Is it a prophetic dream and what kind of dreams are prophetic? How to determine? Sleep criteria How to distinguish a prophetic dream from a simple one

When we are in a dream, we cannot distinguish this dream from reality; according to our subjective sensations, the dream world is no different from the real world. But in fact, this world is much less stable and more changeable. It is his variability that “gives him away.”

There are universal signs of the dream world that work for everyone, and there are personal ones. We will call the first sleep criteria in order to separate them from the second. Sleep criteria are a must for beginners to test reality. Experienced dreamers can use personal signs of sleep, and the awareness mechanism will work faster.

So, sleep criteria are kind of cheat codes. Even if you've never experienced conscious dream, you can use them. How? Testing reality. You need to ask yourself as often as possible in the real world, “Is this a dream?” and check using sleep criteria. Whatever method you use to enter a lucid dream, you must add reality testing using criteria. Gradually, a habit develops, and in a dream we use absolutely the same patterns of behavior as in real life. This way, the dream world will not be able to “fool your brains” by pretending to be reality.

How to distinguish a dream from reality

1. Read any inscription twice: read it, turn away, turn around and read it again. In a dream, the inscription will change.
2. Try to remember what you did in the last five minutes and how you got here. Difficulties will arise in your sleep.
3. Look at your watch. In a dream, the hands dance as they want and do not want to show the time, and an electronic clock works the same way as text - it is constantly changing.
4. Try jumping high. In your sleep, you will feel that gravity is no longer the same.
5. Look at your hands. In your sleep, they will deform right before your eyes.
6. Try to remember what you last did: wake up or go to bed. In a dream you will not be able to remember, this question will cause you difficulty.
7. Try turning the light on or off using the switch. In a dream, the switch may not turn on, or you may even experience a strange dim feeling even though it has turned on.
8. And finally, to quickly wake up and get out of the sleep state, pinch yourself.

To check, it is better to use not one criterion, but at least two, at least at first. For me, the first one turned out to be the “working” criterion, probably because it is the easiest to use in real life. At first I simply instilled this habit, and only then did I become convinced that the inscription was changing.

Since ancient times, people have had deep reverence for dreams. At all times, dream interpreters are held in high esteem; astrologers, magicians, and those who are good at solving dreams flourish in royal courts. After all, since ancient times people have known that some dreams are harbingers of important events and changes. And here the question arises - how to determine that a dream is prophetic before the events predicted by it happen?

In fact, there are several basic principles that will help separate visionary dreams from all unnecessary mental trash. And the first of them is directly related to elementary logic. They should not be considered prophetic dreams that offer contradictory or outright fantastic solutions for any situation. You must understand whether the scenario seen in the dream is likely in reality. If, escaping from a pursuer in a dream, you spread all eight wings plus the tail and fly out through the window straight into the soft green sky, then you can safely write this dream in the “nothing” category. A prophetic dream will definitely be consistent with both reality and common sense.

The second point concerns the environment of the sleep space. If the prophecy concerns career growth, then in the dream events will take place in an environment reminiscent of an office, and not in medieval castle or in the Amazon jungle.

And finally, there is a good test that allows, with 80% probability, from all the dreams you saw last night, to identify the one that really carries a prophecy. The first thing you need to do is remember the dream, and then answer a few questions about it. For each affirmative answer you should give yourself a plus sign.1. Were there people or objects in your dream that exist in your reality?
2. Did the plot of your dream seem quite plausible and could take place in life?
3. Have you ever had prophetic dreams before?
4. After you woke up, did you have a feeling that your dream would certainly come true - a feeling of confidence?
5. Did the plot of the dream relate to an issue that is relevant to you at the moment?
6. Do you have experience in deciphering dreams or working with them in any way?
7. Do you have experience in meditative practices, immersion in trance, altered states (hypnosis, prayer, meditation, etc.) of consciousness?

The more positive answers you receive, the more likely the dream about which the questions were asked is prophetic.

As you can see, distinguish prophetic dream from the fantastic it is not so difficult. Although here, as nowhere else, the rule “what is trained is certainly developed” is relevant.

When a person dreams about something, the same activity is observed in his brain as if these events were happening in reality. Whatever he does in a dream: jumping, running, dancing - his brain understands it as if the person was doing these things in reality.

This conclusion was made by researchers at the Institute of Psychiatry in Munich. They studied the brain activity of dreaming people. The task was not easy - in order to get more accurate results, experts spent a long time looking for volunteers who could control their dreams.

The neurophysiology of dreams is not an easy task. Firstly, we often forget what we dreamed. Secondly, how to correctly compare brain activity with events occurring in a dream? To do this, the volunteer must simultaneously be in deep sleep and report to the experimenter the events occurring in this dream. The phenomenon of controlled sleep helps solve this problem. Its main feature is that the dreamer realizes that he is dreaming and can, to some extent, consciously control his actions in a dream. Only long, hard training allows you to achieve the ability to control your dreams.

So, the researchers asked six volunteers who practiced dream control to take part in the experiment. They must dream about how they squeeze their right or left hand. If the practitioners fell into the desired, controlled sleep, then they had to give a sign - eye movement. Of course, special equipment scanned the brain activity of the dreamers.

Under the conditions of this experiment, only two volunteers managed to see controlled dreams. However, thanks to another pair of participants, the researchers were convinced that the activity of the motor cortex, which is responsible for the left or right hands, during the movements that the volunteer dreamed of was exactly the same as if these actions occurred in reality. Hence the proof: a dream is not a movie. Its perception involves not only visual analyzer, but also the entire human brain.

Then why don't we actually jump, run, or clasp our hand during corresponding sleep? Researchers say that during dreaming, the area of ​​the brain that is responsible for making decisions is silent. That is why the activity of the motor cortex, which is directly responsible for movements, is not realized. As a consequence of this, dreamers who are able to control their dreams clearly understand that they are dreaming. Therefore, it is possible to say that the human brain does not distinguish between dreams and reality only to a certain extent.

The authors of these studies did not stop there and in the near future want to analyze the activity of the human brain during more complex movements - while the dreamer is running or flying. For this purpose it will be involved a large number of subjects who are able to control their dreams.

Being able to recognize that you are dreaming can be very important, especially if you are having a vivid or horrible dream. Perhaps you want to learn to understand that you are dreaming because you intend to control your dreams, or you simply want to know whether you are dreaming or not in case you have to recover from a shock or accident. Sometimes dreams seem more real than real life, however, learning to determine whether you are sleeping or not is quite possible.

Steps

How to check your surroundings

Check whether you are sleeping while you are awake. Although it may seem counterintuitive, people who can see lucid dreams, believe that to develop this skill you need to train yourself to check whether you are sleeping or not during the day. They believe that if a person develops a habit of checking this during the day, it will continue during sleep.

• By deliberately checking whether you are sleeping or not during the day, you will tune your consciousness to this habit and to the need to perform certain actions to check: read the newspaper, thinking about whether you are sleeping or not; touch or move objects; to look at the watch. If you try to do the same thing in a dream out of habit, but do not get the usual result, it will mean that you are dreaming.
• If you are not sleeping, think about why you feel the need to check whether you are sleeping or not. For example, have you taken drugs? Have you been poisoned? Have you had an accident? Are you experiencing hallucinations? Have you suffered a concussion or other injury? If you are physically or mentally injured, call ambulance or ask someone to help you as soon as possible.

1. Carry out a series of checks to determine the reality of what is happening. If you are dreaming, things will not be the same as you are used to. Reality checks are used in controlled dreams and are one of the means of more active participation in dream events. Some controlled dreamers do reality checks while they are awake, as this enhances the possibilities of controlled dreams.

   Look around. In a dream, everything may look unusual, since there are many distortions in dreams, and there these distortions are the norm. If the dream takes place in your home or other place where you spend a lot of time, look for familiar objects. Does the place look the same compared to the last time you saw it? For example, is there a window where the painting should be? Mismatches could be a sign that you are dreaming.

   Think about the people you see. If you talk to people who have died a long time ago, this a clear sign that you are dreaming. Why you are talking to them is a separate issue in dream interpretation, but the very fact that you are talking to these people and consider it completely normal indicates that you are dreaming.

   • Chat with your enemies as if they were yours best friends? This is definitely a dream!
   • Maybe your grandfather suddenly has superpowers and your evil sister suddenly starts being nice to you?
   • If you are in a familiar environment, do you recognize the people around you or are you surrounded by strangers?
   • Are there people there that you wouldn't meet in real life? Let's say you have an eight-year-old sister, Katya, although in fact you are an only child. Or maybe you are standing next to a copy of yourself, a talking animal, a fictional hero or a mythical creature? In this case, you are definitely sleeping.
   • Do people behave in ways that real people would not behave? For example, if ordinary objects seem incredible to you, if you are not surprised by your ability to fly, if you are afraid of what you should not be afraid of, or, on the contrary, are rushing towards a volcano at the moment of its eruption, this indicates that you are dreaming.
   • Do people know things they shouldn't know? Suppose in a dream you may meet a person who works as a geography teacher, but at the same time believes that America does not exist.
   • Do everyone, including strangers, know your name? Do they know facts about you that they shouldn't know? (For example, a stranger on the street says that you always wanted a dog, although you didn’t talk about it.)

2. Look around yourself. Study your palms, feet, legs. Are they in normal shape? How many arms and legs do you have? Are any parts of your body distorted? Does your hair look the way it should, or has it changed in length, texture or color? Try to find a mirror. What does your reflection look like? In dreams, reflections usually look different than in life. The image in the mirror is often distorted or appears blurry.

   How to test yourself

   1. Test your strength and abilities. If you can lift very heavy objects or fly, you are probably dreaming. But remember that in controlled sleep you can develop skills that will be useful to you in the real world. Some doctors and therapists use this with people who have suffered trauma, helping them imagine their bodies recovering. However, the following skills indicate that a person is sleeping. Test your abilities with this list:

      • Try to fly or freeze in the air. If you succeed, you are asleep.
      • Can you speak normally? If you are wheezing or unable to speak, you are most likely asleep (or you have laryngitis, but if your throat doesn't hurt, you are still asleep). Another sign that you are in a dream state is that your voice is too high, too low, or has an unusual accent.
      • Try jumping. Can you jump higher than the moon or hold your jump abnormally? long time? Or do you still jump as usual and land with a bang?
      • Can you move objects around a room or open area without touching them?
      • Can you turn appliances or lights on and off with just your mind? Remember that in a dream, the level of illumination usually does not change with the flick of a switch. This test is not considered reliable by everyone, since for some people who control their dreams, nothing changes when they turn the light on or off.
      • Can you make any objects appear in front of you with just the power of your thoughts?
      • Can you breathe underwater or teleport? If yes, you are dreaming.
      • Do you have superpowers that you've always had and simply forgot about?
      • Do strange things happen to you? For example, if you are walking down the street in Paris and suddenly find yourself in New York, you are probably dreaming.
      • Have you forgotten how to do ordinary things? (For example, if you suddenly can't write your name or even speak, you're probably dreaming.)
      • Are you doing something ridiculous? For example, are you trying to fix a leaky faucet with a spatula? Do you take over a supermarket for no particular reason? Peeing in front of everyone? And if you do something ridiculous, is it surprising to others?
      • Sometimes people urinate in their sleep and still feel the urge to urinate. In real life, this could indicate an infection urinary tract, but if you are healthy, you are probably sleeping.
      • Have you become younger or older than you really are?
      • Are you pregnant, although you have not had unprotected sex, or are you a virgin?

   2. Check what you do every day. To understand whether you are sleeping or not, you can check whether you can do something you do every day. For example, if you usually turn the key once to open the door, but you do it three times even though it is impossible, this could be a sign of sleep.

      Test yourself by reading. This test must be carried out while you are awake. Read the newspaper, look away and return to the newspaper. The text should remain the same. It is important to accustom yourself to this exercise so that you can do it in your sleep. It is difficult to read in a dream because the text is distorted. Try looking away from the newspaper and bringing it back to it. If this is a dream, there is a high probability that the text will transform into something else.

   Dream and reality

   1. Know the main signs of sleep. There are several classic sleep signs that occur in many people and indicate that a person is sleeping. These dreams often develop into subconscious fears, and almost everyone has had variations of these dreams. But scientists have found that we can control the content of our dreams and can use special techniques that can prevent unwanted dreams from occurring.

      • Think about what you want to see in your dream before you go to bed.
      • Allow the desired image to fill your consciousness.
      • Hold this image in your head as you fall asleep.

   2. Be aware of the common physical elements of sleep. The physical sensations in a dream are very real. A person may feel as if he is actually flying, falling, or running. These actions also often startle and wake up the person. The most common actions include the following:

      • Flight without aids.
      • Falling without making contact with the ground (although the sudden start of the fall may be enough to wake you up).
      • Presence dangerous person, a monster or strange creature that runs after you or attacks you.
      • Paralysis (something terrible happens and you sit or stand because you cannot move; it happens that a person can move, but moves very slowly).
      • A lack of clarity about what is happening, an inability to see everything clearly, often accompanied by an inability to fully control one’s thoughts and actions.
      • Lack of body parts, most often teeth.
      • Oddities associated with time. For example, the day can pass in just a few minutes, and at noon it can become dark.

   3. Consider whether you're having a classic nervousness dream. People often have dreams in which they were unable to do something, were in the nude, or were otherwise unprepared for something. Sometimes these dreams are related to events that make you nervous. There are several variations of such dreams:

      • You are lost in a familiar place.
      • You are in public place in the nude (in the city center, on public transport, in class, and so on).
      • Normally reliable mechanical devices have stopped working, especially if you need to escape from something or someone.
      • A test where you don't know the answers. And even test, where you don’t know the answers and where you came naked!
      • Dream about the toilet. This type of dream can be dangerous if you feel like you are awake, sit on the toilet in your sleep and wet the bed. No, this doesn't just happen to children. A variation of such a dream is a plot about the fact that you want to go to the toilet, but cannot find the restroom. While the need to go to the toilet is very real, if you can't find the restroom for some ridiculous reason (for example, the toilet is open and in plain sight), you may be dreaming.

   4. Watching a TV series, movie or reading a book? Check if the information is logical. Although some series (like SpongeBob) border on the delusional, they still have to make some sense because they are supposed to entertain the audience. There are fanfictions that are full of weird facts, but if you're reading something official, the book should make sense. If it's not there, it's most likely a dream.

      • Does the plot have any meaning or is it just a series of situations?
      • Do characters behave in inexplicable ways that are never explained by the author? For this sign to be a feature of a dream, it must be pronounced. For example, if Spock shows emotion once, it is difficult to consider this a sign of a dream, but if he experiences sharp changes mood, and at the same time everyone thinks that this is normal, and neither he nor the others are controlled by someone else, this is most likely a dream.
      • Are different plots and universes mixed in a dream? (For example, Rugrats + Star Wars, Arthur + The X-Files, Star Trek + My Little Pony). Strange combinations do occur, but they may be a sign of sleep.
      • Does a story you know unfold differently than it should? (For example, you're watching Finding Nemo and there's a scene where Marlin is trying to have an intelligent conversation with a pike.)
      • Does the plot correspond to the facts you know? For example, if Hermione Granger's father is a wizard, you are dreaming, because in Harry Potter Hermione's parents are Muggles (common people).
      • Does what happens correspond to the character of the film or book? For example, if in “Well, wait a minute!” there may be talking animals, then in some thriller it’s unlikely.

   5. Think about where you are. Sometimes in a dream a person finds himself in a completely incomprehensible place.

      • Do you remember how you got here? If not and you don't have mental disorders, you are probably sleeping. But even if you know exactly how you got here, it could all be a dream if you don't remember how you got ready for your trip or how you woke up in the morning. Even if you are lost, do you remember what led up to it?
      • Are the places mixed? For example, if the city seems to you like a mixture of Moscow and St. Petersburg, you are probably dreaming.
      • Are you in a place that doesn't exist? (For example, Hogwarts or Narnia.)
      • Is there anything unlikely about the place? (For example, burgundy grass.)
      • Can you get from the place you are in to another place in an impossible way? (For example, a building in Australia has a door that leads to London.)
      • Do you work in a place that is not your workplace or place of study? Are you studying even though it’s the holidays or you’ve already graduated a long time ago? Or maybe you are in an institution where you have never studied? And if you study somewhere, do they teach you something strange (like levitation)?

Prophetic dreams in some cases can save a person’s life. Therefore, many people would really like to learn how to distinguish different pictures that they see in a dream from real prophetic dreams, where each image can act as a harbinger.

How to distinguish a prophetic dream from a simple one

A dream that can be considered prophetic will certainly be unambiguous, vivid, and very clear. Vague symbols and hints may be present, but only in very small quantities. As a rule, such a dream contains a maximum of clear information, sometimes absolutely literal.

People who live in harmony with their own subconscious, who are attentive to the voice of intuition and the clues that dreams sometimes send, are best able to recognize a prophetic dream. It is not difficult for such people to see and accept the help that the subconscious sends.

In the broad sense of the word, every dream is prophetic. Any of them contains elements of knowledge, prophecy, and warning. They can be either explicit or hidden. In some cases, the event is repeated more and more persistently in a dream, and this is a rather alarming sign.

In what cases can you have prophetic dreams?

It is not always possible to see an unambiguous dream that has no hidden meaning. We can say that there is a chance to see it if a person is really in great danger. Basically, the subconscious still prefers to transmit information in encrypted form. For example, a dream about war may mean a conflict that will soon happen in the family or at work. A collapsing house does not necessarily mean the destruction of a building - most likely, it symbolizes the cessation of some important stage of life.

A prophetic dream, as a rule, represents a certain plot where the development of events will occur logically and in a certain sequence. Such dreams cannot in any way be called woven from scraps of some impressions. Instead of the usual scattered pictures, figures, images, faces, prophetic dreams are a kind of plot developing over time.

In such a dream, many have the opportunity to influence the course of events in a certain way, to change it at their own discretion. Prophetic dreams always very realistic and perfectly memorable, and this makes it easier to interpret. The more accurate the information that the subconscious is trying to give us, the more opportunities we have to properly prepare for the event and survive it with little loss.