Are they definitely talking about a real dream - not a day dream?
When I first started astral projecting by accident, before I even knew I was astral projecting or what it was, I referred to them as "lucid daydreams" because of how different they were from normal day dreams. In some early cases I got pulled in so deep that I actually thought I was sleeping for real at home in bed only to then come out of it sitting completely upright at a desk fully awake and aware.
Thank you for making this point David. This reminds me of something I found out shortly after the Brussels bombings (which inevitably affected me considerably since I live in that city, and one of the suicide bombers blew himself off in an underground station that I would be in practically everyday -- I no longer do, for many reasons). I wanted to post these links on this Forum but then I never got round to it in the end. I'll do so now as this is relevant to this discussion
http://boredjihadi.tumblr.com/post/142889314077/three-dreams-of-a-brussels-bomber
"As regular readers of this blog will know, jihadis discuss their dreams all the time"
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/brussels-isis-suicide-bomber-vision-7745742
"I then saw my soul and those of the three soldiers. All of a sudden, the soldiers’ souls burned and vanished and, suddenly, the banner of Islam – represented in the dream by the flag of the Islamic State – came out of the earth and was shining brightly. My soul then became full of light.”
He added that his dream finished with a voice telling him that he had achieved 'deliverance' and he awoke with his heart racing."
I think that this is very interesting not only from the moral point of view but also if we simply objectively wish to understand who is "communicating" from beyond the Veil (supposing these contacts/visions/messages are real and not imagined, of course). Who exactly is giving these people such dreams/visions? If all is "love and light", whence all this? Does it all come from "Jesus" anyway, because horrifically (as this would mean that "the end justifies the means" both for Machiavelli and 'God' -- for those who believe in him) these tragedies HAVE to happen for us to 'learn'? In that case we should be grateful that suicide bombers get thus 'spiritually encouraged' to blow themselves up and kill dozens of innocents, so that we all get amazing opportunities to "learn"! How can we be sure that this reality is some kind of bizarre but ultimately benevolent (??) "splatter school" as many would like to believe, and not a place whose events (and even people) can be manipulated both by good and evil entities pursuing completely different agendas, instead?
Oh my god thank you! Someone other than me finally made this point! Granted maybe this point has ben made hundreds of times before I even joined Skeptiko but you'er the first I've seen.
I've been harping on about this since I joined. The whole good vs evil thing is childishly naive and logically impossible anyways. In my experience people's belief in some form of structured, objective morality, usually religion, gets taken advantage of by some spirits fo their own ends. Manipulating humans for reasons ranging from "just for fun" to "taking out the competition" to "I just like helping people" to "world domination" and beyond. It's all just self interest, nothing more, nothing less.
Believing anything is wholly good or bad is ridiculous, everyone has their own motives, and when there's this much of a power gap between you and them it would be outright stupid to just take their word on anything. And those who do invariably seem to end up as little more than disposable tools, whether it's for gods or governments it doesn't really matter. It's all the same thing at the end of the day.
I was originally going to post on this thread and go "So, why couldn't a spirit give someone a message of mass murder and call it good?" as a counter to the benevolent afterlife narrative. But now I don't even need to because you linked to actual examples. Doesn't matter how much love they radiat or how bright they shine, feelings don't matter. Question the motives behind the message to figure out what, if anything, is really happening.