In his classic, The Varieties of Religious Experience, William James finds "visions and voices" tend to be of relatively low "fruitfulness for life."

The type of religious experience he found most apt to be constructively life changing is "monistic and optimistic." He was referring to contemplative or meditative experience - "one with the universe" or "one with God" according to one's perspective.

People also very often experience levels of this type of experience spontaneously through contact with nature.

James' book gives many concrete accounts of such transformative experiences and was required reading at the U of Chicago Divinity School, where I got my master's. Written in the early twentieth century - an oldie but a goody.

I wasn't sure if this was actually a visitation dream, but it felt soo real. It was one of those dreams where you were happy to be with that person and you didn't want that moment to end. It started out as I was looking at my bed in my room, which was for some reason Heath Ledger's death bed, and I saw him laying there, lifeless. I had someone else in the room with me, but I couldn't remember who. I remember crying and realizing that he was dead, but then I look over and I see him stirring as if he came back to life or something. I say something like, "What the heck? I thought you were dead? What were you doing all this time" I'm not sure why I chose the words of "What you were doing all this time but I said it. Then he replies with something like "I was just trying to get some sleep." And with that he gets out of my bed and I remember just looking at him and I'm pretty sure we gave each other a hug. After that, we turned out to be in some place which was kind of familiar, but i couldn't make it out. Next thing I know he is laying down and I was sitting next to him looking down at him and he just smiled and looked at me ever so peacefully and it was the best feeling ever, and it seemed like we were looking each other for a long time, but we weren't exchanging any words.

There was most of my dream, that had Heath Ledger in it and I was wondering if you would think if this could be real or not. By the way, I have never met Heath Ledger, and I was really emotional about him dying and everything that night before I went to bed, and had the dream, even though it was months after he had died.

A year after my mother died very suddenly I became pregnant with my first child. I had a dream when I was six weeks pregnant (the only dream I ever had with my mother in it) where my mother was looking at me from across this space. We could not touch and it appeared as if we weren't even "allowed" to be communicating. She said to me very clearly and distinctly "You are having a little girl and her name is Ava." That was it. I woke up and knew if my baby was a girl that I would name her this. My mother didn't tell me to name her that. She told me her name WAS that. As if they had met. Well, I did have a girl and her name is, of course, Ava.

I know this was written a while ago, but my mother just shared something with me about hearing her father who died several years ago and I was googling the phenomena and came across this.
A couple of days ago driving out of the driving she heard him say "Get your tire pressure checked." So she drove to a gas station and asked the attendant to check her tires. When asked if they light was on, she said no but that she hadn't gotten them checked for a while and she had a hunch.
So all of her tires were in fact low... I'm not sure if it was dangerously so, but...
I would hope that these are messages from the beyond, but I know that I am choosing to think so and that they may just be hallucinations.