely so heavily on our 5 basic senses that we forget that we only use a small portion of ours brains consciously. I am also convinced that things that happen, happen in cycles and other patterns and that subconsciously our brains can sense much more than we are aware and can fathom these cycles and patterns.
When we die, I think that as the oxygen is slowly depleted from our brains we begin to bridge the gap between consciousness and unconsciousness and sense a little bit of these cycles and pattterns. As far as these people that see bright lights and hear voices when the die and come back goes, just think of what can happen in your mind when your brain is being deoxygenated. I have been partly suffocated and my brain shows me all kinds of lights n things.
Hence, IMO there is nothing after life except death. There is no deep, deep, mystical meaning as to why there is life. Life is simply to live it. People waste an awful lot of time looking for the answer to a question that shouldn't even be a question. Also waste an awful lot of time worshiping Mother Goose, or faeries, leprachauns, gods, demons, etc. lol ( Just had to throw that in )

 

[mt_pockets1000]

Thanks for clearing that up Dex. A rose by any other name....

While astral projection may be a term used by the religious or quasi-religious groups, it has as much validity as hypnopompic or hypnogogic hallucination, neither of which are proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

I wonder how the scientific world can explain the shared dreaming phenomonen?

 

[dancing-loon]

Hi;
Dexter, I read your link... is very interesting!

Here is another strange happening that can only be explained through ESP.

My mother told me that she one evening heard a few knocks on her window. It was dark outside and she couldn't see anything.
The next morning she received a phone call from her sister-in-law, telling her that her husband, my mother's brother, had died last night.
My mother had no idea he was even seriously ill. She believes it was him who came to say goodbye to her.
How can that be explained with the seratonin or a quirky brain stem?

 

[Praxius]

Interesting responses thus far, thank you for all your input.

The reason why I presented this question has to do with various experiences I have had through my life..... mostly within the last decade of my life, but also some things that occured in my youth.

When mentioned above about being aware of yourself in the dream state, I have a level of that, and that also could attribute to how I don't remember many dreams laitly, but this also has helped me learn control over the dreams in which I do have and remember.

Through my childhood I was with a very low self esteme, and there were a lot of problems in my life, much like many other people in the world. Most dreams in my youth were mostly related to scaring the crap out of me in one fashion or another.

One dream that repeated a lot in my youth was myself out on the street in which I grew up on. No one else was out and it was an overcast day in the summer time. I would know what would occur in this dream from previous dreams. I would hear this creepy Atari sound effect that was in a few games at the time, and when I turned around, the sound connected to this character with no face, but dressed like Murdock from the Beach Combers

But you wouldn't of course see a face, just the drab clothing and that blue cap on his head.

Anyways, this character would chase after me like this machine plowing down the road looking for me. When he caught me, I would pretty well scream the crap out of myself and either wake up or the dream would repeat.

Over the years, I learned to dive into the ditch to hide and I would sense he would plow down the street with that creepy digital noise. I would then think it was clear and come out form the ditch, only for him to either appear right behind me or swing around from down the road and come right at me.

Another dream that repeated a lot was also taken place in the summer time but at night time. I would walk around to the side of my house and hear this train sound off in the distance. It would grow louder and closer. I turned to my left and peer into the woods at this one light shining in the dark and shortly after all the trees would smash out of the way for a freight train coming straight at me. Of course as a kid this would either wake me up screaming or it would repeat until I did.

But as I got older, gained more self-esteme and confidence in my abilities in real life, I some how learned to deal with dreams like the above ones and many others like them. When I encountered a dream that was extereme in fear, gore or something else to mess with my mind, I somehow learned to connect in my head that these experiences are either a dream or they are way out of the normal from my life and therefore a potiential dream.

I learned to shut my eyes in my dream and squeeze them tightly closed. I would then open up my eyes and either be in a totally different dream which didn't relate and was more relaxed, or I would wake up. I finally figured out an emergency tool for myself in those dreams, and thus, I gained more confidence in my mind.

But although we know dreams help us figure out what to do in our everyday lives or experiences we will have coming our way, what exactly fuels our minds to feed us such dreams of intensity?

When mentioned above about lack of oxygen and seeing lights being a chemical reaction and pretty well nothing more, and certainly not some religious experience of any kind.... Isn't everything we experience in our everyday lives, both awake and asleep, it's all chemical reactions to some degree. So what makes us determine which chemical reactions we take seriously and which ones we sum up as something trivial which doesn't mean much?

Certain comas can trigger a dream-like state in some people in which they do not wake up from for a long time.... sometimes it is quick. But Comas are also something we still don't know everything about, and we don't know exactly what triggers someone to just snap out of one, or to remain in one for years. What exactly goes on during these stages? Perhaps nothing.

But the connection between what visions, images, sounds and other sensory triggers occur from the mind from so many various exposures in everyday life.... they all can not just be simple trips to be ignored due to some scientific explination of a chemical playing tricks on your mind. If it is just chemicals playing tricks on the mind, then why did those tricks from that chemical reaction fuel the paticular images, messages and sights that we experience?

Then we get into Drugs, halucinations, visions and religions. Most religions and those who created them were also during a time in which drugs and narcotics were not deemed illegal, but serious spiritual tools. Native American teachings follow these quite well, and imo, they seemed to have had a closer connection to nature and how the world works then most.

Anywho I'll leave it at that for now, but I am slowly getting to my point and perhaps my own explination.

 

[s_lone]

Interesting stuff Praxius...

Your dream about a faceless character certainly is intriguing... Did you ever understand the meaning of these dreams? What does this faceless character represent? And what about that train?

 

[dancing-loon]

People in your dreams: Generally speaking every person, animal, or thing in your dream graphically symbolizes some aspect of you, such as the moody part of you, the comedian, the parent figure, or your animal nature, while the dream action depicts how you act and iteract with these fragments. (Our usual response is to deny or disown the less-than-lovely parts of ourselves.) Note any points of conflict, realizing that everything in your dream is telling you something important about yourself.

Faceless person: Person, situation, or aspect of yourself you do not want to face or confront.

 

[dancing-loon]

Children's Nightmares: Children have more nightmares than adults because they feel more vulnerable and helpless and have more fears.
A child who has persistent dreams of drowning, getting lost or killed, or of suicide may have a serious emotional disturbance.
A child who can't remember any dreams may be depressed or suppressing a traumatic experience.

When a child dreams of a bogeyman, it is because he feels threatened by something or someone he can't put a name or a face to. Usually it is some authority figure, such as a father who is an alcoholic and possibly mistreats him, or a mother with a violent temper, or even a brother who gives him a hard way to go; but it is still someone he is supposed to love! Herein lies the problem.
He can't bring himself to say he is afraid of his "loving" mother, for this goes against all his programming. Children are supposed to love their parents! So,, his real fear is clothed in mythical images. (Murdoch?) The dream is telling him he has a fear he must deal with, but his training won't let him face this openly. He is not ready to admit, even to himself,who this monster is. He needs help because his fear is very real, but most likely he will be told to "forget it, it is only a dream!"

Will continue in next thread.

 

[dancing-loon]

Whenever a child dreams of being chased by a monster, it is a sure sign he is feeling threatened in some way and needs some love, understanding, and reassurance. It is important that he be helped to understand the real cause of his problem and to be shown how he can solve it.

The monster is not always a family member - he may represent threats from other children, a teacher, relative, stranger, neighbor, a family argument, or even a scary movie. Whatever the cause, it is best dealt with as soon as possible in a gentle, loving, and understanding manner.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
The forest in your dreams, Praxius, could represent the peace and quiet that got destroyed by that reckless train, coming straight at you. .
The train could represent some bad-tempered, violent, reckless and destructive person or event in your life. You are terrified of "it", because you are helpless.

Only you will know, who or what terrified you so as a kid. I feel like holding and comforting you! It must have been severe for you, and I hope you have a calmer and more harmonious life now.

There is more in my book which I will add here later.

 

[Praxius]

Well those dreams were sort of an example of something common I found over the years. There were a plithora of nightmares as a youngster, in fact they all sort of stopped for the most part after my house mysteriously burned down around me at the age of 9.... which is a story all on its own. But before that occured, there were plenty of weird things going on around the neighborhood and inside my house..... maybe we built over some native burial ground or something..... that would have explained the additional three houses in the neighborhood catching on fire in the exact same manner as my own house (Electrical fire from the wall socket where the stoves were plugged in, all of which were various models and dated stoves/ovens in each house, so the connection beside them being stoves and electrical shorts were the only common thing.)

But yes those dreams over time I learned were usually based around my own personal troubles at the time, mainly low self esteme and uncertainty. I can not link them directly to my parents or one friend, but pretty well my life in general at that time.

As for the character chasing me, it didn't hold anything in detail except the street I grew up on, the character as described above, and his one goal to find me and capture me for whatever reason, all along with a sound I didn't care for much as a youngster.

I also had other dreams, like the statue of Jesus at my old church knocking on the door late at night, my dad opened the door and this statue flew into the door to take us all away for some reason.

Then of course the falling off a cliff thing.

Um.... how about my old pet dog standing in the hallway in the middle of the night panting and looking through my doorway and I was on the top bunk. She was black so she was already hard to see and as soon as I called her name, this evil growl would sound off and this black monster-like thing would pounce and come at my throat.... then I would wake up or repeat.

Hmmm..... There was also the dreams I had when I got smacked with an awful virus of some kind in Grade 9, where I couldn't goto sleep because of the nightmares, but also was too tired to stay awke.... for an entire week this same dream would occur. I had an entire wall wallpapered with a shot of Earth from the moon. As soon as I closed my eyes, the Earth reversed and then was a cybernetic moon which came to orbit Earth and make us all slaves in order to mine and rip the earth of it's resources and then kill us. If we didn't do what was told of us or someone got out of line, this moon would move into our atmosphere and collide with the Earth, crushing and killing everything alive. I of course, like other past dreams would freak out and scream, and it would move towards me and crush us all. I would then either wake up, or it'd repeat.

Eventually, I wouldn't get out of this loop and I know I was looping and eventually I began to curse and swear, shoving my middle finger at this bastard in the sky, only for it to drop again and kill us all again.

Of course I would wake up eventually in a pool of sweat and it'd be almost like I never fell asleep in the first place, as the moon would flash right back into the Earth on my wall, as if I just halucinated rather then fell asleep. As soon as I went to sleep, everything would just flash immediately back to the same dream, and then back to the same place in which I started to sleep and back and forth....... worst week ever. I swear by the end of the week I was losing my mind.... besides puking up everytime I decided to sit up or attempt to goto the bathroom.

Now a days I have no dreams which are like the above. In fact I may end up having some really screwed up dreams, but none of them bring me fear as they used to, nor do most of my dreams attempt to.

These dreams of absolute fear and tyrany that continued to repeat and mess with my mind at night, I can only attribute to some level of training in my mind. Get ahold and control my own mind and I will have no issues with the real world. I did so, and honestly life doesn't seem to stress me out as it used to. I figured out how to solve the problems in my dreams, and I also learned how to expect what was to come and prevent it before it begun. Now in my everyday life, I no longer dwell on the problems of everyday life. I confront the problem, I find the most logical solution that best suits my situation and I apply & move on. If it is not good enough, so be it, I will address it again the next time around.

Now a days, I have noticed that very little scares me, freaks me out, or intimidates me. I am to a degree (Based on these past violent, shocking and intense dreams that repeated and occured continually) desensitized. If I am attacked, I react. If someone is bleeding, I will put my hands on the wound and stop it...... I know what needs to be done to the best of my ability and I apply. If it isn't good enough, so be it, at least I tried. But for the most part, I believe these dreams have helped me to detach myself from the emotional appeal of a situation and I can now focus on what needs to be done in a situation.

I now have confidence in my own abilities, be damned what others think. I know what answers are right for me, and yet, I also know when to stop and listen. But for the most part, I have little doubt in my own abilities when it comes to real life.

Perhaps in the past, people deciding to do things for me rather then allow me to do them for myself, my position in school as not-so popular (to say the least), basically thrown into the pile of crap and being in a suicidal state for the extent of Grade 5-6..... looking back at the connections, I was doing a battle within as well as without, with both my mind and my doubts, and those in which were thrown apon me on an everyday basis by those around me.

Perhaps after my escape from my house burning down was the start of a turning point in my life where I found that I can not always rely on other people and their own confidence to solve all problems in which they seemed to imply on me. My house was burning down around me, my parents were gone shopping and thought my brother, sister and myself were already out playing with our friends as we usually did. I had nobody else to save myself, except myself. Perhaps my very first major survival experience I had at the age of 9.

Added:

Oh and I do plan on eventually getting to the connection of Life after this one and Dreams. I just need to cover a few things first before we reach that point