Quote Originally Posted by Eonnn View Post
I tend to believe, as the title suggests that there is awareness behind the dream. That our own consciousness goes so deep, right down past subconscious and unconscious, into the sea of pure awareness (or the ineffable) where everything is all connected and new ideas (and life?) are born out of it through imagination or inspiration. I've also said before a few times that waking life is similar to dream life in that you can be the dream, the dreamer, or just dreaming. Which one are you? and which would you prefer?

I've had plenty of dreams where characters seem to be consciously alive in the sense they show a high level or degree of intelligence.
According to my knowledge, this is true that the characters in the dream have intelligence, their own - not shallow - personality, many traits. You perecieve such characters because they are projected into our minds when dreaming. This says something about what is really going on in this reality. Why do people have dreams at all - is the essential question here? I tried to answer it multiple times, some conclusions of research I've made I put here: https://www.astraldynamics.com.au/sh...ht=imagination
But some of the statements there might need an update, as it is the ongoing case and I'm gaining more and more facts about the reality.

The idea consciousness is the foundation or wellspring from which all reality comes into form (1st hermetic principle by the way 'all is mind')
Referring to the above mentioned conclusion, in fact, the whole thing could be shown also in the opposite way: this is the mind onto which the whole reality is projected.

The more information I have the more I am convinced that the astral projection term is very well describing what is going on (much more than the Out-of-the-Body-Experience term, which might be a bit confusing in a sense, sorry if this might ruin someone's beliefs, but no offense intented here) to the point that I started recently considering to completely abandon the OBE term, and both in dreams and OBE, but going further, also partly explains the problem with the subconscious mind and - hence - the after-death experiences, which all are similar or actually the same thing in the sense of the state of mind not affected by the physical body and its electrical impulses, material organs and so on.

The "Projection" gives a different outlook on the essence of the thing going on in such experiences and lead to the new conclusions, which - as I frequently see - are omitted for people using the OBE term. It puts the mind in the center, not the observed reality - see the essential difference? I don't want to insist on using certain terms which is typical to the academic circles, but want to suggest that using certain terms is also mental projection - it affects filters your understanding of what is going on, which several researchers such as Chomsky emphasized.

Rupert Sheldrake's work on morphic fields might hold a bit more weight here in this regard.
When first I heard about his conclusions and research he made I thought they were outstanding, the explanation sounded remarkably true. But now I think it's not quite the case what is really going on when referring to the morphic fields, with all the respect that I have for him and tremendous research efforts. IMO it's more complicated - or, more simple, depending on how the things are put: that there is something like etheric library, akashic fields or however you want to call this network, existing beyond the physical and being completely independent from it - something I believe old traditions called "spirit of nature" etc.. This "intelligent library" manages not just plants or animals, but also affect people minds - both living and dead.

To put it simply, it's an physical-etheric-astral matrix, all entangled, and we are in the middle of it, completely unaware of this fact. Why do 99,99% people completely ignore the dream state and do not make any conclusions out of it upon the observations such as you do?

After reading a few accounts on NDEs it seems most people when they die experience similar things, much like in DMT trips.
I also think so. BTW E. Cayce suggested that the after-death state is like dreaming state.

But what they often report is the experience is different for everyone according to their belief system.
Projection?

highlight the importance of becoming lucid, overcoming fear to get to a better place when they die, that if you die there you end up back here re-incarnating into a new body with complete amnesia. I highly believe the afterlife is like a shared lucid dream, and I will continue to believe this because that's what I want to happen, so I can become a lucid god in a high level astral realm when I die. This is where all us lucid dreamers have an advantage over non-dreamers because it's likely we will become lucid of the thought "oh yeah I'm dead, I died in real life a few moments ago" and have some level of control to navigate and defend ourselves.
I have similar conclusions, except recently I started to become very sceptical about whether lucid and OBE experiences are the guarantee to have no such negative after-life "dumb" effect.

Further more, after reading NDE accounts, I started to become recently also sceptical about these reports - I mean, they could be delibarately designed and projected onto these people by the non-physical beings behind the scene, as a message (information similar to religious attempts) to the Earth "sleeping" society unaware of why and what is about incarnation in reality, except some religious beliefs like karma etc.

-subconscious personified: asked to talk with SC, appeared as the most beautiful woman I ever seen that I instantly felt deep connection with, knew everything about me, knew what I was thinking, knew what I wanted and was going to say or do next, made me more lucid, gave me 100% control and followed me around in the lucid dream so I could demonstrate my new found abilities and level of control to her. (this is example where the character is actually MORE intelligent than I am, or has greater level of awareness than I do)
-astral attackers: one example, a being I never seen before had a sort of rainbow body made of translucent multi-coloured shimmering light but still in a human form comes seemingly out of no where, walks right up to me without saying anything, sticks his hand out towards me palm facing down and sticks it right into my belly, then proceeds to try and drain the life force out of me. It was painful and I remember screaming saying "what are you doing" with no response. I get away but that wasn't my first encounter. Another time similar astral attacker, this time more human form but without the rainbow light body wearing all black and black trenchcoat does exact same thing. This one talked a little at least I was running away, trying to escape, multiple methods of evasion teleporting everything under the sun, no matter where I went he was instantly there. When I asked him what he was doing his response was "I want your power ball" now you could interpret this how you want, he might mean chakra, or dantein (like in kungfu) or I could have misinterpreted ball as the name Baal. Maybe he actually saying "I want your power, Baal" referring to me as the Caananite God, enemy of Yahweh. I didn't even know who Baal was back then, with no interest or knowledge on that subject, I just don't know but one thing was clear he was something else, from somewhere else trying to take away my soul, because it felt like having your soul drained, it felt like dying for good, like going into oblivion kind of dying.
-astral parasites: I'm on an alien world, the world is beautiful beyond words and I'm there just appreciating the immaculate beauty and happily exploring when all of a sudden a flying bat-like creature comes out of the sky latches on to me and starts sucking blood out of me, like a vampire bat? so strange. I remembered that dream for weeks, and it made me feel so peaceful remembering back on it (well remembering the first part before the bat came along)
-astral vampires: literally vampiric humans in an astral realm, they lulled me from my bed singing a sweet lullaby to my soul in latin (I don't even know latin but could still remember some parts of the song which I later used google translate to work out)
-aliens: multiple encounters with grey aliens, went to their home planet one time as well and it has a heavy vibe of fear so much that it's like the atmosphere they breathe and they thrive in that feeling of fear which increased their mental capabilities, the fear is not your typical level of "oh ♥♥♥♥" more like being afraid of fear itself level where you are completely incapicitated or paralyzed by it, they love that feeling and can't get enough of it.
-pleasant astral humans: travelling to different realms consciously I stumbled into a few places, perhaps 'off-bounds' to regular travellers, I get asked "what are you doing here? how did you get here?" sort of questions which typical dream characters don't usually ask, at least not in my normal dreams
-heavenly or demonic beings: this includes God, demigods, angels, spiritual guide, Satan, demons, ascended masters, enlightened beings, etc. most are transcendental in nature but not all.
-dream architects: trying to get out of the simulation of life, trying to wake up into the 'real world' on numerous attempts, along the way met lots of interesting folk that act behind the scenes controlling peoples dreams (nice rhyme huh?)
-real people from waking life: shared dreams with people I know, most the time they typically 'don't remember' or won't admit it. Most of them not into dreaming and have zero recall anyway.
-celebrities: keanu reeves, tom cruise, Tupac, etc. I don't even like hiphop never listened to Tupac, didn't know what he even looked like or care about him at all, yet still meet him and have epic dream about it.
-there's many more examples, and also examples of astral places like the school of learning I went to where they speak telepathically and teach anything you want to learn, which for me was learning how to heal people.
-funnily enough, my dream guides are utterly clueless, whenever I ask to see my dream guide it's always a different random DC displaying complete lack of intelligence.
-then there's other stuff like time dilation, 2 hour dream in space of 2 minutes in waking life, being a martial arts expert like it's 2nd nature to me knowing moves I never even seen on TV, being able to freestyle rap like Eninem which I totally suck at in real life (on the spot at least). To dismiss all this as pure fantasy is ludicrous in my opinion, there are just too many unexplained things that go beyond resonable explanation or understanding.
Thanks for sharing.

Most of the dreams you mentioned vividly ressemble my dreams; some I even described in the journal thread. I have similar experience.
But the general conclusion that I have is: no matter what is the name for the altered state of experiencing the reality, they all seem to have many things in common - they are projections. And these projections are frequently intelligenlty designed (i.e. our whole experince, both in physical but also in astral, i.e. after the physical death, is an intelligent design).

The essential question is: what would we do with these experiences? Would we stop there, say "oh yeah, I had a weird/vivid/nice/terrifying dream or experience" and stop there? Or we make conclusions out of the experience and start to research the reality on our own, without depending much on the already existing scientific explanations on what is the unconcious mind or why the dreaming occurs?