Post by auntym on Apr 20, 2013 14:56:22 GMT -6
www.ufodigest.com/article/unbidden-preview-can-our-dreams-jump-events-queue0420
April 20, 2013
Unbidden Preview: Can Our Dreams Jump the Events Queue?
By Edward Crabtree
It was a surprise to see John Major, the then Prime Minister of Great Britain, in a shopping mall in Leicester. It was even more of an eyebrow raiser to see that he was there to sign copies of his memoirs which were on sale. This could only mean that he had left office!
This dream was strange enough for me to put it down in a dream diary that I kept at the time. About a week later – this was June 1995 –the dramatic news hit the headlines: John Major had stood down as leader of the country. This move took everyone unawares, not least his own colleagues. I, who had no interest, still less stake in, the machinations of those at the top of the Conservative Party seemed to have been granted foreknowledge of this.
I make no claims as to the supernatural nature of this dream, and I suspect that the reader will have a story much like it to tell. The dream may have been about issues that I myself was facing at the time, or about nothing much at all, and the connection with later news coincidental. Dreams play enigmatic games with us all.
Dreams: self-delusions.
Chewing over our dreams over the water cooler is an institution which bores some, and fascinates others. We all dream, even those who claim not to. Even the dog that barks at me on the way to work dreams; perhaps even educated fleas dream! No sooner have we slid into the sumptuous bodily melt down of sleep than our mind is kidnapped by a phantasmagorical virtual reality. It always feels like something that is happening to us, but in fact we have been doing it to ourselves all along.
The word `dream` - from the middle English `dreme` meaning `joy` and `music`- carries with it suggestions of escapism. Nevertheless, we all know that our dreams hurl us straight back into the daily problems that we wanted to leave behind. I am a teacher by trade and a great many of my dreams feature me being late for classes, or being otherwise unprepared for them. What about you?
Mapping the dreamscape.
In 1953 an American Psychologist called Eugene Aserinsky astonished the scientific world. He used a brainwave recording machine to prove that, instead of just shutting down during sleep, the brain enters a new phase of great activity. This is accompanied by the eyes jerking about (Rapid Eye Movement). Apart from this, dreams have remained difficult to observe: we cannot speak to a person whilst dreaming and hence can only deal with it as a recalled event.
The Victorians, living as they were in an age of mechanical science, consigned dreams to the role of a nightly dementia brought about by anxieties and indigestion. It took one Sigmund Freud to re-awaken the world to the importance of dreams. He proposed that there was a physical part of the brain which he called `the subconscious` which housed our dreams. Many of his ideas are now out of favour. However, Carl Jung took the `subconscious` concept and ran with it. Where would current New Age thinking be without his oceanic `Collective Unconscious`? The idea is so prevalent that it is easy to forget that many of his contemporaries and some psychologists now, insist that out dreams are as unique and distinctive to each dreamer as a snowflake.
All a dream.
Modern psychologists have no difficulty in ascribing many paranormal phenomena – ghosts, astral travel, memories of past lives –to being dreams of some kind.
The idea is not without merit. I have a friend who can recall as a child having levitated off the ground in a town centre in full view of other people. He knows that this cannot have happened. He therefore assumes it must be a memory of a vivid dream which has somehow got jumbled up with his ordinary memories.
I myself once woke up in a bedsit late at night to see a glowing man sitting in the chair opposite my bed. It disappeared almost on sight. I have always chalked this down to it having been a hypnagogic dream, which is to say the special kind of dream you can get between being awake and asleep. However, some dream experiences are more eerie, and harder to account for, than these.
The Reverend John Wilkins recorded an event that took place in Devon, in the UK, in the 1800’s.He dreamt one night that he was travelling to London. As his parents` house was only a few hundred miles en route he decided to pay them a visit. He entered their bedchamber, and there he saw his mother who was awake. He informed her that he was going on a long trip. His mother, horror-struck replied: `Oh, son! You are dead!’
Later he received a letter from his parents who were checking to see if he was dying, or indeed had already died. It transpired that his mother had also seen him, as a `ghost`, that same night and had had the same exchange. (Ackroyd, p’s -246-248)
CONTINUE READING: www.ufodigest.com/article/unbidden-preview-can-our-dreams-jump-events-queue0420
April 20, 2013
Unbidden Preview: Can Our Dreams Jump the Events Queue?
By Edward Crabtree
It was a surprise to see John Major, the then Prime Minister of Great Britain, in a shopping mall in Leicester. It was even more of an eyebrow raiser to see that he was there to sign copies of his memoirs which were on sale. This could only mean that he had left office!
This dream was strange enough for me to put it down in a dream diary that I kept at the time. About a week later – this was June 1995 –the dramatic news hit the headlines: John Major had stood down as leader of the country. This move took everyone unawares, not least his own colleagues. I, who had no interest, still less stake in, the machinations of those at the top of the Conservative Party seemed to have been granted foreknowledge of this.
I make no claims as to the supernatural nature of this dream, and I suspect that the reader will have a story much like it to tell. The dream may have been about issues that I myself was facing at the time, or about nothing much at all, and the connection with later news coincidental. Dreams play enigmatic games with us all.
Dreams: self-delusions.
Chewing over our dreams over the water cooler is an institution which bores some, and fascinates others. We all dream, even those who claim not to. Even the dog that barks at me on the way to work dreams; perhaps even educated fleas dream! No sooner have we slid into the sumptuous bodily melt down of sleep than our mind is kidnapped by a phantasmagorical virtual reality. It always feels like something that is happening to us, but in fact we have been doing it to ourselves all along.
The word `dream` - from the middle English `dreme` meaning `joy` and `music`- carries with it suggestions of escapism. Nevertheless, we all know that our dreams hurl us straight back into the daily problems that we wanted to leave behind. I am a teacher by trade and a great many of my dreams feature me being late for classes, or being otherwise unprepared for them. What about you?
Mapping the dreamscape.
In 1953 an American Psychologist called Eugene Aserinsky astonished the scientific world. He used a brainwave recording machine to prove that, instead of just shutting down during sleep, the brain enters a new phase of great activity. This is accompanied by the eyes jerking about (Rapid Eye Movement). Apart from this, dreams have remained difficult to observe: we cannot speak to a person whilst dreaming and hence can only deal with it as a recalled event.
The Victorians, living as they were in an age of mechanical science, consigned dreams to the role of a nightly dementia brought about by anxieties and indigestion. It took one Sigmund Freud to re-awaken the world to the importance of dreams. He proposed that there was a physical part of the brain which he called `the subconscious` which housed our dreams. Many of his ideas are now out of favour. However, Carl Jung took the `subconscious` concept and ran with it. Where would current New Age thinking be without his oceanic `Collective Unconscious`? The idea is so prevalent that it is easy to forget that many of his contemporaries and some psychologists now, insist that out dreams are as unique and distinctive to each dreamer as a snowflake.
All a dream.
Modern psychologists have no difficulty in ascribing many paranormal phenomena – ghosts, astral travel, memories of past lives –to being dreams of some kind.
The idea is not without merit. I have a friend who can recall as a child having levitated off the ground in a town centre in full view of other people. He knows that this cannot have happened. He therefore assumes it must be a memory of a vivid dream which has somehow got jumbled up with his ordinary memories.
I myself once woke up in a bedsit late at night to see a glowing man sitting in the chair opposite my bed. It disappeared almost on sight. I have always chalked this down to it having been a hypnagogic dream, which is to say the special kind of dream you can get between being awake and asleep. However, some dream experiences are more eerie, and harder to account for, than these.
The Reverend John Wilkins recorded an event that took place in Devon, in the UK, in the 1800’s.He dreamt one night that he was travelling to London. As his parents` house was only a few hundred miles en route he decided to pay them a visit. He entered their bedchamber, and there he saw his mother who was awake. He informed her that he was going on a long trip. His mother, horror-struck replied: `Oh, son! You are dead!’
Later he received a letter from his parents who were checking to see if he was dying, or indeed had already died. It transpired that his mother had also seen him, as a `ghost`, that same night and had had the same exchange. (Ackroyd, p’s -246-248)
CONTINUE READING: www.ufodigest.com/article/unbidden-preview-can-our-dreams-jump-events-queue0420