• Lucid Dreaming - Dream Views




    Page 1 of 2 1 2 LastLast
    Results 1 to 25 of 33
    Like Tree62Likes

    Thread: new conjectures about precognition and shared dreaming

    1. #1
      Member Achievements:
      Referrer Bronze Veteran First Class Made lots of Friends on DV 5000 Hall Points
      shadowofwind's Avatar
      Join Date
      Mar 2011
      Posts
      1,633
      Likes
      1213

      new conjectures about precognition and shared dreaming

      I'm developing a better guess about the nature of precognition and shared dreaming that's making more sense to me than the thoughts I had about it previously....

      The 'astral plane' is a mental projection. The reason some people get premonitions during astral experiences is that information about the future is available in the present physical world but in a way that is not generally recognized. The idea is that there are no 'random' events in the future, physically it is deterministic. It can't be determined according to the principles of classical physics, so we treat it as random. But the information is there in the quantum states. The imagination can exercise or feel that information, so to speak, it is built into how the mind works. In doing so it can feel what will happen, and also reorient it in a way that can alter what follows.

      Maybe there there's also some exotic matter involved besides normal matter and its properties (which I think also isn't understood as well as is commonly supposed). But that invisible matter doesn't match the 'astral plane' idea very well. The reason I think the astral plane is a projection, is the kinds of mistakes that are made with premonitions, or even shared dreaming experiences, seem to me to make a lot of sense if these experiences involve the exercising of a neural network that involves quantum information that's causally connected to future events.

      Formerly, I was experimenting with the idea that the information is being accessed in 'parallel worlds', but I couldn't get it to work very well. I think my imagination was confused by the sci-fi idea of parallel worlds. Now I think that actually the information isn't in other physical worlds, its encoded in the quantum states in our world. If there are other worlds also, they're not as directly involved.

      I'm not explaining this very thoroughly, and it's vague in my mind anyway. But I'm feeling fairly confident that these ideas are in the right direction. They're a lot more self-consistent and in much better agreement with my experience than with anything I've been able to understand using the 'higher worlds' or 'finer states of matter' ideas, or the more modern 'many worlds' idea.

      The 'astral' idea hasn't made sense to me except as a projection for 20 years. But talking recently about the topic with other people helped get me over the 'many worlds' mental block, after which it became a lot easier to see how the projection would work. When some people say that something is a projection, they mean that its illusory or not real. I don't mean it that way. There is information in it that is real.

    2. #2
      Lucid Dreamer Achievements:
      1000 Hall Points Veteran First Class Made Friends on DV Created Dream Journal Referrer Bronze
      Summerlander's Avatar
      Join Date
      Oct 2011
      Gender
      Posts
      334
      Likes
      312
      DJ Entries
      19
      I am loving the fact that you are thinking critically and making observations about relevant phenomena. We can ascertain that all we have is subjective experience; in other words, whether we are awake or dreaming, what we perceive is always a mental model.

      For the sake of simplicity, let's say that when we are awake and perceiving the objective world—as Stephen LaBerge would say—we are experiencing 'dreaming constrained by sensory input'. At night, largely in REM sleep, we experience 'dreaming unconstrained by sensory input'. So, where there is some form of consciousness, there is dreaming; dreaming is all we have.

      Everyday, all over the globe, at least 20 billion dreams are experienced. We may not agree on a precise number, but we can agree that on a daily basis, the sum of all dreams on Earth by human beings is in the gazillions. If this is so, then there will be, by mere chance amidst a majority of uninteresting sleep experiences, some coincidental dreams that might be interpreted as 'precognitive' or 'telepathic'. There has to be a few dreams that will somewhat coincide with future events—for if these dreams never happened, then it would be really weird. It would be as weird as nobody ever winning the lottery. Somebody is bound to win once in a while, right? In a similar vein, the dreaming mind is bound to have its 'hits' which are less frequent than 'misses' or the average, ordinary dream.

      We also have to consider that the human mind evolved to have a lot of predictive power. If it didn't, our species would have died out long ago. We must be able to predict future scenarios in order to preclude danger and increase our chances of survival. The subconscious mind makes a lot of connections that we aren't even aware of most of the time; once in a while, we get insightful nuggets in the form of Eureka moments, intuition, presentiments, epiphanies, etc.

      The human brain is a remarkable organ—we know of no other organ more complex than this, so, before we start jumping the gun on wild speculations of clairvoyance, telepathy and shared dreaming, we have all these other mundane explanations and theories to rule out first in every individual case. In this post, I hope to highly demonstrate why it is so difficult to 'prove' the veracity of such experiences.

      And a good dose of epistemology is always handy! Imagine: In terms of perception, I leave my body, float around what appears to be my bedroom, return to reality, and start telling the world I had a genuine OOBE. But did I really separate from the physical or was it all a very convincing sleep hallucination? Was it my bedroom, or a mental model generated from 'photographic memory'? How accurate was the subconscious in producing that bedroom replica?

      How much can we claim to know?

      The human mind doesn't need the aid of parallel universes or alternate realities in order to imagine what could have been. We don't need to see a winged pig in waking life in order to dream of a flying pig when we sleep. Our minds can put together, say, the concept of an eagle and that of a pig and, voilà, a pig with wings.

      I have recently finished reading Max Tegmark's Our Mathematical Universe which explores Everett's and Schrödinger's equations and explains why a multiverse is more likely than not. But it is my understanding that such parallel worlds have decohered from our version of events long ago, and we are so quantum-entangled to this world that our observation appears to collapse reality. But we can certainly see evidence of superpositions in experiments like the double-slit.

      If you look at my signature, you will come across the concept of a hybrid brain state which compounds waking consciousness and dreaming. At around 40Hz (gamma frequency), it tends to produce autoscopy (OBEs) and lucid dreaming. They used to be referred to as dissociative REM states—even though sometimes they can occur outside REM—but it was clearly a mouthful. More recently, Raduga et al popularised a more pragmatic umbrella term: the phase or phase state.

      Now in my journal, I adopted a method of writing ordinary dreams under the heading 'DREAM STATE'; lucid dreams and out-of-body experiences under 'PHASE STATE', and my thoughts, plans and actions in the real world under 'WAKING STATE'.

      I don't use the term 'astral projection'. It is too belief-centric for me. Just because the mind can realistically produce the idea of what an astral plane would be like does not automatically give the concept any objective existence. Why should it when imagination is limitless?
      Last edited by Summerlander; 04-02-2021 at 11:16 PM. Reason: Additional
      THE PHASE = waking consciousness during sleep hybridisation at 40Hz of brainwave activity conducive to lucid dreaming and autoscopy.

    3. #3
      Member Achievements:
      Referrer Bronze Veteran First Class Made lots of Friends on DV 5000 Hall Points
      shadowofwind's Avatar
      Join Date
      Mar 2011
      Posts
      1,633
      Likes
      1213
      Hello. Quickly reviewing a half dozen of the possible explanations for premonitions:

      The 'random coincidences' explanation only works for some premonitions. Many people get a couple of clear premonitions in a lifetime, and the experience is different from other dreams. They know its a premonition before the corresponding event occurs. A very small number of people get a lot of premonitions. From about 2010 to 2014 would get very clear ones a couple times per week. The amount of faith required to believe that these are 'random' quickly becomes very large.

      The 'extrapolating from past experience in amazing ways' explanation also only works for some premonitions. In some cases, there's no plausible way an event can be classically predicted from past experiences. An example would be a premonition of an engine failure due to a bird strike. Someone who isn't even in the area isn't going to be able to see that coming a few hours ahead of time using any scientifically accepted mechanism. The 'random coincidence' explanation might somewhat plausibly be used here if it only happens once, but again, some people have these kinds of experiences a lot.

      Another possible explanation would be if someone has a lot of premonitions, but ignores the ones that don't come true, and waits indefinitely for a suitably close experience before declaring one true. There are of course people who want to see themselves as psychic or prophetic, and who aren't very objective or careful with their statistics. But for those who would rather discover that they're not psychic than be deluded about it, such fallacies can be ruled out with a reasonable degree of objective honesty. Most of my premonitions have been followed by the corresponding event within a few hours. Sometimes it takes years, but those are rarer, and again the experience is different. There's a sense of timeframe during the premonition.

      Another possible explanation would be retroactively creating a false memory of the premonition when the event occurs. One way to disprove that is to write the premonition down and/or communicate it to someone else before the corresponding event.

      Another explanation is that some people lie about their experiences. That's true. It's also true that many people have had uncommon experiences that they're not lying about.

      Another possible explanation is that the event is a self-fulfilling prophecy caused by the person who had the premonition. That one only works if the person is somehow involved with the event. Otherwise, it requires some kind of action at a distance which doesn't have a commonly accepted scientific explanation either. For me, the difference between psychically witnessing something and psychically causing something is never very well defined, and this confusion is part of what's driven me to try to understand what's going on.

      Another possibility is if the premonition and the event are both responding to the same unnoticed prior trigger, even though there's apparently no connection between the premonition and the event. As an example, one of my first clear premonitions was of a train derailment which happened the same morning I dreamed it. Train cars look vaguely like shipping containers, and I'd seen shipping containers on a TV show the previous night. The derailment was caused by someone intentionally leaving their vehicle on the tracks. Maybe they saw the same images of shipping containers, which made them think of a train derailing, then they acted on it rather than merely dreaming it? That might work for that premonition, but it fails for a lot of other ones.

      Unusually detailed seasonal patterns would be another possibility similar to the previous one. Again, it only works using conventional mechanisms for some premonitions, and fails for others.

      For me, premonitions are closely related to telepathetic experiences, and seem to be two different aspects of the same phenomena.

      A problem is that known physics does not support either kind of experience. For something to be 'scientifically accepted', a person has to be able to at least posit a plausible mechanism. For mental experiences which appear to violate common assumptions about time or locality, there's no plausible mechanism using existing theory. And extending the theory to accommodate the experiences is prohibitively difficult, at least right away. It would be like Newton trying to understand electromagnetics. Existing theory wasn't close enough to be able to make that step. So I think that if a person is inclined to disbelieve anything that isn't "scientifically accepted", then all such a person can do is find 'rational explanations' where applicable and ignore everything else. Scientific evidence, of the kind that can be rigorously controlled and reproduced by anyone who wants to in a laboratory setting, isn't the only kind of objective evidence though. Also, current scientific theory falls short for some scientific problems also. Most physicists aren't philosophers, and tend to ignore what doesn't make sense if its not stopping them from doing their experimental or mathematical work. But many physicists believe there are problems with the foundations of quantum mechanics, even aside from it not being reconciled with gravity.

      There are theoretical physicists who think that the 'many worlds' type of multiverse is neither plausible nor real. I'm not a theoretical physicist, but I'm in that camp. Part of the origin of confusion here is explanatory. People try to describe physics, to themselves and to other people, in ways that makes conceptual sense. But the explanations often don't really say what the math says. A lot of what one reads that is written by physicists is subtly wrong, or gives the wrong impression, not because they're trying to deceive, but because they're trying to explain it without reverting to abstract principles that most people aren't familiar with. I think that the 'many worlds' interpretation is halfway like that, and common interpretations of wavefunction collapse tend to be like that also.

      One of the mistakes that some have made when trying to study telepathy, is they think about it as if it is like sending a signal, or a message. I think that it is not very much like that, so experiments that look for it to be like that tend to fail. It is more like empathy, except that you're directly touching the other person in some mysterious way, rather than relating exclusively to a toy model of them in your own mind that you built out of past sensate experiences. What I call 'shared dreaming' is essentially what I'm calling empathy, except that similar sound and picture images are individually built up around a partially shared underlying experience.

      Elements of my first post in this thread are new for me, but I haven't said anything in this follow-up post that I haven't gone over many, many times in previous threads. If you're interested in further discussion you might consider taking some of it off-line, because much of what I have experienced or know is connected to details that are personal to other people and shouldn't be posted in a public forum. If you send a private message there's more I'm willing to say in e-mail than when posting, even though there's a fair amount that I am willing to say publicly also, so this way is fine too if you prefer. My time is limited though, so I may say some things without anything like adequate explanation or evidence.
      Summerlander likes this.

    4. #4
      Administrator Achievements:
      1 year registered Made lots of Friends on DV Veteran First Class 10000 Hall Points Stickie King Vivid Dream Journal Referrer Bronze
      Sivason's Avatar
      Join Date
      Jul 2007
      LD Count
      2500ish
      Gender
      Location
      Idaho
      Posts
      4,829
      Likes
      5863
      DJ Entries
      420
      Quote Originally Posted by shadowofwind View Post
      Elements of my first post in this thread are new for me, but I haven't said anything in this follow-up post that I haven't gone over many, many times in previous threads. If you're interested in further discussion you might consider taking some of it off-line, because much of what I have experienced or know is connected to details that are personal to other people and shouldn't be posted in a public forum. If you send a private message there's more I'm willing to say in e-mail than when posting, even though there's a fair amount that I am willing to say publicly also, so this way is fine too if you prefer. My time is limited though, so I may say some things without anything like adequate explanation or evidence.
      Your exceptional thoughts and take on this sort of stuff is too valuable to move them to PM! Maybe you can use fake names and such?

      Summerlander, You seem a little invested in the rational/ physical explanation existing. I have studied much science and scientific theory and it is my feeling that not being open to phenomena beyond traditional understanding/ physics is not honestly rational. So I then wonder at the psychology of the seeker who is invested in doubting. I hope that makes sense. Any input? Given what ShadowofWind said about Newton not understanding electromagnetism it would be understandable for Newton to have said modern inventions were far too fanciful to even consider and should be left in Fairytales while the real scientists discuss trigonometry. What I am looking for is not to attack you at all, but to see if you can relate why disbelief such as atheism (not that you are) serves the psyche of the disbeliever.

      In this thread you will see a couple examples of my type of precog dream. It seems far to specific and time sensitive to write off.

      My belief system is so simple. I do not need to fret with a mechanism for weird things. I believe that reality does not exist. Wow, really. I could explain this using the concepts of mystical Hinduism which explain basically that something grander than us is "dreaming" this into existence, but I find the movie The Matrix is an easier metaphor. E=MC2 implies that matter is simply a form of the one base thing that exists which is generically energy. Energy can change form but in the end everything is some manipulation of energy. So if we assume this, and call this world a God level advance virtual reality with many firmly established laws (such as gravity and electro/mag) nothing is very far fetched after that.
      Last edited by Sivason; 04-03-2021 at 07:12 AM.
      Hilary, Sageous and Summerlander like this.
      Peace Be With You. Oh, and sure, The Force too, why not.



      "Instruction in Dream Yoga"

    5. #5
      Member Achievements:
      Made lots of Friends on DV Created Dream Journal 1000 Hall Points Veteran First Class
      Occipitalred's Avatar
      Join Date
      Jan 2013
      Posts
      766
      Likes
      1160
      DJ Entries
      8
      Shadowofwind What's your relationship with precognition?

      Are you drawn to it for the predictive power?
      Or are do you simply enjoy its company?

      For me it's the latter. My precognitive experiences have always been devoid of pragmatic value but I get a sense that I'm not alone.
      Sivason likes this.

    6. #6
      Member Achievements:
      Referrer Bronze Veteran First Class Made lots of Friends on DV 5000 Hall Points
      shadowofwind's Avatar
      Join Date
      Mar 2011
      Posts
      1,633
      Likes
      1213
      Sivason,

      In your first large paragraph you go directly at motive. I agree that's where most of the real action is. However, I want to make a few points in defense of where Summerlander appears to me to be coming from.

      1. As a culture, 'science' is often prone to dismissing things as unreal which can't currently be accommodated scientifically. That's a mistake. However, within the area where phenomena can be rigorously studied and controlled, science has been very, very successful. If you go to the 'science' section of the bookstore, most of what you read is demonstrably true, notwithstanding some assumptions that are pushed a bit too far or some important things that are left out. That contrasts favorably to the spirituality section, where people are to a large degree just making stuff up, or parroting other people who made stuff up in the past, Almost all of it is misleading, which matters because it alters how we think about things in ways that have consequences.

      2. Different people are working on different problems in their lives, and all of us let some problems or contradictions slide while we work on other things. But some of those problems that aren't so important to us do matter more to other people. And sometimes they'd matter more to us also, if we were seeing things more clearly in some regards. The process of bringing what's true more into focus has to start somewhere, and one good place to start is by looking at what is already understood scientifically and seeing how far it goes.

      3. One useful problem solving technique is to set aside aspects of a problem that are too hard to solve at present, and work on the easier aspects. After progress is made where it is easier, than the harder part also gets easier, and it can be solved also. Another, almost opposite approach, is to go directly at what appear to be the most crucial parts of the problem, because if they can't be solved, the less crucial parts don't even matter. In some ways I skew strongly towards this second approach, though both are needed. There are important questions that none of the esoteric religious teachings attempt to answer, but which science can not currently answer either. If science as a culture claims to have answers to those questions, but doesn't really, then those claims need to be examined so that they can be gotten out of the way. Those claims aren't so much in your way personally, since you don't care about them.
      But they matter directly to other people, and even for you they affect the mental and psychic ocean you swim in. Rhetorically, one way to examine them is to present them as possible answers and see if anyone can knock them down convincingly. I think it's true what you say that when most people present arguments, they're committed to the conclusions those arguments support, and almost no amount of logic or evidence is going to change them. But that's not what everybody is doing.

      4. As I see it, a characteristic of most scientifically inclined people, and most atheists, is they want everything to be understandable. This amounts to a kind of control. A person feels knowledgeable and powerful when they have a dragon chained in the lab. Wild dragons that you only sometimes see are more unsettling to this kind of personality. Many people would rather live in a delusion of being in control than recognize that they're not in control. But a few people place not being deluded as a higher value. So even if such a person is temperamentally inclined to prefer everything to be well defined, they're still willing to grapple honestly with things that aren't.

      5. For those who, when push comes to shove, prefer a false sense of wisdom to recognizing their own ignorance, that's not necessarily the wrong choice for them to make. Going back to my second point, we all work on things in our own necessary order. There are some things that nobody is presently equipped to deal with. So everyone fudges something. Some people fudge the logic, and refuse to see things that they don't know how to handle. Other people fudge the emotion more, and the recognize more of the facts but don't allow themselves to really feel the implications. Fudging neither can produce a level of psychological stress that's unhelpful. There may be a deeper perspective that resolves the conflict, and a degree of honesty is necessary to get there. However, in many cases that deeper perspective isn't attainable - a person needs to grow more first. And growth is more than a matter of embracing a philosophy. This is one reason I don't always dig directly at motive, even though I see that so much other discussion can be a waste of time. The half-truths that I have could be unhelpful for someone else, and if I could somehow force or foist those on the other person I would not necessarily be doing them a favor.

      In regards to your 'reality does not exist' worldview, I think this is something that works for you, and would likely be useful for the rest of us to understand better. However, it's also true that it has limitations and is not in all ways enough for everyone. This goes back to my second point again.

      In regards to sharing personal information using fake names and whatnot, that's not really a solution. Some of my experiences are remarkably unique, and there's no way I can obscure identifying information without altering so much that they're not really the same experiences any more. The way that I think is also distinctive enough that if anyone who knows me reads anything I write they can probably figure out who it is just from that. I hear what you're saying though, that there's value to having things out in the open, and I'm glad that you find the time I've put into this to be worth something.

      My travel schedule has firmed up a bit by the way. I'll be in Boise on July 4th, but might not have more than a couple of hours open. Then I'll be back again briefly a week later.
      Occipitalred and Venryx like this.

    7. #7
      Member Achievements:
      Referrer Bronze Veteran First Class Made lots of Friends on DV 5000 Hall Points
      shadowofwind's Avatar
      Join Date
      Mar 2011
      Posts
      1,633
      Likes
      1213
      Quote Originally Posted by Occipitalred View Post
      Shadowofwind What's your relationship with precognition?

      Are you drawn to it for the predictive power?
      Or are do you simply enjoy its company?

      For me it's the latter. My precognitive experiences have always been devoid of pragmatic value but I get a sense that I'm not alone.
      On the face of it, the predictive power of my clear precognitive experiences is pretty much useless. Most of what I see I can't do anything about anyway, and there are significant things that would do something about but I don't see. I think that the clear precognitive experiences are one form of a more subtle, mostly subconscious process which does have more value. But a person doesn't have to have the overtly precognitive experiences to benefit from that. If anything the overtly precognitive experiences are a weaker mode of thinking and being than the other, more subtle way.

      Part of the reason it matters to me is there's a connection between who I am and what happens in the world around me. Who I am is a bit screwed up in some ways. Maybe part of being able to change is better recognizing the true nature of who I am and what that does. Some of my experiences teach me about some of those connections.

      Another reason I care, is I see all the world religions and philosophies as ultimately being dead ends. In the near term, they're a mix of helpful and unhelpful that is presumably a net positive for most people. But as I see it, none of them ultimately achieve what they claim to. So a lot of what I've been doing is looking for the next step for myself. The experiences I've had are relevant because they're clues about that that next step is. In fact, I think the precognitive aspect of those experiences is in most ways more of a side effect of my learning process than the main point. I move my sense of identity in a way that facilitates getting certain kinds of insights, and that movement tends to produce precognitive experiences. I guess that's similar to what you're saying. Our interconnectedness, and the vague and fluid way in which the line can be drawn between 'I' and 'we', is closely related to precognition. For me, the 'dream telepathy' stuff started as precognitive experiences, then I noticed and started paying more attention to that other aspect of it.

      There's also something else about that movement of 'self' though. It is an important part of what freedom is for me. I feel suffocated, and not fully alive, if I'm not exercising it. That doesn't mean that I need to have concretely precognitive experiences, but I do need to swim in that water where that can happen, so to speak.

    8. #8
      Administrator Achievements:
      1 year registered Made lots of Friends on DV Veteran First Class 10000 Hall Points Stickie King Vivid Dream Journal Referrer Bronze
      Sivason's Avatar
      Join Date
      Jul 2007
      LD Count
      2500ish
      Gender
      Location
      Idaho
      Posts
      4,829
      Likes
      5863
      DJ Entries
      420
      Quote Originally Posted by shadowofwind View Post

      In regards to your 'reality does not exist' worldview, I think this is something that works for you, and would likely be useful for the rest of us to understand better. However, it's also true that it has limitations and is not in all ways enough for everyone. This goes back to my second point again.



      My travel schedule has firmed up a bit by the way. I'll be in Boise on July 4th, but might not have more than a couple of hours open. Then I'll be back again briefly a week later.
      Thanks for the insight. I think the portion you wrote about a sense of control over dragons hits here. My own experience makes the world view fit for me but what a long way away from a sense of control it holds. It basically means even if you master the world of science you could not control or understand everything because something "higher" than you could actually change the rules at a whim. I find it calming because I have a feeling of true understanding "none of this is real, why should anything be surprising?" but it also is removing all sense of control. It also is a deflation of sense of self and worth, "I am part of something else's dream?!"

      Well I definitely will not have to work on July 4th so we should be able to get lunch or something.
      Summerlander likes this.
      Peace Be With You. Oh, and sure, The Force too, why not.



      "Instruction in Dream Yoga"

    9. #9
      Member Achievements:
      Referrer Bronze Veteran First Class Made lots of Friends on DV 5000 Hall Points
      shadowofwind's Avatar
      Join Date
      Mar 2011
      Posts
      1,633
      Likes
      1213
      I think there are things that we're responsible for, that we have a little real power over, whether we recognize it or not. Better understanding my place in the larger scheme of things helps me use that power more constructively.

      I knew a guy in Boise named Peter who thought that believing oneself to be completely powerless is The Answer. He didn't work a job, he sponged off of girlfriends and collected a government disability check. His ostensible "disability" was that his quazi-Zen belief in powerlessness was crippling and prevented from working. Maybe that's something he needed to go through. I think though that it doesn't take a lot of honesty to see that in the end it is a path of malarkey, and it doesn't treat other people right. I think this strain of thinking infects a lot of mystical thought. Once people realize that their sense of power is to a large extent imagined, many can't resist the temptation to imagine it in a way that seems to relieve them of all their responsibilities and put it elsewhere.

      I'm not suggesting you're doing that. I'm just pointing out that personal control and objective knowledge has a place also, even though you obviously know something about that also.

    10. #10
      Lucid Dreamer Achievements:
      1000 Hall Points Veteran First Class Made Friends on DV Created Dream Journal Referrer Bronze
      Summerlander's Avatar
      Join Date
      Oct 2011
      Gender
      Posts
      334
      Likes
      312
      DJ Entries
      19
      Hi, Shadowofwind

      Just to push back a bit on ruling out the 'random coincidences' hypothesis altogether, we must take into account confirmation bias and our pattern-seeking tendencies as human beings. In a similar way that we can conjure up neurological theories for the déjà vu phenomenon—where we may posit, as the result of a synaptic glitch instance, a double reuptake of information into consciousness—as possible explanations for the sensation of having seen brand-new events in the past (as cognitive scientist Daniel Dennett once intuited), and also the false memory syndrome where we are so sure that things happened a certain way when in fact it is often not so, we can also imagine scenarios where we fall prey to other illusions of certainty regarding ostensible precognition.

      A small number of individuals may get a feeling that certain peculiar dreams are prophetic and look for matching events in the future until, through pure pattern-seeking and biased association, such is found in reality, which may even alter mnemonic details of said dream to match newfound actuality. The unusual quality of the original dream says nothing about its alleged paranormality, for we know that some dreams are more vivid than others, lucid dreams themselves can be intensified to display different levels of realism, and we know that profound epiphanies can be experienced through mind-altering drugs such as psychedelics. A feeling is just that: a feeling, regardless of whether or not it coincides with reality. On this note, how many equally impactful dreams or visions are recorded but never come to fruition?

      Furthermore, I think this is also an important point to consider to bring some healthy scepticism to the table: Each dream is unique and therefore different from every other dream in some way—even a recurrent dream differs from the original for the oneiric 'clone' is recognised at some stage to be a repetition whereas the initial one isn't. Dreams may uniquely differ from one another in lucidity, realism, creativity, shapes, colour, form, degrees of abstraction, etc. So we have to be careful when we say that a particular dream differs from the rest. They all differ in some way even if a specific type, granted, is more infrequent than the norm. One has to be careful with affirmations of claiming to know something with certainty. Often, a person who claims to know only thinks he or she knows. Even Einstein learned this lesson with his intuition of necessarily, but erroneously adding, a cosmological constant that would beget the description of a static universe when equations were initially predicting the counterintuitive picture of an expanding universe.

      It may seem like a quantum leap of faith, at first, to consider mere chance the unlikely onslaught of apparently precognitive dreams in sometimes short spaces of time. But perspective can radically change with the alteration of context or even additional information. For instance, in an episode of Derren Brown, a gambler had been anonymously contacted by the illusionist where, in a message, he claimed to have devised a matrix system of predicting future winners. The gambler was initially sceptical until she placed bets as instructed and, to her surprise, won every single time. She become convinced her mysterious instructor was a real psychic!

      However, at the end, Derren Brown finally went to meet the gambler with an explanation: she was merely one subject in an experiment involving several others who had lost bets somewhere along the way. As reality would have it, from her perspective, the series of events she witnessed were 'too much coincidence' to the point of seeming magical or precognitive; but, nevertheless, she happened to stand on top of a 'pyramid' of failed subjects, and, as luck would have it, was the only one who had won all the bets. And this is how bookies make their money: there are more losers than winners (and the wins are excitedly talked about by punters more than their losses). I should know as I worked for Betfred for many years ...

      Moving on, and not to be a spoilsport, I would equally urge caution with the 'past extrapolation' hypothesis and invoke Professor Iain McGilchrist's wisdom on this one where brain hemispheres are concerned and bicameral theory ...

      The left brain tends to think it has everything sussed out but is often restricted by rigid labels and strict, but incomplete, models of reality. The left hemisphere is dull and unimaginative when it reckons all sensory data must make sense based on existent, formulated connections, causing it to refrain from useful, new associations that may initially feel untenable against its model of the world. Until the right-brain says, as it were, 'Try it and see.' The left-brain is constricted by its language, assuming new information simply has to fit the paradigm.

      The right brain has no such restraints and possesses abstract freedom conducive to thinking 'outside the box' and progressive ideas—the source of Eureka moments, recollection of vital information and problem-solving when the left-side finally decides to take a break and give its cerebral counterpart a chance. The right-side is holistic and welcomes paradigm shifts—something that often causes cognitive dissonance in its restricted counterpart.

      So when we reckon past experiences are insufficient predictors of future events, we need to think again. How many past experiences can we consciously recall versus the unimaginable, vast reservoir of information and myriad schemas within the subconscious mind? Again, urging caution, we must remind ourselves that implausibility/improbability does not equate with impossibility.

      I have had what could be described as 'precognitive OOBEs' but I am not jumping the gun on any certainty. We should absolutely have an open mind that perhaps humans may stumble upon psychic abilities—especially when they induce altered states of consciousness. On an episode of superhumans, a man was using lucid dreaming to remote view what someone was seeing in another location, and although what the lucid dreamer described didn't exactly match the other individuals' perspective, strong abstract connections could be made between both viewpoints. I remember getting the impression, at the time, that the lucid dreamer saw an interpretive 'blueprint' of the other person's reified, visual experience.

      Whenever I find myself in love with what seems like a possible explanation, I hear alarm bells ringing. Test your pet theories. Question your current beliefs. After all, it is what any decent scientist should do. If a theory is taking flight, don't add rockets to it; don't provide it with a parachute. Instead, add weights to it in order to ascertain how strong it is. Keep testing it! Try to pull it down and see if it stands the test of time. Sometimes, before you get the chance to say, 'I see an accident waiting to happen', you have a peculiar dream about it instead. Unless, of course, we see these things coming by other, as of yet unknown, means. Perhaps the passage of time is an illusion and, fourth-dimensionally, there is a vantage point betraying a static, energy structure defining the spacetime continuum; a single quantum wave where causation is revealed to be a mere connection in extended relativity, and perhaps, in this way, complex brains such as ours can, sometimes, subjectively sense these connections.

      Anyway, what I'm saying here is only conjecture. In defence of your statement, known physics is incomplete. Eric Weinstein is currently refining a new theory of everything called geometric unity which can potentially do away with the multiverse as it explores Paul Dirac's equations, riemann spaces, chirality and spinors whose simulations I couldn't even envision until I came across them. It can potentially solve the problem of quantum gravity. The point is, we are all still learning ...

      I have also had OOBEs, over my phase state practising years that could be described as somewhat 'telepathic'. I would enter the phase and willingly translocate to the abodes of people I desired to visit. Every single time, when I called or messaged them about the experiences, they expressed shock and felt that they had been visited. The associations were striking enough for me to posit that I might have been tapping into what was on their minds at the time, rather than me visiting them, incorporeally, in the physical world. I considered the possibility that their house replicas were their own mental projections according to where they perceived themselves to be, which I intruded upon within a mental medium—never truly physical.

      Now, even though Michael Persinger failed to convince the scientific community of the plausibility of remote viewing and the quantum entanglement of minds within the geomagnetic field, I wouldn't rule it out completely. But I wouldn't be prematurely certain of it either when I know that sometimes, when people want something to be true, they look for associations—which could be the alternative explanation behind the excitement of the 'visited'. There has also been an instance of apparent shared dreaming between me and my wife—but, needless to say, the levels of love and empathy skyrocket here. Our perspectives in waking life also relate closely.

      Sivason, still working on a reply to your post. It should follow shortly. Great thread, guys!
      Last edited by Summerlander; 04-03-2021 at 09:06 PM. Reason: Additional
      Venryx likes this.
      THE PHASE = waking consciousness during sleep hybridisation at 40Hz of brainwave activity conducive to lucid dreaming and autoscopy.

    11. #11
      Administrator Achievements:
      1 year registered Made lots of Friends on DV Veteran First Class 10000 Hall Points Stickie King Vivid Dream Journal Referrer Bronze
      Sivason's Avatar
      Join Date
      Jul 2007
      LD Count
      2500ish
      Gender
      Location
      Idaho
      Posts
      4,829
      Likes
      5863
      DJ Entries
      420
      Quote Originally Posted by Summerlander View Post
      Now, even though Michael Persinger failed to convince the scientific community of the plausibility of remote viewing and the quantum entanglement of minds within the geomagnetic field, I wouldn't rule it out completely. But I wouldn't be prematurely certain of it either when I know that sometimes, when people want something to be true, they look for associations—which could be the alternative explanation behind the excitement of the 'visited'. There has also been an instance of apparent shared dreaming between me and my wife—but, needless to say, the levels of love and empathy skyrocket here. Our perspectives in waking life also relate closely.
      That is open minded enough for me! Cheers. If I say my own experience has beyond proven these things to me, it is of no worth to anyone but me. We need to remember Shadowofwind gave one plausible theory of "some of these people are liars." My own belief can stand up to rational examination and debate, but in no way can I use that to talk anyone else into acceptance. They should not, of course, form firm opinions based on the word of others. I have in fact revised many of my youthful beliefs abandoning some hope that certain magical things are likely. As an example I believed I was doing OBE in that I assumed my spirit/ soul or something actually left my body. With experience I could see that lucid dreaming can 100% explain everything I experienced (I still believe the astral stuff). Using Occum's Razor here the correct answer was lucid dreams (walking around a ghostly version of my house, etc). Some of my experience is clear to me and I believe, as an educated rational science based professional, involves phenomena of a magical/ spiritual nature. However, I gladly accept that my word on this is not worth the time taken to read it.

      I will definitely look forward to any insight you may give on the psychology involved.
      Last edited by Sivason; 04-03-2021 at 10:01 PM.
      Summerlander likes this.
      Peace Be With You. Oh, and sure, The Force too, why not.



      "Instruction in Dream Yoga"

    12. #12
      Lucid Dreamer Achievements:
      1000 Hall Points Veteran First Class Made Friends on DV Created Dream Journal Referrer Bronze
      Summerlander's Avatar
      Join Date
      Oct 2011
      Gender
      Posts
      334
      Likes
      312
      DJ Entries
      19
      I am also glad these valuable ideas are not lost in PM format. Just to clarify—but I think you have already gathered, folks—the scepticism I've expressed here is not intended to deny extraordinary claims with some materialistic dogma. Relative to Shadowofwind's 'people lying' theory, this brand of scepticism has its origins in having witnessed certain meretricious individuals, over the years, either getting caught in their own lies or deliberately distorting the reality of what we experience with the intent to impress upon others some kind of unattainable 'guru' status—which can put newcomers off of discovering these phenomena for themselves from an unbiased standpoint. But yeah, as a teenager I became interested in science, and reading about Darwinism and Voltaire's Candide pretty much steered me towards atheism. But that is my journey, anyway.

      The teachings of the Buddha are as 'spiritual' as I get, as I see great insight in mindfulness and dovetails with my interest in lucid dreaming nicely. Of course, if upon my demise I meet some kind of sentient Creator, I will cease to be an atheist—but I really can't see the god of Abraham, or any other human depiction of the Almighty, being what is found at the end of this journey if nihilism is false.

      By the way, sivason, you might like Donald Hoffman, the proponent of multimodal user interface and conscious realism theories. I certainly find his ideas interesting and imagine that they might resonate with you in that reality, in the least, isn't what we think it is, and reminds us of the irreducible nature of consciousness which is still puzzling. It might even be the canvas itself, in its blatant primacy! After all, nothing can be said to exist without it. Here's an excerpt from Wiki, but you might have more fun listening to his insightful seminars and interviews which can be found on YouTube, as I feel that I could never do his eloquence justice:

      'Hoffman notes that the commonly held view that brain activity causes conscious experience has, so far, proved to be intractable in terms of scientific explanation. Hoffman proposes a solution to the*hard problem of consciousness*by adopting the converse view that consciousness causes brain activity and, in fact, creates all objects and properties of the physical world. To this end, Hoffman developed and combined two theories: the "multimodal user interface" (MUI) theory of perception and "conscious realism".'

      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_D._Hoffman

      The psychology involved here applies to all of us. Our experiences have an impact on our beliefs.

      At the start of my practice, I had an experience that convinced me I had been to a spiritual plane of existence, because, upon separation from the body, I entered a mirror with an angelic being silently at the gates, as it were, standing between two perceived worlds. I accessed a vibrant and colourful land with perfectly cropped trees, a great river, an enchanting forest, cottages like something out of a fairytale and rainbows in the sky. I heard the beautiful chirping of birds and flute sounds pervading the atmosphere as I flew over this magical land. I felt love and a deep desire to stay there forever, and was sad to wake up from it.

      The following day I wanted answers so I went to the local library and found David Fontana's book, Is There An Afterlife. I flicked through the book and came across descriptions of a certain higher plane of existence by people who had OOBEs and NDEs in particular. The author cast them under the category of 'upper astral plane', aka., Summerland. As I read on, I was shocked to find several accounts describing a river, perfectly cropped trees, rainbows and cute cottages. It had such an impact on me that I decided to call myself 'Summerlander' when I first joined a forum of like-minded enthusiasts—the now obsolete, 'Astral Viewers'.

      Over the years I considered the possibility of people sometimes experiencing similar things en masse due to similar cultures, backgrounds, childhoods—in particular, storytelling, and, well, the fact that we are all human beings with similar brains. I could no longer bring myself to believe, wholeheartedly, in astral projection when, theoretically, large secretions of endogenous DMT could have been responsible for a very intense sleep hallucination. Lucid dreaming can indeed produce anything imaginable. But again, on what grounds can I claim, with absolute certainty, that the dead are not residing in other conscious planes of existence as we speak?

      This is me, in all honesty, being open-minded. I cannot be sure of anything other than the colourful qualia I subjectively experience when I lucid dream, and even then, I am not quite sure about the nature of what presents itself in that elusive state.
      Last edited by Summerlander; 04-04-2021 at 12:51 AM. Reason: Additional
      Occipitalred and Sivason like this.
      THE PHASE = waking consciousness during sleep hybridisation at 40Hz of brainwave activity conducive to lucid dreaming and autoscopy.

    13. #13
      Administrator Achievements:
      1 year registered Made lots of Friends on DV Veteran First Class 10000 Hall Points Stickie King Vivid Dream Journal Referrer Bronze
      Sivason's Avatar
      Join Date
      Jul 2007
      LD Count
      2500ish
      Gender
      Location
      Idaho
      Posts
      4,829
      Likes
      5863
      DJ Entries
      420
      Thank you for the thoughtful reply!
      Summerlander likes this.
      Peace Be With You. Oh, and sure, The Force too, why not.



      "Instruction in Dream Yoga"

    14. #14
      Member Achievements:
      Referrer Bronze Veteran First Class Made lots of Friends on DV 5000 Hall Points
      shadowofwind's Avatar
      Join Date
      Mar 2011
      Posts
      1,633
      Likes
      1213
      Summerlander,

      I listed some potential explanations that can be tried when analyzing experiences. It wasn't an exhaustive list, and I didn't attempt to go through a long list of experiences and argue where those potential explanations succeed or fail in relation to those examples. The primary reason I didn't do that is I have had hundreds of relevant experiences, and over a thousand fairly long posts on this forum already. I don't have time to rehash everything. I realize that just saying that I'm aware of such and such explanations isn't much of an argument. But hopefully its enough to suggest that I might have thought through some of this stuff in a sound manner, even though it isn't anywhere near enough to demonstrate that I did.

      In your response, you doubled down on a couple of points as if assuming that other people haven't considered these adequately. For instance, you ask "how many equally impactful dreams or visions are recorded but never come to fruition?" That was the third point I listed. In my words, "someone has a lot of premonitions, but ignores the ones that don't come true, and waits indefinitely for a suitably close experience before declaring one true". It was important enough in my mind that it was the first point I brought up after the "random coincidences" and "extrapolation" points, which were more directly in response to your earlier comments. Are you arguing with us as if we're other people you used to know? For all you know, I've thought about all of these points at least as long and as incisively as you have.

      As another example, you say "So when we reckon past experiences are insufficient predictors of future events, we need to think again." I've "thought again" thousands of times. How much is enough? I've spent a large portion of my adult life critically analyzing this, and testing ambiguous cases by generating further premonitions which are specifically designed to show whether potential explanations work or not. I gave you one example, out of many, many possible examples, albeit without very much detail. I maintain that you can not plausibly predict a jet engine failure an hour before it happens based on past experience when you're 2000 miles away. There are other possible explanations and fallacies to be considered also of course, but that's why I listed more of them besides that one.

      In science, after you form a hypothesis, and test it, you move on if it doesn't work. You may go back to it and resurrect some part of it that still seems to be potentially of value, or if you find evidence that suggests a flaw in your previous experiment. But you don't keep going back to the same failed hypothesis over and over and over as if unable to accept reality. So in that spirit, no I don't have to continue to "think again" when I reckon past experiences are insufficient predictors of future events. In fact I've been over that ground so many times I'd be an idiot if I continued to keep going over it.

      There's an asymmetry in our arguments here. If you tell me that in your view extrapolation from past experience is a plausible explanations for premonitions you have had or other people have told you about, I don't have any disagreement with that at all. They're your experiences, and you know far more about them that I do. But if you tell me that extrapolation from past experience remains a plausible explanation for my experiences, that's another matter, because you have very thin information about what my experiences have been. This brings us back to the point Sivason made about power. Some people seem to resent the possibility that other people might have knowledge which they lack and have no reliable means to gain. People who suck at objective reasoning tend to want to dismiss science as a waste of time. People who suck at psychism tend to want to dismiss it as bogus. I'm not trying to put you in either category, you clearly fall at least partway outside of both, I'm just pointing out the dynamic.

      Earlier I said "In some cases, there's no plausible way an event can be classically predicted from past experiences." The reason I put the world "classically" in there, is I'm hypothesizing that the future is entirely defined by the present. Classically, there are myriad random events in the future. But if present quantum states are included, maybe the future is already completely defined. There's still the issue of alternative projections from the present state, which amounts to a kind of freedom. So I'm not saying the future is utterly fated. But the information necessary to make any of those projections is in the present, according to this idea, and it is a lot more information than is available classically. (I realize I haven't defined this idea of a projection at all clearly, but I can't define it clearly in this context.)

      If you want to lump in the present with the past, then you could say that this is a type of learning from 'past' experience. But it is learning from experience that is not merely extracted from past sensory information. And it is a very different kind of learning than would be recognized as real by materialist skeptics. What I'm ruling out, with a reasonable degree of confidence, is the possibility that the classical, sensory information based training is adequate. If the classical sensory information is adequate for such extrapolation, then there's still something else going on which falls well outside of generally accepted physics. Because no such patterns are present in the current model. If I can predict the flight of a bird 2000 miles away in detail, then there's something else going on that's not electromagnetics or gravity.

      Here's another example of when its appropriate to rule out a hypothesis. Looking back at past records, there's a pretty high correlation between when I have premonitions and where the gas and ice giants are relative to the earth. Some possible hypotheses would be:

      1. I've looked at planetary positions before in the past, and am subconsciously remembering them when I create the premonitions, even though I pay no attention to astrology consciously and don't remember where anything is.
      2. Other people pay attention astrology, and their actions are subtly influencing me in ways that influence my experiences.
      3. Other people pay attention to astrology, and they are psychically influencing my experiences.
      4. Gravity from the planets is influencing my thoughts.
      5. Gravity from the planets has captured some kind of dark matter, and it's position relative to the earth is influencing my thoughts.

      Of those five wild conjectures, I think I can safely rule out '4', because it makes no sense. Direct gravitational influences on my brain are strongly dominated by massive objects in my immediate vicinity. And if we consider inertial mass to be the same as rest mass, then the acceleration from me moving my head around, and other vibrations in my environment, also dwarfs the gravitational influences from faraway planets. Only the sun and the moon have a large gravitational impact, and the correlations I'm talking about are with the most massive planets, which gravitationally speaking are also very far away.

      My point is that in order to make progress with this kind of analysis, a person has to rule some things out that don't seem to work. Otherwise we spend all of our time checking things we have already checked, rather than focusing on more fruitful avenues where we seem to be making some headway.

      A couple more comments in regards to your last post....

      Since you don't want any private information, I think you should also be more willing to give the benefit of doubt on conclusions I've drawn from experiences which I haven't shared with you.

      Yes, wanna-be gurus are a sorry lot. In one way I can't judge them, since the most part I don't really know what they're capable of or how much psychological weight they've had to carry. But from another objective standpoint, they've betrayed us.

      I doubt you'll stop being an atheist after you die. It never made much sense to me that having a brain should be such a severe impediment to knowing The Truth that we'll learn everything as soon as we're dispossessed of it.

      Ironically, the only experience I've ever had with what seemed to be a dead person was with an atheist. He seemed to be vaguely aware that he was dead, but in a dream-like state and not questioning his atheism. I don't see why he would question it in any case. The idea that atheism is a serious problem for dead people is a theist position that is not shared by either of us.

      In regards to your 'great river' anecdote....Most people seem to regard paranormal or otherwise miraculous experiences as proof of the ideas which accompany the supernatural phenomena. That's never made any sense to me. If 1000 psychics think something, and you start thinking it too without talking to them, that might prove you're psychic, but it doesn't that what they think is real or true.

      Your dream also reminds me of a Masonic themed community called Paradise Park that I stumbled into while hiking. It was like your dream, but a physical place. Funnily, I was trying to follow Enoch Lane, which is essentially The Way in occult lore. I found that although it was shown as leading to the ocean on my iPhone map, in actual fact it dead-ended in a thicket.

      Years ago, every night I would have at least one dream that was an interesting parables. Over time, I started getting fewer and fewer dreams but encountering more and more funny and appropriate symbols in waking life like that.

      I'm highly skeptical of electomagnetics as a medium for shared dreaming. Trying to get information in dreams that way would be like trying to see your reflection in a shag carpet, except a gazillion times harder. Yes there's information there in principle, but there's no plausible way to get it out.

      Here's an experience I had years ago. I'm sure I've posted about this more than once previously. I was thinking about history as if it were a braided rope. It is causally connected, and there are interrelations between the numerous threads within the rope. But the rope itself can float around. Since we're a part of the rope, we can't tell objectively if it is moving, because when it moves our memories move with it. But it would be possible to objectively know that movement is possible, if one of the threads can move relative to another thread in a sharp enough way that we can see the relative change in position. While I was thinking about this, an object that I was holding in my hand suddenly appeared somewhere else, as if it had been somewhere else.

      In contrast to other experiences like premonitions and 'telepathy', I have not tried to test that experience by reproducing it over and over in different ways. It's chaos, potentially, and I don't want to risk much more of that kind of disruption. But that's one of the experiences that informs my thinking about these other subjects, because I see it to be the same kind of phenomena again but in a different form.


      Here's another experience. I'm dreaming, and I have magic dice. I toss the dice, and they bounce around and come back to me. Hypnotized by my dice, a girl dives into a pool and swims across. I'm compelled to follow, but I sink halfway across. I call to my dice to save me, but when they do, I feel I am changed, and I lose something of my power or intelligence.

      In the next scene in the dream, I am walking around the pool. The water is magical, and dangerous. There is a body floating face down in the pool.

      Someone has one of my magical dice, and is trying to pry it open, to get at what is inside. To prevent him, to save the die, I project the other, remaining die at his head, like a weapon. It goes into him, and accomplishes my aim. But when it does, I also feel it going into my head, and I lose something of my power or intelligence again.

      The dice represent the lies that a philanderer tells girls to gain their affection. The dice also represent Valium-like drugs, which amount to chemical lies. And the body is a Valium addicted philanderer named Richard who later drowned in Lake Washington. (Leaving out names doesn't help anything. The dream is unique.)

      I think the 'dice' also represent my ability to manipulate the 'projections' into the future of the states that I feel, to produce outcomes that resonate with my desires. I think that's the primary meaning actually, though the other meanings are real also. This kind of dream always has many interrelated meanings like that. That is one reason why I suggest there's a neural network involved in the generation of both the dream and the events that are connected to it.

      The girl swimmer would be somebody Richard lied to. And it would also be anyone whom I influenced to their detriment by showing them ideas or experiences which I shouldn't have shown them.

      What I'm saying here doesn't assume superior innate wisdom or power on my part. Sharing a dangerous drug is like this for example: it requires no special ability. They say that 'information is power'. It is also true that some ideas are like drugs.

      Seduction isn't entirely a matter of deception. If you present someone with a temptation, they might not be able to resist it, even if you're up front with them about what the consequences will likely be. It's still your fault if you can reasonably guess that they won't be able to resist the temptation, and that the consequences are likely to be harmful. Saying that they did it of their own free will, without coercion, is a cop-out. If you knew what would likely happen, you're still responsible.

      One of the disturbing things about this "magic dice" dream is that Richard actually died. In principle I might have helped him, but I was blind and did not. If anything, I unwittingly pushed him over the edge by saying exactly the wrong things to him at the end. Moreover, I have fairly significant reason to believe, from many other similar experiences, that I do psychically influence events in subtle ways for my own benefit, and that this does have at least some real impact on other people, intended or not.

      It's like when you rearrange a Rubic's cube for the sake of rotating a particular block. You can't do that without putting some other block in a different orientation also, even if you don't care about that other block and it does not appear to be directly connected to the one you do care about. Of course, everybody else is busy scrambling the worldly Rubic's cube also, not just me, so my culpability tends to be small. But small as it may be, it isn't absolutely zero.

      If I had no awareness of such things at all, my culpability would be even smaller, but it still would not be zero. To some extent, you're responsible for the consequences of what you do, even when you don't have complete knowledge or control of what you're doing, such as if you're intoxicated for example. And if you're capable of affecting things in the manner that's related to precognition, then it isn't just what you do or even what you think that matters, but also who you are.


      That's one example of a precognitive dream. It probably doesn't pass very many it's-probably-just-a-coincidence-or-has-some-other-explanation tests. But I have many, many other examples, some of them a lot more direct, including a dozen more that foreshadow violent events that I had no physical connection to, including multiple deaths. One of those wasn't a dream, it was a near-miraculous symbolic foreshadowing of another event in waking life. Most of them were dreams a couple of hours before the corresponding event. The 'magic dice' dream occurred a lot earlier, though there's more in the dream and more context that connects the dream to the life events. I left a lot of that out, mostly for brevity. Can you see what I don't want to have a public, evidence based argument about this stuff? Almost anything that follows in discussion is likely to be both uncomfortable and a waste of time. And yet, you care about this subject, and so do I. So if you're interested I want to say something. I'd rather keep to abstractions though, even though many abstract arguments are to me ridiculous in the face of more concrete examples.

      I need to work. In any case, thanks for your thoughts. I've been making fairly rapid progress in my understanding in some ways lately, and for that I am somewhat in debt to other people who care about these same kind of things. That's part of how the telepathy/shared-identity/precognitive/fate thing works.
      Last edited by shadowofwind; 04-04-2021 at 06:00 AM. Reason: grammar
      Summerlander and Sivason like this.

    15. #15
      Lucid Dreamer Achievements:
      1000 Hall Points Veteran First Class Made Friends on DV Created Dream Journal Referrer Bronze
      Summerlander's Avatar
      Join Date
      Oct 2011
      Gender
      Posts
      334
      Likes
      312
      DJ Entries
      19
      Great elaboration and it cleared up some misconceptions I might have had about your initial post. You've left me with enough food for thought here, so I will chew on it and definitely get back to you with hopefully something extra with which we might expand on our ideas.

      Having landed on atheism, one begins to realise that there is probably nothing that could confirm the existence of God from this viewpoint; if the stars moved to spell the name 'Yahweh' in the sky, I would probably be more inclined to think that we, earthlings, were being pranked by alien beings so technologically advanced as to manipulate the space-time fabric in such a way.

      But I won't say more about theological affairs lest we go off-topic. I think we definitely have far more interesting things to discuss based on your thoughts and experiences. I'm out of time right now but we shall continue this discourse in order to establish a better understanding about these phenomena.

      I think we can all conclude, in the least, that such experiences do happen and I think we have all felt them at some point and to different degrees.

      Keep it up, guys. This thread is already very rich and comprehensive.
      Sivason and shadowofwind like this.
      THE PHASE = waking consciousness during sleep hybridisation at 40Hz of brainwave activity conducive to lucid dreaming and autoscopy.

    16. #16
      Administrator Achievements:
      1 year registered Made lots of Friends on DV Veteran First Class 10000 Hall Points Stickie King Vivid Dream Journal Referrer Bronze
      Sivason's Avatar
      Join Date
      Jul 2007
      LD Count
      2500ish
      Gender
      Location
      Idaho
      Posts
      4,829
      Likes
      5863
      DJ Entries
      420
      One thing I have found interesting in past threads is that some people (no one so far in this thread) seem to have a lot of emotion either into saying "You can not prove this" or conversely "it is rude of you to basically call me a liar." There may even be some back and forth about "a hypothesis with no means of testing is a weak and cowardly position" or the other side "non existence of evidence is not the same as evidence of non existence." My attitude towards this is simply, "why should I care or be invested in if they believe me?" I have had wonderful mystical experiences and proving such to anyone is not even on my priority list. I totally see why some one may doubt and so I take no offense, I do not see why any one expects to have their word be enough; at the same time I do not see why convincing another of mystic experience or getting someone to accept the non-mystic explanation matters the least bit. Now of course getting in deep conversations like this are very entertaining and none of us are pushing to have our sides taken, so that is awesome.
      Peace Be With You. Oh, and sure, The Force too, why not.



      "Instruction in Dream Yoga"

    17. #17
      Member Achievements:
      Referrer Bronze Veteran First Class Made lots of Friends on DV 5000 Hall Points
      shadowofwind's Avatar
      Join Date
      Mar 2011
      Posts
      1,633
      Likes
      1213
      There's another sub-forum for religious discussion, if you want to start a thread there. I think it's OK to hijack this thread for a post or two though.

      I think the most essential thing is not to define our own ideas in orbit around other people's religious ideas. All religions, mainstream and alternative, are con jobs as far as I'm concerned. But that doesn't mean that stereotypical atheist attitudes are true or even rational either. Given any common idea of God, of course we must define ourselves as atheists, because we can't honestly believe in it. But we can forget about them and find out what we do believe.

      One positive thing I can say about faith, is that its like an emotional or moral hypothesis, and your life is the experiment. You have to have some confidence in your hypothesis in order to work at it long enough to test it. Also, if you even look at something like maintaining a reasonable amount of trust between people, some degree of something like faith is required, because it is impossible to know objectively that someone isn't about to sell you out. Neither of those are the same though as pretending to know with certainty things that we don't actually know. And neither is the same as imagining God then trying to curry favor by kissing God's ass. Those kinds of faith I prefer to do without. Being comfortable with ambiguity, in other words, remaining partially agnostic about things that I'm not sure about, is of great value to me. I guess you're in general agreement with that.

      I believe in supernatural things because they're a part of my experience. And it seems plausible to me that something of me might survive my death, because something of me seems to transcend time and place even now. However, reincarnation doesn't make sense to me, at least not as commonly described, and heaven and hell after-life's don't make sense to me. For the most part this is an area of ignorance for me.

      I don't think in terms of God, because my experiences don't fall neatly into the standard western good vs evil paradigm. Because of the way the identity is movable, and superimposable, everything that I experience contains elements of both good and evil. For me God would be more like a big tree with a lot of semi-independent limbs, and those limbs are flawed in much the same ways that people are flawed. I relate to various aspects of various limbs, I don't think of the unified whole very much.

      I disagree with the eastern religions also. I think the quest for enlightenment, as defined by every mainstream or esoteric tradition that I'm aware of, is a dead-end. They're essentially trying to short circuit the way the mind works and stay naturally stoned all the time. That doesn't mean there isn't truth in those traditions of course, but its warped. The believers in such theologies or philosophies can't see the flaws because any of the questions which would show the flaws are defined as being meaningless distractions. It is a positive feedback loop in that sense that traps the believer, just like any other religion. I never want to embrace any kind of faith that prevents me from seeing things how they really are. In this sense I almost worship sobriety. Again, I'm not saying that these religions have no value for other people on balance, I'm just saying that there's a price that I'm both unwilling and unable to pay. That said, I found studying various esoteric religious ideas to be invaluable as food for thought earlier in my life. It was food mixed with crap, but food nevertheless. In terms of ideas and vocabulary, I'm most familiar with jnana yoga, raja yoga, gnostic Christianity, western occultism, Taoism, and Chinese Buddhism, in something like that order.

      One of the core things that has motived my exploration is that I'm unsatisfied with the moral condition of our world, but I understand that condition well enough to know that the problems go at least a billion years deeper than politics. This is why I'm interested in understanding what is possible in terms of reaching outside of what we regard as natural history, to other possibilities. I realize that this is a deeply radical and project which courts hubris and destructive utopianism. But I've also made some headway. Asking certain kinds of questions has produced significant enough results that I know I'm onto something, even though I can't know where I'm going to end up.
      Occipitalred and Summerlander like this.

    18. #18
      Member Achievements:
      Referrer Bronze Veteran First Class Made lots of Friends on DV 5000 Hall Points
      shadowofwind's Avatar
      Join Date
      Mar 2011
      Posts
      1,633
      Likes
      1213
      Sivason,

      It's true that everyone needs to be free to believe what they want to believe. It's also true that addressing prejudices and motives, as you did earlier in this thread, can be the most direct line of argument, even though it can also be counterproductive. Personally, I don't want to screw around with people who don't seem to be open to new perspectives or don't seem to be arguing in good faith. Its not entertaining to me, and I have too much else to do.

      Everyone trusts other people for knowledge that they don't possess for themselves. Of the people who trust 'science', very few are technically educated enough that they can know for themselves what is scientifically true, they're taking the word of other experts. Likewise for trusting the ideas of writers or theologians. If I think that someone may have unexamined assumptions about what they do or do not consider trustworthy, I may point it out, because if they're open to looking at that, it might open up a more productive conversation.

      With the subjects in this sub-forum, I think that past a certain point, not only does productive discussion require a sincere desire to see things in a new way, it is literally necessary to read the other person's mind a little bit. Words help, but they don't go all the way. I think its fair to appeal to that.

      That said, faith in most of the things we're discussing here is not only not necessary, its not even desirable. If the door is open just a tiny bit to a possibility, that's enough. If I recall correctly you said that earlier.

    19. #19
      Administrator Achievements:
      1 year registered Made lots of Friends on DV Veteran First Class 10000 Hall Points Stickie King Vivid Dream Journal Referrer Bronze
      Sivason's Avatar
      Join Date
      Jul 2007
      LD Count
      2500ish
      Gender
      Location
      Idaho
      Posts
      4,829
      Likes
      5863
      DJ Entries
      420
      Quote Originally Posted by shadowofwind View Post
      Sivason,


      Everyone trusts other people for knowledge that they don't possess for themselves. Of the people who trust 'science', very few are technically educated enough that they can know for themselves what is scientifically true, they're taking the word of other experts.
      I made the Jr. High teachers so irritated because I wanted proof. I asked why he thought the Earth went around the Sun as it appears to be the other way, He said questioning basic science was ridiculous. I wanted someone to explain how I personally could be sure of these things. Sorry, totally unrelated.
      Peace Be With You. Oh, and sure, The Force too, why not.



      "Instruction in Dream Yoga"

    20. #20
      Lucid Dreamer Achievements:
      1000 Hall Points Veteran First Class Made Friends on DV Created Dream Journal Referrer Bronze
      Summerlander's Avatar
      Join Date
      Oct 2011
      Gender
      Posts
      334
      Likes
      312
      DJ Entries
      19
      Shadowofwind,

      Having gone over your previous post, I was able to mull over some observations and came up with a hypothesis for your jet engine prediction, but again, it is only based on limited information, so perhaps you can elaborate with more details. By no means am I assuming that you have not already considered this, so bear with me and correct me if I'm wrong or lacking detail. For the time being, I shall play devil's advocate for the mundane with what I'm presently aware of.

      I postulate that whatever you experienced, i.e., the vision of a jet engine failing, was neither prediction nor precognition. Moreover, and I'm not necessarily saying this applies to your case, it is worth recalling that it can be easy to conflate the semantics between what is predictive and what is potentially precognitive, blurring the lines of distinction between the two. We can absolutely rule out the former for now, with confidence, in tandem with your reasoning:

      2,000 miles is a great distance from a site where events end up coinciding with a vision—I'm from Europe, so, right off the bat, it would be almost the equivalent of someone in Lisbon, Portugal, having the subjective experience of a jet engine failing in Berlin, Germany; I say 'almost' because, despite having to travel across four countries in order to reach the German capital from the Portuguese one, it still falls short of a couple of thousand miles.

      What does this distance mean for 'prediction'? Perhaps nothing. Unless you've been made privy to information about sabotaged jet engines in Europe and that a plane flying over Berlin is a ticking time bomb as a friend of yours with a pair of binoculars phones you from Germany to tell you about it, there is no way to make such prediction.

      What does such distance mean for 'precognition'? Well, if it is real, again, perhaps nothing because, for all we know, like quantum entanglement, such phenomenon is nonlocal, or is largely unhindered by space-time restrictions like the classical.

      What does the distance mean for 'coincidence'? Here is where it gets tricky because coincidence itself is the hardest one of all to rule out. It requires the examination of past thinking patterns and the discovery of possible schemata—with origins tied to local life events and which are wholly independent of remote occurrences—as the antecedents to a distinctive 'vision' that conceivably tallies with something thousands of miles away as opposed to, say, hundreds.

      For some perspective somewhat pertinent to this topic, this thread here philosophically explores the unavoidable implications of an ostensibly infinite universe and how simple human minds would struggle to see cosmological norms as anything other than 'too much coincidence', such as Earth analogues and replicated histories across the vastness of space where the laws of physics as we know them only permit a finite number of atomic arrangements:

      https://www.dreamviews.com/philosoph...ther-yous.html

      We then have to ask how many jet planes were flying across Western Europe on said day and, out of those, ascertain the number of engines that failed. Are we going to dismiss the ones that were closer, in space, to the foreboding dream, but remained fully functional? If so, why? Why confirm failure as a hit a few borders away? Merely because it fits the narrative of the alleged precognition? How many more would correlate, say, a month ago or next year?

      And if distance is irrelevant, what about time? Why is it that, in our minds, two hours away can have more of an impact or meaningful significance than, say, five days, a week, a couple of months, or even a year ago? Why not a few minutes? By contrast, Nostradamus recorded alleged prophecies for the centuries that followed and Jules Verne never claimed clairvoyance but correctly 'predicted' space travel and moon landings.

      What would lend more weight to preternatural hypotheses for that particular vision would be the inclusion of minute details of jet propulsion components, the make of the engine and type of turbofans, as well as evidence of specific internal/external damage, all matching reality—increasing the impression upon human minds that something mighty strange is afoot and currently beyond scientific scope.
      Last edited by Summerlander; 04-07-2021 at 04:14 AM. Reason: Additional
      Occipitalred likes this.
      THE PHASE = waking consciousness during sleep hybridisation at 40Hz of brainwave activity conducive to lucid dreaming and autoscopy.

    21. #21
      Administrator Achievements:
      1 year registered Made lots of Friends on DV Veteran First Class 10000 Hall Points Stickie King Vivid Dream Journal Referrer Bronze
      Sivason's Avatar
      Join Date
      Jul 2007
      LD Count
      2500ish
      Gender
      Location
      Idaho
      Posts
      4,829
      Likes
      5863
      DJ Entries
      420
      Summerlander, The thread IS about "new conjectures about precognition/ shared dreaming" so I am supportive of what you are doing, to avoid any of this seeming confrontational. A mundane explanation of how such and such happens IS a conjecture, please keep that in mind Shadowofwind. Let's get as into either side as you guys wish. I believe Shadowofwind 100% that many of his experience are of "beyond modern physics/psychic" nature. Of course I have 40 years of odd things of that type that are in my experience and have know him for 10 years now. Something I have come to terms with 100% is that, I should almost always keep this stuff to myself because no person will be convinced unless they experience it. If I insist, the logical conclusion for some is simply that I am lying.

      Summerlander, Very few planes have engines fail. Distance is not an issue with psychic perception. I know this but don't expect you to believe me. Think of it like the effect of gravity being somehow outside of our physical model of space, it is something like that. I say "there is no distance between any two points in space or time" because this is not real. It is solid but it is a simulation far more akin to a running computer program than any other metaphor. How much space does a running computer program take up and how far apart are any two data points contained with in it? Oh hey, that's no fair. My world belief can hide behind a blanket of "Absence of proof is not proof of absence." That is a point that can not be tested or explored in any way by anyone who is not already "gifted" with a more developed sense (literally a sense like hearing, taste) that allows a type of perception. Lets give it a generic name "energy sense" for further reference. I admit I never will fault anyone for calling bull shit on anything so far fetched, but I also KNOW from being alive and aware of my own experience that all this stuff exists. faced with that I normally do not engage.
      It is natural for the atheist to want details like serial numbers, first and last names, a series of five images or some such solid proof. More power to you as far as maintaining your doubt. However, if a phenomena exists that is real but falls short of such proof you do not get to have that in your life and we do. Ask all you want for a scientific proof of such things and rest assured no one will provide the proof. I somehow think I am being fun here so take no offense: If I get to experience a wonderful life full of magic and mystery why the hell would I give the first f@#k if any one else chooses to disbelieve? That said, feel free to take a firm stance and we can get intellectual. I posit that we leave open the hypothesis that sivason is either mental ill in some manner that cause delusions or that sivason is an attention seeking liar. Will leave that out there, although I personally do not hold to that theory, being me and biased in my favor.

      Energy sense: Energy in the sense of what practitioners of kundalini, reiki, kria yoga and so on claim their arts are manipulating. It is some state of matter that is not detectable with current instruments. There is some mechanism that allows animals to interact with it. This sense is so subtle that most people are not even aware the sensory input is a distinct thing. It is just lumped in with the other senses almost like a static. It may be interpreted as a sense of motion or tingling that is always somewhere in the background. It is actually a sense all to its own and when focused on and trained the sensory inputs can become noticeable. What ever this stuff is it can also be effected by some activity of the highly trained brain.

      Based on that brief concept does any of that fall outside of plausible from a scientific point of view? If so why based on the prior discussion of Newton not understanding modern science, but the science having still been there.

      I am on one hand telling you what I know to be true, but lets just put it out as a starting hypothesis for how we can move towards these dreams being both real in a magical way and being grounded in scientific plausibility.

      Premise 1) States of matter exist we can not yet detect and one of these may be generically thought of as "the stuff various people have been noticing when they talk about mystical energies."
      Premise 2) Many human sense exist beyond the classic 5 and one of those might be capable of causing neural inputs when it interacts with this unknown state of matter, further the human animal may have some way to interact with this state of matter through some form of neural activity.
      Peace Be With You. Oh, and sure, The Force too, why not.



      "Instruction in Dream Yoga"

    22. #22
      Lucid Dreamer Achievements:
      1000 Hall Points Veteran First Class Made Friends on DV Created Dream Journal Referrer Bronze
      Summerlander's Avatar
      Join Date
      Oct 2011
      Gender
      Posts
      334
      Likes
      312
      DJ Entries
      19
      Absolutely, sivason!

      The possible, mundane-sounding conjectures are, by no means, conclusive and in such cases can never prematurely hold a monopoly on truth. To proclaim that the matter has been settled would be to do a disservice to shadowofwind (who knows far more about his experience) as well as other members. It would be remiss of me if I failed to mention that even my experiences impressed upon me. We cannot categorically state here that dream telepathy or precognition do not exist—risking sounding like doctors in the first half of the 20th century declaring smoking to facilitate breathing and being good for your health in general only to face a disconcerting paradigm shift later; I may have enquired about numbers pertaining to engine functionality within a perimeter of thousands of miles, but a similar token of scepticism can be used to parry outright, materialistic denial with one assertion: Vast swathes of the population are not in the habit of sharing their dreams, let alone remembering them—so precognition and telepathy could be far more prevalent or common than what most of us imagine, it's just that the majority of us are not paying attention.

      Embarrassingly, enough people don't even know what lucid dreaming is despite neuroscience having already identified it to be a hybrid state quite distinct from the waking and ordinary dreams states. The Tibetans have known about it for thousands of years and incorporated it in their dream yoga; the Bible has some instances where people experience vibrations before visions as 'thy bones tremble'; and even old Samuel Pepys didn't just document the plague and the great fire of London in his diary, in the 17th century. A lot of lucid dreamers were doubted before and after the findings of Keith Hearne, Alan Worsley and Stephen LaBerge! But thankfully enough, today, lucid dream sceptics are a dying breed as they have no leg to stand on. So I sincerely hope, as a society, that we have learned our lesson in jumping the gun with a doubting Thomas mentality; during these types of discourse, there is nothing worse than someone affirming that your experience is impossible. The fact that, mid-20th century, Celia Green published a book entitled Lucid Dreaming: The Paradox of Consciousness During Sleep, reflects the audience's mentality at the time. Imagine people coming across it and thinking, 'How is it possible that one can become conscious of dreaming?' Indeed it would have sounded paradoxical.

      My only hope here is that other members, or any type of reader with an interest for that matter, take my express scepticism as a point which has been visibly considered and eloquently addressed by people like me, you and shadowofwind. A point that others can see having been mentioned lest we get accused of being too one-sided. This way we can show that we did explore it and it is still not sufficiently explanatory against the impact of apparent extrasensory perception.
      Sivason likes this.
      THE PHASE = waking consciousness during sleep hybridisation at 40Hz of brainwave activity conducive to lucid dreaming and autoscopy.

    23. #23
      Member Achievements:
      Made lots of Friends on DV Created Dream Journal 1000 Hall Points Veteran First Class
      Occipitalred's Avatar
      Join Date
      Jan 2013
      Posts
      766
      Likes
      1160
      DJ Entries
      8
      So, I guess it's clear now. We're not here to pluck out an absolute truth from the depths of our intuition but rather to come up with a less poetic etiological myth that's more appropriate for our modern sensibilities to describe our mystical experiences.

      Quote Originally Posted by sivason View Post
      Premise 1) States of matter exist we can not yet detect and one of these may be generically thought of as "the stuff various people have been noticing when they talk about mystical energies."
      Premise 2) Many human sense exist beyond the classic 5 and one of those might be capable of causing neural inputs when it interacts with this unknown state of matter, further the human animal may have some way to interact with this state of matter through some form of neural activity.
      I really do agree with premise 1) that the human body is not equipped to perceive all stimuli present in the objective world. For instance, some fish sense the world with an organ that receives electrical information to sense conductors and insulators in their environment. This not only can give them information about the presence of an object, but also the nature of that object. Imagine swimming and being able to have this sense... I can't. But it could have been the case. Now, we can measure these same properties with technology but we still can't feel what it feels like in our subjective world to sense an insulator or a conductor. Another example is the limits of our vision to perceive only certain segment of the electromagnetic spectrum. As of yet, we have been using technology to broaden the scope of our perception but we could imagine there's yet more to perceive.

      BUT...

      About my eyes, sensory organs, well, I kind of don't have a choice but to perceive the information they collect. Even if I tried not to, I can't really resist the information. Were I unwilling, my sensory organs would still be perpetually violating my subjective world with information. So is it really likely that people are not paying attention well enough to perceive these "mystical states of matter." Do people truly train their skin to better feel? Train their eyes to better see? Train their ears to better hear? Train their mouth to better taste? Is my experience of taste really impoverished beside a wine connoisseur? I do agree people train to better distinguish certain sensations. Some will be able to identify more specific hues of color but is it is because I don't know the difference between purple and magenta that I am blind to those colors? Is it because I don't know the difference between an E note and an E minor note that I can't enjoy a concerto? It seems to me, when we want to collect more information about the world that we are otherwise blind to, training our bodies is quite useless. Rather we used technology. I'm not going to train my eyes to pay attention to UV rays until they finally become visible. But about this mystical state of matter... why is technology seemingly useless to collect that information? Perhaps because it is not matter nor energy.

      My problem with describing "mystical experiences" experiences with energy
      1. Energy is the capacity to do work. It's generally about states that we can measure quantitively in relation to another state. Like, if an object is above another, it has potential kinetic energy (that is, if you let it go, it will fall). So talking about energy is to talk about hot things cooling down, high things falling down, colliding things colliding, springy things springing... The scientific definition of energy really doesn't seem to have anything to do with mystical energy.
      2. Nihilism - we can deconstruct everything in our subjective experience to nothingness. Everything meaningful to meaninglessness. With clarity and detachment. If these mystical experiences were states of matter, why is their meaning so insubstantial?

      So as to my conjecture, I present these premises:
      A) There is a missing link between the objective world and the subjective world (no amount of perception or technology can clue us in as to the bridge between these two worlds, as to how matter and energy can affect an invisible mind and how this invisible mind could ever have an effect on neural firing). That is, if all scientific efforts of our world were led by non-sentient robots, they would not discuss consciousness or sentience. All cognition would simply seem to be happening at the level of firing neurons, not at the level of conscious cognition. Perhaps this "state of matter" belongs to the other side, not the physical material side but rather to the subjective world side (where there is no matter and energy).
      B) Because meaning can be deconstructed... and constructed (it's not substantial like a rock), I could get behind Sageous' philosophy that soul is constructed. If the world is like a video game, our reality somehow coded, perhaps the infinity of universes is simply the code. As in a game, where all the different choices a player can take are already coded in the game so that they can be consequential. And perhaps our subjective experience "saves" a bunch of "save files"... "images" of constructed meaningful events. And since everything is two ways, if we're constructing all these "images", maybe we sometimes perceive them, not physically but subjectively.

      I'm in a rush to leave so I'm not going to go back and edit my ramble of thoughts, so here's hoping it's not too infested with errors and lack of logical flow!
      Last edited by Occipitalred; 04-07-2021 at 06:29 PM.
      Sivason and Summerlander like this.

    24. #24
      Member Achievements:
      Referrer Bronze Veteran First Class Made lots of Friends on DV 5000 Hall Points
      shadowofwind's Avatar
      Join Date
      Mar 2011
      Posts
      1,633
      Likes
      1213
      Summerlander,

      One problem with your analysis is I didn't even describe my experience. So you're speculating about how some other hypothetical experience might be explained, not my actual experience. Even then, I find your line of analysis to be strained. As Sivason suggested, how much consideration do we need of the statistics of how many engines fail because of birds flying into them on a given day? If we're restricting ourselves to our world, that number is almost always zero, and occasionally one. Also, this experience is just one data point in a much larger set of data points. Even if we go into this one in detail, it's just one.

      I can go into a few dozen others in detail, but like I said, they're all highly personal. Even where the content appears to be impersonal, I'm connected to it in a personally emotional way. And since the whole basis of these dreams is a kind of emotional action at a distance, I'm to some extent exposing myself directly and emotionally to anyone who reads it. I don't know if I want all those people touching me. And in the end, what will we have? Objectively you won't even know that I didn't just make it all up.

      As a side note, I think it is unfortunate that culturally we have reinterpreted the word 'coincidence' to mean 'random coincidence'. Yes my experience was absolutely co-incidental with the event. It is important to be able to talk of the connection without ascribing causality, which is a more slippery question. But it definitely was not random, or meaningless.

      I'll go into this one dream in more detail. One reason I picked it as an example, is I knew the dream was significant when I had it, so I wrote it down and e-mailed it to someone upon waking, shortly before the corresponding event. I don't recall ever having done that before or since. Maybe once every year or two I'll send a dream to someone, but never that quickly. So this anecdote also helps rule out the retroactive-false-memory hypothesis. If course, I could fabricate the e-mail, so it doesn't prove it to anyone else, except the person I sent it to, but it helps prove it to myself.

      As another side note, at least one other person had a dream foreshadowing the same event, I saw someone post it in a dream forum. I think I saw it too late to quiz them on the details. However, my expectation, based on my experience with these things, is that there dream would have contained elements in common with mine, but would have been from a different perspective, and probably would not even have been concurrent with mine. Theirs might have been a few hours earlier, for instance.

      During that period of my life, every night I would have a metaphorical dream which would speak to a question that I had the previous day. This is one reason I never got into dream control, I was always interested learning new things that come from outside of myself, and that doesn't happen unless I give the experience some freedom.

      The theme that day was aggression, and I interpreted the dream from this nap as a lesson in the similarity between aggression and courage.

      In the first scene, lasting a few seconds, I'm in a long narrow building with fluid on the floor. I'm debating with my 'mother' whether the fluid is water or cat spittle.

      The second scene, also a few seconds, is a hymn of praise to a cat, 'Leo, Leo, Leo', to the tune of the song Stranglehold by Ted Nugent, who is a hunter and I think it's fair to say an aggressive a-hole.

      In the third scene, I'm outside the long narrow building, next to a small adjacent building about the size of a large pump-house (if there are any farmers in the audience). There's an opening on the near side of the building, and a metal contraption inside the opening. A heavy, nondescript blob-like object hits the side of the building and falls away. A second object hits it and falls away. I find the sound pleasing, like a hammer hitting a skull. So I pick up the blob and throw it into the opening. It rings the metal contraption inside like a bell, and it starts shaking itself apart, in slow motion.

      That's followed by a much deeper gong from under the ground, a death knell. I turn by attention back to the long thin building because I have to save the 'children' inside. That's the end of the dream.

      You have to understand that there's no clairvoyance in a dream like this. The images are constructed from a finely detailed feeling. So the content is almost all in the emotion. But I'm clear about what the emotions are at the time I have the dream, so it is objective in that sense.

      The first scene is an argument about causality. The water is literal water, but most of all it is the 'water' that we swim in spiritually. I mostly don't understand the nature of that water, but many, many other people have some idea what I'm talking about. The cat spittle symbolizes the desire of the aggressive spirit embodied by the cat. My 'mother' in that scene isn't my biological mother so much as a part of my 'higher self' so to speak. I think the words 'higher kin' would be more accurate, because it is related to me but not really me.

      The second scene is a celebration of a spirit of courage, and also, praise for the pilot who saved the plane. Many jet pilots are not very nice people in their personal lives. But the freedom-loving aggression that is in many of their personalities is also a virtue, and highlighting the value of that virtue, and the importance of cherishing and developing it, is the essential meaning of the dream. I'm horrified by the nature of aggression, which might be described as uncontrolled or corrupted aggression. But you can cut off or suppress it only at the expense of the other, which is also essential to life. It has to be disciplined and nurtured.

      I interpret the third scene as an abstract representation of the aircraft. Time is distorted, so what took only tens of milliseconds in real life took seconds in the dream. I always have a sense of time in such dreams.

      One of the most notable aspects of that scene is a death knell. I think you can not hear that sound, and follow the feeling to where it comes from, without the dream being significant to you, even with no other content. The ability to think into that feeling, and develop the part of yourself that's capable of doing that, is key to having these kinds of experiences and being able to understand something about them. The feeling of responsibility and affection for the 'children' whom the bell is calling for, so to speak, is significant also.

      To clarify, the first person in the dream isn't really 'me'. To a limited extent it is me, but I'm vicariously experiencing myself as being something more than myself, which is showing me something through that experience. My ability to allow my sense of identity to move like that is also essential to this kind of experience. And the awareness of identity is a core part of the content in any dream like this, similar to what I said about time.

      I'm willing to talk about it some, but I'm not interested in relitigating this dream for 'rational explanations'. It is old news for me, and its my dream. I'm the only one who can properly explore it by thinking into it and what it's connected to, even though it may have meaning for other people also. And I don't want to try to provide more context by sharing dozens of more dreams. I'd almost rather go to the office naked. In that sense, it isn't even the content of the dream that matters, its that a person who can emotionally connect to the dream can psychically connect with me. It's like a sign that lets people find me. I don't want to be so exposed. Being invisible, and overlooked, is my most important source of safety. Of course I value contact with other people, but there need to be limits. We're not talking about sending psychic smoke signals, its more of a limited mind meld. A person needs to be careful with that.

      Sivason said that distance is not an obstacle. That is true in my experience, at least on the scale of our world. Time isn't an obstacle either, again with qualifications. Like I said, most of the dreams like the one I just described happen only an hour or two before the corresponding event, but I have a sense of context during the dream, and it is possible to change that context and dream of things further away, within limits, presumably. Given what I do understand, I'm trying to understand more. That's really the purpose of this thread, along with sharing a bit of what I have learned. Everyone is working on a different part of the problem of course, and everyone else's part is in some way as important as mine. But for better or worse I've lost a lot of patience for the kinds of discussions we had ten years ago, even though I'm still willing to do it some.

      Shadowofthewind is a metaphor for spiritual darkness by the way, taken from a Black Sabbath song. The second verse of the song goes "If words had names like red and green, and two for sympathy, like black and white or in between, then you'd be Misery. Every day is an inquisition, who are you what are you why? I'm alive I belong I'll be back - it's a half truth, still a whole lie. To the garden of good and evil you'll go, but you know: the spider only spins the Shadow of the Wind.

      One thing that's about is trying to break into heaven, trying to solve a problem by force of inquiry when you're not ready.

      Part of my point of highlighting the meaning of my handle, is to plead for people not to pry too hard in the wrong way. It's OK to accuse me of insincerity, cruelty, or even of psychic crimes. (Sincerity may be my highest value: I try very, very hard to not mislead or mistreat people.) If the accusation is fair, or even tries to be fair, I respect it. I worship reason in that regard. But where I feel vulnerable and threatened I may also be more dangerous, and in a weirder and more subtle way, than you might anticipate. Psychism for me is largely involuntary and immediate. If you poke a snake the snake may respond, irrespective of what the snake thinks. The venom might not be very potent or the dose might be very small, but I wouldn't count on that.

      I strike an aggressive stance because I am afraid. One reason I'm showing some of that vulnerability is as an example. If you want to 'find' the part of yourself who can know some of these things for yourself, you have to open the door to that part of yourself, without shrinking away. But don't pry to hard, either with other people or with yourself. To the extent it is closed, it is closed for a reason. Sometimes its time to grow, but sometimes you just need to leave it alone.

      The other reason I'm expressing this is I have to go more into that part of my mind in order to think about the subject we're talking about. You can't just analyze it intellectually. The intellect is the tip of the spear, but the weight is behind it. You have to think with feeling. If you're disengaged emotionally, you're not even thinking about the subject, you're thinking about a symbolic shell of it. People try to be dispassionate, so that passion doesn't cloud their objectivity. But for psychic subjects, usually the kind of dispassion you need is emotional power and emotional control, not emotional detachment. This is why the professional skeptic types are idiots from my standpoint. They're not bringing the right tools to the experiment, and consequently are almost completely ignorant of the subjects they presume to be experts on. Maybe they don't even own tools that are up to the task. Thinking and feeling are not two different things if the subject is something that you can't deal with except through feeling. Yes you can think about physical phenomena, but you can not produce them, or understand the context, without the other part.
      Summerlander and Occipitalred like this.

    25. #25
      Lucid Dreamer Achievements:
      1000 Hall Points Veteran First Class Made Friends on DV Created Dream Journal Referrer Bronze
      Summerlander's Avatar
      Join Date
      Oct 2011
      Gender
      Posts
      334
      Likes
      312
      DJ Entries
      19
      I see that another great mind has joined this chat! I am really loving Occipitalred's line of reasoning based on logical observations and definitions of energy. I couldn't have said it better myself. (Honestly, the post is fine as it is and does not require editing.)

      It reminded me of when I first read Unweaving the Rainbow by Richard Dawkins years ago. A particular chapter of the book teaches us that we should never prematurely assume that science will never solve certain puzzles or uncover the answers to certain questions ...

      Even the greats make mistakes. Who would have guessed that, before spectroscopy and astronomy really took off, the great philosopher and founder of the kind of positivism that my friend Deschain (from Rececca Turner's World of Lucid Dreaming forum) adores--the French prodigy Auguste Comte--asserted in his Cours de philosophie positive that as regards the stars we would 'never be able to study, by any method, their chemical composition or their mineralogical structure ... Our positive knowledge of stars is necessarily limited to their geometric and mechanical phenomena.'

      How wrong could Comte be at the time when his contemporary, Joseph von Fraunhofer, would inevitably discover the dark bands in the Sun's spectrum which tell us so much about its chemical composition (and today, by the same method, we are able to know the stars' elements like a supermarket cashier is able to tell you the price of a product by scanning its barcode)?

      That was a lack of imagination on his part (as a philosopher, Comte should've known better than to jump the gun—but still, he was only human and being wrong about one thing doesn't discredit his other great ideas). By the same token, I'd imagine, we shouldn't prematurely say that we will never solve the enigma of consciousness. The awareness phenomena should be explored on an individual as well as collective level. (And we should claim back the term 'collective consciousness' in the sense that the sociologist Emile Durkheim intended.)

      Shadowofwind, I was wondering where you got the name from! I like Black Sabbath and Ozzy Osbourne myself. Please don't misunderstand my former analysis as absolutely conclusive of what you experienced. They are only inquisitive conjectures based on an incomplete—and vicarious—foundation. Nobody here should take it as gospel any more than Newtonian physics were held as flawless dogma with the advent of quantum mechanics. What I post here should always be open to revision and refinement—it is the only way we can sharpen our comprehension of what we are dealing with here.

      I wouldn't want you to get out of your comfort zone to feel vulnerable or exposed just for the sake of a discussion. I think, so far, our conversation here has been interesting, progressive and comprehensive enough that it can develop even further without the need to invoke personal details and emotional baggage.

      I'm liking the Jungian interpretation of your dreams (I always thought Carl Jung displayed a better intuition over oneiric language, so to speak, than Freud himself), the fine line between courage and aggression reasoning (including the belligerent but virtuous pilots) and the level of freedom you allow your dreams to have for the sake of being receptive—a real, oneiric, good 'listener'. This contrasts the proactive approach of wilfully 'visiting' someone in those ostensibly 'telepathic' out-of-body experiences—similar to remote viewing but observing what appears to have been on the minds of others—and I wondering if precognition requires the receptive approach at all times (at least one of my potential precogs was a 'future scene', two weeks earlier, that I stumbled upon).

      To clarify, the first person in the dream isn't really 'me'. To a limited extent it is me, but I'm vicariously experiencing myself as being something more than myself, which is showing me something through that experience. My ability to allow my sense of identity to move like that is also essential to this kind of experience. And the awareness of identity is a core part of the content in any dream like this, similar to what I said about time.
      This seems to relate to Ian McGilchrist's arguments about the consolidation of information by two very different brain hemispheres, where, usually, a more reductionist left-brain has a tendency to say, as it were, 'Leave it! I got this! I've been labelling everything into a coherent model that makes sense to me!' as opposed to the more holistic right-brain very adept at abstract thought, who says, 'I've already considered the whole thing and every possible connection ...'

      The neural pathways you referred to earlier may have something to do with this, where, during a precognitive dream, the functional default mode has been halted to allow for that higher self to take the helm for a while, and the distortion of time is really a perceptual distortion of the passage of time where, and this is where people might find it more far-fetched, the awareness is moving towards a vantage point overseeing the fourth dimension—where it has all already happened and causation is merely connections in extended relativity; imagine a static, spacetime structure that makes you realise the passage of time is an illusion (but not time itself as described by multiple 'frames' of space within which matter presents itself at different locations).

      This conjecture makes precognition plausible and the view that time only appears to be passing in the 3D world has actually been reflected upon in great detail by theoretical physicist Max Tegmark's in his Our Mathematical Universe.
      Last edited by Summerlander; 04-07-2021 at 10:18 PM. Reason: Additional
      Occipitalred and Occipitalred like this.
      THE PHASE = waking consciousness during sleep hybridisation at 40Hz of brainwave activity conducive to lucid dreaming and autoscopy.

    Page 1 of 2 1 2 LastLast

    Similar Threads

    1. Uhm... I wanna do shared dreaming/ mutual lucid dreaming...
      By HypnoDestiny in forum Beyond Dreaming
      Replies: 8
      Last Post: 10-11-2015, 09:22 AM
    2. Shared Dreaming, Fake and Real Shared Dreams.
      By user5659 in forum Beyond Dreaming
      Replies: 36
      Last Post: 01-13-2014, 05:53 AM
    3. Replies: 60
      Last Post: 04-14-2012, 12:38 PM
    4. Looking for a dreaming partner of sorts (not shared dreaming)
      By Brooooook in forum General Lucid Discussion
      Replies: 15
      Last Post: 10-03-2010, 06:52 AM

    Bookmarks

    Posting Permissions

    • You may not post new threads
    • You may not post replies
    • You may not post attachments
    • You may not edit your posts
    •