Months later, at lunch with a friend, I was discussing the matter of prayers for the dead. The friend, as a young man, had been educated for the priesthood and his explanation for the reason and function of prayers for Extreme Unction and for the freeing of a soul from Purgatory gave me a new understanding of the subject. His explanation was given in terms of modern psychology rather than religious ones, since I am not of the faith. It ran about as follows:

In death the individual releases his hold on the conscious mind, which is the seat of free will. In giving up the will the consciousness "relaxes" into the subconscious, which is without free will. Here the soul could remain for a long time, trapped in its own thought forms, desires, and old habits. Ultimately the soul will discharge its mental "desire-waste,"

Extracts from the Edgar Cayce Readings on Dreams

The study from the human standpoint, of subconscious, subliminal, psychic, soul forces, is and should be the great study for the human family, for through self man will understand its Maker when it understands its relation to its Maker, and it will only understand that through itself, and that understanding is the knowledge as is given here in this state.

Each and every person getting that understanding has its individual force toward the great creation, and its individual niche, place or unit to perform. Has to reach numbers of psychic forces or phenomena that may be manifested in the earth plane ... yet the understanding for the individual entity, viewed from its own standpoint, with its knowledge, is obtained and made ready by itself, to be manifested through itself, towards its own development, and in that development of the creation or world. In this manner, and in this form, and in this way, will the development... be of assistance to the world.

As in dreams, those forces of the subconscious, when taken or correlated into those forms that relate to the various phases of the individual, give to that individual the better understanding of self, when correctly interpreted, or when correctly answered . . .

Q-43. What is a dream?

A-43. There are many various kinds of manifestations that come to an animate object, or being; that is in the physical plane of man, which the human family term a dream.

Some are produced by suggestions as reach the consciousness of the physical, through the various forms and manners as these.

When the physical has  laid aside the conscious in that region called