Mod+ 282. CAN YOUR DREAMS PREDICT DEATH? NEW EVIDENCE, SURPRISING RESULT.

I haven't finished listening yet (started listening too late in my morning commute) but I wanted to say that I am really enjoying this episode. I am a pretty prodigious dreamer and have been somewhat disciplined about writing them down for the past 8 months as I am in the early stages of becoming a Jungian analyst and my analyst reads them each week. I am apparently not nearly as disciplined as Andy, though! There have been plenty of times where instead of typing them up I just jot down a few bits on scrap paper hoping to come back and fill them out and then forget to, or sometimes, worst of all, just forget entirely. However, for the first several months I was very good about it and I managed to fill up something like 65 single-spaced Word pages in five months or less. Some nights I had as many as 7 dreams. Let me tell you, it is a lot of work to keep typing up dreams when you have that many a night - and I do believe that paying attention to your dreams and recording them somehow causes you to have more dreams to have to sit down and record. Whenever I get lax with the process, I end up dreaming less. I can't say, however, whether this is letting your dream memory muscles get flabby or if the unconscious turns its nose up at you for not paying as much attention to it.

Just two weeks ago I had a dream about a cockroach. Now, I don't have a database like Andy, but I am fairly confident that I almost never dream about cockroaches. I wouldn't be surprised if this was my very first dream about one. Also, I have never seen a cockroach in any place where I've lived. Ever. The next morning my wife says to me that a cockroach had flown through the living room that night while I was asleep and that she had wanted very badly to wake me up to come kill it, but decided to do it herself. It was her mentioning this that caused me to remember the dream (this is an interesting thing in itself - I am surprised oftentimes by how someone will casually say something or an event will occur that will trigger my memory of a dream from the previous evening that would have simply been forgotten without that triggering event). The dream was elaborate. It was not simply a vague sense of "Oh, I sorta think I might have had a dream about a cockroach last night." In the dream, a cockroach ran across the floor and my father and I chased it and my dad pinned it against the wall under a glass. After capturing it, it turned into a crab. I stared at it in disbelief and said to my dad, "How the hell did that happen? Does that sort of thing really happen!?" "I guess it can, sometimes," he said. Like I said, not the sort of vague impression you might have had a dream about something someone said.

I've had even more unlikely dream premonitions but nothing like Andy. The most accurate and elaborate one was of going to my parents house and learning from my mom that my brother's girlfriend was visiting that evening and was driving herself because she wanted to stay for an entire week. My mom mentioned this to me in the kitchen. In waking life, my brother's girlfriend at the time only ever visited with me, as she lived near me and we would drive there together. She had never driven there on her own and had never stayed for more than a weekend. I went home that Friday evening, a few nights after having the dream, and entered the kitchen. My mom greeted me there, and the two of us began talking. I heard someone drive into our lane and said, "Who is that?" and my mom replied, "That's your brother's girlfriend, she came on her own because she's staying for the whole week." At that time I was also journaling my dreams, but was doing so by hand and simply for my own amusement. I had my journal with me and showed my family the entry several days before right on the spot. They had to believe it because it was handwritten numerous pages back in the book and I showed them immediately. Also, a few weeks ago a family member died completely unexpectedly. Just two weeks prior to her death she came to me in a dream and shared a special message with me. A few nights after her death, I had a dream where I met a man who shared that he had a message for me from her and that he was sent to tell me that she had "made it over ok." This was a dear but distant family member and I cannot recall any other dreams about her in my lifetime. Even though I'm convinced there's something to all this stuff, I'm always dumbfounded when it happens.

And that brings me to the final thing I want to say for now. In this episode, Andy says that skeptics may need to be skeptics because of their life journey or whatever. I used to be far more evangelical about psi and NDEs and the like but for some reason as I get older I have become more cynical - and this in spite of the fact that I am an "experiencer." Throughout my life I have had precognitive dreams, waking premonitions, a vision of a brilliantly bright being I thought was an angel (at the time) and of an explosive light I thought was God (at the time), ectoplasm emit from my foot which was witnessed by my family, seen strange things in the sky, heard voices (three times only) that all said powerful and impacting things that have directed the course of my life, an OBE that was very much like an NDE and perhaps was one where I felt nothing but love for myself and everything and everyone that exists.

...and, yet I doubt all of it somehow and am given to pessimism and a general frustration with life as it is. Maybe that's because I am supposed to be a doubting Thomas for something I have to do in my life, I don't know. On paper (or otherwise, I guess) I wouldn't blame someone for thinking I was crazy. But I have to say, I would much rather believe if I could... but I just can't seem to connect the dots. I don't see how the pieces fit. And that might be because of what the first of the three voices told me when I was four or five years old. "When you figure it out, you're done."
 
Alex's question at the end of the interview:

Have you ever had any precognitive dreams, particularly related to someone's death?
 
I'm going to go ahead and answer the question, even though I've not yet listened to the interview; that I'm looking forward to on the weekend.

The only death-precognitive dream which I can verify happened to me in July 2008.

Here's a link to the news item about it.

At that time, I had been keeping a dream diary for a year or so. I dreamt of a fire and of a specific car - a Lamborghini.
It's important to note that I never dream of specific cars, and never from the outside; cars, motorcycles, buses and trains always appear in my dreams with me inside them. I am not a petrol head in any wise, and I would barely recognise a Lambo if it fell on me.

But just these two specific things - a great fire and a Lambhorgini car (apparently parked in my driveway) made enough of an impression on me to record the dream in my diary.

That was the Friday night. The next night, a Saturday, we found that a Lamborghini had veered off the road about a half mile from our house, bursting into flames and burning up the young driver and the occupants of another car - some security officers.

Since I dreamed this more than 24 hours before it actually happened, I have to think about it as a precognitive dream of some peoples' death.

Oddly, neither the driver or the security guards were known to me or my household. It seems to be a matter of spatial proximity only .

I nearly drove myself dilly trying to understand this. I had never dreamed in this fashion before, or since. I seem to have had no connection to anyone involved.

I think I'm going to have to listen to the podcast a bit sooner than the weekend actually - I have some resurfacing questions of my own now. :)
 
Alex's question at the end of the interview:

Have you ever had any precognitive dreams, particularly related to someone's death?

I shared this in another thread, but I'll give a little more detail here:

During my college years, I often had dreams that seemed very powerful and symbolic to me which I interpreted as being from God. Sometimes they seemed to help me interpret the events in my life, but none of them seemed to be anything that someone else could attest to as being verdidical until a dream that I had the second semester of my senior year.

One night before I went to sleep I really wanted to have another significant powerful dream, so I specifically asked God to give me a dream that showed me something. That night I dreamed that I was watching the interaction between a girl and a guy named Jim. It was as if they were in a theater (drama) on the rows of seats or on bleachers. The girl made a flirtatious pass at Jim, but he kindly refused. The girl was white, but after he rejected her and walked away, she took some pills that made her black. She then claimed that Jim had pursued her and that she had rejected him. People in the audience began standing up and angrily accusing Jim of discriminating against her because she was black. This made me laugh because everything they were saying was flip-flopped and twisted around: She wasn't actually black... she was taking pills to make herself black... and she didn't reject him - he rejected her... and he didn't reject her because of any discrimination... he just wasn't interested.

So I woke up laughing and thinking that this dream was so silly that it could not possibly be from God and that it couldn't possibly mean anything. Later that day, a female acquaintance asked me if I'd like to go have dinner with her and talk. I agreed so we went to a restaurant and talked. She immediately began talking about her frustration with a mutual acquaintance named Jim. She was telling me how at the beginning of their friendship he liked her, but she wasn't at all interested... and then some guys warned Jim about her, and now he doesn't even seem to want to be friends. She still claimed to be uninterested in him romantically, but obviously she had some kind of feelings. I listened for maybe 45 minutes or an hour before I got really sick of hearing about all this drama with Jim. I desperately wanted to change the subjected so I searched for anything random to talk about, so I said, "hey I had a weird dream last night..." And then I started laughing because I suddenly realized my dream was describing what was going on here: she was lying and flipping things around and saying that she was discriminated against because of what other people had told Jim about her.

Later, I talked to Jim about this girl and he confirmed that he was never romantically interested in her, but she seemed to be pushing it on him and was pursuing him.
 
Oh! I can't believe I forgot this!

In November 2013 I had a dream that I was at my best friend's old house where we always hung out in high school and even afterward until his parents moved away. I was very glad to be there again... until I noticed a huge wrecking ball attached to a crane preparing to demolish the house. I shouted, "Stop! Stop! Don't do it!" and a voice responded, "It's too late. There's nothing that can be done" and the wrecking ball plowed through, showing that the interior of the walls had a lot of rot inside of them. I felt so sad over it and was filled with a sense that an era had come to an end. My feeling was that now my best friend and I had entered a new period of adulthood and had truly left our adolescence behind. The next day I received word that my best friend's mom had died that night in her sleep of a heart attack. It was completely unexpected. She was a seemingly fit woman who grew a lot of her own food, was very active, trim, lifetime non-smoker, non-drinker and only in her early 50s.
 
Funny, I am the opposite, I can not disbelieve, I just can't.

And hopefully you're happier for it. In spite of all the stuff I've read about NDEs, mediums, psi, etc poured over with all of my own validating experiences, it still doesn't do anything to diminish my fear of illness, death, family's death, decrepitude, etc. From this perspective, I can understand why the Buddhists and yogic philosophers all warned about chasing after these sorts of experiences. Ultimately, I don't believe they do a whole lot for you in and of themselves. First, they don't seem to weave together to form a coherent metanarrative or worldview. If they did, the New Age publishing industry wouldn't be able to pump out all these books which, while sometimes overlapping, often contradict one another. Secondly, they do not rid us of the fact that we are in this world for the time being. Maybe Grammy and Grampy are young and beautiful in a spiritual body in the next world, but in this world they are under the ground and silent. Maybe pleasures abundant await us all after our last breath, but for the meantime, we face very real struggles in what seems to be a very real place.

What I think may have happened to me is, like some NDErs, I glimpsed something too beautiful, too alluring - and perhaps too early in my life. The first half of life ought to be about embracing this life by the horns and grappling with it, getting down and dirty. For me, it's like I barely had begun to land on the earth when the transpersonal began to make itself known to me. Sometimes I feel like I'm in a game of tug-of-war. The demands of this life and my obligations haul me over here while spiritual hunger, even loneliness, tug me back the other way. Like I said, it's hard to make sense of... and oftentimes I feel like I'm just fooling myself when I speculate about it. How do you get clarity on such things?
 
Alex,

Surely Andy accidentally described Dean Radin's presentiment experiment rather than Daryl Bem's experiment!

David
 
...and, yet I doubt all of it somehow and am given to pessimism and a general frustration with life as it is. Maybe that's because I am supposed to be a doubting Thomas for something I have to do in my life, I don't know. On paper (or otherwise, I guess) I wouldn't blame someone for thinking I was crazy. But I have to say, I would much rather believe if I could... but I just can't seem to connect the dots. I don't see how the pieces fit. And that might be because of what the first of the three voices told me when I was four or five years old. "When you figure it out, you're done."

I have read Andy Paquette's book Dreamer and one thing which is interesting is that, to me, there is something in it which is very small but to me is profound and directly impacts this issue of doubt. This is the dice incident (which is alluded to by Alex in the show). Andy says that he was playing backgammon with his wife and had a premonition that they would roll descending doubles from 6's down to 1's. He then rolled and got double sixes, she rolled and got doubles sixes etc down until they were at double ones. At that point he couldn't believe it and "lost his nerve" and predicted they would not get the double ones.

The odds against this are 6^20 = 3.6561584e+15 = 3656158400000000 This is a huge number. It beggars belief. And, of course, he didn't just roll it, he predicted it which means the odds against are far, far higher.

So, in my opinion, this is binary. There are only two possibilities. These possibilities are:
-It is of paranormal origin.
-Andy Paquette is lying and his wife is aiding and abetting this lie.

Other possibilities make no sense. It cannot be chance. It is not something subject to opinion or delusion. The event was witnessed by more than one person.

Is Andy lying? I see absolutely no evidence of that. There is no motive. It doesn't fit with anything. I suppose you could say he is selling his book but I cannot believe the book is making any money (at all really). Liars don't keep dream diaries for 20 years, compile databases and write scientific papers with statistics. Liars instead do stuff like this: http://www.oranum.com/

So, if you want proof of the paranormal, there it is. What does it mean? Well, that is more difficult :-)

"When you figure it out, you're done."

I love this.
 
Alex,

Surely Andy accidentally described Dean Radin's presentiment experiment rather than Daryl Bem's experiment!

David

I remember that happening during the interview. Alex corrected me, but maybe that was edited out? I haven't listened yet because I just got back from Bangkok and am very tired.

AP
 
I have read Andy Paquette's book Dreamer and one thing which is interesting is that, to me, there is something in it which is very small but to me is profound and directly impacts this issue of doubt. This is the dice incident (which is alluded to by Alex in the show). Andy says that he was playing backgammon with his wife and had a premonition that they would roll descending doubles from 6's down to 1's. He then rolled and got double sixes, she rolled and got doubles sixes etc down until they were at double ones. At that point he couldn't believe it and "lost his nerve" and predicted they would not get the double ones.

The odds against this are 6^20 = 3.6561584e+15 = 3656158400000000 This is a huge number. It beggars belief. And, of course, he didn't just roll it, he predicted it which means the odds against are far, far higher.

So, in my opinion, this is binary. There are only two possibilities. These possibilities are:
-It is of paranormal origin.
-Andy Paquette is lying and his wife is aiding and abetting this lie.

Other possibilities make no sense. It cannot be chance. It is not something subject to opinion or delusion. The event was witnessed by more than one person.

Is Andy lying? I see absolutely no evidence of that. There is no motive. It doesn't fit with anything. I suppose you could say he is selling his book but I cannot believe the book is making any money (at all really). Liars don't keep dream diaries for 20 years, compile databases and write scientific papers with statistics. Liars instead do stuff like this: http://www.oranum.com/

So, if you want proof of the paranormal, there it is. What does it mean? Well, that is more difficult :)



I love this.
You are right to think I am not making any money on the book. To date, several years after its publication, I have received no money at all for any of the copies sold. My agent did try to give me a check in the first year of publication, but it was too small to be worth the fee my bank would have charged to deposit dollars from an American bank into my Dutch euro denomination account. For that reason, I instructed my agent to give it to the Salvation Army or treat herself to lunch--and to do the same with any other checks of similar size or less. I haven't heard from her since.

AP
 
Here are three of my most dramatic experiences (dramatic to me but, as far as these type of stories go, perhaps not so much). Two are death-related, the other not but I'm sharing it anyway :-)

The first involved the death of an aunt. Now, this aunt and I weren't very close. We weren't antagonists but I usually only saw her once, maybe twice a year (since I lived about 650 miles away), and when we did see each other we didn't have long conversations. At the time of my dream, my aunt had lived with cancer for approximately three years. In November of 1996, my mother told me that my aunt had taken a turn for the worse, but my aunt rallied. Prior to my mother telling me this, I wasn't getting monthly reports re: my aunt's condition and didn't get any repots even after my mother's latest information. I did see my aunt in Christmas of 1996 for about 20 minutes, at a family gathering; obviously she had rallied enough to get out of the house. Between the Christmas of 1996 and the last week of February 1997 no one had spoken to me regarding my aunt's health or any worries my uncle might have had or anything like that. In the last week of February of 1997, one night I went to sleep around 11:30 p.m. At some point, I had a dream that my aunt and uncle/her husband were standing together and they were saying “goodbye” to me. The image of my aunt and uncle standing beside each other was as if superimposed on a black background was very clear and powerful because I immediately woke up after hearing from them (I woke up around 5:00 a.m.) and instantly knew what this dream/communication meant (but I didn't think at all that my uncle had passed). Around 9 a.m. that morning my sister called to say that my aunt had died (my uncle later told me that my aunt had died around 4 a.m.).

Second, I used to work in a building with a guy I'll call "John." John and I worked for the same organization but he was in a different group. I call him "John" because I don't know and never knew his real name, nor his particular skill set, nothing about him. Because we worked on the same floor in a building with only one elevator bank I probably saw John at the elevators several times in a week. We probably said "hello" if we were the only ones on the elevator but we've never had a conversation. Well, the organization we worked for moved into a much larger building and while John and I were still on the same floor I saw him less because there were more elevators and the building was larger. So, if the first building I saw John several times a week I now was seeing him maybe two or three times every five or six months. I then moved to a different side of the building and started using different elevators and different entrances and stopped seeing John altogether. Since I didn't know him, I stopped thinking about him. One day, probably 5 years or more after I'd last seen John I was walking toward one bank of elevators. As I reached about 20 feet away I saw John. My fist thought was, "Wow, I haven't seen this guy in years. He still works here?" When I reached about 10-15 feet away from John, my next thought was "Wow, I need my glasses because that's not John!" If John was, say, 38 years old with light brown/blonde hair, 5'10 inches tall, no glasses, and a medium build, the man I thought was John (who was someone I regularly see in the building) was about 50-53 years old, 6' 1" tall, black/gray hair, black glasses, and slender build. I then started laughing at myself and wondering how I could have confused the two. Still shaking my head at my mistake, when I reached about three feet from the up/down elevator buttons one of the elevator doors opened and the first person out was John! What's striking about this is John is not someone at all connected to me; but on a number of occasions people I don't know will suddenly appear in my mind (sometimes I might know the name or face, but have no direct connection to this person) and usually within a few hours I will actually see that person.

Finally, this dream involved a work colleague with whom I was becoming a closer friend (I’ll call her “Mary”). In May of 1991, Mary moved back to the U.S. West coast from the East coast. In late June/early July of 1991, she had an aneurysm and died (she was only 32). I probably found out about 10 days after her actual death (she was a member of a South Asian religion and had been cremated). It was a blow to all of us who knew and worked with her. In August of 1991 I had a dream that Mary and I were standing outside of an old concrete building; it was dark outside, as if it were evening. Mary and I were both crying. I told her that “I needed her to be there when they came and got me”. See, in the dream, I was going to be executed that day for not returning a library book. Even in the dream I thought that this seemed an excessive overreaction, but there was nothing funny about it. Mary and I then went inside this old building. Just inside, there was a large open space that made me think of a library; again, it was dim inside, but there were some lights. I looked up to the second floor and behind a wall of glass there was a desk or podium. There was a man with thick glasses and it looked like he was writing something in a book. He stopped writing, peered over the edge of the book/podium and looked down at us; then he pulled back and started writing again. Mary and I walked farther into the building and entered a totally modern section of the building. We were both still crying and I again asked her to be with me when they came and got me; she kept shaking her head, saying she couldn't do it. From where we stood in the hallway, there were two rooms. One room was filled with those old style chairs that had a mini-desktop attached (the desk could be raised and lowered; I don’t seem to see these desks anymore), and in this room were a young man and woman who seemed to be taking a test. Mary went into that room. I went into a room that had a window; outside that window was the same view that Mary and I shared when we worked together. There was nothing in my room except a clock. I kept thinking that someone was writing a brief or appeal on my behalf because I couldn’t believe that I was going to be executed for not having returned a library book. Once more Mary and I met in the hallway and this time neither of us is crying. I tell her again that I need her to be there when they come and get me. She then said that she would try, but she said that when they came and got me it would mean that she would meet Bill (a guy she was dating at the time of her death). She then said: “And when I meet Bill, it will be the beginning of the end of my life, all over again.” At that point I immediately woke up and wrote it all down, which is why I can easily recount it years later. This was probably the most powerful dream I've ever had and I describe it as giving me the feeling of having actually gone somewhere or being in some place different than the space I occupy in the waking world. About a month after this dream, I was struck while reading Michael Talbot’s The Holograhpic Universe that in some religions the image of a library is a common afterlife theme). Fast forward to 2011, I encountered a colleague who had also been friends with Mary. This colleague, too, had a dream about Mary that that left a profound impact on the colleague (again, because the dream felt so "real"). The colleague said that in 1999 Mary appeared in a dream. The colleague then said, “Mary, what are you doing here? You can’t be here because you’re dead.” Mary replied, “I’m so very happy.”
 
What I think may have happened to me is, like some NDErs, I glimpsed something too beautiful, too alluring - and perhaps too early in my life. The first half of life ought to be about embracing this life by the horns and grappling with it, getting down and dirty. For me, it's like I barely had begun to land on the earth when the transpersonal began to make itself known to me. Sometimes I feel like I'm in a game of tug-of-war. The demands of this life and my obligations haul me over here while spiritual hunger, even loneliness, tug me back the other way. Like I said, it's hard to make sense of... and oftentimes I feel like I'm just fooling myself when I speculate about it. How do you get clarity on such things?

How do you get clarity on such things? Great question. There have been certain things which have happened to me which I have ascribed to the paranormal but they are always elusive and, in my case, they are mixed up with a genuine mental illness which I suffered in 2009. So, I have these questions, what is illness, what is paranormal and what is coincidence? There is no answer. And, of course, among those who have experienced stronger things (like Andy) it is still elusive.

So, for me, my pain is about uncertainty. I want an Angel to appear and explain it all. Yet, I know somehow that the uncertainty of it is somehow central to the purpose of the thing. So that is a “firm" and interesting data point. Anyway, I feel your pain. I have spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about all this crap and it has not made me happy.

So, here, I will go ahead and volunteer something personal about this (sorry if it is off topic really as it has nothing to do with death dreams).

-In late 2009, I was (in retrospect) showing signs of psychosis. Up late at night. Working all the time. At the same time I was investigating UFOs in a serious way.
-On Oct 18, 2009 I went to this web page - http://aulis.com/mars.htm I was in a semi psychotic state and I saw special meaning in the “intelligent placement” at the bottom of the webpage. I decoded this as a symbolic message where the tetrahedrons represented carbon (as carbon bonds in a tetrahedron) and the “circle” represented “helix” and the 2 represented “double” so I saw this as “double carbon helix” or “DNA”. This marked my real descent into psychosis. I believed this was a profound insight for about 4/5 days and I interrupted Stanton Friedman’s dinner (his phone number is on his website) and also emailed Nick Pope (famous UK UFO guy). A few days after that I was in a mental hospital (which is where I belonged).
-I was then quite psychotic for a couple of months. While psychotic I had a delusion about being the reincarnation of a Biblical figure (there is much more to this but I want to keep this as short as possible). Note that delusions are often grandiose and religious so this is a pretty common sort of delusion. I then got better and mostly left the delusion behind me (but not quite completely).

So, anyway, fast forward to late 2013. At this time, I listened to Skeptiko 122 about Nick Bunick (http://www.skeptiko.com/122-reincarnation-of-apostle-paul-nick-bunick-scrutinized/) which I found really interesting. Nick Bunick, describes certain concrete events which are not subject to interpretation (so they must be paranormal or Nick and those around him are lying in some conspiracy (which makes no sense)). One important thing (which is close to the beginning of Nick’s "journey") is a piece of paper (5 pages actually) handed to him by Rick Eckard (says Epcot in the Skeptiko transcript which is an error). This is a key piece of paper to Nick. He reproduces it in at least one of his books. What is on this piece of paper? Well, there are a number of things (about 5) but two key things are the phrase “spiritual DNA” and a number of tetradrons, two of which are joined into a star tetrahedrons (a 3 dimensional Star of David). Nick takes the tetrahedrons as a angelic sign and then, most interesting, “spiritual DNA” is taken to be a sign that somebody is a reincarnation of a some kind of Biblical figure.

You can read more at http://gwhardin2.herokuapp.com/books where you can download the book “The Messengers” (this is the book about Nick) for free. The piece of paper is described on page 35. A description that “spiritual DNA” implies somebody reincarnated from Biblical times is on page xi in the introduction.

So, my thing starts with two tetrahedrons and a reference to DNA and and so does Nick’s (among other things). I have a psychotic delusion thinking I am the reincarnation of a Biblical figure and Nick thinks he is the reincarnation of the Apostle Paul.

So, what am I supposed to make of this? Is it pure bad luck that my mental illness started with two tetrahedrons and DNA? How often do you find two tetrahedrons and DNA together (outside of chemistry textbooks)? Or, does it mean that I really am the reincarnation of a Biblical figure? Am I making something of nothing? Am I using the power of the internet to find needles in haystacks to find obscure links and connections (which I did when I was psychotic)? What is the role of my mental illness? Is there something paranormal here? What is coincidence? And, of course, what does it mean (if anything)?

And, of course, I keep thinking about it and trying to “solve it” and, of course, this is impossible. None of it has made me happier or made me any money. I “should” stop thinking about it and never visit Skeptiko again but when I have tried that it never lasts. Or, perhaps, I should visit more often. There is nowhere else where you can talk about this stuff. I have shared it with a few friends but they don’t know about any of this stuff (and, very interestingly, most of them just don’t care).

And then there are things like this (which happened to me after all this - last August in fact) - http://www.skeptiko-forum.com/threads/mikes-bikes.1270/ What do I make of that? Coincidence? God likes bikes? I have a hard time dismissing it as coincidence yet it has no real meaning. It is highly improbable but how improbable is it really? Arghhh!

I have a database with 153 “signs” in it of which maybe 18 are possibles (the rest are definitely rubbish). Despite this I still can’t decide if anything paranormal has actually happened to me. That said, I am 100% sure that paranormal things have happened to others.

Anyway, sorry if I have ranted a bit (and been off topic).
 
How do you get clarity on such things? Great question. There have been certain things which have happened to me which I have ascribed to the paranormal but they are always elusive and, in my case, they are mixed up with a genuine mental illness which I suffered in 2009. So, I have these questions, what is illness, what is paranormal and what is coincidence? There is no answer. And, of course, among those who have experienced stronger things (like Andy) it is still elusive.

So, for me, my pain is about uncertainty. I want an Angel to appear and explain it all. Yet, I know somehow that the uncertainty of it is somehow central to the purpose of the thing. So that is a “firm" and interesting data point. Anyway, I feel your pain. I have spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about all this crap and it has not made me happy.

So, here, I will go ahead and volunteer something personal about this (sorry if it is off topic really as it has nothing to do with death dreams).

-In late 2009, I was (in retrospect) showing signs of psychosis. Up late at night. Working all the time. At the same time I was investigating UFOs in a serious way.
-On Oct 18, 2009 I went to this web page - http://aulis.com/mars.htm I was in a semi psychotic state and I saw special meaning in the “intelligent placement” at the bottom of the webpage. I decoded this as a symbolic message where the tetrahedrons represented carbon (as carbon bonds in a tetrahedron) and the “circle” represented “helix” and the 2 represented “double” so I saw this as “double carbon helix” or “DNA”. This marked my real descent into psychosis. I believed this was a profound insight for about 4/5 days and I interrupted Stanton Friedman’s dinner (his phone number is on his website) and also emailed Nick Pope (famous UK UFO guy). A few days after that I was in a mental hospital (which is where I belonged).
-I was then quite psychotic for a couple of months. While psychotic I had a delusion about being the reincarnation of a Biblical figure (there is much more to this but I want to keep this as short as possible). Note that delusions are often grandiose and religious so this is a pretty common sort of delusion. I then got better and mostly left the delusion behind me (but not quite completely).

So, anyway, fast forward to late 2013. At this time, I listened to Skeptiko 122 about Nick Bunick (http://www.skeptiko.com/122-reincarnation-of-apostle-paul-nick-bunick-scrutinized/) which I found really interesting. Nick Bunick, describes certain concrete events which are not subject to interpretation (so they must be paranormal or Nick and those around him are lying in some conspiracy (which makes no sense)). One important thing (which is close to the beginning of Nick’s "journey") is a piece of paper (5 pages actually) handed to him by Rick Eckard (says Epcot in the Skeptiko transcript which is an error). This is a key piece of paper to Nick. He reproduces it in at least one of his books. What is on this piece of paper? Well, there are a number of things (about 5) but two key things are the phrase “spiritual DNA” and a number of tetradrons, two of which are joined into a star tetrahedrons (a 3 dimensional Star of David). Nick takes the tetrahedrons as a angelic sign and then, most interesting, “spiritual DNA” is taken to be a sign that somebody is a reincarnation of a some kind of Biblical figure.

You can read more at http://gwhardin2.herokuapp.com/books where you can download the book “The Messengers” (this is the book about Nick) for free. The piece of paper is described on page 35. A description that “spiritual DNA” implies somebody reincarnated from Biblical times is on page xi in the introduction.

So, my thing starts with two tetrahedrons and a reference to DNA and and so does Nick’s (among other things). I have a psychotic delusion thinking I am the reincarnation of a Biblical figure and Nick thinks he is the reincarnation of the Apostle Paul.

So, what am I supposed to make of this? Is it pure bad luck that my mental illness started with two tetrahedrons and DNA? How often do you find two tetrahedrons and DNA together (outside of chemistry textbooks)? Or, does it mean that I really am the reincarnation of a Biblical figure? Am I making something of nothing? Am I using the power of the internet to find needles in haystacks to find obscure links and connections (which I did when I was psychotic)? What is the role of my mental illness? Is there something paranormal here? What is coincidence? And, of course, what does it mean (if anything)?

And, of course, I keep thinking about it and trying to “solve it” and, of course, this is impossible. None of it has made me happier or made me any money. I “should” stop thinking about it and never visit Skeptiko again but when I have tried that it never lasts. Or, perhaps, I should visit more often. There is nowhere else where you can talk about this stuff. I have shared it with a few friends but they don’t know about any of this stuff (and, very interestingly, most of them just don’t care).

And then there are things like this (which happened to me after all this - last August in fact) - http://www.skeptiko-forum.com/threads/mikes-bikes.1270/ What do I make of that? Coincidence? God likes bikes? I have a hard time dismissing it as coincidence yet it has no real meaning. It is highly improbable but how improbable is it really? Arghhh!

I have a database with 153 “signs” in it of which maybe 18 are possibles (the rest are definitely rubbish). Despite this I still can’t decide if anything paranormal has actually happened to me. That said, I am 100% sure that paranormal things have happened to others.

Anyway, sorry if I have ranted a bit (and been off topic).


Everybody is delusional in their own special way.

I am not sure why being a reincarnation of a biblical figure is startling, If reincarnation is happening, then surely some people from biblical times should still be reincarnating Of course we are working on the assumption that reincarnation is a given. But if it is the case, then unless we find out a way to stop reincarnating or perhaps reincarnate in other realms, then we will keep returning to earth.
So the reincarnation of a biblical figure is not that hard to believe if reincarnation is true.

I liked your story and think you are being to hard on yourself just because you see things others don't see, but then you find some academic who does,
 
I've had many pre-cognitive dreams. Once I dreamed that "Mary" had died. I thought it was my mother-in-law, but turns out it was the woman who worked all her life for my grandparents (Mary). I had the dream on the night she died. I dreamed that a chiropractor friend was building a new white house with long stairs leading up to it. Unbeknownst to me, he had cancer, and died a year or so later. I believe I was seeing the astral home he was building on the "other side". Since I've had several OBE's, I've retained a sense of what things are like "over there".

The strangest pre-cognitive dream was one where I saw a large red S on some steps. This was during the soccer playoffs (I never watch soccer but had heard it referred to on the news). Upon waking, I became convinced this meant that Spain was going to win the soccer playoffs. So I started to watch soccer and became really excited about it. Somehow I "knew" that Spain would win (they did). This happened during a period of my life when my husband was dying of cancer. I believe I had the dream to allow myself a small respite of excitement and something to look forward to during this dreary and stressful time. I guess I should have found out a way to place a bet on the game.
 
Just got to say this, one of the most interesting topics here in a while. Really enjoy this episode and your experiences here.
...and, yet I doubt all of it somehow and am given to pessimism and a general frustration with life as it is. Maybe that's because I am supposed to be a doubting Thomas for something I have to do in my life, I don't know. On paper (or otherwise, I guess) I wouldn't blame someone for thinking I was crazy. But I have to say, I would much rather believe if I could... but I just can't seem to connect the dots. I don't see how the pieces fit. And that might be because of what the first of the three voices told me when I was four or five years old. "When you figure it out, you're done."

I can relate to that. Ive heard and read about so many great things regarding all that stuff, but similar to your situation everything just doesnt seem to fit together for me. And with every bit of knowledge that i gain i just get more and more frustrated about how everything just becomes more and more uncertain to me. Before i started investigating all those things i had a horrible fear of death. I still fear it, surely, but im not sure if my situation got better through gaining knowledge. Atleast i was certain of something back then. It makes it easier on your mind if you are certain of something, even if it is about death being the last thing you will ever experience. Ignorance really is a bliss sometimes.
 
How do you get clarity on such things? Great question. There have been certain things which have happened to me which I have ascribed to the paranormal but they are always elusive and, in my case, they are mixed up with a genuine mental illness which I suffered in 2009. So, I have these questions, what is illness, what is paranormal and what is coincidence? There is no answer. And, of course, among those who have experienced stronger things (like Andy) it is still elusive.

So, for me, my pain is about uncertainty. I want an Angel to appear and explain it all. Yet, I know somehow that the uncertainty of it is somehow central to the purpose of the thing. So that is a “firm" and interesting data point. Anyway, I feel your pain. I have spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about all this crap and it has not made me happy.

So, here, I will go ahead and volunteer something personal about this (sorry if it is off topic really as it has nothing to do with death dreams).

-In late 2009, I was (in retrospect) showing signs of psychosis. Up late at night. Working all the time. At the same time I was investigating UFOs in a serious way.
-On Oct 18, 2009 I went to this web page - http://aulis.com/mars.htm I was in a semi psychotic state and I saw special meaning in the “intelligent placement” at the bottom of the webpage. I decoded this as a symbolic message where the tetrahedrons represented carbon (as carbon bonds in a tetrahedron) and the “circle” represented “helix” and the 2 represented “double” so I saw this as “double carbon helix” or “DNA”. This marked my real descent into psychosis. I believed this was a profound insight for about 4/5 days and I interrupted Stanton Friedman’s dinner (his phone number is on his website) and also emailed Nick Pope (famous UK UFO guy). A few days after that I was in a mental hospital (which is where I belonged).
-I was then quite psychotic for a couple of months. While psychotic I had a delusion about being the reincarnation of a Biblical figure (there is much more to this but I want to keep this as short as possible). Note that delusions are often grandiose and religious so this is a pretty common sort of delusion. I then got better and mostly left the delusion behind me (but not quite completely).

So, anyway, fast forward to late 2013. At this time, I listened to Skeptiko 122 about Nick Bunick (http://www.skeptiko.com/122-reincarnation-of-apostle-paul-nick-bunick-scrutinized/) which I found really interesting. Nick Bunick, describes certain concrete events which are not subject to interpretation (so they must be paranormal or Nick and those around him are lying in some conspiracy (which makes no sense)). One important thing (which is close to the beginning of Nick’s "journey") is a piece of paper (5 pages actually) handed to him by Rick Eckard (says Epcot in the Skeptiko transcript which is an error). This is a key piece of paper to Nick. He reproduces it in at least one of his books. What is on this piece of paper? Well, there are a number of things (about 5) but two key things are the phrase “spiritual DNA” and a number of tetradrons, two of which are joined into a star tetrahedrons (a 3 dimensional Star of David). Nick takes the tetrahedrons as a angelic sign and then, most interesting, “spiritual DNA” is taken to be a sign that somebody is a reincarnation of a some kind of Biblical figure.

You can read more at http://gwhardin2.herokuapp.com/books where you can download the book “The Messengers” (this is the book about Nick) for free. The piece of paper is described on page 35. A description that “spiritual DNA” implies somebody reincarnated from Biblical times is on page xi in the introduction.

So, my thing starts with two tetrahedrons and a reference to DNA and and so does Nick’s (among other things). I have a psychotic delusion thinking I am the reincarnation of a Biblical figure and Nick thinks he is the reincarnation of the Apostle Paul.

So, what am I supposed to make of this? Is it pure bad luck that my mental illness started with two tetrahedrons and DNA? How often do you find two tetrahedrons and DNA together (outside of chemistry textbooks)? Or, does it mean that I really am the reincarnation of a Biblical figure? Am I making something of nothing? Am I using the power of the internet to find needles in haystacks to find obscure links and connections (which I did when I was psychotic)? What is the role of my mental illness? Is there something paranormal here? What is coincidence? And, of course, what does it mean (if anything)?

And, of course, I keep thinking about it and trying to “solve it” and, of course, this is impossible. None of it has made me happier or made me any money. I “should” stop thinking about it and never visit Skeptiko again but when I have tried that it never lasts. Or, perhaps, I should visit more often. There is nowhere else where you can talk about this stuff. I have shared it with a few friends but they don’t know about any of this stuff (and, very interestingly, most of them just don’t care).

And then there are things like this (which happened to me after all this - last August in fact) - http://www.skeptiko-forum.com/threads/mikes-bikes.1270/ What do I make of that? Coincidence? God likes bikes? I have a hard time dismissing it as coincidence yet it has no real meaning. It is highly improbable but how improbable is it really? Arghhh!

I have a database with 153 “signs” in it of which maybe 18 are possibles (the rest are definitely rubbish). Despite this I still can’t decide if anything paranormal has actually happened to me. That said, I am 100% sure that paranormal things have happened to others.

Anyway, sorry if I have ranted a bit (and been off topic).

What is paranormal and what is coincidence?

Bingo
 
I can relate to that. Ive heard and read about so many great things regarding all that stuff, but similar to your situation everything just doesnt seem to fit together for me. And with every bit of knowledge that i gain i just get more and more frustrated about how everything just becomes more and more uncertain to me.

It is certainly the case that the whole field is very frustrating. I have made a concerted effort to learn and think about it all and it is still uncertain to me. That said, a few things do seem certain to me (you may, of course, disagree):
-The paranormal exists. It is not all fraud, wishful thinking etc (though these are big factors). It exists and it does interact in certain ways with certain people but it is rare (for most of us).
-God exists. I just don't see how this is avoidable.
-It is all elusive on purpose. I guess God wants it this way for some reason. If it was a natural phenomena then progress would have been made. We are not studying phenomena at all. We are playing a game (hence my avatar which is a game piece). It is a very complex game where we are not told the rules or even that we are playing. Winning seems something to do with love but exactly how that goes I do not know. I don't think there is a "opponent" in the game but it does seem clear that there is a "game master" with sublime intelligence and perfect knowledge - hence I see God behind it. This game master is active in the game. The game is not passive. We make moves, God makes moves. God's moves are rare, subtle and mysterious. God may be helped by spirit guides/angels etc but they are ultimately agents of God. There may very well be free agents (spirits, ghosts, perhaps even "demons") but their activities are tightly regulated. They can do this (poltergeist activity) but not that (materialise on a late night talk show).

God is a God of plausible deniability.
 
One more thing. The game is primary played with other people. The paranormal is a "backwater" which is not that relevant to most players (but may be extremely relevant to a few players). Paranormal things may be viewed as "easter eggs" in the game (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter_egg_(interaction_design))

There is, perhaps, a danger of putting too much energy into studying these easter eggs to the detriment of actually playing the game (a point I should keep in mind myself).
 
I have read Andy Paquette's book Dreamer and one thing which is interesting is that, to me, there is something in it which is very small but to me is profound and directly impacts this issue of doubt. This is the dice incident (which is alluded to by Alex in the show). Andy says that he was playing backgammon with his wife and had a premonition that they would roll descending doubles from 6's down to 1's. He then rolled and got double sixes, she rolled and got doubles sixes etc down until they were at double ones. At that point he couldn't believe it and "lost his nerve" and predicted they would not get the double ones.

The odds against this are 6^20 = 3.6561584e+15 = 3656158400000000 This is a huge number. It beggars belief. And, of course, he didn't just roll it, he predicted it which means the odds against are far, far higher.

So, in my opinion, this is binary. There are only two possibilities. These possibilities are:
-It is of paranormal origin.
-Andy Paquette is lying and his wife is aiding and abetting this lie.

Other possibilities make no sense. It cannot be chance. It is not something subject to opinion or delusion. The event was witnessed by more than one person.

Is Andy lying? I see absolutely no evidence of that. There is no motive. It doesn't fit with anything. I suppose you could say he is selling his book but I cannot believe the book is making any money (at all really). Liars don't keep dream diaries for 20 years, compile databases and write scientific papers with statistics. Liars instead do stuff like this: http://www.oranum.com/

So, if you want proof of the paranormal, there it is. What does it mean? Well, that is more difficult :-)



I love this.
I really liked your post. But one thing I find very funny, is the link to "Oranum" as an example of liars.

What is so funny is that a man named Christopher Robinson is now working on Oranum as a psychic. However, what you may not know is he was once known as the "Dream Detective", and in my opinion is 100% legitimate, and probably the most remarkable precognitive dreamer ever put to the test scientifically by Prof Gary Schwartz of the University of Arizona.

Prof Schwartz filmed the dream experiments, some of which I have seen on YouTube, and it is quite honestly staggering. Chris Robinson and his ability really was the first thing which started to open me up to the possibility that life may be a lot stranger than we are told by conventional sources and authorities, and this led me on to Skeptiko, and my own dream diary, and remarkable premonitions of my own, which I will post here later when I have time.

Funny and coincidental that you mentioned Oranum, and that I happen to know Chris Robinson is now working as a psychic on there. He too used to dream about dead people all the time, and his premonitions were used by police detectives in the UK.
 
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