When deceased relatives or pets show up in your dreams

Is there a particular reason that makes you conclude that it certainly wasn't a spirit communication?

It just seemed a bit bland - as if the catering was the most impressive part of the afterlife.

Although it's the kind of thing she'd say, I'm pretty sure it was me reassuring myself. I kept a dream diary for a year looking for any signs of precognition etc and found that my dreams are always about recent events/preoccupations.

A few days after my mother died I dreamt I met her again. I asked her what heaven was like and she said "oh, it's lovely. There's a bowl of fruit in every room."

That's intrigued me...

[Ninshub]

It just seemed a bit bland - as if the catering was the most impressive part of the afterlife.

Although it's the kind of thing she'd say, I'm pretty sure it was me reassuring myself. I kept a dream diary for a year looking for any signs of precognition etc and found that my dreams are always about recent events/preoccupations.

Yeah I certainly don't want to argue there with you, because it's your experience.

At the same time, my thought was, that might just expresses her personality, and that detail of the afterlife might be what would "fit" that initial stage of her transitioning. Just putting that out there.

A few days after my mother died I dreamt I met her again. I asked her what heaven was like and she said "oh, it's lovely. There's a bowl of fruit in every room."

Almost certainly not a spirit communication, but a nice dream nevertheless

I think we may be too quick to assign the kind of objective judgement on these things that we would for the more mundane events in our lives. I'm pretty much convinced that a significant part of the content - not just of dreams but also of NDEs and other spiritual encounters - is much more subjective and/or symbolic than we realise. We are trained from an early age to be strictly objective and the further we go into adult education, the more objectivity is demanded. That's understandable for the hard sciences, most areas of medicine and technology but I think that matters of the mind require a different approach which tends to be overlooked in our materialistically inclined society.

On the other hand, your mother might have been thrilled to find lovely rooms all with fresh fruit, etc.

I think we may be too quick to assign the kind of objective judgement on these things that we would for the more mundane events in our lives.

Well, like I said, I kept a dream diary for about a year and my dreams fall into three categories (a) about things that are happening to me, (b) dreams about travelling and (c) just nonsense. Nothing seemed to relate to any kind of inexplicable knowledge. I don't want to suggest that dreams can't be precognitive/informational but personally my brain just doesn't seem to work that way - it has abilities in one capacity so it can't do other things. But that's fine. After all, you wouldn't expect a psychic medium to bend spoons.

Well, like I said, I kept a dream diary for about a year and my dreams fall into three categories (a) about things that are happening to me, (b) dreams about travelling and (c) just nonsense. Nothing seemed to relate to any kind of inexplicable knowledge. I don't want to suggest that dreams can't be precognitive/informational but personally my brain just doesn't seem to work that way - it has abilities in one capacity so it can't do other things. But that's fine. After all, you wouldn't expect a psychic medium to bend spoons.

Can I ask whether your mother was in any hotel, hospital or residential care, etc., in the period directly prior to, or at the time of her death?

[Ninshub]

Well, like I said, I kept a dream diary for about a year and my dreams fall into three categories (a) about things that are happening to me, (b) dreams about travelling and (c) just nonsense. Nothing seemed to relate to any kind of inexplicable knowledge. I don't want to suggest that dreams can't be precognitive/informational but personally my brain just doesn't seem to work that way - it has abilities in one capacity so it can't do other things. But that's fine. After all, you wouldn't expect a psychic medium to bend spoons.

I am listening recently to a lot of videos by mediums, psychics this last week, and I do hear a lot about how everyone has the potential for psychic abilities, intuition, more easy contact with the other side, as they had as children. It's a matter of re-opening ourselves to them if we're interested, and there are strategies and techniques to do so. Just FYI in case you don't know - but perhaps you do!

Well, like I said, I kept a dream diary for about a year and my dreams fall into three categories (a) about things that are happening to me, (b) dreams about travelling and (c) just nonsense. Nothing seemed to relate to any kind of inexplicable knowledge. I don't want to suggest that dreams can't be precognitive/informational but personally my brain just doesn't seem to work that way - it has abilities in one capacity so it can't do other things. But that's fine. After all, you wouldn't expect a psychic medium to bend spoons.

I get that and agree. Moreover, I don't think it has anything to do with preference. I am very much a proponent of the study and practice of psi phenomena but I have no abilities whatsoever in these directions. I have often said that I am a natural, if reluctant, sceptic mainly because I can't repeat the experiences others seem to just fall into by accident. I spend hours each day meditating but can't induce an OOBE or a meeting with a spirit no matter how strong my desire.

That doesn't lead me to disbelieve others who do have these experiences, however. I tend to approach these accounts without the prior conviction of many sceptics that such things just can't happen so they must be false accounts.

Nevertheless, coming back to symbolism - sometimes we just don't recognise it. A simple example is the well documented symbolism or birds and/or butterflies which are associated with the presence of spirits. Most sightings of birds and butterflies are, of course, just what the seem to be - birds and butterflies going about their business. Yet sometimes when spiritual contact might be suspected or even expected, then a butterfly landing on my shoulder would have a much greater significance.

Jung's story about the scarab beetle is an example of something similar to the point I'm trying to make.

In his article Synchronicity, An Acausal Connecting Principle, Carl G. Jung gives an example which has, over time, become famous: "A young woman I was treating had, at a critical moment, a dream in which she was given a golden scarab. While she was telling me this dream I sat with my back to the closed window. Suddenly I heard a noise behind me, like a gentle tapping. I turned round and saw a flying insect knocking against the window-pane from outside. I opened the window and caught the creature in the air as it flew in. It was the nearest analogy to a golden scarab that one finds in our latitudes, a scarabaeid beetle, the common rose-chafer (Cetonia aurata), which contrary to its usual habits had evidently felt an urge to get into a dark room at this particular moment." [Coll. Works, vol. 8, § 843]

Jung continues "The meaningful connection is obvious enough ... in view of the approximate identity of the chief objects (the scarab and the beetle)." [CW, vol. 8, § 845] He then notices that the treatment of this patient would be at first very difficult because she was caught up in a certain rationalism and the possibility of the irrational phenomena would be completely refused. She, therefore, would need a change of perspective whereby her consciousness could open with respect to the irrational. Such a transformation of consciousness is almost exclusively represented by symbols of rebirth. Jung writes: "The scarab is a classic example of a rebirth symbol. The ancient Egyptian Book of What Is in the Netherworld describes how the dead sun-god changes himself at the tenth station into Khepri, the scarab, and then, at the twelfth station, mounts the barge which carries the rejuvenated sun-god into the morning sky."

Can I ask whether your mother was in any hotel, hospital or residential care, etc., in the period directly prior to, or at the time of her death?

yes, she was

@ersby Thanks, it would be interesting to know whether fruit baskets were present in any rooms during the period before she passed away.

My own speculation is that people  begin to spread out across what we call spacetime as they pass away. Transcend spacetime, if you will. At least they no longer seem bound to space and time as strongly as the wakeful healthy are.

I’ve read too many (and seen) apparitional experiences that come from the past. It’s more reasonable to me, that this is actually where they are still coming from, but touching others, like ripples in a lake spread out, but across spacetime.

Because of this, information which appears to come from the period around which the person passed away, but which is experienced by us, after the person passed away, may not appear like that to those who are passing. Our constraints of spacetime, may simply be irrelevant to them, as they pass away.

To them, when you asked a question in the future, it’s possible they are still passing away, unbound and timeless, and free to answer as if it was but a moment ago.