Dreams and the Two Aspects of Mind

Humans seem to have two aspects to their minds or two ways to process information: logically through conscious reasoning and intuitively through feelings or flashes of awareness from the subconscious. Some people strongly favor one method over the other. 

Those who are grounded in logic and reason often scoff at the intuitive and think reliance on feelings or psychic flashes is nonsense, only accepted by the gullible. And those who rely on the intuitive sometimes have a tendency to think that being logical and relying on conscious reasoning is somehow inferior.

Both aspects of the mind have their place and are necessary. The conscious mind and use of logic and reason allows us to experience and interpret the physical world in which we live. If the subconscious could do the job, we wouldn’t need a conscious mind. The conscious mind tells us when we are in danger or about to do something that is not compatible with existence in a physical world. 

Consider the following example. I was thinking about astral projection one night prior to falling asleep. While asleep, I left my body and joined another person who was going to take me on an astral tour. We traveled together until we arrived at a railroad track with a fast moving train approaching. I immediately stopped, still having conscious awareness in the dream. He laughed and said, you don’t have to stop; it can’t hurt you, as he moved through the train and arrived safely on the other side. 

Now to the astral body this was not a threat, but if I tried this in the physical world, I would not survive for long. We can see this with people suffering from a disease like leprosy, where the sufferers often have sores and skin rubbed to the bone. Due to nerve damage, they have lost the physical sensation that normally warns and protects the body in its contact with other objects. They don’t know when they are damaging parts of their own body. 

Intuition is equally important because this emanates from the source of who and what we are. The subconscious is the activating force for carrying out the instructions given to it by the conscious mind as it assesses the world. The denial of the subconscious is the denial of our greater reality. 

The subconscious controls most of what we do because it has learned through our conscious experience. The mere act of walking does not require conscious control because all of the electrical activity that must take place within the brain has been learned. It knows the muscles that need to be activated and the required sequence.

During our childhood development, the conscious mind had to learn how to perform activities that could then become unconscious. And it had to learn about dangerous objects or situations so the response could later become automatic.

The activation of the subconscious is the great secret employed by successful people in all occupations. Athletes use principles they have been taught to tap into the awesome power of the subconscious to improve performance. 

The subconscious relays messages to us in a variety of ways. Sometimes we have a hunch about something, another time we get a strange feeling around someone, and often we see clear messages related to our daily lives in our dreams. If you deny intuition and your dreams, you are cutting yourself off from your greater self. 

Now who is in charge? Extensive study and research makes it clear that the conscious mind should be in charge. The conscious mind is assessing reality and constantly sending messages to the subconscious, which then tries to act upon the direction it receives. 

I say the conscious mind should be in charge because some have let the subconscious take control causing a severe mental imbalance. They have abandoned what should be the function of the conscious mind, often to disastrous consequences. 

The conscious mind is equipped to interact with and evaluate the physical world, not the subconscious. Intuition and dreams are there for guidance, but you must set the course for your life and the conscious mind must deal with its daily challenges. 

A few weeks ago, I had an interesting dream that showed me the balance that needs to exist between the two aspects of mind. We need both, but they must be balanced and complement one another. 

For those of you who are interested in pursuing this topic, I recommend reading The Law of Psychic Phenomena by Thomson Jay Hudson. This work dates back to the late eighteen hundreds, but is a seminal work and recommended in the Cayce readings as a book to read to better understand what Cayce was doing while in trance.

Changing the Future—Example 1

The following dream is also in my book. This dream occurred early in my work with dreams as I started to change my life. I dreamed that I was talking with a man who appeared to be an adviser. He said that I was having back problems because I was not exercising my spine. He added that if I did not start exercising, I would start passing out. He suggested an exercise I could easily do each day. 

In reflecting on the dream, I realized that I did feel lightheaded at times, so his warning did not seem far-fetched. I was not being treated by a doctor for any specific health issues, but I lacked energy, my back was often sore, and I sometimes felt dizzy. 

The dream was brief and to the point, as my health dreams often are. My dream adviser described an undesirable aspect of my probable future that would become real if I did not take the recommended action. This dream scared me, so I immediately made the change suggested. And I began to feel an improvement in a short time. 

The dream was for my benefit and precipitated action on my part. If I had ignored the dream, I might well have injured myself or someone else, such as when driving during a blackout. My future might have been very different from the future I experienced as a resulting of heeding that dream advice, as well as suggestions and warnings from many other dreams. 

The improved life did not happen just because I had dreams; it happened when I changed my thoughts or behavior because of my dreams. I had to take action, to do something, to change the probable future and bring about a more desirable life. 

If you don’t like some aspect of your life, then you must change the cause. And your dreams can help you find the cause. But that is only half the battle; the other half is making the necessary changes in your life.

An Uncomfortable Truth

Today I am addressing what I consider an uncomfortable truth. I have stated in previous posts that some people do not think you should try to see the future. And many do not think it is possible, even if they think it has value. The truth is you can see the probable future, and I believe this is a problem for most people. 

The possibility of seeing the probable future is an uncomfortable thought. I believe most people would like to lead their lives in ignorance of the future, because the possibility of seeing it opens up an entire new array of concerns. 

If they can see their future, maybe they will see something bad, and that scares them. Or perhaps the future they want is not the one they see, and change is necessary to create the one they want. And we all resist change to varying degrees. 

I am sure that you have known someone who reacts to bad news that really requires a response on his or her part by refusing to acknowledge it. The individual thinks that if it is ignored it will go away. 

I am not advocating dwelling on the negative. I am saying you must confront and deal with problems. While it may be good to be optimistic, problems must be addressed before they become crises. 

If you build your house on the bank of a river and there is a flood, you should not pretend that there is not a problem and ignore the flood. Yes, eventually the water will recede. But will the house and your valuables still be there? 

There are two kinds of dream scenarios involving the future: dreams of future events that can be changed and dreams or visions of the future that the individual dreamer cannot change. 

Dreams can show you the probable future, the likely future, if you do not take action. One key benefit of seeing the probable future is to have the opportunity to make mid-course corrections in your life. 

By changing your thoughts and actions, you bring the probable future into alignment with the desired future. If you do not have selfish motives and want to improve your live for the benefit of yourself and others, you will be guided to make the right changes in your life. 

I have known people with habits leading to bad health who are fond of saying, “whatever happens, happens. I’ll die when my time comes, so why worry about it. What I do doesn't matter.” Well, my answer, usually unexpressed, is that it might come a lot sooner than you think or want, if you don’t make some changes. 

If the future you see is not something you can change, then you can prepare yourself psychologically for what is going to happen. In this situation, these dreams of the future or visions may be of a broad nature and involve your employer, your city, or your nation. In any case, they are likely to involve people and circumstances over which you have no control, but you might be affected personally by what happens. 

From the above you can see two main benefits from seeing the probable future in your dreams. In one situation, you can make changes that will alter the probable future and allow you to experience the life you want. In the other situation, you can prepare ourselves for what is to come, and if the future event is frightening, you can mitigate that fear ahead of time. 

If you decide to ignore all your dream guidance, the future events depicted will still occur, but just may not be what you want or are prepared to handle. And the life you live may not be the life you desire or could live. 

This may sound very hypothetical, so I will provide concrete examples of both types of dreams in my future posts. In this post, I am laying the groundwork and explaining why dreams of the future are important. My future examples will show how dreams of the future benefited me.

A Precognitive Dream or Coincidence

Last Friday night I had the following dream. I was driving my car along the highway. The road seemed slippery, and I was using extreme caution. My main concern was to keep my speed down to stay on the pavement. 

I felt I was doing well, when I came to a huge, deep water hole at an intersection. I peered into the water and saw a car at the bottom. My focus briefly returned to the surrounding area. I looked into the water again and saw that there were two cars, one on top of the other. I wondered how the cars might be pulled from the water.

I thought about the dream as I was having breakfast, but I couldn’t make an obvious connection to anything happening in my life. My conclusion was that it might well be a preview of some event later in the day.

Saturday morning, as usual, I drove to an organic supermarket about ten miles from where I live. On my way home from the store, I drove very cautiously because there are a number of dangerous intersections along the main road. 

As I approached a major intersection, I saw flashing lights from fire trucks and an ambulance. One of the respondents waved me off to another road on the right. Before he did, I could just make out two demolished cars that had collided at the intersection.

Dreams often contain a broader view of people and events surrounding us. They are not limited to the normal time sequence and often show events from the future as part of the present. 

When my dream occurred, had all of this already happened in some alternate reality, and eventually took form in the physical. Or was my subconscious just operating like a very powerful and sophisticated computer, one that could make projections based on everything in my subconscious, as well as data received telepathically concerning people and events within my normal environment. 

Of course, some will say that this was a coincidence. If this is the case, then I have coincidences like this occurring every day of my life. 

The skeptics will not be convinced of anything by this dream or the numerous other similar dreams described in my book. If you already accept precognition, this will merely be considered by you as an interesting example. If you have not yet decided, but have an open mind, I strongly suggest you record your dreams. 

You do not need a scientific explanation to experience visions or benefit from views of the future. Humankind benefited from fire to provide warmth and to cook food long before the chemistry involved was understood. And humans understood that objects fall when released from a height before Newton and Einstein. 

Unfortunately, today many scientists are still in denial despite an avalanche of data because they cannot explain what happens during paranormal activity, which seems to contradict how they think the universe works. 

However, progress is being made and some scientists are even beginning to sound more like mystics. I think the scientific explanation for paranormal activity will eventually be found, but in the meantime, you can benefit from your own understanding as I have done.

Science, Precognition, and Dreams

Over the past several decades, experiments have been conducted in several countries with results that suggest the demonstration of precognition. The gist of these experiments is as follows. Individuals as test subjects are shown pictures that provoke a strong emotional response and neutral pictures that don’t provoke a response. As might be expected, there is a definite difference in physiological activity when these pictures are viewed. 

The two classes of pictures can be characterized by two decidedly different profiles: one shows activation of the sympathetic nervous system and the other shows inactivity. See http://www.dailygrail.com/2014/3/Scientific-Research-Suggests-We-Unconsciously-React-Events-10-Seconds-They-Happen. 

Now things get interesting. When the picture the subject is going to be shown is something provocative, up to ten seconds before seeing the picture, the subject displays physiological activity corresponding to that occurrence. If he or she is going to be shown a neutral image, there is inactivity. 

Some suggested that the conductor of the experiment was doing something that tipped off the subject about the nature of the picture he or she would be shown. So experimenters removed the potential bias of the conductor by having a computer make a random selection and repeated the experiments. Neither the conductor nor subject knows what type of picture would be selected. 

The same results are obtained. The subject seems to know what type of picture would be selected, before it is selected at random, up to ten seconds before the selection. 

These results are very puzzling to many scientists. Some say they conclusively demonstrate precognition and others state that there must be some other explanation. Many have called for more experiments that are carefully conducted to rule out any possibility of experimental bias. 

In the nineteenth century, several different scientific committees were commissioned to investigate psychic phenomena like precognition and telepathy. The groups could never come to a unanimous conclusion. Those who believed in the possibility of psychic phenomena concluded that the data supported its existence. Those who believed that psychic phenomena was impossible and promoted by charlatans concluded the data did not support its existence. These studies, which were conducted in France and elsewhere, are described in The Law of Psychic Phenomena by Thomson Jay Hudson. 

The reason for the conflicting results might simply be the one given by Hudson. For most scientific experiments designed to establish a result, the conductor is not relevant to the experiment. By that, I mean that anyone who follows certain steps and procedures should obtain similar results. 

Herein lies the problem. When trying to prove that precognition or telepathy exists, the persons designing and conducting the experiment are part of the experiment. There is the possibility that their beliefs strongly affect the results. So we find that believers get the results they expect and non-believers get the results they expect. 

In one of the articles I read from the Internet, the suggestion was made that precognition could be established if someone could do something like predicting the next day’s closing stock price. I have done this a few times through my dreams, but I cannot control it. 

I don’t know why my subconscious decides on those few occasions to provide this information. I don’t know what aspects of my next day my dreams will focus on, so conducting any kind of experiment is not possible. I am convinced by the preponderance of daily evidence that I have collected over many years. 

In the early days of Edgar Cayce’s readings, the results were not always as beneficial as Cayce and his close supporters would have liked. They soon realized that the readings were affected by the conductor and those in attendance. Cayce decided that his wife would become the conductor for all of the readings, and more attention was paid to the intentions of those in attendance. These actions led to improved results. 

If you acknowledge telepathy, then it is clear that a stream of messages can be sent to someone who is being tested or in a trance state that are never seen or heard consciously. Experiments with hypnosis demonstrate that a negative audience can affect the results and may cause the person under hypnosis to fall out of that state. In conducting experiments or demonstrations involving psychic phenomena, dreams, and hypnosis, the subject, testers, and audience are all part of the experiment. 

If you doubt that you can have precognitive dreams, you probably will not have them. If you are at least open-minded to the possibility, as I was when I first began examining my dreams, I believe you will see the evidence. In the beginning, I had not yet formed an opinion about precognitive dreams, but in time the evidence was overwhelming that they do occur. 

I wanted to understand my dreams, believed it was possible, and expected results, which came quickly. I believe this approach separated me from many others who never found much help from their dreams or evidence of precognition. 

Scientists around the world continue to conduct experiments to either establish precognition and telepathy or prove it doesn’t exist. One problem is that few seem to realize they are part of the experiment. Their beliefs will affect the results and often negate the value of the experiment. 

Many dream labs have conducted studies to evaluate thought transference and precognition as well. And they face a similar problem. In addition, it is not easy to control the content of a person’s dream. In the final analysis, you have to examine your own dreams and decide for yourself what is possible.

More About Time and Dreams

I think a natural question to ask concerns the nature of the future. Does the future already exist in some sense or is the subconscious merely projecting what the future will be as if it were a sophisticated computer making predictions based on all relevant data including all telepathic communications. 

Is there another reality where the entire time path of our future unfolds and is just waiting to be physically realized? This seems to be the view of Seth, Jane Robert’s trance essence. 

I don’t find it expressed this way in the Edgar Cayce readings. However, Cayce repeatedly says, “thoughts are things,” so if the subconscious sees or has thoughts about the future, does this not give it a psychic reality. 

Consider the following example. Suppose I am an architect planning a new building. As I work through the details, I will have various sketches and drawings with measurements, culminating in a picture of the finished product. 

Now the building does not exist yet in the physical world, but everything is worked out for how the final product will look. If I think of my subconscious as the architect and the finished building as the future I have planned, the future has a certain type of reality. But I think it is more than that. 

The plan formulated or the future has a strong propensity to try to become physical, and becomes physical unless the plan is changed. So the future seen by the subconscious seems to be more that a logical prediction; it seems to be an alive energy that tries to find expression. 

You can see this for yourself in your dreams. If I dream I am going to encounter a certain event the next day, this event as a mere logical prediction would suggest that awareness of the prediction from the dream would enable me to easily prevent the event from taking place. However, this does not appear to be the case. 

I have repeatedly found that such an event seems to have an energy like a vortex that tries to carry it into physical expression, and it requires considerable awareness and effort on my part to prevent it from occurring. There is a sense of being pulled into that future despite my best efforts. You must experience this for yourself to fully appreciate what I am saying. 

What I am suggesting is that the future may actually exist in a non-physical form, and that future will be experienced as my life unless I change that profile to something else. And the way I change it is through the re-patterning of my thoughts to create a different plan on the subconscious level. But first I have to understand what my current plan is, what the finished product or future will be if I make no substantive changes in my conscious thinking. 

My dreams will tell me if I am on a positive, constructive path or one that will result in a life of hardship and disappointment. My seeing through my dreams gives me an opportunity to create the future I want and not one that I have unknowingly created that is less than what I desire. 

Here we find an important value of dreams, because our dreams will show us the future we will experience based on what we have created in our subconscious. And what we have created is built based on our daily thoughts and actions. 

Our dreams give us an opportunity to change our probable future, if we find it undesirable, and help us build the future consistent with our highest ideals. On a practical level, it may not matter if the probable future exists on another level or is a logical deduction. 

In my next post, I will describe some fascinating experiments conducted in several countries over the last few decades. These experiments strongly suggest the existence of precognition and are quite puzzling to the scientific community, many of whom would like another explanation. 

The Nature of Time—Physical Time

Until the early 20^th century and the publication of Einstein’s special theory of relativity, scientists believed that time was absolute and the events in the universe all ran as if the universe were a giant clock. Time was considered absolute. The measurement of the duration of events would be the same for everyone. Thanks to Einstein, we now know this is not the case. 

Scientific time is more subjective than previously thought. Two observers in motion relative to each other can obtain two different measurements for the duration of the same event. And what is occurring in the present for one observer may be occurring in the past or future for another observer.

Scientists now view an event in time as a point in a 4-dimensional space-time continuum. A point in the future is just as real as one in the past. Whether that point is the present, future, or past for you depends on its position relative to you in your frame of reference. For you it may be the future and for someone else in motion (extremely fast) relative to you, it may be perceived as the present. 

The accepted view is that one could actually travel into the distant future if the speed were sufficient. In fact, we are traveling into the future all the time, although it often seems to be painfully slow. 

Due to paradoxes resulting from a violation of causality, most scientists do not believe that travel into the past is possible. We would have the inevitable question: Can one travel into the past and change the future? There is the famous ‘grandfather paradox’ in which someone travels back in time to keep their grandparents from meeting, thus preventing his or her own birth. 

There is speculation that with wormholes it might be possible to travel into the past, but if the past were changed, would it be the same life path or a different one. Maybe an alternate reality would be created in which you were never born, but the current reality also still exists. Actually, within certain limitations, some suggest we may be able to change the past as well as the future. However, this is a subject for another posting.

At this point, you may wonder what this has to do with dreams. The scientific view is important because it makes clear that our concept of time is much more plastic than previous thought. This suggests that dreams of the future may indeed be possible. So when I write about visions or dreams of the future do not think that it somehow violates science. It does not, but that does not mean that science understands how visions occur. 

Models have been proposed by eminent scientists that could potentially explain how one is able to see the future. However, currently there is no accepted theory. And not all believe it is possible, even if it does not violate scientific principles.

As I develop my perspective in these postings, I will describe my understanding of the mechanism that allows me to see the future with the understanding that the future seen is one that exists at that moment in time. 

As I live my life and make decisions, I am now at a new moment in time and the future I saw previously might have changed. So I can only say that I saw the probable future, the future that would occur if I did not change something that would affect the future I saw.

You may think that I have reduced the concept to something that is meaningless because we are constantly having thoughts and making decisions. This is true but most people establish a course in life with very definite opinions and beliefs and seldom make substantive changes. 

Their beliefs and desires create a future that is quite determined, even if it is hidden from the conscious mind. They are following a very predictable course. Their conscious mind cannot hold enough information to enable them to see the consequences of all their beliefs, and often they are also blind to what is readily seen. 

I am sure you all have seen people, often family members, who you are certain will end up a certain unfortunate way later in life. And often they do, to their own dismay. They simply could not see what others could see. 

Now apply that to yourself with a subconscious mind that remembers everything you have ever done and said, and with a seemingly perfect ability to reach logical conclusions from the data it contains. It can indeed show you the future because it not only contains everything you have ever said and done, but it also can telepathically tap into others’ thoughts and desires and see potential future meetings and relationships. 

The metaphysical view is that thoughts are things with a very real existence. At any point in time, we are on a path that extends far into the future. That path with all its encounters is very real. 

If we embark on a road not traveled before, we experience the buildings, people, and events on that road in time as we travel it. They already exist, but are not part of our experience yet. Now if we reach an intersection and leave that road, we encounter a different landscape and events. That intersection represents a decision point, and so it is with our lives.

Visions can give us the broader view where we see what is coming on the particular path we chose. The path exists, but time does not because time is a construct that is part of our physical existence. 

The Nature of Time—Psychological Time

We are now in a new year and I am going to focus the content of my posts on the nature of time and the type of dreams that Edgar Cayce called visions. The title of my book (The Man Who Sees Tomorrow in His Dreams) clearly suggests that I believe we can see the future in our dreams. But before I discuss visions, I need to provide some background so there is no confusion about what I mean when I write about time and the future. 

There are really two main aspects of time: psychological time and physical or scientific time. In this post, I am focusing on psychological time. By psychological time, I mean a person’s sense of the duration of an event. This is very subjective and appears to change with one’s age. 

When I was a boy, I used to walk by a neighbor’s house on my way to and from school. A man who lived there was retired and often sat on his porch. I would stop and talk with him about a variety of topics. 

One day I expressed some unhappiness about how long the school year seemed. This brought a quick response and a bit of a lecture from him. I’ll never forget how he described his life as now flying by compared to his younger years. He said that each new decade passed faster than the previous one, and now years seemed to pass in an instant. 

Now, in my retirement years, I can appreciate his observation. There seems to be an acceleration in time as I age. 

Regardless of the sense of duration of events and passing of days, the common perception is that the future does not exist until we encounter it. The activities and events for next week do not exist until that calendar time arrives, and we live the week. 

Time has a certain flow to it and the future appears to be unknown until we reach that point in time. We may plan certain activities ahead of time, but how the week actually plays out is unknown. This is the common belief. But is it correct? 

In future posts, I will attempt to cast doubt on this common belief and show that time is more like an illusion that serves a purpose in our daily lives, but does not provide an absolute even for scientists. 

Yesterday I took a brief nap around 5:00 pm. While napping, I dreamed I was with a man who was once my boss. He said, I see you just talked with Debbie. I was surprised and said, No, I haven’t spoken to her for at least six months. This was the beginning of a much more involved dream, but I do not need to relate the remainder to make my point. 

A short time after I awoke, the telephone rang and it was my niece, whom I had not spoken to or heard from for at least six months. What is interesting is that her job is in HR. The woman, Debbie, mentioned in the dream, also works in HR. 

So perhaps we have telepathy and precognition both at work here. And on another level the event I experienced in time, her telephone call, already happened prior to my physical experience. 

My next post will deal with physical or scientific time, which definitely casts some doubt about veracity of the common perception of time.