Most of us have woken up from a dream that felt so real and so vivid that we carried its emotional intensity with us throughout the subsequent day. What if you woke up from a dream like that, and then everything you dreamt came true?
1. Introduction
Whether through discussion, vivid memories, or firsthand experience, seeing the future in dreams is a phenomenon to which many people can attest. Throughout history, people have studied these phenomena from various philosophical, scientific, religious, and spiritual lenses, and although the explanation, if coherent, may rest at the intersection of these lenses, little has been done to merely observe what people have experienced and study it at face value. This essay therefore seeks to do just that, in an attempt to establish a basis of truth concerning seeing the future in dreams.
To do so, the essay is broken up into three sections. Following this introduction, the first will discuss what seeing the future in dreams looks like. Examples of such dreams will be presented and analyzed, paying particular focus to a few distinctions that are common to this phenomenon. The second will explore what it means to truly see the future, wrestling with time, free will, and the like in order to get a full picture of what seeing the future in dreams might mean. And finally, the third will take a brief look at the various prevailing theories that have been constructed over the past few decades to explain precognitive dreams.
1.1. Background and Overview
Seeing the future in one’s dreams has been contemplated for thousands of years across various cultures, notably the Chaldeans, Babylonians, Assyro-Babylonians, ancient Egyptians, Persians, and later, early Greeks and Romans. Psychical researchers discussed this phenomenon mainly in collections of case studies that also included other types. Throughout history, Western explanations of precognitive dreaming have vacillated between the supernatural and the empirical. The examination of the phenomenon of seeing the future in dreams that this paper provides will cover both ancient and twentieth-century evidence of this ability in detail. The delivery of both cases is aimed at providing an accurate, broad portrayal of the ability over a time period large enough to help understand the experience as separately as possible from the individual rather than to reconcile the contexts.
This monograph is divided into three chapters. Chapter one provides examples of precognitive dreaming from early Roman times to the twentieth century, including two from ancient Greece, two from Rome, two from the Middle Ages, seven from the Birth of Christ, the first century, the fifth century (A.D.), 1900 (A.D.), and 1901 (approximately). Chapter two gives John Younts’s personal accounts in some detail from their late nineteenth and early twentieth-century context settings in order to enhance the understanding of the twentieth-century experience alone. These accounts also provide examples of precognitive dreaming outside the academic clinical context. Grouped by content, they delineate stages of the uncanny dream problem. Yount frequently experienced the events he saw in subsequent reiterations of a dream that was, at first, mundane and made on about a half-hour’s experience.
1.2. Purpose and Scope of the Study
Now that the phenomenon is described in such detail, the fact that questions concerning it have so far been left untouched has become all the more striking. The reader will possibly expect this part of my essay to turn into a discussion focusing on the observations and instituting of experiments designed to test the conditions of such predictions. Both unaided and augmented with artificial instruments, introspective analysis fails to provide any evidence of any one premonitory content about which the dreamer has no doubt. Provisionally, therefore, I can see only one question I am in a position to discuss, that question being to what extent the subjects of my earlier questions believe themselves to have expected the events they believe they saw in their dreams. It seems to me that such a question alone can provide some approach to the subjective validity of premonitory dreams.
The purpose of this study has been to examine questions connected with the phenomenon of seeing the future in dreams, primarily focusing on both the objective existence of such premonitory contents and their detailed descriptions. Dreams of misfortune and their bearing on infants, soothsayers, natural indications, contemporaries or relatives among the dreamers’ family, the frequency of premonitions among the champions of this theory, emphasis on the commonly accepted truths of premonitory dreaming and the separate description of some detailed cases are discussed. At the end of last year, I analyzed dream logbooks and reports – but only those that were spontaneously made – for my planned study. As early as the pilot phase with a group of 30 subjects, I established that there were two types of dreams of misfortune among people from among my fellow Polish. However, at one point the research was complicated by a controversial opinion regarding the dream report analyzing data. The specific circumstances’ matter became an obstacle in my work. Now I come back to the main purpose of the study: to show how the phenomenon of seeing the future in dreams is understood in psychic matters.
2. Historical Perspectives
Since ancient times, people have reported experiences of seeing the future within dreams. For example, there are written accounts of this phenomenon by the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans. In general, the views of these societies, cited in books on the subject, indicate that seeing the future in dreams was considered a natural and common ability of normal people at certain times of life. The abilities of individuals to interpret facts of the future from their dreams, or to master this faculty of seeing the future in dreams, was dependent on their cultural background, education or profession, as well as the religious or spiritual beliefs of a culture or society in any particular era. For instance, in Medieval and Early modern Christians thought you might see your futures in dreams, but there was an entire class of people who were known as dream interpreters or people who could see the future.
Seeing the future in dreams and prophetic states was a feature of Greek culture already in the classical period, and highly plausible dreams were part of the entertainment of ancient Roman dinner parties. For Neoplatonists, deep sleep was a reflection of our angelic nature, and from it came dreams of instruction. The possibility of seeing the future in dreams was a widespread belief, particularly in the early period but lasting into the 18th and even early 19th century. ‘Divine dreams’ were an enormous category, and anybody armed with a dream book asserting that serene dreams signified a wedding, and both milk and eggs meant that a gentle lover was in the offing, could aspire to be a prophetic dreamer. There were books on dream interpretation specifically for husbandmen, predicting the future as far as a year hence.
2.1. Ancient Beliefs and Interpretations
Precognition is an elusive idea, and its grip on our collective subconscious has varied greatly over time. In many ancient traditions, precognitive dreams were thought to be a direct message from the gods. In the religious and mythological traditions of the ancient Mediterranean, precognitive dreams played a central role and were considered an important aspect of belief. The Greeks and the Romans believed that the gods sent information to humanity through their dreams. Many ancient writings document these kinds of dreams and providential messages. In religious traditions, the Old Testament is full of stories telling of prophetic dreams and visions. For the Egyptians, dreams were also thought to contain the seed of the future, and the pharaohs, in particular, consulted their dreams looking for guidance.
In his book, Herodotus suggests that the Greeks and the Egyptians have very different attitudes to the claims of seers. The Greek traveler and historian states (2.81): “To the Greeks, there may be wisdom in the soothsayer; however, to the Egyptians, there is no such attribute in them, since it is the craft of quackery. Yet, the Egyptians confess to perceiving the force of their own dreams. This may be taken for certain.” Such testimonies confirm that there are very different beliefs and traditions related to dreams and prophecies in the classical world depending on the cultural group. All these sayings have pointing it is for certain that the ancient Mediterranean peoples recognize the existence of the category of dreams. The existence of humankind’s two parts they are: the imagination and the understanding or in another definition: “ὀνείρατα,” dreams, and “δρḗαμα,” visions. “Dream” relates to groundless emotions and illusions of the senses; it is sheer fantasy, a delusion. In contrast, “vision” involves the apprehension of reality by reason and intellectual intuition, a would-be trustworthy means of discovery that yields knowledge in the course of ordinary visual perception or seeing.
3. Scientific Explanations
Contemporary dream research has ventured into the territory of neuroscience, as electroencephalogram (EEG) recordings of the sleeping brain have further illuminated the nightly experience. With these technological advancements, there has come an increased interest in a different kind of dream, one that has possessed the human imagination for centuries: seeing the future. Referred to as “precognitive dreams” in the modern literature, countless societies have distrusted and even rejected individuals who claim to frequently witness future events while dreaming. From a scientific perspective, it appears that merely 5% – 10% of dreams are reported to exhibit any apparently accurate event premonitions. Similar to the reduction of time in daily experience, a smaller subset does address these dreams as personally significant, even mystical. Given that approximately 1% of the scientific literature to date is devoted to any analysis of the future in dreams (constrained as an operative definition of both the user and the comment), it is understandable precisely how and why an account of a dream that appears to seemingly foresee the future is so intrinsically compelling to so many.
The way that modern dream research approaches these occasional curious events is through the powerful lens of misconstrual. Dreaming perception without simultaneously possessing an accurate, world-coupled external stimulus as is characteristic of waking perception makes any attempt to directly link dreaming perception to reality potentially troublesome. Alternatively, dreams might be seen to be “separative,” insofar as they rely exclusively upon long-term memory systems for emotional significance, context, and guiding content compilations. Prolific peer-reviewed publications in deciphering this particular form of cognitive phenomenon often blend constructivist philosophy of science with the neuroscientific, Asymmetrical-Temporal-Hemifield Hypothesis (ATHH)-inspired worldview.
3.1. Neuroscience and Dream Research
Some dreams can accurately predict the future. These precognitive or prophetic dreams are even more curious discoveries when they point out future negative events. Precognitive dreams, still, have a few things governing them that need to be unraveled for a better understanding. We start this review with the epidemiological status of such dreams, describe a few conjectures that are used to clearly delineate precognitive dreams, and summarize the different clinical, observational, and experimental studies that have been conducted on precognitive dreams. In the last section, we describe how neuroscience has ventured into dream research and whether specific cognitive processes can lead a sleeper to have a precognitive dream.
Until recently, dream was an umbrella term; it was like an unexplored frontier that was jointly governed by transcendental, divine, and occult forces. The advent of neuroscience in recent years unequivocally concluded that dreams are the expression of the brain-specific state that remains active during sleep. Since precognitive dreams are no exception to the operational framework of dreams, they cannot harbor any of the attributions of supernatural powers. Like all dreams, precognitive dreams have at their base biorhythm theory, periodicity, gestalt interpretation for future anticipation, etc. In old Gestalt theories, emotions and sensations were essential components. These were linked to the autonomic processes. As such, by studying feelings and sensations during sleep, Gestalts and dreams could be correlated with future events. This index of “anomalous cognition” has some empirical support. The governments of the USA had conducted extensive experiments on remote viewing, which is defined as the process of perceiving or obtaining information about a person or object (when it is hidden from physical view) by using extrasensory perception. Now that neuroscience has gained a foothold on the mechanics of ESP, it is likely to direct future research on sleep-related extrasensory perception (ESP) or precognitive dreaming.
4. Psychological Theories
The psychological paradigms that are used to interpret the precognitive dreaming phenomenon are based on the dream theories developed by, arguably, the two most renowned psychiatrists of the 20th century: Sigmund Freud and Carl G. Jung. However, among the two, Carl G. Jung’s ideas are more relevant here than those of Freud. Freud mainly argued that dreaming is the royal road to the “unconscious” aspect of the person, while Jung expanded this definition, emphasizing that dreams are the direct link that allows the exchange of information and guidance between the personal and the “transcendent” aspect of the individual: the dream actually teaches our ‘unconscious’ mind about the subjective and objective nature of the world and ourselves.
Jung argued that reality is considered under two major perspectives: as either mainly subjective (rituals, myths, representations, etc.) or mainly objective (natural and physical law, scientific theories, etc.). Every individual must construct its own unique relationship between these two perspectives and re-evaluate it throughout his life. It is up to the unconscious mind to provide feedbacks to the conscious mind based on the progress made, take in real-time a deeper understanding concerning external, individual and collective events, and even predict, in a manner that may be explicit or symbolic, future development or future events. In other words, some dreams may hold within them such a powerful impression, unusual clarity or momentous content that the dream itself helps prevent the future at a conscious and non-conscious level.
4.1. Freudian and Jungian Perspectives
Both Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung had distinctive views and theories about dreams, although their ideas overlapped in many ways. Freud considered dreams as the expression of unconscious desires and fears that get trapped in the subconscious. He believed that nothing in dreams is coincidental, and that dreams conceal certain (repressed) wishes of the person who dreams. This approach is based on the introspection and clinical practice of Freud (as with psychoanalysis more widely). The phenomenon of seeing the future in dreams contradicts the Freudian theory of dreams because it maintains that there are indeed coincidental elements in dreams.
Jung’s ideas present an interesting improvement of Freud’s opinions. According to Jung, the dream seeks to communicate something about the functioning of the psyche as a control mechanism for psychological health. Jung specifies that the dream has, in addition to a compensatory function, a prospective function of developing and improving the individual. Jung’s theories are closer to the phenomenon of seeing the future in dreams in that he considered that the dream operates under the laws of psychological cause and effect (“synchronicity”). Jung described this as an “acausal connecting principle” that operates synchronously, without being causal. The phenomenon of seeing the future in dreams contains a mechanism in which sees connections between elements going outside the cause-and-effect relations. In Jung’s industrial research on the interpretation of dreams, Jung interpreted many of his own patients’ dreams using archetypal symbols. These same symbols also appear in historical art, myths, legends, and folklore of different cultures; this led Jung to believe that these symbols were, in fact, products of the collective unconscious. Some authors consider that the collective unconscious can be related to the phenomenon of seeing the future in dreams.
5. Cultural and Societal Impact
Is there a culture that boasts its own system of beliefs and yet has no knowledge of dreaming about the future? Molecular biologist Rupert Sheldrake published a book intended to answer this very question, entitled “Seven Experiments That Could Change the World.” Dreams about the future are mentioned in its first chapter, right next to the beginning of London’s Energy Field. The people who inhabit this region – who believe in the existence of dreams that can predict and determine someone’s future – were the ones caught in it. The book is filled with many examples about how society in Guinea, Japan, Northern Ireland and South Africa continues to be influenced by cultural traditions related to dreams that shape the future. At the same time, people practicing Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity and Islam, Socialism and Communism also believe in visions that are similar to the one European Jewish woman asked about the fact that we have decided there is no God.
It is difficult not to triumphantly conclude, influenced by such a variety of beliefs, that all this folklore about visions of the future in sleep results in a Christian society that is heavily influenced by the Old Testament, the Torah, and the term “prophecy” that appears in the very first sentence of the very first Book of the Old Testament, and not once but forty-three times in just half of this one. If the Jewish Bible consists of such a great number of books then it must be admitted that in Genesis, Numbers, Deuteronomy, and Samuel there is a section concerned with exhibiting, explaining in more detail, describing to all the inhabitants of the Near East and Asia Minor the passages that exist in the mind of God dreaming, getting free coffee, or sorting out (into categories, some of which are very specific – these turn out to be the recipes for the holy oil and the incense, and the tabernacle had to be built “Exodus 25:40, New International Version”) the directions for the roads in life.
5.1. Dreams in Different Cultures
Dreams, and particularly the precognitive kind, are not viewed in the same way by all societies. For example, the Spokane Indians were familiar with a type of precognitive mental phenomenon that they called “dǝłkil” or “nᶘalq°st”. This was experienced when people could glimpse a future event in a split-second frame of visual imagery during a dream. They used this to predict the sex of a baby before it was born. Even in our own industrialized Western society, a small remnant of these attitudes is reflected in the way that girls are said to dream about children, while boys dream about the moon. In Nigeria, fulfillment of a dream of eggs or poultry is associated with the future accumulation of wealth. Finland has a folklore legend of Valo, the Swan of Tulamoit, where there is an association of the sighting of the swan in a dream with actual sightings in the realms of reality.
While there has been very little research on dreams in non-Western societies, that of the Schwegler Amazon Indians along the Tuichi River in Bolivia is better known. Dreams are the most important basis for their belief system. For them, the dream comes first as the origin of everything. It is during dreams and more particularly those where the shaman communicates with spirits that problems are solved. In stark contrast, many Islamic cultures regard “ru’yā” as receiving a prophecy in the form of a dream. In these Islamic cultures, dreams in general contain predictive elements to varying extents. In Hindu and Buddhist cultures, prophetic dreaming was associated with the sky god Yazel and his queen Mara who was known as the chief “giver of dreams”; for commoners, a good omen dream might occur in which animal symbols pointed to a time for marriage or the birth of a child.
6. Case Studies and Examples
Precognitive dreams are obviously quite subjective and difficult to quantify. Still, there have been a few somewhat famous cases throughout history. They might not be solid proof, but they’re still fun to read about.
Mark Twain, the 19th-century author, had a precognitive dream about his brother’s body being returned to the family home. Twain wrote about it in his memoirs.
In 1945, four days before his brother’s death, then-President Abraham Lincoln had a dream of “the phantom-like domination of one of my ancestors.” In the dream, “he got hold of the axe, and unsheathing it, he bent his head down, over the block on which he was to lay it, and gave several powerful strokes.” In the dream, Lincoln asked the man why he was doing this, and the man, without looking up, said “I had to, it was my work.” Lincoln woke up the morning of his assassination without ever telling anyone of the plot. Did he have a feeling that he, too, would be assassinated?
In 1898, writer Morgan Robertson published a book called Futility. It told the story of the unsinkable ship, which was going to sail from England to New York before it struck an iceberg and sank. How uncanny.
In 1985, Stephen King wove the story of his own near-fatal accident into his work, Dark Tower, and published the book in 1991. The plot concerns a boy and a ‘dark man’ who experienced the same accident as King and died. Just 3 years later, King was also struck by a van and nearly died. Strange coincidences or powerful premonitions? Who’s to say?
6.1. Famous Cases of Prophetic Dreams
Documented examples of prophetic or precognitive dreams are very rare. However, there are plenty of cases in which famous people have reported seeing into the future in their sleep. These famous dreamers have developed such reputations that their dreams are frequently considered historical fact. These cases span many centuries and incredible social and technological revolutions that rendered the predictions in the dreams eerily accurate.
For example, Abraham Lincoln supposedly dreamed about his own death and Teddy Roosevelt allegedly peered decades into the future. We can also find countless claims of dreams that predicted modern-day events from the attacks on 9/11, to major airline disasters and deaths of celebrities. The case of President Lincoln is particularly famous. According to historical accounts, Lincoln allegedly dreamed about his own assassination. In these dreams, Lincoln reveals:
“In the evening before I went to bed, the telegraph operator came to me and showed me a dispatch announcing that the president had been murdered. But not only was the rendition he gave me a very singular one, but everything about it made so deep an impression on me, that my distress the next morning was really overpowering. I remember how I wept on the shoulder of Mrs. Lincoln as I related my dream, adding that I was so sorry for the President, and was afraid that something awful was going to happen.”
Here, Lincoln appears to describe two dreams. The first is likely what we would call a factual dream. The telegraph dispatch did indeed show that the president had been murdered. In the second, more emotional account, it appears as though Lincoln is describing something more intuitive occurring. He weeps on the shoulder of his wife and somehow his dream indicates a possible future tragedy. This is the story that made its way into the national consciousness after it first appeared in a biography of Lincoln in 1866. Dream researchers, indeed, many people unacquainted with dreams, frequently use his vision as an example of precognitive dreaming. Clearly, for many people, if Lincoln dreamed about his own assassination, then dream content must sometimes reflect future events.
7. Debunking Myths and Misconceptions
There are many misconceptions about seeing the future in dreams. Here are several of the most widespread myths:
Myth #1: When people claim they have dreamt about future events that later came true, it’s always possible that they could have just been imagining things. Humans are very good at recognizing (often after the fact) patterns and connections that don’t really exist.
Myth #2: Modern science has conclusively proven that consciousness is fully limited to the brain, and that it cannot influence or interact in any way with the past. As a result, dreaming about the future must be explained based on our current scientific understanding, which indicates that any evidence we have at this point is purely anecdotal and likely the result of coincidence (or something else).
Myth #3: If seeing the future in dreams was real, then a lot of kids would dream about the next day’s Pop Quiz, or lottery winners could dream about the winning numbers. Interestingly, many kids have indeed reported dreaming about test questions or the final outcome of sports games. They just usually don’t report their dreams until after the event has already happened. If this error in human memory is the one you’d like to blame for all the “evidence” in favor of precognitive dreaming, you’ll have to believe it plays a lot of other tricks as well.
7.1. Differentiating Between Coincidence and Prediction
First of all, it would be pertinent to delineate the respective attributes of a coincidence and a prediction. The Merriam Webster dictionary defines a coincidence as “the occurrence of events that happen at the same time by accident but seem to have some connection.” Now, this itself begs the question as to whether this “seeming connection” is present merely because the human brain is wired to perceive patterns in the sensory data that it processes, or exists in reality. The dictionary goes on to explain the verb “predict” as “to declare and make known especially before the right to do so,” with synonyms such as “forecast” and “envisage.” In other words, prediction entails the conscious act of forecasting a future event prior to its actual arrival at a particular point in the time continuum.
One measure by which predictions are separated from coincidences is their success rates. Statistically, a staggeringly large percentage of coincidences occur in which one or more events in the world have an association with one or more of the precise imagery, sounds, tastes, and happenings in a particular individual’s dreams. But one successful prediction can launch its seer into a life beyond skepticism and into the far reaches of the scientific community, the defense trade, and the folklore of communities.
8. Ethical Implications
If dreams can provide information about the future, such precognitive dreams may be said to provide the dreamer with an unfair advantage. This is particularly so because dreams often provide free decision-making environments in which the dreamer can explore different possible choices without cost or risk. If the dreamer is supplied with accurate precognitive information about which of these possibilities is best, then it has been suggested that, as with insider trading in the waking world, it is ethically wrong for the dreamer to act upon this kind of information. When remedies are available to remove any unfair future knowledge from the dream and to encourage a level playing field in dream space, morally advantageous options arising from dream information may be less problematic. At the same time, the dream process itself provides an ethical decision-making environment.
When decisions are to be made, people can and do consult their dreams to inform themselves about future possible paths along which their personal and professional choices may lie. True or not, the ethical implications for such dream-directed actions have been the subject of fierce debate. This lively discussion harkens back to the broader questions of one’s future and the nature of causality in the world of physics, as well as conformity with universal spiritual law. Currently, various practices rely on dreams and dream interpretation as tools for decision making. For example, some First Nations people place a strong emphasis on the significance of dreams and visions in the process of decision making.
8.1. Use of Dream Interpretation in Decision-Making
Ideally, you would not make any personal or professional investments based on what you dream. More than lessening the seriousness of your aims, though, it is wholly unethical to redirect individual career paths or collective strategic directions via the interpretation of prophetic dreams. Yet, if you are entertaining what you saw at night as being prescient, then you might want to call attention to whether sober reason indicates that there is any risk worth considering. Indeed, might the possibility of seeing the future in a dream potentially be important enough to hold ethical sway?
Both in the pragmatic relevance of the occurrence in question, as well as the pragmatic relevance of consequentialist considerations of whether that occurrence is ethically relevant, I will outline reasons for thinking that, in an ideal world, having knowledge of certain future events conveyed to us through prophetic dreams might be critical enough to hold sway over our ethical decision-making. That is, even though dreams in general can certainly influence decision-making, we also generally agree that we would ideally not let them do so in morally dubious ways (e.g. by letting our dreams influence medical advice given, or jurors in a legal case). Thus, being above such utilitarian considerations, my interest resides in pragmatic appraisals rather than pragmatic consequences, and more in showing what ethical question we would have to answer than in showing the answer thereto.
9. Future Research Directions
Over the past decade, the field of dream science has experienced a methodological revolution thanks to significant advances in technology, which have permitted research to progress in increasingly experimental and ecologically valid directions. It is anticipated that this will continue to be a major trend in the coming years. New methodologies are expected to also include a more extensive use of brain imaging acquisitions (both during sleep and wake) and big data analyses (e.g., machine learning, artificial intelligence) in order to decipher the probable brain networks and mechanisms behind extraordinary-night experiences, memories, and on the identification of possible predictive factors of their occurrence. For instance, advanced signal processing and neurobiological analyses are increasingly studying the neural precursors of the dreamlike mentation, and these could be synthesized and analyzed with respect to correlation between traits and phenomenal features in order to eventually reach a selection of the very-high escitalopram dreamers.
A widespread opinion among the community seems to be that good laboratory scenarios for psi research need to be found. Implementing very ecological scenarios is a road which seems promising. Thus, it would be important also to replicate our field pilot study in a standardized way as befits one of the first steps of the methodological best practice for exploratory studies. Furthermore, dream analysis has taken advantage of the novel open source and commercial technologies to analyze and quantify dream diaries. It will be interesting to see whether other known indicators of dream reports are associated with future empirical support.
9.1. Technological Advancements in Dream Analysis
What’s left to explore? With all that we have accomplished in the field of exploring nightmares and prophetic dreams, we take this part to explore what can be. This is a question of exploring technological advancements and novel research methodologies that can be utilized in the advancement of both dream recording technologies and possible projects concerning the psi of precognitive dreams. This feature shows the potential and promise these areas can bring to the field and leave question open for researchers to study in the possible future. Research on precognitive dreams still exists and what may be possible to better study now.
Precognition, a premonition, the sense or knowledge of a future event prior to its occurring; the phenomenon of seeing the future. Those with dreams that they claim to be prophetic are not being well explored enough through research, and so the phenomena is left in the dust as the next quiz or spooky story acts as a bandage on an area of the field that, for all we know, may be the next important proponent of contemporary and popular science. Perhaps it would be easier to explore precognitive dreaming as a far-flung possibility of the future casting back to the past; trying to get to a clear picture of any phenomena as of yet unaccounted for. It’s possible to explore training or functional neurology tasks that would help improve the quality and stamina of those professionals capable of getting just that. The hiring of someone who is capable of chronicling nothing but the research of precognitive dreams and dreamer experience might be considered a subterfuge project by some or up to snuff in others.
10. Conclusion and Summary
In conclusion, the phenomenon of seeing the future in dreams, or precognitive dreaming, has been a part of human life since as far as can be historically traced. Precognitive dreaming has found its way through folklore and into academic research. Many individuals have had this type of experience to a degree where they feel that the events they are dreaming, or “seeing”, will come to fruition. Paranormal believers are also drawn to the topic as part of their fascination with all things paranormal. However, precognitive dreaming is not diagnostically connected to any of the known conditions, so it is usually experiences of the general public or psychologists that wish to experience this phenomenon.
Precognitive dreaming is an unusual phenomenon, to say the least. It is often part of a web of encounter experiences, but not necessarily preceding or anteceding anything else in an experience. The experience of paranormal dreaming is also often part of a person’s broader personality and belief system, and may last for years in some cases. In keeping with other spontaneous paranormal-like experiences, precognitive dreams are not holographic presentations that can be retrieved at will. Instead, the information the dreamer receives is often fragmented and/or symbolic. The dreamer only becomes aware of the predictive nature of the dream after the event experienced in the dream comes to pass. But these findings do not necessarily support a Goa or a Freudian argument. The findings are not strong enough to tie precognitive dreaming to a particular structure in the brain or universal mental structure beyond all other possibilities. It is possible that there is an overlap between our constructs. However, as precognition of any fashion is not supported by most scientists and scholars, some, such as Goats, are disinclined to take this view except as a last ditch effort.
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