Are Dreams a Window into the Future? Exploring the Mysteries of Dreaming

[hypnagogue]

The future does not exist according to whom? It appears as if it doesn't exist yet-- this is a view of time made from within time. Are we really in some priveleged position to judge what does and does not exist, or is our view relative to our particular viewpoint?

In any case, time isn't an absolute. Two events that appear to occur simultaneously to one observor can appear to occur sequentially to another. So for one observor, 'the future' is happening right now, and for the other it is yet to happen. If the latter says that it doesn't exist, he'll get a funny look from the former. More generally, if we refuse to grant priveleged status to any particular reference frame, then there is no absolute sense in which the future doesn't exist.

 

[TENYEARS]

I do not believe I can see the future I know I can, I have done it many times. Those who did not believe it is possible now believe it is. One women I told of a disaster before it happened and the exact day said she did not what to know anymore and not to tell her. The fact that anyone says something does not exist is a complete admission of their lack of logic and dishonesty. I witnessed my next door neighbor(the father of my friend) walk again after years of being confined to a wheel chair unable to walk with MS. The doctors also said it was utterly unexplainable after many years confined to a wheel chair. I would not accept that he was healed even though I knew his character and it was good. I had to understand how it was possible. Could I deny it NO. Chould I affirm it NO. I was left in nomans land. This is being true to myself. This is logic. Drop you arrogant foolishness before life pounds you into the dust. It will you know. Change your minds, change your ways. You would have accepted it when you saw not only the physical evidence, but one piece of evidence which was purely physical.

 

[Overdose]

I just think its one of those things that most people will think is bull**** unless they have a direct personal experience of it.
I don't really blame anyone for not 'believing', but at the same time i think its going a step too far to say that seeing into the future is impossible as it hasnt happened yet.
That seems a little simple minded to me; as hypnagogue pointed out time is relative.

 

[TENYEARS]

You find the college with balls enough to care about reality, and I will prove it is possible. Stage one will be to examine the past of what happened already. I can prove that with some degree of certainty with a series of tests. Stage two, I tell what the universe is created out of and how it works which is how this is possible. With this comes a few extras. Stage three?

It would be kind of like giving fire to kids wouldn't it. It's ok I suppose there is a safety gaurd for misuse. Problem is you will get masses of people attempting to take advantage of others, dozens of times more so than now. And many will be taken advantage of because they do not see the difference.

I will undergo something which no other would be willing to go through who has claimed to see the future. Some of you belong to colleges, many maybe. Find me the college. This is no joke. The second the world "believes", things will change somewhat. Sometimes belief creates a break through into that extra nudge which creates or unviels experience.

If you know the words of a truthful person, you will know mine.

 

[loseyourname]

The future does not exist according to whom? It appears as if it doesn't exist yet-- this is a view of time made from within time. Are we really in some priveleged position to judge what does and does not exist, or is our view relative to our particular viewpoint?

In any case, time isn't an absolute. Two events that appear to occur simultaneously to one observor can appear to occur sequentially to another. So for one observor, 'the future' is happening right now, and for the other it is yet to happen. If the latter says that it doesn't exist, he'll get a funny look from the former. More generally, if we refuse to grant priveleged status to any particular reference frame, then there is no absolute sense in which the future doesn't exist.

Our future doesn't yet exist within our own reference frame. Good enough?

 

[hypnagogue]

Our future doesn't yet exist within our own reference frame. Good enough?

It doesn't yet exist, but it exists in a greater context. That opens the logical possibility of premonition.

 

[mikesvenson]

ok all, i have something for you here. I have indeed seen the future through REPEATED dreams. Then seen the manifestation of it in my 'present'.

This past summer, I had a re-occurring dream: I catch thieves breaking into my van. While trying to stop them, I manage to save a bag of $1200 that was inside the van. They get away with everything else except the $1200. About 2 weeks later, my van gets broken in to. Hours before the break-in, I ?coincidentally? remove the bag of $1200 from the van for UNRELATED REASONS that I had up until that point, stored in the van (I was on a long road trip). At first, what seemed to have happened was I dreamed of what would happen in the future, and received some kind of warning through the dream about my money.

This raises a lot of interesting questions. What is free will? Is our path in life predetermined? Many people cling to the friendly idea that they have complete control over their future, and that their destiny is whatever they make it. For a while, I thought this to be so. But there are some complicated problems with this notion and the dreams I had about the break-in. If all future events are manifested as an effect of our own free willed choices, in other words, if we are really in control of our future, then why would I have dreamt of a future event at all? If free will is so, then the event of the break-in would have been only one of billions upon billions of possible outcomes of future events, which would in this case be controlled by my choices. In theory, something as simple as wearing a different color shirt weeks beforehand could have made a huge dent in the probability of the break-in. So the event of the break-in according to free will couldn’t have possibly been inevitable until the moment it starting happening. Therefore there would have been no reason for me to dream of it weeks before hand.

This reasoning about the notion of free will brings me to consider the possibility of a predetermined path to our existence. Where free will is nothing more than a comfortable illusion brought on by a defiance to reality. A reality in which all instances regarded as moments in time (all past instances, present and future instances) exist simultaneously within a space of eternity. Similar to a photo exposed multiple times of the sun passing where several moments in "time" are represented in one frame by the different positions of the sun in that frame. In this example, the frame represents a space of eternity, while the different positions of the sun represent different instances all of which exist simultaneously in the eternity frame. Look at one position of the sun in the frame. By observing the future positions of the suns instances within the frame you can predict its past positions, and vise versa, you can observe the suns past positions within the frame and determine its future positions. In this case, the future can be predicted by the past, as can the past be predicted by the future. The nature of cause and effect runs in ALL directions. No matter which direction time is perceived, the outcomes are reasonably predictable. So, considering this, does time, or whatever we consider to be time, even have a real direction? Or does it simply exist, with neither a begginning, an end, or a direction?

Memories can be described as a recording of causes to which the effect is the coinciding existence frame. After all, I wouldn’t be writing this sentence if I hadn’t written the sentences before it, and I can remember doing so. Regarding the dream in reference to what I wrote above, I can suppose that the dream was a temporary slip up in the singular awareness of the order of instances that simultaneously exist in an eternity frame. That my dream was a memory of an event that is still happening AND HAS ALWAYS HAPPENED in what is relatively now a past frame of existence in an eternity frame. This wasn’t a warning of any kind, but was a "memory" of an event yet to occur. In a sense, I traveled through time in my dream and caught a glimpse of what was to be an effect of a cause, and, the cause of an effect. Since time has no direction and all instances 'are' in an eternity frame, my dream was simply a relief from the illusion of times direction. A memory of the future.

Now, you may say that this is all nonsense and if what I said is true, then why didn’t I dream of exactly what happened, if
(according to me) what I saw in the dream was exactly what would happen in the future? This is because within the eternity, an infinite (eternity) amount of instances exist. and while I was dreaming, I was seeing the same type of event happen in different ways, in different life paths, or, dimensions, different instances. The imagination (subconscious) view this realm of eternity. An idea of the imagination is the subconscious observing different outcomes of instances. Like playing a game of pool, when you can ‘see’ the path at which you need to hit the ball, you are seeing existing moments in different instances in eternity.

Statistics and probability are only proven relative to a particular sequence of instances. The more instances within a sequence are observed, the less probabilities there will be. The longer a consciousness follows a path, the harder it is to get off that path., the longer one lives, the less choices he has.

infinity <---- 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 ? 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 ----> infinity

-In infinity, the probability of the missing number to be 9 is the same for it to be any other number, or simply to not ‘be’ at all.

In infinity all outcomes are equally possible. In a single life path, “statistics and probability are only proven relative to a particular sequence of instances”. In infinity, statistics is a measure of inversely proportional probabilities where all opposing outcomes are equally possible.

When I was 10 or so, I dreamt that my mother had died. In the dream, she was being taken away from my house in a casket that was made of glass. I ran up to her and looked down upon her before she was carried from the house. Looking up at me, she said, "don't worry, everythings going to be alright". When I was 21, she died in my house while I was flying back by plane from a short vactaion.
The dream was simply a preperation for what was to come in the future, so as not to be so much of a shock.
Now, if i had this dream after the fact, then i could rationalize it away as just my own mind trying to deal, but the fact that i saw i happen BEFORE it 'did happen', forces me to realize the significance of the dream.

 

[12345]

well i have had so many dreams about different places in moments of time, then a few days later i experience the same setting and moment in real life. and i know exactly what is happening next.

it must happen to many people. i think.

 

[russ_watters]

I'm not challenging that idea. All I'm saying is that our failure to reproduce 'prophetic' dreams (or most psi phenomena in general) does not amount to evidence against such phenomena, just a lack of a certain kind of evidence for them.

That works for me.

 

[Overdose]

Like i siad earlier i find it interesting that people i speak to and have heard from mostly only seem to have premonitions when their life may be in danger. Its like an in built early warning system that's evolved over time.

 

[mikesvenson]

Like i siad earlier i find it interesting that people i speak to and have heard from mostly only seem to have premonitions when their life may be in danger. Its like an in built early warning system that's evolved over time.

yes, perhaps more generally when something relatively important will happen.
hmmm, ?will?, or ?could?, or ?probably will?.

seems like a question on free will verses predetermined future

 

[russ_watters]

This past summer, I had a re-occurring dream: I catch thieves breaking into my van. While trying to stop them, I manage to save a bag of $1200 that was inside the van.

If I had $1200 in a van, I'd be real surprised if I didn't dream about it being stolen.

 

[mikesvenson]

If I had $1200 in a van, I'd be real surprised if I didn't dream about it being stolen.

good point, although i see the coincidences in this incident to profound to be dismissed by such an optimistically obviouse explanation. As you read, i dreamt about saving the money at the last minute as the van was being broken into. (in 2 separate dreams). Ironically, the van was broken into, and the money was saved. Perhaps the dream was a reminder for my subconsiouse(which was seeing the future instances that were to arrive) to find a reason to take the money out of the van the day of the break-in. The money then was taken out of the van for completely unrelated reasons. I didnt see the break-in coming at the least bit, since i dismissed the dreams as nothing, until that is, the dream actually came true.

 

[olde drunk]

i have not read this thread, so i apologize if this has been offered previously.

if, time only exists in our physical world and our dreams are timeless (without time). why wouldn't we be able to visit both the future and past??

i suspect that we 'educated' people have lost this aspect of our consciousness. so many 'ignorant' cultures still believe and work with their dreams rather well.

love&peace,
olde drunk

 

[loseyourname]

Whatcha talkin' about, drunk? Do you mean that since you can have a dream in which days pass in the dream, when in reality, it's only been a couple of hours, that when you dream, your consciousness is escaping time. Ignoring the fact that nothing in either science or experience can really tell us whether or not that is possible or what the consequences would be, I don't see how you would then be able to re-enter time at a later date, then come back out and re-enter at the original earlier date. That implies that all of time already exists, which would fly in the face of your other ideas regarding free will. Now I know you've postulated that there are infinite possible futures, and we simply choose which one we will move into when we take any action, but if this is the case, and your consciousness simply splipped into one of these futures while you were dreaming, your prognostication would only have a 1 in infinity chance of being correct.

By the way, hyp, the mentor in the Relativity forum says you're off your rocker for suggesting that the relativity of simultaneity allows for prognostication. Maybe if one of you is moving close to the speed of light, you can see a couple of seconds into someone's future. You wouldn't be able to communicate what you saw, but it's interesting anyway.

 

[olde drunk]

Whatcha talkin' about, drunk? Do you mean that since you can have a dream in which days pass in the dream, when in reality, it's only been a couple of hours, that when you dream, your consciousness is escaping time. Ignoring the fact that nothing in either science or experience can really tell us whether or not that is possible or what the consequences would be, I don't see how you would then be able to re-enter time at a later date, then come back out and re-enter at the original earlier date. That implies that all of time already exists, which would fly in the face of your other ideas regarding free will. Now I know you've postulated that there are infinite possible futures, and we simply choose which one we will move into when we take any action, but if this is the case, and your consciousness simply splipped into one of these futures while you were dreaming, your prognostication would only have a 1 in infinity chance of being correct.

By the way, hyp, the mentor in the Relativity forum says you're off your rocker for suggesting that the relativity of simultaneity allows for prognostication. Maybe if one of you is moving close to the speed of light, you can see a couple of seconds into someone's future. You wouldn't be able to communicate what you saw, but it's interesting anyway.

sigh, poor me. i did not know that 'time' existed for the entire universe, including my subconsciousand spritual self. i am such a dummy!

i'll continue in my ignorance and believe that my subconsciousexists in a non-linear enviorment that does not include time. i'll repeat what i said in another thread - (past, present, future)

if the past, present and future are interdependent and exist as probabilities the moment i experience is a function of the expectations and/or desires for that moment. all future probabilities are out there and valid. it is up to me to choose which probability i wish to actualize and experience.

now, i suspect that this is a harmonious agreement tween my conscious, un-conscious and spiritual self. i am not suggesting that i can simply say that i will be able to jump six feet high tomorrow and have that desire realized.

within the process of becoming, we have chosen the circumstances for our life to best provide us with the experience that we wanted. these decisions were made by our counsciouness, not our conscious mind. we use our conscious mind to narrow the focus of our attention to gain understanding of our experience. we use linear experience to make understanding easier.

why can't my soul, or whatever I am, reach into my psyche and present a dream to help me understand and/or better deal with my experiences?? is a dream of a past event more legitimate than a dream of future? can that dream reach back and change a past event??

i am not a dream researcher or devote'. i was offering my opinion that i believe that we do dream in a timeless enviornment and, IMHO, we do visit future events. these dreams help motivate and encourage our efforts to make dreams come true.

love&peace,
olde drunk

 

[loseyourname]

Okay, you didn't address any of what I said. I'm not trying to be combative here, I just want to establish whether or not your system is consistent.

If what you're saying is that your unconscious self, or your soul or whatever it is, can see all of the past, present, and future at once, that is not denying the existence of time. Time must exist in order for there to be a past, present, and future. What you really seem to be saying is that your soul does not experience the passage of time. This, however, would deny the possibility of change, and hence any kind of growth, or really, any kind of experience at all. Experience requires the passage of time. It seems a little odd to speak of there being two "yous," one that exists in time and one that does not. How could a separate you that exists outside of time communicate with the you that exists in our familiar four dimenions? Any action requires a change in state, which requires time, which you have said your soul does not experience.

 

[olde drunk]

the aspect of me that is human requires time to process data. there is also an eternal aspect of myself that exists in a timeless universe; probably, non physical.

it would get messy if we tried to define our greater reality as it is beyond our total comprehension. can energy experience time? or does it experience different states? the chair i am sitting on is energy, condensed or coalesced energy.

we are one, with many aspects or lives. i view my greater self as a tree with each branch or even each leaf as an incarnation in this or any world. this greater self is an energy essence learning to master it's powers and abilities.

hey, look, no one has been able to explain to a scientific certainty what is really happening. i have pieced together this view because it works for me. fortunately, as i move along this line of thinking more and more of reality makes more sense to me. my dreams are limited and i do not spend much time sorting them or reaching for meaning.

i do however, like the idea that we are capable of so much more than we practice. look at what conventional medicine has done to OD's or is it DO's. they had a discipline that worked and it has been lost since they have been absorbed into the AMA definition of medicine. they did this to be accepted by government - business authorities.

my views promote a limitless creative enviornment for myself. (subject to the self-imposed limits for this human experience). now i will pay a little more attention to my dreams to see if i can add an anecdote to this thread.

love&peace,
olde drunk

 

[Ireth2690]

well I am pleased to hear that you can see the future. I can too. Please e-mail me (at Ireth2690@yahoo.com) If you can I would like to talk to you.

 

[Yggdrasil]

One dream about how my entire family will die came true. Have any of you heard of the 9/11 attacks?

 

[ChaosTheory]

I was searching for psychic/clairvoyant stuff, and here I am. Odd that I'm also a M.E. and possibly Physics major. :)

Anyway, here's a link that I just discovered, which may give believers and non-believers something to check out.

http://www.ode.nl/scripts/article.php?aID=3773

Enjoy :)

 

[Imparcticle]

it would get messy if we tried to define our greater reality as it is beyond our total comprehension. can energy experience time? or does it experience different states? the chair i am sitting on is energy, condensed or coalesced energy.

Energy, and everything else in the universe is subject to time. In order to experience anything, there must be a certain time frame in which we experience it.


The day before my dad died, my mom had a dream that his time had come. He'd had a heart attack 2 weeks before, and was getting better (so the doctors said). Then one night, my mom dreamt that the doctors, dressed in pure white, where praying over him. As they did so, he was suddenly engulfed in light. Then he was gone, and my mom knew he was going to pass away.
Personally, I'm a skeptic of psuedoscience and stuff like that just because there is no credible evidence that I've ever heard of to support it. But that dream I just mentioned is one that compells me. I have my own theory, but it probably doesn't make sense...

 

[gravenewworld]

Do I believe dreams can fortell the future? You bet. I have had many cases where my dreams have come true to life. For example I will be in some place I have never been before in my entire life and when I walk around the corner I will already know what will be there because I already walked around the corner in a dream I had. Usually the "dejavu" I have happens every once in a while, not all the time, and they are of events of nothing significant like I have described.

 

[loseyourname]

I was searching for psychic/clairvoyant stuff, and here I am. Odd that I'm also a M.E. and possibly Physics major. :)

Anyway, here's a link that I just discovered, which may give believers and non-believers something to check out.

http://www.ode.nl/scripts/article.php?aID=3773

Enjoy :)

Your link is dead.

 

[Philocrat]

the aspect of me that is human requires time to process data. there is also an eternal aspect of myself that exists in a timeless universe; probably, non physical.

it would get messy if we tried to define our greater reality as it is beyond our total comprehension. can energy experience time? or does it experience different states? the chair i am sitting on is energy, condensed or coalesced energy.

we are one, with many aspects or lives. i view my greater self as a tree with each branch or even each leaf as an incarnation in this or any world. this greater self is an energy essence learning to master it's powers and abilities.

hey, look, no one has been able to explain to a scientific certainty what is really happening. i have pieced together this view because it works for me. fortunately, as i move along this line of thinking more and more of reality makes more sense to me. my dreams are limited and i do not spend much time sorting them or reaching for meaning.

i do however, like the idea that we are capable of so much more than we practice. look at what conventional medicine has done to OD's or is it DO's. they had a discipline that worked and it has been lost since they have been absorbed into the AMA definition of medicine. they did this to be accepted by government - business authorities.

my views promote a limitless creative enviornment for myself. (subject to the self-imposed limits for this human experience). now i will pay a little more attention to my dreams to see if i can add an anecdote to this thread.

love&peace,
olde drunk

Sorry to interrupt your little conversation with loseyourname. You seem to be a dualist. Well, there is nothing bad about that, except that being one simply undermines the whole foundation of your argument. The only problem that I have with your argument is that if there were an aspect of you that existed outside time, it would still be physical since there is originally no causal and clarifying relation between physical and non-physical.

The causal and relational battle is currently between SEQUENTIALISM and SIMULTANEITY, and the fact that the latter may approach a critical point where it may overcome the former does not undermine this fact. The most this could do is to create a critical state that I habitually call ‘THE STANDARD UNIVERSAL NOW’ (SUN). Well, my own opinion is that anything that attains this critical state does not in anyway express a disaster nor neither does it express a sudden translation into non-physicality. Rather, it merely expresses an ability to act non-sequentially.

As I have pointed out elsewhere, the problem of reconciling sequentiality with simultaneity starts with the causal and relational design structure of man himself. Or to be more technical, it is a problem ‘transmutated’ from the subject of perception to the object of perception. This means that, naturally, we think and act sequentially (both in a sleep-state and in a wake-state), and as loseyourname originally pointed out, and you partially agreed, this does involve a passage of time.

My suggestion is that we should focus and concentrate our multi-disciplinary efforts on reconciling the following problematic natural relations:

1) Something and Nothing or a thing and non-thing
2) A thing and itself
3) A thing and other things
4) Identity and Change
5) Sequentiality and Simultaneity

These relations have profound and ultimate consequences on the notions of TIME, SPACE, IDENTITY, CHANGE, CONTNUITY, MATHEMATICS, LOGIC, REASON, and PERFECTION.

I am currently sceptical as to whether these problems can be reconciled in purely human terms, and this is why I started suspecting many years ago that to do this might involve adverse intevention with the entire human reality. And trust me, this is almost a no-go area, even within the scientific community itself.

 

[Guardian01]

Can daydreams also be considered dreams? Daydream=oxymoron? Sorry to change the subject, but the thought came up.

 

[Guardian01]

Can daydreams be considered dreams, technically? Daydreams=oxymoron?

 

[ChaosTheory]

http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:777hX_7iAYQJ:www.ode.nl/scripts/article.php%3FaID%3D3773

Try this. It's Google's cache of the website.

I really don't know how scientific it is, as there are no sources. But google is our friend :)

 

[russ_watters]

The day before my dad died, my mom had a dream that his time had come. He'd had a heart attack 2 weeks before, and was getting better (so the doctors said). Then one night, my mom dreamt that the doctors, dressed in pure white, where praying over him. As they did so, he was suddenly engulfed in light. Then he was gone, and my mom knew he was going to pass away.
Personally, I'm a skeptic of psuedoscience and stuff like that just because there is no credible evidence that I've ever heard of to support it. But that dream I just mentioned is one that compells me. I have my own theory, but it probably doesn't make sense...

I see an obvious coincidence there. If my father had a heart attack (and survived), my mother would dream about his impending death for years before getting over it.

 

[Imparcticle]

Have you ever heard of teletrons?

 

[OneSoul]

Can dreams predict the future?

I have also had many dreams at night, that I seem to experience in the events of the next day. And most of them are not anything important, I have also told friends about them first and then they happen. I believe it is just part of being connected to the path I am on, or tapping into the universal source, who already knows the ansers for which we choose.

I have also done lucid dreaming, where I recognize I am dreaming while in the dream and have been able to make choices in my dream state, knowing that it is not real, at leat on the physical plane. I have had a lot of fun doing this

However none of it has seemed to make my life any easier, just sometimes I feel more faithful that there is something else out there, and we are not scientific mistakes.

 

[Overdose]

I see an obvious coincidence there. If my father had a heart attack (and survived), my mother would dream about his impending death for years before getting over it.

one man's prediction, another man's coincidence.

 

[russ_watters]

one man's prediction, another man's coincidence.

And that, in a nutshesll, is why this ain't science.

I have also done lucid dreaming, where I recognize I am dreaming while in the dream and have been able to make choices in my dream state, knowing that it is not real, at leat on the physical plane. I have had a lot of fun doing this

Lucid dreaming is something neat I'm working on. I am semi-conscious in some of my dreams, but I can't yet control them.

 

[loseyourname]

Have you ever heard of teletrons?

The electronic display device or the hypothetical psychic particle?

 

[loseyourname]

I really don't know how scientific it is, as there are no sources. But google is our friend :)

It's difficult to tell how scientific the studies being cited in this article are. As you said, there aren't any actual citations, just references to particular names and events. It is implied that nominally scientific studies have been conducted; it would be nice to see them.