Precognitive dream

Sometime in the wee hours of August 1, 2007, I had a dream about being in a car accident. I remember waking up with a clear impression of a crash and all the air bags inflating. I don't often remember my dreams, but this one struck me because of the surprising level of detail, the emotional content, the fact that I don't recall ever having a similar dream, and because I had never before been in a car accident.

Because of the dream, later that morning I decided to play it safe and drive to work a different way than usual. The most dangerous part of the morning commute for me is getting on 101, one of the major North-South highways in the Northern California Bay Area. The entrance that I usually take has a very short merge lane that often requires you to drive on the shoulder because both of the two lanes of the highway are congested, sometimes by massive trucks going 70 mph. My adrenaline is always in high gear when I use this entrance because if an unthinking driver decides to park on that very same shoulder (it happens occasionally), thereby blocking the only available place to merge onto the highway, then the drivers on the on-ramp -- who are accelerating and paying attention to oncoming traffic, and not on who is in front of them -- are destined for a bad end.

The safer, alternative entrance is a little out of the way for me, but there is a very long, much safer merging lane. So I took that route.

I'm waiting at the traffic light at the entrance to the highway, along with a few other cars in front of me. The light changes to green, but before any of us have a chance to move, bam!, my car is hit from behind. A Chevy Tahoe smashes my rear bumper and part of the lift gate. The driver saw the green light and his foot responded before his brain realized that there were cars in front of him. The startle I felt on the impact was like what I experienced in the dream, but fortunately it was just a mundane fender bender. The airbags did not inflate.

Now, I had specifically taken the alternative route to avoid what I had experienced in the precognitive dream. But in doing so, I ended up in an accident anyway. Does this mean we cannot escape our destined future? That we have no free will? Or, does it mean that we have potential futures, and that by making this particular choice I had potentially avoided a much worse accident?

I prefer the latter explanation.

Comments

Roulette said…
What if it meant that the way you focused on the contents of your dream and your expectations about avoiding the accident somehow led you to that particular outcome?
Jarett Nuttall said…
I recently purchased a book titled, "10,000 dreams interpretted."
I have always dreamed vididly, however remembering them was another story. Last month I had a dream that I really had to remember. It was unlike any other.

I was on a ship that was taking on massive amounts of water, almost like the hull broke and it started to sink and water was just rushing in from all over. Then i saw a man on the ship that looked very familiar. He was a neighbour of mine when i was a younger, and I always had a feeling that he had broken into my vehicle to steal my stereo and goods, but i could never prove it. Well I knew that this guy on the ship was causing this ship to sink some how, and I thought I could talk to him. I told him that I know what he did and for him to not feel guilty that I forgave him and everything was going to be okay. Well all of a sudden he lifted his hands and the water stopped and it rushed out of the boat and the hull sealed up and the man vanished. I then woke up.

I looked this up right away, and it said that I was going to be going through a troubled time, but if I hang on it will see its way through. I couldn't find anything about this potential enemy though, just a sinking ship being saved.

Well, same day, I went to work, and during the day I have appointments at homes, and I happend to lock my keys in my car with my engine running. I looked everywhere for help and no tow trucks in site so I tried with a nearby stores coat hanger to break my self in. That went no where and i gave up because for me and my day time is money aswell. I called a tow truck using a phone book in a nearby gas station. Just before I hung up a guy paying for gas that was kindof rough looking told me to cancel the truck and he would help me. I did as he said, and he took the coat hanger and was in the truck in 5 seconds flat. I had a feeling that this guy wasn't your average locksmith. I gave him $20 for his good work because i felt it was due, but he refused.

When I got home that day I looked back at the dream I had the night before and saw such similarity of my dream world and living world.

This felt precognitive in some way, and I try to pay more attention to my dreams every night.
Marcel Cairo said…
In the dream your air bags were released which probably means you had either a head on collision, or a strong side collision.

The real accident was a rear impact fender bender. If you think about how much time difference there is between a head on impact vs. a rear impact, one might suggest that your precognitive dream put you 1/4 of a second ahead (or behind) in time/space. This dream allowed you to bend rime/space to minimize the potential damage.

Science is just now discovering neuroplasticity, perhaps this flexibility of creation also applies to time/space.
anonymous said…
Readers of this blog may find the book "An Experiment With Time" by J. W. Dunne interesting. He explains how to remember your dreams (immediately upon waking ask yourself, "what was I thinking about and why?"). He reports that if you keep a log of your dreams and review them a day or two later you will find many precognitive dreams. I tried this and confirmed his results.

Gary Schwartz book "The G.O.D. experiments" touches on this too.


Regarding the question of destiny... Another explanation is that you are being toyed with by uneducated spirits. I have learned to ignore dreams or voices I hear just before wakeing up in the morning. I have not found these dreams to be useful. There is one joker who keeps giving me bad investment advice, fortunately I have enough sense to ignore it.

A preminition is distinct in that it is a "knowing" which is easy to distinguish from an irrational fear which is an emotion.
mrlukeduke said…
Dean it may well be worth checking into any reports of other motor accidents on that stretch of the highway on that same day, you never know what you may dig up.
Martin Cooke said…
Hi Dean, I love the idea that an event might bring itself into existence like that. It makes me wonder about possible mechanisms for supernatural agency, and such poetry (and I also like the idea that I could use a time machine to come back here and tell myself how to build it:) ...but what if, whether or not you had a genuine premonition, the actual accident was entirely coincidental? Mistaking the accidental for the meaningful must be quite a danger when there is some synchronicity etc. Incidentally I've tagged you here.
Dean Radin said…
Could the accident have been a fluke, and the apparent link to the dream pure chance? Sure.

It doesn't feel like this to me, but precisely because of such uncertainties science can't rely on anecdotes for evidence. Such stories are suggestive, but it takes controlled experiments to provide strong evidence.

Laboratory evidence does exist, of course, which is why I'm more inclined to believe that occasionally a dream can contain genuine precognitive information, and that this might have one of those instances.
Dean Radin said…
The idea of precognition of event A causing future event A is appealing to me. But perhaps "cause" is not quite the right word. "Collaborate" or "participate" seems better.

These issues are on my mind because I'm presently studying precognition, PK and their possible relationship to the Principle of Least Action. The PLA has a curious teleological feel to it, as does precognition.
Unknown said…
I was under the impression that precognitive dreams were supposed to be sort of foretelling. Your dream may have been influenced by modern cinema, or perhaps the mind is able to assert the physics of what will happen based in the experiences you've had in other situations.

Whole House Dehumidifiers
Dean Radin said…
> I was under the impression that precognitive dreams were supposed to be sort of foretelling.

Yes, but assuming the information is real and not illusory, it still isn't clear if the foretelling is of the actual future or the probable future. In addition, how that foretelling manifests is widely variable from one person to the next. Some people feel, some see, some hear things, etc. In this case I mainly recall a vivid kinesthetic feeling, some emotion, and a sense of the scene.
Martin Cooke said…
I agree with you about the need for more scientific investigations. Unfortunately the fact that there are a lot of potential sources of confusion, when it comes to personal feelings about such things, seems to put a lot of scientists off making just such investigations!

Another problem, though, is that dreams quite ordinarily feel rather special and meaningful, and that how we recall them can be affected by what has happened between them and the recollection, quite normally. (And if they are written down scientifically, to help with reliable recall, then there is an increased risk of such problems as Anonymous indicated.)

And then there is the difficulty of distinguishing between the premonition of an event and its occult (i.e. psychokinetic or telepathic) causation. That is not so much the suggestion that you might have directly (and irrationally) caused that car to knock into you, as the possibility of an indirect (e.g. collective unconscious) causation.

I think that it was in your book (?) that I read of such correlations as that between graduation (or other important) days and unusually fine (or bad) weather, and such accounts might (collectively) indicate that some sort of widespread but low-level micro-PK ability can be amplified within special social circumstances. And similarly there might be widespread but low-level telepathic connections (e.g. as a collective unconscious), and so because you are a relatively well-known person, in this area, you having had your original dream (for ordinary reasons) might therefore have created such a special circumstance, increasing the attractiveness of such physical options (for the relatively unimportant drivers of the other cars near you that day) as knocking into your car. So, even if the coincidence was indeed too unlikely (and was associated with too special a feeling) for it to be (very likely that it was) just that, still it might not be especially likely that it was a premonition, which would rather depend upon how unlikely were all the other options (and the natures of their associated feelings).

Precisely because the original dream seemed unusual there are other non-premonition possibilities (such as ones like those of Anonymous’s comment). E.g. you might consequently have mentioned it out loud (e.g. to a friend) or in writing (e.g. in a diary), and of course people who are (known to be) relatively successful in this area would probably interest such mundanely occult powers as players of stock markets, big insurers, security services, and so forth. And some of the latter are likely to (have the resources, opportunities and motives to) at least bug (to begin with) some of the former. So, if you did mention it (out loud, or in writing) then there would therefore be some (unknown) probability of the knock having been arranged, e.g. in order to see what your reaction was.

Ironically, if you did have genuine premonitions occasionally, you would be more likely to interest such occult powers, and so the second sort of possibility would have a greater probability. So as you say, unless such scenarios (as those two) have been allowed for, then an intuition that the events were obviously too coincidental, or qualitatively special, to be just that, would be lacking in force.

Incidentally, given the potential utility of such things as premonitions (and amplified micro-PK), it is odd how little interest is shown in investigating them properly (even by those who would refute this whole area)... unless such investigations are being done in secret, precisely because of the potential utility, which would again increase the likelihood of a non-premonition explanation.
K.L.Wright said…
I have also experienced precognition in dreams, the most shocking being a dream which foretold of a brain aneurysm suffered by a close friend. The dream came a week in advance, and my friend was one of the rare fortunates who suffered no permanent damage or debilitation. I, on the other hand, was extremely upset by the experience and have read extensively on consciousness studies (including Dr. Radin's excellent offerings) to find some sense of understanding (as if it bestows some sense of "control", though I realize that it doesn't) regarding the implications of such dreams. Like Dr. Radin, I have also had to confront the real possibility that "free will" is truly an illusion. My provisional hypothesis of the present moment is that we have free will to make decisions during "key" events in our lives. Who/what decides on which events qualify is completely beyond my comprehension at the moment, and I suspect that the answer will not be forthcoming during this lifetime.Pity, that.
Martin Cooke said…
...and of course, if precognition (et cetera) are real phenomena then the potential agents in the latter scenario are more likely to be acting! In short, there are lots of possibilities, so I suspect that subjective analyses, of the nature of the feeling (like something other than a coincidence) that you mention are potentially a good way forwards. Can you say more about that feeling? (Personally I find language very awkward for talking about feelings:)
Topher Cooper said…
Retro-causation covers a number of different phenomena: precognition, retro-PK and time travel among others. The last is the form that has figured most prominently in traditional discussions, both popular and academic.

There are two logical problems associated with retro-causation. The first, and most well-known, is the "grandfather paradox", which I have called the "negative feedback time paradox". In this paradox through retrocausation, something causes its own cause to not occur, resulting in a contradiction.

The other problem is less well-known. I have called it the "positive feedback time paradox" but I propose as a catchier name "The Bootstrap Paradox" because it is the central concept in Robert Heinlein's classic story "By His Bootstraps." It also is the point in his even better story, "All You Zombies--", but "Bootstrap Paradox" is more explanatory than "Zombie Paradox". In All You Zombies, a man is recruited into the Time Patrol. Through an intricate folding of time and some biological oddities, he is both his mother, his father, and the person who recruited himself into the time patrol.

The Bootstrap Paradox is when something is part of its own necessary cause. This is a paradox because it involves the creation of information out of nothing. In the All You Zombies story, for example, the man's entire, presumably human, genetic code was assembled from nothing, without human antecedent before his own self-seduction.
Dean Radin said…
enigman writes > ... if you did mention [the dream] (out loud, or in writing) then there would therefore be some (unknown) probability of the knock having been arranged, e.g. in order to see what your reaction was.

I hadn't mentioned this dream to anyone, or written it down anywhere. The dream occurred sometime early in the morning, and it was later that same morning on the way to work that the car was hit. Ordinarily I might have mentioned this to my wife before leaving home, but she was away on a trip. So no one knew about this dream except me.

Can you say more about that feeling?

As I wrote, I don't often remember my dreams. But when I do it's not the content so much that seems to spark the recall as much as the quality. E.g., if I remember being surprised by something in the dream, especially if I wake up laughing, or I feel a strong emotion associated with something meaningful, then I tend to remember the dream. Of course, these same characteristics might occur in lots of dreams I don't recall, but I can only report on what I do recall.

A second factor that seems to spark recall is if the dream has an unusually vivid, hyper-real quality.

A third factor is associated with a recurring, epic dream-story. While I don't always remember the exact details, I do know that there is an overall theme involving a classic struggle of good vs. evil, multiple sub-story arcs, many characters with distinct personalities, and so on. I am usually one of the principal story characters, but more often a minor one than the "hero." When the dream recurs it is a variation on the same theme. If Lord of the Rings or Star Wars were dreams, this would be something like that. Vast, sweeping sagas, in the far past or the far future, in deep space ships or antediluvian, rough-hewn settings. I've had this dream a dozen or more times starting in my pre-teens, predating my familiarity with the two classic stories mentioned.
Quiddity said…
Found this via The Daily Grail.

When I was in college, I had a dream so mundane that I couldn't help but remember it. Was in my dorm room, talking to my roommate (but she was blonde and my roommate that year was a brunette), asked her what she was doing, she said studying for her Civil Engineering exam (not my roommate's major). Jumped off my bunk bed and used a corner of her desk to sign something that I had to turn in for one of my own classes, end of dream.

Boring.

The next year, I had changed dorms. Was sitting in my room talking to my new blonde roommate, asked her what she was doing, she said she was studying for her CE exam, I jumped off my bed and used the corner of her desk to sign something ... and WHAM, remembered the dream.

It left quite an impact.

The only other dream I've had that was that vivid was completely in the realm of fantasy. Demons, prisons, angst, drama. When I told a couple of people about it, they just looked at each other and went and got a book from a shelf. It was one that I had never ever read before, but it was perfectly in synch with the scenery and events of the dream - down to the view I had from my tower prison window, the hair color of my captor, and being trapped in some kind of force field that allowed me to fly up and down but not outside of the barrier. Can't remember the book now but that also left a mental mark, made me wonder how much we "communicate."
Martin Cooke said…
Thanks Dean, that eliminates (what I would consider to be) the weirder of my two suggested alternatives. Regarding your initial question, I wonder how it could already have been that you were likely, earlier that morning, to have a serious accident later on. If it was a purely physical likelihood, based around the route that you did not take, then it seems coincidental that you should have had the actual accident. So, maybe there were other forces at work (as in your recurring dreams, or whatever), both ones that would have caused (so to speak) the serious accident, and ones that warned you of that... although it still seems odd that some residue of the former (higher) actions should manifest as a harmless instance of the same type of accident.

It's all very mysterious. We are only thinking of your dream as precognitive because of the harmless accident, and yet it seems to have been about a more serious accident on a different route, one that did not actually occur. So I still like the idea that the (sleepy) guy in the car behind you might have been influenced by your (unusual) state of mind, whether your dream was a premonition of something that did not happen, or not. That your dream was a premonition of the accident that occurred, which only occurred because of your dream (whether or not there was any influence over the guy behind), I find too mysterious to know whether or not it is plausible. (Good luck in your recurring dreams, by the way:)
David Bailey said…
Without in any way trying to dismiss your experience, I should tell you of my only dream of that type.

I was on holiday, and I dreamed that my brother was telephoning me and just saying that something awful had happened. It was a very vivid dream which woke me up and left me rather disturbed.

After some consideration, I did not contact my brother until after the holiday, but when I did (crossing my fingers because I still remembered that dream), I found him and his family perfectly well!

I KNOW I would have considered this to be PSI if he had had anything bad to report!
Carol Maltby said…
A witch I know once discussed the best strategy for dealing with the possibility of unpleasant events, perceived precognitively.

In his method if you had the dream of the car crash, you'd take some toy cars and make them re-enact
the scene. This would satisfy any inevitaility that might be attached to the dream experience.
Unknown said…
Dean,

In quantum physics we know that we change the outcome by observing. So here is my theory, the collective unconscious was signalling you to allow you to co-create with it. By oberving what was going to happen, you changed it. So about free will, I believe we have probabilities within a few degrees, so destiny is malleable.

Marn
sbg said…
I had a similar experience a number of years ago. Just upon waking I had a dream I was involved in a car accident, although the details were not that vivid. My first reaction was not to drive that day. But it was around Christmas and I needed to go shopping. Although it was raining, I was hypervigilant driving, avoiding all risk. But as I was returning home and taking the East Blithedale exit off 101 S, I had to make an abrupt stop (which is common for this exit). "Here it is--the accident," I thought. But looking in the rear view mirror, the car behind me stopped in time. And then about 2 seconds later the driver in the car hit me, thinking I had moved on the green light. I clearly did not avoid my fate that day. Although I felt the dream prepared me so that I was less surprised and traumatized. In fact, the whole experience felt dream-like. What strikes me about your story is the similarity of the type of accident. Maybe by having the dream and being aware we lessened the impact.
Mikemotorbike said…
The reality is we create our reality.

Simpler, we 'own it'... take responsibility for it.

Precognitive dreams are your own creation, time doesn't really exist, except as a chosen perception, so the meaning of a precognitive, perceived event is of emotional, not temporal significance.

It happened (will happen, is happening, The question is: why did you create it?

As for the airbags, would they not symbolize safety? i.e.: you recognized the emotional content of the dream (your desire for safety, perhaps?) and took corrective action with intent to mitigate harm -- by creating a cushion, symbolized in real life by taking another route.

Basically, the dream means, exactly what you did. Meditate on your waking experiences to know the meaning of the dream. Life, both fore and aft, predicts the dream.
nick herbert said…
Great story, Dean. Plenty of food for thought for those of us who are wondering what the hell is going on here.

There is a psychiatric diagnosis called "delusions of reference" that consists of interpreting random events as messages meant for YOU.

On the other hand, one of the hypotheses I like to entertain is that we have never left the womb. And that all those tubes and fluids that nourished us then are still present in a more complicated setting where many other womb-mates are nourished too. And, by the way, She's gonna kill you.

So, adopting this Extended Womb hypothesis, I sometimes am open to looking for "omens" in the world--private messages directed (from the Big Womb) to me.

I was having lunch in a cafe the other day with a lovely lady and opened up a bottled soft drink and there on the cap was an omenic message: "Enjoy before DATE". My first thought ("First thought, best thought."--Allen Ginzberg) was that this was a personal death threat meant for me from the universe-at-large.

I was wrong.

I lived past that drink's expiration date.

warm regards
Nick Herbert
Dean Radin said…
Hi Nick,

I think you may have misread that "enjoy by date" omen. It probably wasn't a death threat (bottle caps rarely are), but rather advice on maximizing your enjoyment potential with a particular refreshing beverage.

I have no doubt that delusions of reference, especially when fueled by too much caffeine, can cause one to become perpetually freaked out by seemingly omnipresent omens, big and small. But I've never paid much attention to minor synchronicities. For me to take notice I need the UFO landing on the White House lawn. Something big. Real big. Something so unusual or striking that it leaves me stunned. I've had a few experiences like that.

By the way, I didn't report one other unusual event that happened later in the day on August 1, after the dream/real car crash. While walking to my office I happened to notice a sudden white flash in the sky. On closer inspection, I saw what looked like a flock of white snowy egrets flying around in formation. I don't know if egrets commonly fly in groups or not, but that's what it looked like. When the sun reflected off their wings in just the right way, it produced a blinding white flash. I had never seen anything like it before.

Did that event signify anything in an omen-like way? Probably not. It was just striking enough for me to notice. But sometimes in the right frame of mind, after pondering many previous tales of blinding lights suddenly appearing in the heavens, I wonder.
Herman La Croix said…
I only recently discovered the idea of the phenomena of entanglement, and it made me freak out.

As a philosopher I had been searching for some way to "wipe clean" the "taint" of individualist thought that I perceive to be thurst upon us by existentialist thought.

So, when I starting investigating entanglement I thought that perhaps by matching it up with a loose interpretation of identity theory (in philosophy of mind) that a bridge between individuals specifically, and between all things in general could be reached.

I just learned about the existence of your book, and I must go pick that up as soon as possible. It is exciting to see this sort of work being done. I will have to RSS this blog.

Sorry if this is an inappriopriate comment for this topic.
ArtFunk said…
Another good book about precognitive dreams is Dreams That Come True by David Ryback and Letitia Sweitzer (New York: Ivy Books, 1988). There is a Psi Dreams listserve run by the IASD (www.asdreams.org) (I am the moderator) and an upcoming PsiberDreaming on-line conference which will run from Sunday, Sept. 23rd to Sunday, Oct. 7th. Anyone interested in participating can sign up by going to http://asdreams.org/psi2007/index.htm
Unknown said…
Dean asked in regards his dream which he labeled precognitive:

"Does this mean we cannot escape our destined future? That we have no free will? Or, does it mean that we have potential futures, and that by making this particular choice I had potentially avoided a much worse accident?"

In my opinion your dream was not precognitive. The events of the dream illustrate experiences that you are having in your psyche which you are not fully conscious of. Basically it is saying that the car your mechanical mechanistic sense of soul is clashing with reality. You are protected by the air bags which prevent injury. What is the significance of air, it is a refined sense of substance, which operates autonomously independently of yourself.
It seems that your fear and belief in the dream demonstrates in your day-dream what the dream is about. You are so fearful of the literal interpretation of the dream i.e. take life materially and are emotionally affected by that interpretation of life that you are moved to let it control your life. This leads to your accident which confirms your belief. No wonder human have recurring dreams.
This is a thumbnail sketch. Whatever the dream means it is not what you think!!! That is the problem. It is an attempt to tell you what you don't know about your self.

Best Richard
Art said…
have had quite a few precognitive dreams. Some of them very specific. I am also quite impressed with stories like the one about the Aberfan coal slag disaster that buried a schoolhouse in Wales. I totally believe that the little girl who dreamed of her own death was a real person and that her mother was not lying. To be honest all these stories have lead me in the direction that free will may very well be an illusion, and towards fate and predestination. I've also read several near death experiences that also seem to point in that direction. I'll stifle myself for not suffice it to say, I'm not at all sure about free will. By the way, I'm about halfway through Entangled Minds. It's not an easy read. - Art
Unknown said…
this is all new to me, having just read a fascinating article by Craig Hamilton that discusses your work and the book--i am kinda in that freak out stage that jonathan mentioned, given some small but startling synchro events i have experienced, especially over the last few days. my question is in regards to precog dreams of events that don't involve "us"--specifically--how did you feel when you learned that hours after your dream, the bridge in Minneapolis collapsed--do you think you could have been "having someone else's precog dream"? or having a premonition of that awful event?
Dean Radin said…
Was this dream literal or symbolic? Sometimes my dreams are echoes of the day's events, or a movie I just saw, or things I'm planning to do. They don't seem this way during the dream, but afterwards when I relate them I immediately see the connections to mundane events. Othertimes dreams are genuinely bizarre, not connected to anything I'm aware of, and clearly symbolic or archetypal. A third category is, for want of a better term, synchronistic inklings of something beyond me. Sometimes from the future, sometimes elsewhere. I can't prove this, of course, but that's what they feel like, and sometimes world events seem to corroborate those feelings.

Is it possible to feel someone else's future experiences? I think so, yes. If minds are entangled in the way that I believe the data show, then we all have the capacity to experience everything. But most of the time in the normal waking state we filter out that information, so dreams are one nonordinary state where this information can seep in.
littlebug said…
I agree with your dream categories, and in my experience there are definite differences in the way these dreams feel. Let me give two contrasting examples.
1) For years I had a recurring dream of being on the ground and looking up to see a commercial jet careening out of control and slamming into the ground. The dream always ended with me trying to shield myself from the flaming wreckage. Despite the disturbing nature of this dream I never felt that it was precognitive. One day I had an epiphany in which I suddenly understood the dream's deeply personal symbolism... and I never had that dream again.
2) Approximately three years ago I dreamed that I went to pick up my 3 year old daughter from preschool, and discovered that she was missing. The dream was suffused with a unique species of panic and fear that I had never before experienced. In the dream, a search was mounted, and 45 minutes later she was located safe and sound at a playground not far away, to which she had wandered on her own. I immediately experienced a flood of relief combined with anger that she had escaped and made me feel such extreme fear. When I woke up, this feeling vividly remained in my mind and did not dissipate like most dreams do. The day after the dream was Saturday, and I took my daughter to the zoo. It was a sunny summer day and the zoo was very crowded. We were in the "jungle" area of the zoo, with narrow densely planted paths, enjoying the antics of the baby gorilla, when I looked down and realized that she had silently darted off. I was instantly thrust into the precise emotional tone of my dream from the night before -- a feeling
I'd never before experienced in "real life." I immediately realized that my dream had been precognitive, and drew comfort from the fact that it had ended well. After 5 minutes of panic and searching, I found her. She'd darted away and run off into the paths and quickly gotten lost in the crowd. In retrospect I found it interesting that the "feel" of the dream from start to finish was identical to what actually happened the following day -- she was lost and then found safe -- although the setting (preschool vs. zoo) and duration of time (45 mins. vs. 5 mins.) were different. I speculate that my mind received a precognition of the "event" of her being lost and found, but that my dreaming brain created a scenario that differed from the actual event in detail but not in emotional tone.
buba9000 said…
All my life I have been dreaming strange dreams. Usually, they are like a premonition puzzle, correlated with different happenings all around the globe.
But, there is something else. I often feel and hear a very high frequency tone before something would happen, and after the years I became able to recognize the direction of the happening. I have been experiencing this since I was a little.
lightseeker said…
Although it's possible your real fender-bender was just a coincidence, but if you FEEL it wasn't, then it wasn't.

It could be by changing your usual route you avoided the more serious accident, but because your consciousness (=intent, even subconsciously) was focused on an accident, you attracted one to you anyway (thankfully so so serious).
dilrukshi said…
dean, please explain in simple terms what PLA means.also let me know if anyone in the New-York area is doing any research on pre-cognition,dreams hallucinations and the mind.Thank-you
Dean Radin said…
What does PLA stand for?
Tim McCoy said…
I have read most all of the Seth books and I know this topic comes up. In fact, in the early sessions a specific dream involving a car crash is discussed and commented upon by Seth.

Seth gives expicit instructions on not driving or being in a car under certain conditions until a certain date. This is to avoid a car accident like "event" that was dreamed by a frequent visitor to the Seth sessions.

My interpretation of the Seth reading is that the event-type is probable but the specific event is not pre-destined and can be avoided.

I further interpret Seth descriptions relating to dreams like yours and suggest that your dream contains highly symbolic information. For example, the air bags indicate that you would not be physically harmed in the incident - not necessarily that air-bags would be deployed in the actual incident.

Lastly - there was an earlier posted response proclaiming that we create our own reality (which I believe) and indicating that you should examine why you have arranged to be in a car accident in the first place.

This is necessarily personal - however - in your line of work - it's always possible that its purpose was simply to add to your lines of investigation. Perhaps you were there simply to record the entanglement... as it is what you do. Perhaps it is an invitation for you to remember that you must continue to pursue your personal Spiritual path as it impacts on your ability to progress your science.

kind regards, Tim McCoy
Roger Knights said…
I thought I'd mention the obvious, since no one else did: This is the sort of event that is classified as an "appointment in Samara."

In that story, a person saw Death walking in the marketplace and fled to Samara to avoid it, whereupon he ran into death again. Death startled and said that that he was surprised to see that he had kept his appointment with him in Samara, given that he'd been so far away earlier in the day.
Macy said…
I dreamt of a man I met twice about six months after meeting him and telling him he was to marry by age 40,he was single and not in any relationship, dont know where the info came from. In the dream a woman was following him around and she appeared vividly to me in the dream. Three years and a bit later I am driving my car in a popular cafe strip and there he was with that same woman, identical as the one in dream, hair, face and body. When I got home I googled his name and I was led to a blog of a patient of his who didnt seem to like him that much and spoke openly of her specialist and she had discovered he married by him suddenly mentioning a wife. It happened when he turned 40. I have since wondered how could I have known the type of woman he'd pick for a wife before he even met her.
Before this chance event I dreamt of him again but this time of him with a 10 yr old boy walking a red stoned street with terrace houses, the boy appeared to be his son and he was ignoring the boy and consumed in some thought. He didnt have children when I met him, but I was in this dream at a distance watching this.

It makes me think of the prohets in the bible who prophecised Christs coming 100's of years before the event.
f said…
you will probably find that had you gone the usual way you would have been involved in a much more severe accident. Its sort of Divine Intervention thats hasnt fully worked.
This has nothing to do with dreams (even though i often get predictive dreams) but the other month we were going to go painballing. the day before we were planning to go the paintballing place got vandalised. Slightly disapointed we had to find somthing else to do and whilst pondering it was revealed on the news that there had been a fatal crash on the road which would would hade been traveling along at the exact time we would have been traveling along it!

another incident which i had also involving car crashes was when i was on holiday, one moring i woke randomly around 2:15 and feelng rather emotional. Whilst going to the beach te next day we found the road was closed and that at around 2:20 that moring a car with four people returning from a party crashed off the road, fell 60ft onto a train track and rolled down a bank into a tidal river, only the drived survived....

...its really freaky when dreams come true like that, especially when its loads of little things that are almost identical to the dream...
Unknown said…
i've had many precognitive dreams ever since i was 7 and in yr 2, i still remember my first. i dreamed i was sittin in the middle of a room wif kids all around me and a man sitting in front of me on a chair, everything else was white, all that was there where the ppl. my first day of yr 3 i found myself in that situation. all my precognitive dreams never last long and soon after waking up i put it out of my mind (im guessing from habit), so it usually isnt until wat i dream comes true that i fully recall the dream. also every time i have never been able to change what happens in my dream, every time i try i only end up doing what i dreamed in the first place. also another thing is that sumtimes i have a dream that is so real i can actually feel, hear, smell,see etc everything in the dream, once i was actually woken from a dream because i got hurt so badly in it, and wen i woke i was lying in my bed and nothing had hit me. there have also been times wen ive tried to wake and i know im not asleep, but i simply cannot move and i feel like there is a big pressure on my entire body and it takes a lot of force be4 i can move myself. there have also been time when ive been in a room alone and i hear sum1 call my name and i look around and there is no one there.
Anonymous said…
I myself have experienced multiple precognitive dreams. I, of course, do not know they are such when I wake up, but after a month or few. When the dream actually 'comes to life', it does so exactly like in my dream. I mean, I suppose, I could change the paths I take or even the smallest of things, but the dreams them selves escape my mind at that time. Or, I simply am not in control of what is happening. As in, I dreamed of someone else's actions and not my own. But, again, I mention, there was NO difference between my dreams, and the actions in real life. NONe what so ever. Every little detail was the same. So, I suppose, I could attest to the authenticity of such dreams. And in my belief, we all have or Can have them. It might be something we are born with, or it simply might just be a skill. Like writing, or reading, simply this we are not taught. This couldn't be too hard to believe, considering we are only using 4-10% of our brain...plus, i also believe that we are taught to disbelieve these things, i guess to keep us in line, or something of sorts. Shrug. whatever the reason, surely there has to have been enough prof of its existence(these things we call phenomenons)to stop questioning it. And it simply was not voiced to the public. . . .
Anonymous said…
I had a precognitive dream last night. I've been browsing the internet for a while trying to make the most of it. I woke up this morning with a foggy memory of what happened in the dream. It was just a dream of a regular day, and there were a couple small things that happened. When I came home from lunch I figured out that everything I dreamed about has so far happened today. Just small things. I dreamed that my landlord would come fix my wall today, and sure enough they did. I have been waiting months for them to fix it. Anyways, I'm a little sketched out because something bad happened at the end of the dream, and I can't remember what. Just figured I'd post this so that if something bad does happen, its pretty good proof that precognitive dreams are legit.
Never_there101 said…
Alright, I have been "precognitive" my entire life. Between dreams, day dreams, feelings, I also can immediately tell a liar, negative person, or someone who's out to do harm to others. With that there is also, being able know what people are thinking occasionally or how they are truly feeling. This is not why I was writing, I was writing because with each of these "dreams" or "feelings" whether I'm awake or not, it has ALWAYS come true.

Sometimes it's less than what I thought it would be, which is always nice, but most times it is as bad as the feeling I get or what I saw. When my grandmother died, I had a dream the week before that she would be in the hospital waiting for me to say goodbye, and when I got home she would be dead. And that's exactly what happened.

But then there are other incidents where I feel phsically sick from this "bad feeling" and it is nothing that should've made me that way. Ex: I had a really bad feeling for a couple days, I told my mother-in-law about it and the next day she calls to tell me that my brother-in-law was stung by wasps and had to be rushed to the ER. Shortly before she told me, the "bad feeling" had gone away.

I don't know if you can really change anything that is meant to happen, but I'd like to think that me telling my mother in law left her a little more prepared for what was about to happen. That day she parked close to the building (something she never does) and she never left her kid's sides.

All in all I believe that if you are lucky enough to have that dream that saves your life that you should just appreciate it and let it go. That's what I do, and if my children come across this "gift" I hope that's what they'll do.
Fibi said…
never there 101... I have the same gift but as of late I am not sure it is something I appreciate; a few months ago I had this vivid dream; in my dream....I moved to Montreal and was living in this loft with my children and a business man who was 5'11 with brwn hair; (my dream does no show or explain how it was that my husband in real life dies, but there is a strong sense in my dream where I knew that I was in Montreal with this other man because some tragedy had taken my husband from me and my children.) Being in this place with this man was a conforting peaceful feeling as I am having my dream. However, after waking from this dream I cried because this dream was so vivid and felt so real as if I were really there that (also I have had vivid dreams like this before and they have come true) I cried at the thought that maybe this is God's way of preparing me/telling me that I might lose my husband in the future. The part that upsets me is that my dream does not tell me how I lose him and so there are no clues to stopping this from happening. I decided to brush off this dream as possible in some way that my subconcious was helping me deal with my fears and that it is not relaly precognitive. Now let me give you a little background before i tell what has happened recently; I have never been to Montreal and when I had this dream I didn't know anyone who lives there. Just a couple weeks ago, and old friend of mine who had just moved to Montreal this summer (this was after I had my dream)called and asked me out to breakfast. By this point I haven't thought much about my dream as I do not like to remember it. But as we were having breakfast he suddenly mentions that he thinks he should have gone into business instead of medicine; the instant he said this it was like my memeories of my dream came flooding back and I had this uneasy feeling...as the conversation con't he also mentions this new place he just moved into is a loft and he thinks I would absolutely loved the place. Now I am sure that it was him, he even fits the description of the man perfectly. My curiousity gets the best of me and I start describing my dream to him, (he has made no mention of his place except that its a loft); but I feel that the person in my dream is him and this loft he just mentioned is the place in my dream. We both freak out because as it turns out I had just described to him his new place in perfect detail!! PERFECT detail!! As someone mentioned in this blog earlier precognition is distinct in that it is "knowing" rather than just some irrational fear. I feel as though I know this place and everything about it. Thank God that my husband is still alive and all is well right now; but this dream barely leaves my thoughts since my discussion with my friend as how can this be a coincidence?? I have never been to this place and yet I can describe it perfectly? I refuse to live my life worrying that something terrible might happen to my husband based on a dream I had; but I can't ignore the fact this sense of "knowing" cannot be just a coincidence. I mentioned to my husband about how I had this dream about some guy in a loft in Montreal (leaving out the part about him not being around anymore) and that I had described it to my friend and it matched perfectly. My hubby's response was "the last time you had a vivid dream about some guy in a specific place, you ended up marrying the guy" Its true, I did dream about my now husband long before I met him. I always told my bestfriend that my dream was so real that I believe I will someday meet this guy and marry him. I only found out almost a year after we were dating that he was the guy in my dream because I told him I once dreamed of a guy that fit his description living in a particular house and as I describe the house, it turns out I was describing in perfect detail the house he grew up in.

any thoughts on all this? how else can it be explained?
Dean Radin said…
> any thoughts on all this? how else can it be explained?

That people occasionally have accurate precognitive dreams is clear from the historical record. Of course, without keeping track of every dream it's not possible to know with certainty which are precognitive and which may be, say, projections of anxieties. But based on similar effects that we can see in controlled laboratory tests, let's assume that some of these dreams provide real information about the future that cannot be explained by any conventional means.

The question is whether this means that the future is predetermined, or probable, or if by knowing the future we have the opportunity to change it. The answers are not yet known, and there is experimental evidence supporting all of these possibilities.

So the jury is out. I suspect that much of the future is predetermined because of inertia, like a strong current in a stream it can be extremely difficult to change the course of certain events. But I also suspect that we have "micro free will," and we do have the capacity to change some outcomes. I'm guessing this based on the probabilistic nature of quantum events, where uncertainty about future outcomes seems to be deeply wrapped into the elementary fabric of reality.
f said…
Its funny that two comments are made on here for the first time in ages on the same day i experiance my own semi-precognition with the intention of blogging it...

Thats some interesting stuff from Dean and Fibi, just a bit more exciting than mine. Basically in the dream i am in the social area at my collage and i learn (not from anyone i just know) that someone from my year was shot whilst walking up to the other, not as good collage up the road. It was the most terrifying thing ive experianced in a long time, there were people missing from the social area and i had no idea who had been shot. Any way, slightly later on i learn that it is one of three people which was horrible to know but atleast it wasnt any of my close friends. The dream kind of ends but i wake up really badly shaken from it cus it was so real and i was genuinely upset at the time.

Anyway, at collage today i begin studying film for my Extended Project and my teacher tells me to go to the other collage's library cus theyve got really good books about film. Now i havnt been to that collage for over 6 years when i did swimming club there and i was slightly freaked out about having to go there the day i wake up from having a dream about someone being shot whilst walking up there.

Obviously i dont go but i decide to go to my own collages library instead and on the way whilst crossing the road that runs through campus i pass the three people that were beleived to be involved in the horrible incident. This slightly freaks me out a bit more but when i get to the library the first book i open on the first page i see is a picture of a gun, a double page spread of a revolver (somthing to do with Special effects), of course i'm slightly taken aback by this and the fear of the dream hasnt really left me because of this...

But that i fear is not the end. I take the books out my bag that i borrowed when i get home and there is one that has a label on saying 'not to be taken away' titled 'Penguine dictionary of physics' with a diagram of a spherical object bending the plane of space-time beneath it. This is intreaguing as only this monday did i watch a documentary about einstein & eddington and how they discovered that gravity is formed by mass bending space-time around it resulting in the General Releativity Theory (as described on the diagram on the front of the book). Slightly fasinated with this kind-of-a-coincidence i look and see that the only time this book was rented out was on 20th April 2004. I look this up on wikipedia and find that this day was when Gravity Probe B was launched into polar orbit to finally gain evidence for the general releltivity theory. The probe is still collecting data and a result is yet to come.

I know this sounds stupid and i'm probably making links that dont exist but the ID of the book is 530-ILL (odd as i am actually ill at the moment) but my curious mind finds out that the 530th day of the year June 13th of the next year (if its a leap year, which 2004 is if you start counting from 2003) which is my mums birthday (she is also ill at the moment lol) but there are in fact 201 days left after this and guess what page gravity is on? page 201.

You wil most liekly think i am crazy and sad after reading all this but i notice these links everywhere and its actually driving me insane. It would be nice to know that this kind of thing is normal and expected but it really doesnt feel like it.
anyway, ive typed way way too much and my arms hurt (ouch!) so i'm gonna go now, c ya!
JMOM said…
I have had three major precognitive dreams predicting a serious illness, a car accident, and a death. All of these involved different family members.
Right before these precognitive dreams I started experiencing sleep paralysis, not sure if it's related (where your mind is awake from sleep but your body is still paralyzed)
Also, haven't found the meaning of this situation yet, but SEVERAL times a day EVERY day I am thinking of a word or phrase (not talking about little words or phrases either) and it is spoken by someone else almost immediately. At first, I thought this might be an indicator of their psychic abilities, except it also happens on the television and radio. I'm not talking about little coincidences. I'm actually not seeking out these "coincidences". They have become very frusterating. Do I sound crazy?
Oh and to DJCAMM, This is the first time I read this blog, and I noticed you talked about your Mom's birthday. You posted on my Mom's birthday (Dec.5)
Dwiizie said…
I have had many precognitive dreams, and, after experiencing what I have, I feel as though the future can not be altered. I feel like, if you went a different route that day, that is what you were supposed to/going to do. It was, at first, and still now, very difficult for me to think of life this way. It threw my whole spiritual belief system out of wack.

I dreamt of hanging out with my brother and another mystery person. When I woke up the next day, I called my friend, and told him all about it. I said of the mystery person "I know that I know him, I know who he was, but I just can't see or remember him now"

The place we were hanging out, the mystery person's living room, was so strange that I didn't even think that this was precognitive at the time. There was a plaid couch with leopard print cushions (ugh!), a weird table with ridges in the surface, and a strange conversation between the three of us.

As it turns out, the mystery person was my older brother's friend that used to live with us when we were younger. I knew where I was as soon as I saw his living room. The plaid couch had leopard print pillow cases over the cushions to protect the couch from their dog. "Ohhhhh thats what it was!" The table with ridges in it was actually a glossy topped wooden table, with the reflection of window blinds across it, making it appear to have ridges. Even the conversation we had was word for word as it had been in the dream.

Here's the kicker. About 10 minutes into the conversation (or script as I like to call it) I started talking about the dream, all of the details. My nonbeliever brother and friend disregarded me and said I was freaking them out. A few minutes of silence later, they started talking again, and picked up the script right where it left off, as if I had said what I was supposed to say. If I had thrown the TV through the wall, how would that have changed things?

Soooo, was I supposed to see those things in my dream so that I would alter the script (which would be...following the script...)or did I really have a glitch viewing of the future, and since I am a conscious being, was able to alter MY script, but not my brother's and his friend's scripts. Think about the guy that hit your car. He was in an accident that day too, he had a script, a path. If his path was dependent upon yours, then you wouldn't be able to alter his, or yours either.

I also, in the dream, was viewing the whole scene from a different angle than reality. In reality, I was sitting in a chair to the boy's right. In the dream, I was directly in front of them participating in the conversation, following the script. Was this consciousness/spirit visiting another frame in the reel that is "life" Was this information beamed down from someone else who had already witnessed the scene? Why would I see something like this? Accident? I just have to return to the belief that there are no accidents. I was meant to see it, if only to raise the topic with the boys and get their minds thinking of such possibilities (soon after, my brother admited to the slightest amount of believing, even talking about his own dreams, which would move him consciously closer to his spirituality that he doesn't/didn't believe in), or to joggle my deeply rooted interest in the matter, or simply to confirm some things I was already working with. I've had little 30 second snipits of dreams over the course of 6 months, that strung together to form a 1.5 hour block of time, not approximate, but exact, down to the people involved, what they were wearing, the conversation.

I guess we all come to the "undecided" section after considering all things. I really want to believe we control our own fate, that how we live today determines more of what will come tomorrow, and moreso that our actions, be they "positive" or "negative" have some sort of influence on how the world works with us (i.e. karma) With the evidence I have at this time, I must accept that certain, if not all, things are unchangeable. Even if we catch a glimmer ahead of time, and "change" them, did we really? If everyone's day to day relies on interaction with other humans, then how could I possibly change my own path without affecting that of another (butterfly effect?)

If things are indeed, unchangeable, then we get to "why do it then, if we can't change anything..." I say, if the events of life are unchangeable, our reactions and emotions are not. 20 people can face the same exact situation and react in different ways. This, you CAN control. I'd say, if there is a point to life, it would be for humans to get to the point where they are spiritually and mentally able to react with love no matter what the situation, and to enjoy the use of a body in the physical realm, because many things we experience, both good and bad, can only be experienced with the aid of a physical body. Its an evolutionary process.

I could go on and on and on about the subject, though this is the first time I've ever addressed it in a public forum, I feel good to finally have put my thoughts together on the subject and I am happy to have the chance to share that with all of you.
anonymous said…
Here's a question that maybe parapsychology can answer that can help people understand how to use spontaneous psychic perceptions.

When people experience a synchronicity they may think it is some type of sign telling them something. A Spiritulaist might say it is due to the influence of spirit guides. Gary Schwartz might say it is evidence of Guiding Organizing and Designing force in the universe. I think the most common parapsychological explanation would be that it is due to unconscious psi.

My question is, assuming it is unconscious psi, should it be interpreted as a sign. Here's an example to illustrate the question: At one time I was unhappy with my job, and during that time, for some strange reason I decided to go somewhere that was very uncharacteristic for me to go to. It turned out that while I was there, I met someone and that meeting led to a job offer allowing me to leave the job I was unhappy with.

The Spiritualist or Gary Schwartz might say in that situation I should take the new job because there is an benevolent intelligence behind it working for the highest good.

Assuming this situation is not just a coincidence due to chance, what does parapsychology say in this case? Can a person rely on their unconscious psi to work for their highest good? How far can they trust it? Would it definately be in their long term interest to change jobs or might it solve a short term problem but in hindsight turn out to be a bad decision after all? If someone had self destructive tendencies could their unconscious psi act to their detriment rather than for their benefit?

If parapsychology can answer this question, that might be an important application of the science in the every day life of individuals. It would demonstrate parapsychology's superiority over the Spiritualist or G.O.D. world view.
Unknown said…
I have precognitive dreams all the time and in the last week alone I've experienced 4. I don't mean I've had 4 dreams, I mean 4 dreams from 6 mo. to 4 years ago became real with people I've just met in situations I've never been in. I see it as I am where I'm supposed to be.
boklenhle said…
I have dreams like these all the time. The first was the strangest. I was only eight at the time I had this but if anyone could tell me what it means, it would be appreciated.
I was in large room with people I'd never met before, my mom came out of a doorway with a baby girl next to her. My step-dad was sitting at a table in front of her. Keep in mind I'd never been in this place and knew none of these people.
Five years later a relative had just passed. My little sister was two at this point and it happened exactly as I had dreamed it.
What does this mean?

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