Dreams and the Fear of Death

I think today’s topic is relevant for everyone. Death is inevitable for all of us, and most people have some degree of fear or trepidation when facing it. It is not a question of intelligence with fear of death relegated to only the less intelligent. In fact, some of the most intelligent people in history have exhibited great fear at the prospect of their physical death. John Von Neumann, who many consider the greatest mathematician of the twentieth century and probably the smartest person alive in the first half of the last century, was said to be terrified of his own death when the end approached (see http://www.eoht.info/page/John+Neumann).

The most intelligent people may exhibit even greater fear than that of the average person because their intelligence has served them well in the material world where they have been able to control many aspects of their lives as well as events surrounding them. Death is an unknown for them where their physical abilities will no longer be relevant. And I think this scares them. Also, many of the most intelligent people are either atheists or agnostic. They do not have a belief in the afterlife to comfort them as they approach their end.

I believe the study and interpretation of one’s dreams can help alleviate the fear of death. Edgar Cayce, the famous twentieth-century psychic and mystic, said that in our dreams we were closer to the state we experience after death. If you seriously study your dreams, not just examining an occasional one that seems unusual, I think you will find much evidence that an aspect of you transcends the physical self. In time, you will experience the great movement of your consciousness to other places that occurs regularly when you sleep. Some will say that it is all in the mind and only part of the activity of the physical brain when we sleep. However, dream events will occur that cannot be explained by scientific theories that limit the mind to the brain.

A simple example of this is a visit to a place far away where you see events taking place that are only reported to your conscious self later on. Perhaps you see a family member or friend involved in some activity, experiencing a problem, or undergoing a great change in their state. In your dream, you may see in considerable detail what is occurring, even though you have had no direct contact with the person for some time. And the occurrence in the dream may not be related to his or her normal activity and your knowledge of them. You might dream that they experienced a fire, which you witness in the dream, only to later learn that they experienced a fire on the day of your dream. Now if this only occurs once, you might pass it off to a coincidence. However, regular study of your dreams will make it clear that this is a common occurrence.

Often, when I awake and reflect on my dreams, I realize that I have had a very busy time during my hours of sleep. The actual day may have been uneventful, but I may experience events and situations that leave me exhausted from all that I have witnessed and experienced in my dreams, from personal local events to national and world events. Your subconscious will tune into information of relevance or interest to you and filter out everything else. If someone you know has an undiagnosed cancer, you may dream about it because of your closeness to him or her. You won’t dream about the thousands of other people with undiagnosed cancer because they are not relevant to you in a personal way.

In your dreams, you may attend weddings, sit in on lectures, and visit cities of interest to your conscious self. Your wanderings can be far and wide because you no longer have the physical limitation. Edgar Cayce, in his readings while in a self-induced trance, sometimes described the street and buildings he passed as his consciousness went to the location of the person requesting the reading. He even described any unusual activities of the people he passed, which were later verified as occurring at the time of the reading.

You are not your physical body. Your physical body is your expression in a corporeal world, but you are not limited to it or by it. The study of your dreams will make that very clear. After many years of dream work, I am as comfortable in my dreams as in the waking state. I can pass from one state to another with ease. The real work is done in my dreams because I first dream about future events before they occur. The events I will meet in the physical are first encountered in my dreams before becoming physical. This gives me an opportunity to make conscious changes in my life if I don’t like what is being built in my dreams. And it allows me to prepare myself psychologically for events I cannot change, such as hurricane Erma discussed in a previous post.

Mystics talk about the connectivity of all life. You don’t have to be a mystic to experience this; you can experience it in your dreams. A study of your dreams will soon make it clear that we are all connected in terms of consciousness. We are not the separate isolated beings that some think we are. “Thoughts are things,” as Edgar Cayce frequently said, and they exist independent of the brain. Our thoughts affect others and their thoughts affect us. We are all part of a glorious tapestry that that is interwoven through our shared consciousness, not simply our conscious mind. The conscious mind is only one part of us that rises to address the physical world and may become quite deluded. The deeper layers of consciousness reach far beyond our physical bodies to the Eternal and have a clearer perspective on our real nature and purpose, which is related in dreams to those with a sincere purpose to seek guidance and discover the truth.

Death is merely a transition from one state to another. I would be disingenuous if I said I was not apprehensive about the possible pain associated with death. However, I have no apprehension about what happens after death. If you want to understand death and remove any fear of death, study your dreams.