Dreamtime

Here's an incident that's trivial in itself, but suggestive.

Last night I had a vivid dream in which I was at a hotel spa. For some reason the treatment consisted of having dental paste shoved into my mouth. I hadn't expected this, and started to choke. Finally I had to spit out the paste. 

Because the dream had some possible symbolic significance, I wrote it down when I got up, and even described it in an email to a friend. 

Later in the day, I turned on the sitcom The King of Queens on TBS. In the episode, the lead character visits the dentist. The dentist unexpectedly pushes a dental-paste mold into the character's mouth, and he starts to choke on it. The choking scene plays out for more than a minute while other action is taking place in the background.

The parallel between the dream and the episode is pretty close. How often does the subject of choking on dental paste come up?

If this were the only premonitory dream I'd ever had, I might dismiss it as a coincidence. But I've had many others. The difference in this case is that I remembered to write it down, and I even shared it with a friend - before I saw the sitcom episode.

As I said, the premonition was trivial. But the implications aren't. If we can tune in to the future, even in inconsequential ways, when we are asleep and dreaming, then what is the relationship between the present and the future?

J.W. Dunne addresses the same issue in his 1927 book An Experiment with Time, which details the author's precognitive dreaming. 

Comments

[dmduncan]

Was the episode old or new? If old, had you seen it before and possibly do not remember it? If new, or an old episode replayed, is it possible you had unconsciously absorbed that scene from an episode preview in the background while you were doing something else?

[Paul Welsh]

Did you see a trailer for it? :)

[Paul Welsh]

Having said that so much TV seems so generic these days I think I have been seeing the same things since 1972

[Nate Cull]

In the last two years since I started journalling my dreams, I've noticed several cases of similar things which seem to be An Experiment With Time- style precognitive dreaming. So I'm pretty sure that yes, you're not just imagining this, it really happens.

One of the most vivid cases for me was when I dreamed of a weird sort of portable electrocution device on a battlefield. Wtf? Where did that come from? The next day at work I was shown a video for an automatic heart-start defibrillator.

It felt like exactly what Dunne was talking about: dreaming in reverse, so you get mixes of 'real' and 'imaginary' events, and 'past' and 'future' all swirled together.

[Michael Prescott]

Was the episode old or new?

Old. The show is in syndication on TBS.

If old, had you seen it before and possibly do not remember it?

I had seen it before, but of course I had no normal way of knowing last night that this particular episode would be on today.

is it possible you had unconsciously absorbed that scene from an episode preview in the background while you were doing something else?

I thought of this and watched TBS carefully to see if they air snippets of upcoming episodes of their syndicated shows. They don't - at least not during the time block when I was watching.

[Kevin]

I am always interested in recountings of precognitive dreaming, as it offers me some level of comfort with my own experiences. While the dreams can be about serious and potentially life-threatening events (such as the ruptured brain aneurysm of a close friend, which I recorded in my journal a week prior to its occurance), they are typically of a more benign and comparatively trivial nature, such as yours. Dunne's short book on the matter (more like an extended essay) was interesting, and I've sought more writings on the subject in the years since I've read it. When pressed on the matter, physicists seem unable to offer much on the concept of time, and display our true lack of understanding of it. I've had discussions with some people who, when I relate some of my precognitive experiences, attempt to argue against the possibility by invoking a claim that such violates the idea of cause-and-effect. My counter is to say that nothing of the sort takes place: as long as the cause precedes the effect, it matters not "when" the cause comes from. The discussions never produce much in the way of insight or understanding owing to our own paucity of same, but that poverty hasn't stopped the dreams from continuing to arrive sporadically. In truth, I look forward to every sleep period, anticipating interesting information and the potential for further insight into my existence. I've even tried "dream seeding", and actually "received" an answer, but only "time" (whatever THAT is) will reveal its authenticity. Thanks for sharing your experience, Michael, and please don't hesitate to make more such postings as they occur (unless, of course, they're of a nature too private to share).

[Brian Joseph]

When my daughter was a few months shot of being 3 years old I had a horrifying dream of her running out in front of a car. I screamed so loud that my wife woke up. I told her of my nightmare. About 12 hours later I was in a parking lot. It was a 2 door car. I put the front seat forward and turned to get my daughter. She had seen a neighbor across the parking lot and had gone to run towards her just as a car was pulling into the parking lot at a quick speed. It was heading right towards her. I screamed just as I had in the dream. The car came to a screeching halt. My angel girl was about 3 feet in front of it when it had stopped.

[Art]

"At its deeper level reality is a sort of superhologram in which the past, present, and future all exist simultaneously." - excerpt from The Holographic Universe, http://www.earthportals.com/hologram.html#zine
____________________________________________

The emotion attached to the episode seems to be the key. I used to have precognitive dreams all the time. Lately, not so much, although I've actually had a couple of rather strange precognitive experiences in church. I am deeply suspicious of free will and lean heavily towards fate and predestination. I also believe that everything happens for a reason, even the bad stuff. We are spiritual beings having a physical experience. This earth life is a school and the soul uses the body to learn what it needs to learn and after it finishes it casts the body off like an old worn out suit of clothes. Near death experiencers after they leave their bodies look back on the body with very little attachment or emotion. I also believe the answers to life's most profound and difficult questions lie more in the realm of quantum physics and the holographic nature of the Universe than in spirituality or religion.

[Michael Prescott]

The emotion attached to the episode seems to be the key.

In some cases this seems to be true, such as the story Brian Joseph relates (above) about his little girl.

In my own case, most of my apparent premonitions have involved very trivial things that had little or no emotional significance to me.

[Michael Prescott]

Thanks for sharing your experience, Michael, and please don't hesitate to make more such postings as they occur

For those who are interested, I wrote a couple of essays, "Unusual Occurrences" and "More Unusual Occurrences," which cover other, similar incidents. They can be found here.

[Kameron]

Interesting post, because I've had several dreams that were [seemingly] premonitions.

A few times I recorded the dreams in a notebook only to experience something similar within days or weeks. Like your dental paste dream, my dreams were slightly absurd but seemingly unimportant in their content.

Curiously, one of the dreams happened while I was reading David Bohm's Wholeness and the Implicate Order. I interpreted the dream as an indication that Bohm was spot-on in his argument that science had yet to figure out some fundamental facts about what we call reality.

[Art]

I've had quite a few precognitive dreams. Some about big stuff and some about trivial stuff, but even though trivial, when examined there was an emotional component involved. One time I dreamed about a bowl of big bowl of slithering black eels. The next night there was a program on the History channel about Rome and on this program they talked about one of the Emperors who cut up his enemies and fed them to eels, and on the program they showed a bowl of eels that looked identical to the ones in my dream. Another time I dreamed about a huge beautiful swordfish. About two nights later I was watching the movie "A Perfect Storm" starring George Clooney and they were swordfisherman and in this movie they were catching huge swordfish. The emotion for me would be that when the boat went down all those huge delicious swordfish were lost. I hate waste! I could go on and on.... I dreamed about the bridge collapse on I-40 in Oklahoma about a week before it happened. What I saw in my dream was a boat run into a support under a bridge and in my dream it looked like the bridge blew up. I used to live in East TN about 7 miles from Norris Dam, the first dam built by the Tennessee Valley Authority. In my dream I saw terrorists trying to blow up the dam. I actually called the FBI and told them. I said, "you might think I'm nuts but I've had dreams that have come true before?" The guy I talked to said he didn't think I was nuts. But what was funny was about a week later Norris Dam Park Rangers caught two Egyptian guys at 5:30 am in the morning taking pictures of Norris Dam. Turns out they were both in the country illegally. I often wondered if the FBI gave a heads up to the Rangers to keep an eye out? It happened right after I had dreamed about something similar happening. One time I also dreamed about a China Air Jet crashing in the Straits of Taiwan, and I also dreamed about the last space shuttle disaster about a week before it happened. Okay, you talked me into it. One more and I'll stop. I take naps in the afternoon (I'm retired) and I dreamed that I was on my way up to this tall building to see this beautiful Asian woman; but the weird thing was that I was being chased by an old gay guy - which sort of weirded me out. I woke up wondering why I would dream something so weird? So, about two hours later my wife came home and asked me if I wanted to watch one of the movies that we had bought for 88 cents at a local discount store. I agreed and we ended up watching a movie called "The Yin and Yang of Dr. Go" starring Jeff Bridges when he was young. Well, one of the plots in the movie was exactly the same as my dream! I think I identified with the character because when I was young I looked a lot like Jeff Bridges. It was my connection with Jeff Bridges which made me dream that part of the movie.

[Art]

Free online book:
Precognition and Human Survival
Charles Drayton Thomas

http://www.survivalafterdeath.org.uk/books/thomas/human/contents.htm

[dmduncan]

Similar things happened to me when I was a kid, revolving around movies. I would have waking premonitions about movies that I wanted to see, and the following week or two later that movie would be scheduled on TV. I loved movies (still do) and it happened enough times that it seemed not to be coincidence, and I know I hadn't seen any advertisements.

And it's interesting that you should mention that Dunne book, which I hadn't heard about or read. The past 15 years of my life have been absorbed with creating a theory of time.

Time has been a subject of interest to me since I was 5 or 6 years old when I closed my eyes one night and the entire night passed, literally, in the blink of an eye. I've discovered that others have had similar experiences, usually in zen practitioners, where a series of hours passes instantly. So study of time has become one of the central themes of my life too.

Hmmm. DM Duncan. JW Dunne. Both from the Gaelic, and we both initialize our first and middle names. That's funny.

[Markus Hesse]

>>I would have waking premonitions about movies that I wanted to see, and the following week or two later that movie would be scheduled on TV. I loved movies (still do) and it happened enough times that it seemed not to be coincidence, and I know I hadn't seen any advertisements.<<

Happens to me often, typically features I haven't thought about in 10, 15 years, they suddenly pop into my head and within a day or 2 I stumble upon em while aimlessly channel surfing, it's gotten to the point where I'll actually expect this to happen.

[Markus Hesse]

BTW, sorry to hijack this topic Michael but you and those of us here that like to analyze and critique the materialist mindset might want to pop over to the hitherto indefatigable Raving Atheist's blog, he has apparently found Jesus and is now a Roman Catholic.

I'm not sure if this isn't a prank of some sort but do check out the comments posted by his regular atheist readers, they're turning on him mercilessly with the usual "you're a delusional fool" schtick, they seem to be personally insulted by the very idea of such a thing, haha.

I suspect this might simply be a test by the blogger to expose people's true colors, in any case, a poignant example of the intolerant and unyielding fundamentalist mindset many a theist/atheist have, case-in-point.

[sonic]

I've had similar experiences- sometimes the dreams are well ahead of the events (years)
If we are goal oriented beings, then it would seem some of our attention is always in the future--
Perhaps these dreams are just very good guesses...

[Paul Welsh]

LOL of all the religions to convert to - that is the funniest thing I have seen all week.

[Larry Boy]

I sometimes wake up "knowing" I will hear a sound of some kind, only to hear just that sound seconds later. I don't remember what kind of sounds they are, only that I at the time think they're unexpected.

[someone]

I don't think the dental paste dream is more than a mere coincidence.
Although, I have to admit that I dreamed nearly the same tonight (before reading this thread ;-)

[Ulysses]

Has someone looked at the premonition experiments with Chris Robinson, performed by Gary Schwartz as described in his book The G.O.D. Experiments? Some extracts of the book can be found here:
http://www.enotalone.com/article/5436.html

[Brian Joseph]

Another strange dream experience that I had was waking up one morning and remembering a dream that seemed quite strange. In the dream there was a line up of people of all different nationalities waiting to use a water fountain. I was on line next to my grandfather and when we got to the fountain I held the knob for him as he drank. He looked at me and smiled. "It taste good."

I laid in bed and pondered the significance of the dream. My grandfather was Cape Verdean. He had come to the U.S. when he was a young teen. His skin was African dark. My grandmother was of European descent. Her skin was as white as skin can be. I had cousins who were of every skin shade. When I was a young child I saw no significance to it. I saw it the same as people having different colored hair.

I laid in bed thinking about the dream and drifted back to the time I had first found out that there was prejudice based on skin color. Grandpa was watching television and I was playing with a toy fire engine and making siren sounds. Grandpa asked me to be quiet and I lowered down a bit but not enough. Grandpa yelled loud which was something he never did. "I want to hear this!" I looked at the television. There was a man talking. He looked a bit like grandpa. "I have a dream......" Grandpa raised the volume and was transfixed in front of the television.

Afterwards grandpa said he was sorry for yelling and told me that the man was trying to change things. He explained prejudice as best as he could to a 5 year old. We lived in New York. Grandpa was a merchant seaman. He showed me a map and told me that when his ship stopped in this place he couldn't use the same bathrooms,eat at the same places, or drink from the same water fountains as people who had the same color skin as me.

Grandpa was always one for telling stories. This sounded like some crazy made up thing. I went to the kitchen and told grandma what he had told me. She yelled at him saying thatI was too young to hear that kind of stuff. He disagreed. I was totally floored. Grandpa was the smartest person that I knew. He spoke many languages fluently and knew where every place in the world was and there were places where I would be allowed to do things that he couldn't.

When I had the dream almost 40 years had passed since my introduction to skin color prejudice. Later that day when I was at work I received a phone call. Grandpa had died in his sleep the night before. He had been in good general health and it was completely unexpected.

[Darryn in London]

On the morning of 13th October this year I had a dream in which the message "Dow [Jones Industrial Average] closes up 880 points" came through. I had at that point been watching the markets for only about 2 months and so that morning I looked into the likelihood of such a thing occurring, finding it to be exceedingly unlikely. The biggest point move upwards until that time was 499 points which occurred in March 2000. So I told my boyfriend about the dream and went off to work. Later that day I caught sight of the news at a food joint I was and it turned out the Dow was up about 536 points at that time. I was surprised but mildly disappointed because I had the feeling that by that time of the day it couldn't go any higher and so my dream would be for nought.

Anyway, when I got home, it turned out the thing had shot up in the last hour and closed up a record 936 points, which remains the record point move and 5th largest % move in history -- the four larger % moves occurred in 1933 and earlier.

Now, I don't know whether this counts as premonitory or not. Of course it would have been truly remarkable had it been spot on, but to be 56 points wrong is still to be wrong. Had I dreamed "Dow up a lot today" the dream would have been more precise though much less specific.

[Art]

Several years ago I had a dream where I was in like this little house and there was this guy showing me these two huge fish. They looked like bass to me. I was really impressed. Well a couple of years later my next door neighbor called me and asked me if I wanted some fish. I said "sure" since I'm a real chooch and I love to eat. So went next door and my neighbor had been fishing for Striped Bass on Douglas Lake in East Tennessee. They really knew how to catch them and they had caught a bunch. These fish were huge! Like about 15-20 lbs a piece. Well, my neighbor gave me two of them and they looked exactly like the two bass I had seen in my dream two years before! I dreamed about two big fish before I ever saw or acquired them. I didn't make this up. I swear that this is true and it really happened to me. In this case the emotion attached to it is that I really like to eat and food is very important to me, and yes I'm fat.

[http://www.geocities.com/chs4o8pt/natural_mediumship.html]

You don't have to be asleep and dreaming to have precognitive visions. As you are falling asleep watch the activity of your mind and you might notice when you enter the hypnogogic state and there is a lot of vivid imagry flashing through your mind. These images can be precognitive or other types of psychic perceptions including spirit communication. If you can get into that state through relaxation exercises you can become psychically receptive at will. If you ask questions in prayer, or of your spirit guides in that state, you will be astounded at the answers you get. Some answers may be literal, others may be interpreted symbolicly.

[Michael M]

I've had quite a few premonitions. One of them that stood out was about 5 years ago when I was working as a teller in a bank. The night before, I had a dream that in the parking lot next to our bank a car drove over the curb and crashed into the parking structure. When I went to check it out, I saw a person on the ground covered in blood but their was no car. The very next day, probably 8-10 hours later. Me and my co-workers heard the sound of helicopters circuling our area. It turns out that somebody was killed (or seriously injured due to violence) in the parking lot next to us.

Another one was when I dreamt that a house was on fire and my 2 cousins, aunt and uncle were inside yet they were unharmed and my cousins appeared 10-15 years younger. Weeks later at a family gathering, my aunt told me that my cousins dorm caught on fire, thankfully no-one was hurt.

[Art]

If we didn't "tune out" the future we would have a difficult time focusing on the present. I think the future "breaks through" once in a while and it's got something to do with the emotion that is attached to the experience. The emotion may be little more than realizing that we are seeing a little bit of the future, and it weirds us out a little bit, challenging what we believe about reality.

If my theories about "why we are here" are correct - the lessons the soul is learning may not be so much about making choices as just having the experience itself. Experiencing time and space, separation, emotion, tastes, smells, flavors, sounds, sights, etc. Teaching the soul what it's like to be alive, to be inside a body, what it's like be separate, etc. A lot of life has to be experienced to be truly understood. Without this kind of reference point, it would be difficult on the other side to conjure up our own reality and enjoy it. We might be relegated to living in a void of nothingness, an empty void. If heaven is a place where thoughts are things and consciousness creates reality, the first step may be to learn what it's like to be alive.

[Vitor]

Mr. Prescott,
do you ever heard about Malcolm Bessent? He was the best precognitive psychic studied, unfortunely he died in 1997.

Read the article "Precognition and real-time ESP performance in a computer task with an exceptional subject", Journal of Parapsychology, 51, 291-320(1987). It's very good.

Happy New Year!

[Brian Joseph]

Emotion seems to also be connected to other types of 'paranormal' cognition. One night about 6 years ago I had some serious pains in my chest. At first I thought that it was indigestion which I rarely ever experience. Then I thought that I might be having a heart attack. My wife suggested that maybe she should take me to the hospital. I said I wanted to wait a bit. I laid down on the couch to relax, a bit worried. I drifted off to sleep for a few minutes to be awoken by the phone ringing. The pain had stopped. My wife answered the phone. It was her mother. My mom had just been rushed to the hospital, an apparent heart attack. She died a couple of hours later. The cause of death was heart failure.

[artie]

As for movies I had a similar experience a couple of years ago. When the movie 'girl interrupted' came out I wanted to get the book so i went to the bookstore but thought the book was too expensive and didnt buy it. Years later I was helping a friend clear out his storage space and the book 'girl interrupted' was lying on the floor so I snatched it up and it took it home. That night I was watching the daily show and they had this segment and called it boy interrupted. The next morning I was in the supermarket and they were playing the song 'downtown' by petula clark which was featured in the movie.