Didge Doo

Where do our dreams come from? What do they mean? Can they ever predict the future?

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Walt O'Reagun Profile
Walt O'Reagun answered

They come from our subconscious.

They mean your conscious is trying to process all the information your subconscious has absorbed.

They never predict the future.  However, your subconscious may have picked up information that SEEMS to predict the future ... Because it ties past "cause and effect" together.

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Didge Doo
Didge Doo commented
I agree with you on ALL counts. And yet I once had a dream that predicted the future.

I was 15 or 16 and the dream was job-related. Like many dreams, although it was vivid, there were a couple of aberrations in it that spoiled the reality. Then, six weeks later, when I was in a situation I couldn't have predicted I saw that dream begin to unfold through the window of the van I was riding in. And when those anomalies occurred, right on schedule, all the hairs stood up on the back of my neck. I can still remember it vividly, almost 65 years later.

Interestingly it was of absolutely no importance at all. It didn't predict anything momentous, just something unusual in the life of a young land working at his first job.

And still I agree with you. And, at the same time, add a "but..."
Walt O'Reagun
Walt O'Reagun commented
I, too, have had dreams that "predict the future". Back in the early 1980's, I had a dream that I was trapped with a friend ... in the vault of a skyscraper in NYC ... when the building fell down around us.

Of course, *I* was not in the Twin Towers when they came down. I've never actually been in NYC, even. I even had lost contact with that person. Until I heard from her about a week later. She was going to do a presentation in one of the offices in one of those towers - and right before boarding the plane, had remembered me telling her of the dream - and had cancelled the presentation.

Maybe my dream was a prediction. Or maybe my subconscious took all the turmoil of the time, and my hatred of large cities, and wanting some "alone time" with that female acquaintance ... and came up with the dream sequence. Who knows?
Didge Doo
Didge Doo commented
Whichever it was, I'm glad she didn't board that plane. (My dream was of absolutely no consequence at all, except that it happened.)
Corey The Goofyhawk Profile
Corey The Goofyhawk , Epic has no limit, answered

Dreams come from our subconscious and are driven by whatever we ate last. Seriously, I have the strangest dreams at night depending on what I ate before bed.

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Didge Doo
Didge Doo commented
It's claimed that we all dream but that some of us don't remember them. I gotta confess I rarely remember mine. Those I do remember are usually set in a job I had during the 1960s and 1970s -- never the ones after that.

But lots of people complain of odd dreams after odd bedtime feasts. thanks for the answer.
Corey The Goofyhawk
Corey The Goofyhawk commented
I don't remember most of mine either. I don't remember all the details of my dreams either.
Call me Z Profile
Call me Z answered

a) Generally understood as a natural and involuntary act, dreams flow in distinct states of consciousness, fed by multiple categories of stimuli arising prominently in a dreamer's thoughts or experiences.

b) Studies show a larger portion of people believe their dreams reveal meaningful insights into their unconscious beliefs and desires. Value is a subjective concept, who's to say dreams truly have no meaning. Dream interpretation has been a pet industry of prophets, soothsayers and charlatans alike, since time immemorial. Fair to conclude there are those for whom dreams have discernable meaning, however askew from common reason such interpretations might be. 

c) I can't conclude the future is reliably foreseeable in dreams, nor really anywhere else, but it can be said without much dispute that in countless cases, dreams have set forth inspiration toward molding future events, or to the pursuit of goals. Predict the future, no; set it in motion, yes.

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Call me Z
Call me Z commented
It certainly creates pause to think, doesn't it. That said, and not to in anyway diminish the significance of the connection, did you think of the dream as prescient before you saw it come to its fruition weeks later, or was it realized upon reflection?
Didge Doo
Didge Doo commented
No. It was just an unimportant, silly dream. It was to do with work but not the area I worked and although I knew the man in the dream (He was a telephone technician and I think his name was Ted Walsh) he and I knew each other only casually and I should never have been in his van.

As far as I can remember I had forgotten all about the dream. When circumstances came together to allow the dream to unfold, it blew me away.

I haven't remembered this only now. It's stuck with me over the years. Just an inexplicable (to me) part of the puzzle.
Call me Z
Call me Z commented
Tis' fascinating. I put this alongside deja vu as one of those inexplicably meaningful things which instill wonder in life.
music lover Profile
music lover answered

Well I think our dreams comes from, what we were thinking all day and that thought comes in our dreams in the form of story and it means nothing and not predict our future

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Didge Doo
Didge Doo commented
That pretty much covers it, Music Lover. Maybe just the subconscious coming out to play when we put our busy conscious mind to sleep. :)

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