Dreams

The Power Of Dreams

According to dream researcher Jeremy Taylor, dreams have great power, which, if it could be harnessed, could greatly improve people's lives. Check out this interview with Jeremy Tayor on the intuition.org web site:

http://www.intuition.org/txt/taylor.htm

Excerpt, where he talks about the power of Lucid Dreaming:

  "...I would say I succeed in getting lucid maybe once a 
  month.  There are certainly friends and colleagues of mine 
  who do it a good deal more often than that. I don't think 
  the frequency of the experience is necessarily as important 
  as what you do when you get lucid. For instance, if you 
  only had one lucid dream a year and were really able in 
  that moment to gather your wits together and ask the most 
  important question for your life at that moment, it would 
  probably then take about a year to manifest the creative 
  energy that was made available to you in that moment...."

Weird Dreams I've Had

My own dreams, when I remember them, tend strongly to the predictive, and in some cases to the blatantly precognitive. Yes, some of them have come true, even down to minute details. Some of them, I hope never come true, because it would be horrible if they ever did. What follows are transcripts of some of the weirdest dreams I've had over the last half century.

Most terrifying dream ever: "Coffee and Newspaper"

At the time of this dream, I was living with my parents in the Hotel Corday in Santa Ana, California, USA, in August of 1978. I was sleeping in my bed in our shared hotel room. I dreamt that my father came walking into the room with a cup of hot coffee in his left hand, and a folded copy of our local newspaper, the Orange County Register, in his right hand. He walked up to my mother, who was just waking up, and told her in an excited voice about something the president said, which he had read in the newspaper.

Then I woke up, and thought, "what an odd dream. That's actually sort of plausible. It would be kind of cool if my father DID walk into the room right now, just as my mother is waking up, with a cup of coffee in his left hand and a newspaper in his right hand, and told her excitedly about something the president said."

AND THEN IT HAPPENED!

My mother began to wake up. The door opened, and my father came in. He had a cup of coffee in his left hand and a folded copy of The Orange County Register in his right hand. He walked quickly over to my mother and told her excitedly about something the president had said, which he had read in the news.

I was reeling in shock and horror. This was raw, pure, unadulterated, unexplainable precognition. Not possible. When the absolutely impossible happens, it catches my interest in the extreme. I've still never been able to explain this dream. It was certainly not deja vu, and it was certainly not random chance. Every nuance of the event I dreamed about, woke up, remembered, and mused about, before it even happened. It was as if my father was acting to a well-rehearsed script. But in actuality, he had no knowledge of my dream, nor did I have any way of knowing in advance what he was about to do. But my dream predicted the whole scene in great detail.

Second-most-frightening dream: "2001-09-11"

On the morning of September 11, 2001, I was in bed dreaming. In my dream, I was at the corner of Bristol and Sunflower in Costa Mesa, California, USA. A very strange-looking airplane was flying round-n-round in tight circles at a low altitude over the Imperial Bank building (which, incidentally, somehow got moved from the southeast corner of the intersection to the northeast corner in my dream). The airplane was shaped sort of like a battle tank with horizontal and vertical wings on the sides, and huge propellers. (I later found that one airplane does exist which looks like that; it's called an "Osprey".) I thought, "He'd better be careful, or he'll clip the corner of that building and spin out of control!"

AND THEN IT HAPPENED!!!

The airplane clipped the corner of the building and spun out of control. It plunged into the Orange County Performing Arts Center across the street. I thought, "OH MY GOD! A CONCERT IS IN PROGRESS IN THAT BUILDING! AN AIRPLANE HAS CRASHED INTO A BUILDING FULL OF PEOPLE! THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE WILL DIE!"

And then I woke up. But I was to find that the waking was far, far, far more horrifying than the dream. While I slept, the United States of America I knew died, and will never return. I'm still living in this nightmare today.

I had some sense that this nightmare had reached out of the dream and into the waking world at once. The air was full of tension. On the way to work at 7AM, the streets were preternaturally deserted. On the bus, the people were unusually quiet. They looked sad and shell-shocked.

Then the bus driver announced, "Obviously, in light of what has happened this morning, we're not going into the airport. I'd like to, but I doubt the National Guard would let me."

I ran up to the bus driver in a panic and yelled "WHAT HAS HAPPENED???" The bus driver looked at me coldly for a second, then said "Buddy, if you don't already know, I'm not going to be the one to tell you."

I got off the bus outside the airport and ran to work, which was about a half-mile east of the airport.

My workplace was buzzing like a beehive that had been stirred with a stick. Some of the people were talking excitedly; some were walking around looking sad and stunned; some were crying; some were clustering around a small portable TV set.

And standing off to one side, looking relaxed and chipper, with a slight smile on his face, was Frank Secretan, our chief engineer. I thought, "Good! If ANYONE can explain this madness to me, it will be Frank."

So I ran up to Frank in a panic and asked, "FRANK!!! WHAT HAS HAPPENED??????????????????????????????????"

Frank answered, "Terrorists have hijacked two airliners, and have rammed them into the twin towers of the New York World Trade Center. One tower has collaped, and the other tower may also collapse."

I said, "FRANK!!! That's a horrible joke!"

But Frank just smiled that half-smile of his, and said calmly and icily, "I'm not joking.".

I said, "OH MY GOD!!!"

Frank said, "Precisely.".

I thought back to the dream I had had just 90 minutes earlier, where I had thought in my dream, "AN AIRPLANE HAS CRASHED INTO A BUILDING FULL OF PEOPLE! THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE WILL DIE!"

Well, that had happened, and apparently about the same time as I dreamed it. If not "precognitive", this dream was at least "clairvoyant". It was as if some part of my being felt a terrible disturbance in The Force, and repsonded to it by dreaming that dream.

Most-recurrent dream: "Shadowy Death On The Arches":

I'm walking up Newport Blvd, from the Lido Cinema, in Newport Beach, California, USA, along the east side of the road. I get the feeling I'm being followed. I look over my shoulder and see two black, ill-defined shapes moving quickly towards me, veering from the street to the sidewalk. They look vaguely like black greyhounds, except larger, and they float more than they run. I run north, onto The Arches bridge, attempting to escape. They pounce on my and rend my body to shreds in about 1 second. I die.

Oddly, I've had this dream several times, spaced decades apart. Always exactly the same.

Maybe someday I will die on that bridge. Who knows? I've walked over the spot where I always die in my dreams many times, and it always sends a shiver up my spine. I look around for black shapes heading toward me, and I think, "is today the day that I die?" And when I don't die, I know the answer is, "not yet".

Most-violent recurrent dream: "Octogonal Death"

I'm a 10-year-old boy. I'm with two friends, both also 10-year-old boys. We're terrified, because we're being chased by the father of one of my friends. The father is very angry, and is prone to violence. We're in an apartment complex, with a wide open front courtyard, with a small octogonal-shaped rental office, with large picture windows in front, in the center of the courtyard. We run into the rental office and hide in the closet, trying to be silent. But the angry father comes into the office and opens the closet door. He has a shotgun in his hands and a look of rage and hate on his face. He shoots us all, many times. Our blood splatters all over the rental office, as our corpses sink to the floor. We die.

I had this dream twice, once at age 10 and once at age 30.

And later, at age 39, I stumbled across the location of the dream. It's an apartment complex in Huntington Beach, California, USA. When I saw that octagonal rental office in the center of the wide-open grass courtyard, I KNEW that death had occured / will occur there. Some children were killed, or will be killed, by a man with a shotgun.

But I'd never been there before in my life! The first time I saw the place was about 29 years AFTER the first time I had the dream! Weird, huh?

A dream that (unfortunately!) came true: "Civil Defense Checkpoint #1"

I was in bed asleep, dreaming [a dream within a dream], in my apartment complex, which was a two-story L-shaped building with partially-covered catwalks on the upper floor. [Note: in real life, I've never actually seen a building shaped quite like that.] Then some noise wakes me up [from the inner dream]. It's an airplane flying overhead. But then there's a soft "boom", the engine noise cuts abruptly out, and there's the soft "whoosh" of the remanants of the plane tumbling out of the sky. I leap out of bed, jump into some clothes, and rush out of my apartment, fearing that the airplane is going to fall on my head. I run down the street. It's about 6AM, the sun is coming up behind clouds, providing a misty, difuse dawn light. I look back over my left shoulder as I run, and sure enough the airplane is falling out of the sky, breaking apart, trailing thick black smoke. Small pieces of shrapnel from the airplane sting the back of my arm. I run faster to avoid the falling debris.

Once I get clear of the fallout zone, I look around me. I'm in a tent city. If there were permanant buildings here at one time, they must have been destroyed. I'm surrounded by tents and pavilions. Some of the tents house people, but most are shops selling goods. Lots of people are milling around. There's a feeling of tension, like that of a nation at war. The air smells of toxic smoke from the burning airplane, which seems to have crashed about a half mile behind me, a short distance behind my apartment building.

I start back home. But When I arrive at the entrance to my apartment complex, I find that there is now a wall just a few feet from the front entrance, a wall that stretchs for thousands of miles in either direction. There's a gap in the wall in front of the entrance to my apartment complex. In the gap is a brown banquet table with a sign above it reading "Civil Defense Checkpoint #1." Sitting behind the table is a National Guardsman, a woman, in a camo uniform, with a steel battle helmet on her head. She asks for my identification, which I present. She looks me up in a computer terminal, then says, "I'm afraid you can't pass." I say, "But I live right here in this building!" She says, "Not any more, you don't. You live on the other side now. You were on the wrong side of the barrier when THE EVENT happened. You can NEVER return. You are contaminated with radiation, and you are assumed to be a Russian sympathizer. You're not welcome here, Putin lover." I'm rather perplexed at all this, but I must accept it, because another National Guardsman is blocking the entrance, he's pointing a loaded, cocked machine gun at me, and he is beginning to squeeze the trigger. A look of cold hate is in his eyes. I ask the woman, "But where shall I live?" She hands me a key and says, "Room 224" and points to building behind me (on the "Russian" side of the barrier). "But I live in Room 124!" I said, pointing to my (former) home, behind the barricade. She just gave me the finger.

So I slunked off to my new room in a barrio in the Russian Quarter, wondering what the hell all this was about. That's when I woke up.

A few months later, this dream came true. I got fired from my job, ran out of money, couldn't pay rent, couldn't afford to move. My landlord filed for eviction. When I took the "Unlawful Detainer Complaint" to the clerk at the Orange County Courthouse, he gave me an "Answer" form, pointed to the first line, and said "Pay special attention to Civil Defense Checkpoint #1!" Turns out, Civil Defense Checkpoint #1 was the first line on the "Answer" form for defending one's self from a civil lawsuit! And the woman in my dream at the checkpoint, with a drab-green uniform and a gun, also appeared in real life. She wasn't a National Guardsman; she was an Orange County Sheriff's Deputy, who came to my apartment to give me a "Five Day Notice To Quit" order after I lost the unlawful detainer case. In short, yes, I was forced to leave my home, and told I could never come back.

Another precogative dream: "Maroon Sedan And Sunglasses"

The following is yet another dream of mine that came true. Ie, it was a precognative dream. Sorry if you don't "believe in" precognition, but the fact remains, it exists.

As for how precognition works, I don't know. I've heard it said that precognition is due to "intuition", but while I think that's true, it's not a very useful statement. It's like I had asked you, "Who killed Samuel Jacobs on the corner of 5th Avenue and 7th St. in NYC at 3AM Eastern time on the morning of Tue Sep 2 2008?", and you replied "a .357 magnum Ruger Redhawk revolver, with a 6 inch barrel". Yes, that much was clear from the balastics report; but who pulled the trigger?

So while I'm sure that intuition is behind precognition, I'm not at all clear on how human intuition (pattern recognition) can sometimes allow humans to predict the future. But I know that it can.

An example is a dream I had I had a dream around Sept. 1, 2008. In this dream, I was a teenage girl, riding in the right front seat of her dad's car, which was an expensive late-model maroon sedan. Dad was a middle-aged businessman wearing a suit. Suddenly, I accidentally dropped my sunglasses out the window of the car. I asked my dad to turn the car around and go back so I could get my sunglasses. Dad made a U turn, went back, made another U turn, approached the spot where the sunglasses were lying in the street, and stopped the car in the slow lane with his hazard flashers blinking. I hopped out, ran around to the front of the car, and grabbed the sunglasses, which were undamaged. I looked up at our expensive late model maroon sedan looming over me. That's where I woke up.

The next day, i went to an employment agency to drop off a copy of my resume. (I'm currently looking for work.) As I was riding away on my bike, I noticed an expensive late-model maroon sedan stopped in the driveway. The driver, who was a middle-aged businessman in a suit, was staring at an object lying in the road. The object was a pair of sunglasses. On closer inspection, they were MY sunglasses. I'd apparently dropped them a few minutes earlier on my way to the employment agency. I snatched them up. The driver in the car looked startled, terrified even, as if he'd experienced the whole thing a few hours before in a dream, as I had.

What were the triggering elements for this bit of precognition? I don't know. Physicists say that information cannot travel backwards in time. But is that really true? In this case, it seems almost like information from the future somehow filtered back in time, and got into my dream of the night before.

Note that my dream was NOT completely true. I'm not a teenage girl (I'm a middle-aged male). My father is not alive, was never a businessman, never wore a suit, and never drove an expensive maroon sedan. But I DID drop my sunglasses the next day, and they WERE almost run over by a businessman in an expensive maroon sedan. My dream took elements of an event which would occur a few hours in the future, and jumbled them up. The burning question is, where did my subconscious get those elements? The only honest answer I can give is, "I don't know".

Possible future disaster: "N607AM"

In another dream I had, several months ago, I saw an airliner, painted red/white/blue/silver, marked "Welcome aboard American Airlines Friendship Liner, Boeing 757, 712", graze the top of a rocky hill north of Santiago Middle School in Orange, CA, USA. It lofted over the school, silently, both engines out, at an altitude of 75 feet and falling. It crashed in the grass field to the south of the school and broke up, killing all aboard. The nose section landed in the parking lot of the Bank of America at Chapman and Santiago in Orange, CA, USA. My dream cut to two policemen standing near the charred nose cone. They were talking:

Cop #1: How many people were on board?
Cop #2: 137.
Cop #1: How many survivors?
Cop #2: 0.

After this dream, I did some research. I googled "boeing 757 712" and I got a lot of hits involving registration number "N607AM". It turned out that 712 is a "line number", meaning the 712th Boeing 757 ever manufactured. That airplane has registration number N607AM. N607AM is, indeed, owned and operated by American Airlines. N607AM is, indeed, painted red/white/blue/silver. N607AM is, indeed, still in active use. N607AM is, indeed, used on trips into John Wayne Airport. N607AM is, indeed, flown over Santiago Middle School regularly, on its way into John Wayne Airport.

Here is a picture of the airliner which I saw crash in my dream:

http://www.well.com/~lonewolf/essays/N607AM.jpg

Will this airliner ever crash? And if it ever does, will it crash in the way predicted by my dream? I don't know. I hope it never crashes. I'd try to warn American Airlines to inspect the fuel system on N607AM, but they'd think I was a crackpot. They'd ask, "WHY do you think there is a problem in the fuel system of this airplane?" What could I say? "Intuition"? I doubt they'd buy that. And if they DID think I was serious, they'd probably call Homeland Security, who would then send FBI agents to my house to arrest me.

No, I don't think I'll call American Airlines. I'll just wait and see what, if anthing, happens. But if 137 people die because of that, I'll wish I'd done something. Hopefully nothing bad will ever happen to this airplane, and that situation will never arise.

The only dream I've ever had in which I committed murder:
"Redneck And Suit"

I'm hiking in the desert with my best friend, Mike David. Suddenly a pickup truck appears with two guys in it, a redneck-looking fellow, and a foppish European-looking guy with long hair, a suit and round-lens wire-rim glasses. Suit pulls a black pistol with a silencer out of his suit jacket pocket and says "you want I should do 'em, boss?" Redneck says "no, I'll use my machine gun". Suddenly he's in the back of the pickup swinging this machine gun at my friend Mike. I try to say "LOOK OUT HE'S GOT A GUN!!!" but before I can get my mouth open, Redneck machine-guns my friend Mike to death. He points the gun at me and pulls the trigger, but the gun jams. He's pissed. I run.

Suddenly there's this building there, where none was before. I run inside and lock both the front and rear doors. It's a 1-story office building, about 100-feet square (that is, 10,000 square feet). It's walls are all made of glass. The roof is held up by slender steel poles throughout the building. The two doors both have "This door must remain unlocked during business hours" written above them, along with illuminated green "EXIT" signs.

I think, "Well isn't this stupid. I'm in a glass house. If those two guys want to get me, all they have to do is hit the glass with a baseball bat..." (at this point, Redneck wields a bat) "...or throw a rock..." (at this point, Suit wields a rock) "... and the glass will shatter. I need to get out of this place!" I looked around, but I was the only person in the building, and there were no obvious escape routes.

A phone rings.

"Hello?"

"Robbie, this is Hack. You got to get OUT of that place! RIGHT NOW!!!"

"But HOW???"

"Use the computer, silly. No, the one on your right. Yes, that one."

"This palm pilot?"

"It's not a palm pilot! It's a transuniversal transporter! You gotta get out of that universe IMMEDIATELY!!!"

At this point, Redneck and Suit see me with this little computer in my hand, and they're terrified. They drop their bat and rock and run back to the pickup. I'm wondering what they're scared of. I pull on the computer, and it expands out to the size of a notebook. It doesn't telescope or unfold or stretch; it just expands. There's no keyboard or mouse, just a stylus and touchscreen. I select "TransUniversal Jump" then hit "OK". Immediately I'm in another universe.

I'm on a parallel Earth. Same planet, same physical location, same longitude and latitude, same date, same time; but whereas before I was in a desert, now I'm in a humid, cool, overcast environment with plants and trees and buildings and a few people walking by. I see a pickup pull up to a curb ahead. Redneck and Suit get out of it. The see me and start running away. Suit is saying "we've got to get back to base!" I give chase, but they give me the slip. I'm mad as hell and want to catch up to them and kill them because they shot my best friend to death with a machine gun. But I can't see where then went. (Now I know it's stupid to suddenly be chasing two armed men when I'm unarmed... but hey, it's a dream. Dreams are often illogical.)

Suddenly, out from behind a bush strides a certain Internet friend of mine who often goes by the nickname "Hack". (I'm not 100% certain what his name is in real life, but I've heard rumors his first name is actually Bryan.) Now, I haven't a clue as to what Hack looks like in real life, but in my dream he was male Caucasian, 6feet, 170lb, lean and stringy, very-pale skin (almost albino), medium-length curly black hair, piercing blue eyes, black pants, white polo shirt. He says "Psst! This way! They went into the park!" I follow Hack into a sort of amusement park. We go creeping along a twisty walkway amongst bushes and weird rides. It is very foggy. Suddenly ahead we see Redneck and Suit. They see us and jump into a sort of fiberglass slide and disappear. We follow.

At the bottom of the slide we come out onto the sidewalk of a street between two businesses. We catch a glimpse of two guys running around a corner to our right, and give chase.

We go around the corner, but we don't see our prey, so we slow down and walk slowly along the street. Suddenly a white van comes up from behind us. It passes, slowly. We look in the passenger-side window, and there's Redneck (driving), and Suit. They're both smiling and giving us the finger. Hack and I give them the finger right back. I yell "assholes!" and Hack yells "pricks!"

"They're getting away! What should we do?" I say.

Hack says "Call the cops". I look around for a phone, but there is none. Astonishingly, the van has slowed to a crawl and Redneck and Suit are still giving us the finger. I should smell a trap at this point, but for some reason, I don't hearken to the danger.

A police car appears from behind. Hack flags it down. I tell the officers, "See that van ahead? Those men are murderers! Arrest them!" The cops pull the van over and Redneck gets out. "You a murderer?" First Cop asks. "No", Redneck says. "Look in the van, his accomplice is in there!" I say. But Second Cop looks in the van and says "there's no one in here."

Suddenly Hack, the two cops, and myself all feel intense stabbing pains in our heads, and the universe starts flashing between positive and negative (photographic negative, white is black, black is white) once per second. Hack says "UUUOOO, they're using a transuniversal transporter as a weapon! They'll send us to someplace unliveable!" Redneck makes a dash for the van, jumps in. The two cops jump in the van, but I see Suit fire his pistol (with the silencer) twice. It makes a soft "Thuck! Thuck!" sound. The two cops die inside the van.

Suddenly the van, with Redneck, Suit, and the two dead cops in it, vanishes. The universe is no-longer flashing between positive and negative, but Hack and I are now standing on a high freeway transition road (whereas before, we'd been on a quiet city street at ground level). The gravity is about 5G. Hack says "OOOooo, my head feels soooo heeaavvvvyyy. The ggrrravitty is toooo high." I look at my watch and the numbers are spinning wildly out of control, about 1000 times normal speed. I feel my thoughts and speech slowing down. I say "aaanndd tiimme is messsssed up, tooo." Oddly, automotive traffic on our transition road, and on the freeway far below us, is flowing at a sedate 55MPH. There's a city a few hundred feet in front of us, tall glass skyscrapers glowing in the afternoon sunshine. Hack looks up, and laughs. "Thhhhe skkky is ppppurple!" he burbles. "I allwwwways wannnted to die unnder a prrrrple skkkky." I look up, and sure enough, the sky is an even lilac color, with a few fluffy white clouds and a bright yellow sun.

Suddenly I notice a computer in the gutter. "Lllooook, Hack, Redneck drrrropd his cmmppputrrr!" I snatch it up. "Get mmmee back to TTTTEXAS!!!" Hack yells. I click some buttons and Hack goes ::POOF::, safely back in Texas. Then I click "Homing Beacon (Return To Owner)". ::POOF:: I'm immediately in a different universe.

I'm now under a maze of freeway overpasses so enormous and complex that they blotted out the daytime sunlight almost completely. Like being under the four-level interchange in downtown Los Angeles. There are surface streets and even buildings under here. A whole city under the freeways. There's an odd "building" here with internal partitions and granite pillars extending all the way up to the freeways above; but the only exterior "wall" is a chain-link fence. And yet I know somehow that this place is "Headquarters" for Redneck and Suit.

I climb the 12' chainlink fence, crawl over the barbed wire at the top, and climb down the other side. I sneak into Redneck's office area and hide behind a pillar. A van pulls up. My heart is pounding. The engine turns off. I hear Suit get out. He prowls around the area, reconoitering, but fails to see me. I hear, "coast is clear, boss. I'll go around front." For some reason, Suit enters the front gate, but Redneck enters the side gate. They approach each other. Redneck is laughing and says "Well, I think this has been an enjoyable day."

That's when I lunge! I tackle Redneck from behind, knocking him into a surprised Suit. Suit falls over backwards and his pistol skitters out of his hand and slides across the waxed concrete floor. Redneck lands on top of him, and I land on top of Redneck. I think, "now isn't this perfectly insane. If I'm going to kill these guys, it would be nice if I had a weapon. A knife would be nice." Just then, I notice a white plastic table knife from Irvine Chinese Food in my pocket. I whip it out and cut Redneck's throat. I cut with all my hate. The knife goes clear through his flesh, all the way to his spine. (Now, this is obviously impossible for a dull plastic knife. But hey, this was a dream. Dreams are weird.) Redneck is squirting gallons of blood all over Suit, and Suit is trying to get up and go for his gun. But I jump up and kick Suit in the head, knocking him out. Then I cut his throat. Redneck and Suit both die.

That's when I woke up.

Weird dream, huh?

Now, in case you're wondering, I've never killed anyone in real life, and this dream was the first time I've ever done so in a dream. Nor do I know anyone in real life who is much like Redneck or Suit. The only "real" people in the dream were myself, my friend Mike David, and Hack.

I'll tell you, though, I'll be keeping my eyes open for a redneck-looking guy, and a European-looking guy in a suit, driving around in a pickup or van. If I see them, I think I'll discretely run the other way. I won't be attacking them with a white plastic table knife from Irvine Chinese Food.

(Unless, of course, they murder my best friend; in which case, all bets are off.)

PS: Hack: Thanks for helping me chase down Redneck and Suit, even if it was only in a dream.