Posts Tagged ‘prophesy’
2012 Prophecies
Prophesies and 2012
When events are felt to be threatening, or the way you have lived for years is changing fast, the fight or flight reflex might kick in making you want to run from or fight the change. But what direction do you take, or what do you fight for, when the apparently solid walls of your life are crumbling and the old world is passing away?
Erwin Laszlo, in his book Worldshift 2012, points out some important parts of the changes we are in the middle of. He says that:
1 – There is unexpected acceleration toward the time of no return for when the critical point is reached.
2 – The sea level has risen faster than expected. It could rise by over a meter, and that could bring about the need for hundreds of millions of people to leave their homes and move.
3 – Expectations of carbon emissions have gone beyond expectations. The growth of emissions has leapt beyond any forecasted by IPCC.
But there are other types of forecast that also carry weight. There is a rumour circulating, a rumour originating from the ancient Izapa, Maya, and Aztecs cultures of South America, that a totally new world order is emerging at the moment. The Mayan prophecy gives the exact date for the end of an old cycle as December 21st 2012. The Mayans were great astronomers, and in 2012 a particular galactic event occurs that marks the beginning of a very different phase of human life. (31)
Although some people who talk about these prophesies say they mark the end of the world, the Mayan elders totally disagree with that statement. They believe from their careful studies that December the 21st of 2012 will be a time of rejuvenation and rebirth.
To understand the importance of these statements it is necessary to realise that December the 21st of 2012 is the end of a 26,000 year cycle. On that day, at sunrise, the Sun will rise to conjuct with the intersection of the Milky Way and the plane of the ecliptic. Many spiritual traditions, such as the Vedic and Islamic, the Hopi, the periods of time according to Hindu time keeping, Mithraism and Jewish kabbalistic prophesies agree that this is a time of enormous significance.
Even astronomy, a science, agrees there are hard times ahead. It is forecasted that solar activity will peak around 2102.Such a massive event could cause chaos to the globally interlinked energy grid.
There is even a prediction from the emerging science.
It say there my be ananswer on ‘God particle’ likely in 2012.
GENEVA, Switzerland (UPI) — The search for the so-called God particle, underpinning theories of mass and gravity, could be over by the end of next year, researchers in Switzerland say.
If the subatomic particle predicted by theory and known as the Higgs boson exists, then the Large Hadron Collider of the European Organization for Nuclear Research Geneva will detect it by the end of 2012, a scientists involved in the search said.
“I am pretty confident that towards the end of 2012 we will have an answer to the Shakespeare question of the Higgs boson: to be or not to be?” Rolf-Dieter Heuer told Britain’s The Independent.
“But not finding the Higgs will not be a failure; on the contrary,” he said.
If the collider fails to produce evidence of the Higgs, something even more mysterious must explain mass and gravity, Heuer said.
This would require an overhaul of the “standard model” of physics that has guided scientists for decades, he said.
“If it does not exist, and therefore we do not find it, then we must find something else which takes up the job of the Higgs, namely giving up mass to elementary particles,” he said.
Researcher Guido Tonelli said physics was on the verge of changing the way we view and understand the universe.
“Physics will not be the same after 2012,” he said. “This will probably change our vision of the world. It will have an impact on the future, depending on what we discover or don’t discover.”
When any such turning point occurs, people experience warning dreams and visions – (a waking dream. See: Visions.) As an example of this I experienced two such ‘visions. One occurred to me on January the 3rd 2003. Because I am interested in exploring my dreams I made an effort to work on what was an extraordinary dream. What I experience with great force was a meeting with the creative forces of our individual lives, our world and the Cosmos. I understood from this meeting that we as humans have not been the custodians of earth and its creatures, but were like a massive attack and greed. I then understood that a very powerful change was arriving. This was understood as a change of season rather than any form of punishment. It seemed from what I understood that there are enormous forces that act upon humans and can act destructively or to our good. Just as when the temperature changes enormously people die of heat or cold, so global forces can cause enormous disruption unless we understand them and learn to work with them.
So what I learned was that the changes would have an effect on individuals and society similar to an earthquake. It shakes up everything so that if the person or social structures do not have a sound foundations the person or the structure will fall. Most of us have heard this – “Built your house upon a rock and not a upon the sand.”
There was another influence acting upon us in this season. It is a force that pulls down the weak. Considering the inequality, greed, corruption and aggression in governments, businesses and society, there is an awful lot of sickness in humanity and our creations. Those things are inner weaknesses. In a way, what is weak shakes itself to bits through its own internal energy. It self destructs because it is not connected with life giving forces. It is full of self grabbing and self centredness. If a tree does not integrate the fundamental life giving forces of the sun, the bacteria and microbes as its root, it dies. So do we as a society, if we are not connected to what gives us life, die.
The great woman Elizabeth Kubler Ross said, “It is very important that mankind knows this, for we are at the beginning of a very difficult time. Not only for this country, but for the whole planet earth. Because of our own destructiveness. Because of nuclear weapons. Because of our greediness and materialism. Because we are piggish in terms of ecology, because we have destroyed so many, many natural resources, and because we have lost all genuine spirituality. I’m exaggerating, but not too much. The only thing that will bring about the change into a new age is that the earth is shaken, that we are shaken, and we are going to be shaken. We have already seen the beginning of it. You have to know not to be afraid. Only if you keep a very, very open channel, an open mind, and no fear, will great insight and revelations come to you. They can’t happen to all of you. You do not have to have a guru, you do not have to go to India, you don’t even have to take a TM course. You don’t have to do anything except learn to get in touch, in silence, within yourself. Get in touch with your own inner self and learn not to be afraid. One way to not be afraid is to know that death does not exist, that everything in this life has a positive purpose. Get rid of all your negativity and begin to view life as a challenge, a testing ground of your own inner resources and strength.”
The Groundswell
Another ‘vision’ I experienced some time later I recorded as follows:
Did you feel that?!
Seemed like the ground moved.
Not like a shake or quake,
More like a swell,
A rolling shifting in slow motion.
Then it was gone.
So I ran to a hill
Beyond my house,
Where I could see things
On a grander scale.
And there it was,
So slow you would miss it
If you stared straight at it.
Waves were rolling across the landscape.
Dear God — it was powerful to watch,
To see it building up,
To glimpse the changes it was moving toward.
And as I looked,
I saw the tension of that groundswell
Mounting in the West.
I felt the earth move again,
And saw at last the people in their millions
Powering the waves.
Frustration, tension, energy,
Forming like an earthquake
Looking for the trigger,
The direction, the release for that terrible,
Wonderful energy to flow.
People, the sea, the earth,
All one thing.
No separation.
Bodies, mind, energy,
The earth and sea moving as one.
Then, on the horizon I could see it coming.
I saw that awe-full power,
Shifting and transforming
The shape of things.
Pushing over the old forms.
Like some new strength of a growing thing,
Splitting open rocks,
And pushing obstacles aside.
Truly a wonder.
Somehow no more destructive than Spring,
Breaking open the old seed cases,
And transforming into the new.
And here it comes –
People finding a focus for their longing for change.
Finding a trigger of release
To shatter the old imprisonment
Of manipulation by a system
Needing ever greater production and destruction –
Ever greater conflict with opposing views.
Here it comes –
That transcending moment
Of a catalyst — a union
Of millions seeking release –
A focus for that new life –
Technological breakthrough –
A ground swell
Changing the face of things.
Prophecies of Edgar Cayce
Cayce, still in his state of sleep in which he got all his amazing information says, “As for the future of mankind, shortly after the year 2000 A.D., Christ will manifest himself to the world once again to usher in a new era, a one thousand year period of world peace and righteousness, the age of Aquarius (the water-bearer). The end of the Age of Pisces (the fish, the symbol for the Christian church) is upon us. But before peace and righteousness comes, the earth will undergo catastrophic disasters upon civilization. These disasters will force mankind to once again rely on nature, God, and other people to create harmony and stop all war, evilness, and end the continuing desecration of this planet. As in the days of the dinosaurs, the days of Atlantis, and the days of Noah, civilization also experiences a process of evolutionary renewal from time to time that leads to perfection. The earth has a mind of its own and it cleanses itself of impurities as a single organism does.
Each soul came to earth not by chance, but through the grace, the mercy, of a loving Father; that the soul may, through its own choice, work out those faults which prevent its communion and at-onement with God.
The Coming Change
We can already see huge changes occurring in the world, as witnessed in recent global economic turmoil. But until 2012 we must live in uncertainty as to whether the prophesy is correct in saying a very different world order will exist. What you can be certain of though is that you have already lived through and survived enormous world changes. These changes presented you with a totally new world that you managed to meet and adapt to, even enjoy and take advantage of. And if you take time to remember these tremendous times of change and how you managed them, it will stand you in a place of strength to meet anything the future will bring.
So, how did you survive a complete physical change as your body moved from being a baby to a child? How did you navigate the shifting world as you left childhood behind and became a very different creature in adolescence? Then again, events transformed your body and mind as you entered the world of young adulthood. How did you ride these rocky rapids of change when you not only had a new body and glandular system, but you were confronted by a completely different way of responding to the world?
Think about it – you are an amazing being to pass through such enormous changes and survive.
Well – how did you manage those incredible times of change? There may have been really tough stretches when the going was hard, so what did you do and what did you learn? Did you think it all out? Did you plot a course? What resources did you use? How did you know what direction to take?
It really is worth taking time to look back at that journey to understand more fully how it was done. Or if you are in the middle of it at the moment, how it is being met.
Having made the journey myself into being a senior survivor I can see that at times I didn’t have a clue what was coming next or how to get there. That was true not only in the shift from childhood to being a teenager, but also at times in my adult life. The new and unknown that is coming may be outside of you in the world. A lot of the time though it is also coming from inside you. My teenager grew from inside me. Fortunately I let it happen most of the time. Though I did have a hell of struggle with emerging sexual feelings, and some people struggle with their self image, or food.
Certain things stand out for me about those times of enormous rebirth. I think they may be as true for you as for me.
Firstly, life in me knew where to go and how to do it. I guess I should have known that. After all life is millions of years old. But my education didn’t help me to believe in myself in that way. In fact quite a lot of what had been passed on to me set me in opposition to myself, to Life. If not that then it misinformed me. It took me an age to undo some of those mistakes. My education was all about survival in a somewhat sick world by grabbing for money or fame. And if you didn’t you were labeled a ‘loser’.
Next, being in some ways in opposition to my natural growth meant that I killed out some of the most precious parts of me that would otherwise have emerged and flourished in my life. This may sound strange, but our culture sometimes trains us to be afraid of who we really are. The pressure to conform is so great we hold back some of the most important parts of our own nature. Having worked as a therapist with people I learned that a major part of the work was to help people unblock the parts of themselves that had been repressed or damaged.
The lessons to learn from this is that what is arriving in the world and from within ourselves is often unknown. As a child we don’t know what our future is, but we can trust our innate life process to grow us into it. The mistake is to feel we know who we have to be, or copy other people, and we may then prevent the best in us from emerging. When we freely allow our full emergence our passions, fascinations and natural growth lead us toward our own future. We only feel lost when we have repressed those parts of us or they were damaged in our early years.
The psychiatrist Carl Jung wrote that when working with people whose problems seemed insoluble, he found that those people didn’t solve or resolve their situation by thinking about it, they outgrew problems that had destroyed others. He went on to say that in observing these people he realised “the greatest and most important problems of life are all fundamentally insoluble. They cannot be solved but only outgrown.”
This brings us back again to the process of growth that carried us from being a baby through to wherever we are at the moment. It is the most fundamental and powerful force in life, yet as adults we often overlook it and feel we, the conscious person, must do all the work.
Aligning ourselves with the power of growth doesn’t mean becoming inert and lazy or giving up thinking. Partnership with Life requires full participation of everything you have with the power of creativity. Such a partnership does mean giving up full control though and recognising that nature in you, the life that is millions of years old, has learned tricks of transformation and renewal that your young self doesn’t know. Remember the transformation from child to youth for instance – the resurrection of the caterpillar into to he butterfly – the miracle of the whole experience of generations going into a seed and unfolding a new life. You have all that in YOU.
Jung tells us that to allow that inner wonder to grow us beyond problems we face, we need to do nothing but let things happen.
That sounds crazy because in the middle of difficulties we must act. Yes, but at the same time we must leave the door open for the new, for the previously unknown. Remember adolescence; where did that totally new body and person emerge from? Was it all from your personal planning and effort? Of course not. But at that time the life process pushed it on you. You didn’t have a lot of choice. However, the insoluble’s and challenges in adult life take a lot more conscious cooperation with the inner creative to grow through. Too many things have been put in the way of that internal potential. Too much control has been taken over by your beliefs and habits. You have probably settled into being a particular person, living a certain type of life.
Again – look back. The person you became in teenage was like a new incarnation, a new being. The new you could look back and see the connections with your previous ‘incarnation’, but a massive amount of new responses and ways of being needed to emerge. This is true of real ability to cope with a new world, future change, and personal stagnation or paralysis. And you cannot become the new person while you are still clinging on to the old outworn you for dear life. If you cannot allow earthquakes to reshape the territory of who you are then you are holding back on your own rebirth.
Look around – look back
Life on our planet has done just that many times – earthquakes of change. Whole environments and species have been wiped out again and again. Life regenerated in forms that fitted the new environment.
There is an argument going on between scientists who promote the theory of evolution and religious groups who promote the theory of intelligent design. However, without trying to resolve that argument, if we look around at the incredible variety of living creatures on our planet, it seems obvious that life can take almost any shape and size. It is also obvious, because of those past ‘earthquakes of change’ that life adapts to the new. That suggests innate in the life process is an infinite potential. In fact one physicist, David Bohm, has suggested that infinite potential is a basis of the physical universe.
That is put as a suggestion. But what I do know from my own life and my work with people, and from what Jung has stated, that within each of us is enormous potential. Through the processes of life on our planet and our forebears our body is shaped a particular way. In a similar manner, what we call our personality and mind, also have a particular form and set of beliefs or cultural patterns of thought via language. We are what we are, but behind that is a fantastic potential. As I say, look around and see that life can be almost anything. You have the potential for change, to become something, someone, completely new, and the possibility of that new you is already within you. It does need the avenues of its birth to be clear though. It does need you to be ready to be stretched beyond who you are, just as you were in adolescence, just as the mother is who bears a child. And it is mostly your mind, your personality that is stretched, sometimes to the point of groaning, as the old you burst open allowing the emergence of a larger you.
As for how to allow that to happen. It is so simple you may find it hard to believe. If so remember that at this moment your heart is beating, your body is doing the most amazing things to integrate billions of cells in their process of being the foundations of your existence. Life is doing that now. To connect, open a door to it in your feelings. Create a bridge of sympathy, of openness, even of love, between that quiet background of mysterious something giving you life and your conscious attitudes and experience. Be aware, if you can, of how you hold yourself back, and let things flow. Welcome the potential life offers into you. Be like a child meeting the mystery of Life.
But in the end I do not feel any great fear of the future. Even the visions that warned me were not about an awful end for mankind, but about shaking up of the world to bring in a new order, and new world.
There.are some films and reports that say that the end of the world will happen in a great catastrophic event. Yet the elders of the Mayan people say, as my own visions suggest, that it will be a great regeneration, a rebirth into a new era. There may be hard times, but when have we had any different times?
Precognition
As a part of the human survival ability, the capacity to predict the future is a well developed everyday part of life. So much so we often fail to notice ourselves doing it. When crossing a road we quickly take in factors related to sounds, car speeds, and our own physical condition, and predict the likelihood of being able to cross the road without injury. Based on information gathered, often unconsciously, we also attempt to asses or predict the outcome of relationships, job interviews, business ventures, and any course of action important to us.
If a detailed observation were made of the habits of ten people, one could predict fairly accurately what they would be doing for the next week, perhaps even pinpointing the time and place. For instance some would never visit a pub, while others would be frequently there.
Because the unconscious is the storehouse of millions of bits of observed information, and because it has a well developed function enabling us to scan information and predict from it, some dreams forecast the future. Such predictions may occur more frequently in a dream rather than as waking insight, because few people can put aside their likes and dislikes, prejudices and hopes sufficiently to allow such information into consciousness. While asleep some of these barriers drop and allow information to be presented.
Ed. Butler’s dream is about his work scene. Each detail was real and horrifying. Shortly afterwards, Rita was burnt just as in the dream.
Example: ‘ I was startled by the muffled but unmistakable sound of a nearby explosion. While unexpected, it wasn’t entirely unusual – the high energy propellants and oxidisers being synthesised and tested in the chemistry wing were hazardously unstable. When I heard the screams I froze for an instant, recognising that they could only be coming from Rita, the one woman chemist in the all male department. I rushed to the doorway of her laboratory. Peering through the smoke and fumes I saw a foot sticking out of the surrounding flames. I was only in my shirt sleeves, unprotected, not even wearing my lab coat, but I had to go into the flames. I grabbed Rita by the foot and noticed with horror that her stockings were melting from the heat. I pulled her back into the doorway and tugged at a chain that released gallons of water on her flaming body. When satisfied the fire was quenched, even though my own clothes still smouldered, I ran for the emergency phone.’ From Dream Network Bulletin, June 1985.
Some precognitive dreams appear to go beyond this ability to predict from information already held. So far there is no theory that is commonly accepted that explains this. A not too bizarre one however, is that our unconscious has access to a collective mind. With so much more information available, it can transcend the usual limitations when predicting from personal information. The speculative side of modern physics suggests an extension to this in saying the origins of our being lie beyond space and time. It we touch this aspect of ourselves, we may transcend our usual time-bound self, and see things in new ways – one of which might be precognition. See There Is A Huge Change Happening
Example: A dream told to me by a young man of 22. “I was in the jungles of Vietnam, standing near a railroad track, when I felt a sharp pain in the back of my neck. I felt myself rise out of my body, enter a large room, and sit down beside a young man. I asked him what had happened. He said: `We were both dead. I was killed in an automobile accident.’ I didn’t believe him. I saw two doors through which people were coming and going. Some looked happy, others unhappy. Then my name was called, and the young man said I was to go through one of these doors. I found myself standing in a large room facing a group of people seated behind a long table. The man presiding had an open book in front of him at which he looked from time to time. He spoke to me and said: `John Walter McGregor, you are physically dead and this is where you are judged. You have been found wanting because of your failure to heed the teachings of the woman, Nancy McGregor, your mother in this life.’ I insisted I was still alive. The man took me to the jungles of Vietnam and showed me my physical body lying there dead. He said again: `You are physically dead. You will, however, have another chance. You will return to earth in the body of a newborn baby, once again to learn these spiritual teachings.‘ Quoted from Dreams your Magic Mirror by Elsie Sechrist. One month later, in September of 1965, the man was sent to the jungles of Vietnam.
I believe this dream came as a symbolic warning to change his destructive attitude toward life lest his own life be cut short. This dream had a profound effect on him. He began to take religion seriously, and I am thankful to say that, after two years of service in the jungles around Danang, Vietnam, he is out of service and planning a career as a psychologist. Through this dream experience, the High Self was most effective in bringing about the desired change.
Example: I awoke, my heart beating rapidly, heavy beads of perspiration on my face; even catching my breath was difficult. I looked around my bedroom for some trace of reality, something to tell me I was safely at home and not frantically running to catch a connecting flight at the airport. In my dream I had lost my luggage and missed my flight. I couldn’t help wonder what connection existed between the dream and my coming flight later that morning. I dismissed it as a nightmare. Several hours later, however, the nightmare became reality when I missed a connecting flight because the plane was three hours late. I had to rush to another airline, catching a flight with a minute and half to spare. As in the dream, my luggage was lost.
The next examples are all from Shirley G. Because of space, only three of the dreams are quoted. Nevertheless, they are typical of dreams that do not seem to fall into the category of precognitive dreams arising from unconscious scanning or information already known.
Example: ‘I set out to dream the winner of a horse race each day for a week.
1 – Was driving down a country road and suddenly saw a glimpse of Emmerdale Farm down a side road. Following day: chosen horse ‘Emmerdale Farm’ came in first.
2 – Was working in a room when a man popped his head around the door and shouted excitedly ‘John, John, your uncle’s here’ and disappeared. I carried on working. Chosen horse: Uncle John. Came in first.
3 – What predictive dreams deal with appears to depend a great deal upon the dreamer and their preoccupations and deeply felt interests or anxieties. We can think of this rather like someone going into a library that has every possible type of information in it. What the person chooses to look at depends upon their current attitudes, fears, fascinations, etc. The following dream show a very different result to the anxiety type dream prediction.
4 – Was walking down a road, called into a house by a friend to have a chat. On the way out she opened the door and I saw a completely empty room except for a huge black fireplace. Door closed and I left the house. Chosen horse: Black Fire – which I insisted would only be placed – due to ‘fireplace’. Came in 2nd.’
Example: I dreamt that a female friend, Liz, and her husband David, with myself and my husband were busily and happily renovating an old barn to live in, and seemed to be living away from our home towns. All was blissful until, almost suddenly David and I were in love. We decided we must be honest and tell Liz. I told her and felt an overwhelming, powerful and radiant love coming from her, She was smiling warmly and said “That’s alright Shirley, I understand.” Still the glowing love was enveloping me as the dream trailed off. The following morning I heard Liz had died after the extraction of in infected wisdom tooth. S.P.
Example: I look back and describe myself at that time as a “straight psychology professor” having no knowledge of metaphysical events or higher consciousness studies. I was always taught that dreams went backward to reveal repressed sexual and aggressive impulses. Nowhere did I ever learn of a dream going forward in time to provide glimpses of future events. In fact, when I awoke from my accident dream, I looked at the car crash symbolically and wondered why I was trying to hurt or punish myself with such a violent action. Can you imagine my surprise, when I experienced the car accident three weeks later, in exact detail, as my brakes did indeed fail? This dream was the first of many informal lessons to follow.
Weeks after this spectacular car crash, I dreamed of another accident with brakes failing. Of course, this was ridiculous since I had purchased a brand new car to replace the totalled wreck. This time, sound effects were added to the dream as I heard a snap when I put my foot down on the brake. Again, wondering about my punitive gesture toward myself, I dismissed the dream since this couldn’t possibly happen to a brand new car. Again, the inside information was correct, as the brake cable snapped just days later. Marcia Rose Emery.
See: Example under body teeth; esp in dreams; foresight; prophetic dreams.
ESP in Dreams
Many dreams extend perception in different ways.
dreaming the future – Just before his title fight in 1947, Sugar Ray Robinson dreamt he was in the ring with Doyle. ‘I hit him a few good punches and he was on his back, his blank eyes staring up at me.’ Doyle never moved and the crowd were shouting ‘He’s dead! He’s dead!’ He was so upset by the dream Robinson asked Adkins, his trainer and promoter, to call off the fight. Adkins told him, ‘Dreams don’t come true. If they did I’d be a millionaire.’ In the eighth round Doyle went down from a left hook to the jaw. He never got up, and died the next day.
The problem is that many dreams felt to be predictive never come true. Often dreamers want to believe they have precognitive dreams, perhaps to feel they will do not want to be surprised by, and thereby anxious about, the future. When the baby son of Charles Lindbergh was kidnapped, and before it was known he was murdered, 1300 people sent ‘precognitive’ dreams concerning his fate in response to newspaper headlines. Only seven of these dreams included the three vital factors – that he was dead, naked and in a ditch.
Out of 8000 dreams in his Registry For Prophetic Dreams, Robert Nelson, who was sent the dreams prior to what was predicted, has found only 48 which bear detailed and recognisable connection with later events. See: prophetic dreams.
dreaming the dead See dreaming of death
dreaming together – The Poseidia Institute of Virginia Beach, USA have run a number of group ‘mutual dreaming’ experiments. Although the institute suggests very positive results, a critical survey of the dreams and reports reveals a lack of hard evidence. Like other areas of ESP dreaming, it can seldom ever be willed. But the dreams did show themes related to problems regarding intimate meeting. Also, some of the dreams were directly about the goal of dream meeting, as in the following example.
Example: ‘I find the group of people I am looking for. There were maybe six or more people. They were asleep on mattresses except for two or three. These were awake and waiting for me, and wearing small pointed hats such as Tibetan Lamas wear. In the dream I realised this meant they had achieved sufficient inner growth to remain awake in sleep. We started to communicate and were going to wake the others.’ Tom C. See: meeting in dreams.
There are ‘meeting’ dreams however, although these seldom occur under test conditions.
Example: ‘I dreamt my sister was attacking me with a pair of scissors. She backed me against a wall and stabbed me. During the day after the dream my sister phoned me at work and said she had an awful dream in which she stabbed me with scissors.’ D.
Example: My husband is in the Navy, serving on a ship in the Gulf. We’ve always been close, through 22 years. I dreamt we were making love, and could even smell him. It ended as lovemaking always does for us, with orgasm and a cuddle into deep sleep. I woke surprised he wasn’t next to me. He phoned next day to say he had the same dream, same night. Mrs. E.H. – Gosport
the dream as extended perception – Even everyday mental functions such as thought and memory occur largely unconsciously. During sleep, perhaps because we surrender our volition, what is left of self awareness enters the realm where the nine tenths of the iceberg of our mind is active. In this realm faculties can function which on waking seem unobtainable. A list of these would include –
1 Extending awareness to a point distant from the body, to witness events confirmed by other people. This is often called Out of Body Experience or OBE, but some of these experiences suggest the nature of consciousness and time may not be dualistic having to be either here or there. See: out of body experience.
The March 24,1974, New York Times Magazine contained a report about a dream that Lieutenant Colonel H. R. P. Dickson, a British political official in Kuwait, experienced in 1937. One day, a violent sand-storm carved a hole by a palm tree in his compound. That night, he dreamed he approached the hole and saw a sarcophagus at the bottom. Inside he discovered a shroud, and when he touched the shroud a beautiful maiden rose to life. As the dream continued, shouting strangers arrived and wanted to bury the girl alive in the desert, but the colonel chased them away.
Perplexed by his dream, Dickson consulted a local Bedouin woman who had a reputation as a dream interpreter. She explained that the girl symbolised wealth beneath the sands of Kuwait and the men trying to bury her were strangers from across the sea who wished to prevent its discovery. At that time, a British oil company crew had been drilling nothing but dry wells for two years at Bahrah on Kuwait Bay.
The Bedouin interpreter told Dickson he should move the team to the desert of Burgan and concentrate drilling activities by a lonely palm tree, where they would find great treasure. When the drillers laughed at Dickson’s urgings to move the team, he sailed to London and told his dream and its interpretation to the company executives. One of them, who believed in dreams, felt the dream interpreter’s instructions deserved a try. He cabled Kuwait and the team was moved about thirty miles south to Burgan. In May 1938, the drillers discovered huge oil deposits there in the desert by a lonely palm tree.
In a recent news program on television, a man who survived the Japanese prisoner of war camp in Singapore had been given a photograph of children by a dying soldier he did not know. The man had asked him to tell his family of his death, but did not give his name. The photograph was kept for forty odd years, the man still wanting to complete his promise but not knowing how. One night he dreamt he was told the man’s name. Enquiries soon found the family of the man, who had an identical photograph.
2 Being aware of the death or danger of a member of family. Kinship and love seem to be major factors in the way the unconscious functions. See: dead people dreams; Talking with the dead
3 Seeing into the workings of the body and diagnosing an illness before it becomes apparent to waking observation. Dr Vasali Kasatkin and Professor Medard Boss have specialised in the study of such dreams. In a recent dream told to me a man looked back into a bedroom and saw a piece of the wall fall away. Waves of water gushed from a main pipe. The dreamer struggled to hold back the piece of broken pipe. Within two weeks his colon burst and he had to have a major operation. See: meditation.
I – the author – witnessed a number of extraordinary dreams told me by my first wife Brenda. One of them has become a landmark for me of what is possible in dreams. One morning Brenda woke and told me she had dreamt about the baby of two of our friends. The friends, who I will call Jane and Bob, were living about 200 miles from us. We knew Jane was pregnant, and about a week or so before the dream we had received a short letter saying the baby, a boy had been born. We were not on the telephone at the time, so the letter was our only means of communication.
In the dream Brenda saw the baby and a voice from behind her told her the child was ill. Its illness, she was given to understand, was serious, and would need to be treated with a drug taken every day for the child’s life. The reason for this illness and the drug use, she was told, was because in a past life the person now born as the baby, had committed suicide using a drug.
I did not take the dream seriously, thinking it was some sort of personally symbolic dream. But we couldn’t seem to extract any personal meaning for Brenda, so just in case I sent an account of the dream to Jane and Bob. About a week later we had a letter from them saying that the letter and dream had crystallised an already existing anxiety about the baby. It had not been feeding well and was fretful. On taking it to the doctor nothing definite could be found but special tests were made in hospital. From these it was discovered the baby was dying. It lacked an enzyme which was needed to digest calcium. To compensate it was given a drug, which it has had to take every day of its life to make up for the lacking enzyme.
4 Access to a computer-like ability to sort through a massive store of information and experience to solve problems. These dreams are often confused with precognitive ability. Prediction does occur from these dreams, but it arises, as with weather prediction, from a massive gathering of information, most of which we have forgotten consciously. Morton Schatzman, in an article in New Scientist, showed how subjects can produce answers to complex mathematical problems in their dreams. See: the dream as process as computer; creativity and problem solving in dreams.
5 Tapping a collective mind which stores all experience, and so is sensed as godlike or holy. See: spiritual life in dreams .
6 It seems likely that before the development of speech the human animal communicated largely through body language. Some dreams suggest we still have this ability to read a persons health, sexual situation, intentions and even their past, through body shape, posture and tiny movements. See: Postures Movement And Body Language.
See: Cayce, Edgar; collective unconscious. See Also: hallucinations; altered states of consciousness..