Paranormal dreams

Some people might wonder, "Ok, so most dreams are symbolical representations of my emotional issues with myself or something that happened to me in the past week. But can I not have had a precognition dream?"

Well research has been performed in scietifically controlled environments by Ullman, Krippner and Vaughan regarding telepathic influencing of a dream as well as precognitive dreams. They discussed the results in the book Dream Telepathy. Also you can read the research done in those studies in how much an agent could telepathically influence the dreams of a sleeping test subject, by picking out an image or painting and concentrating on it: Dream Telepathy Experimental and Clinical Findings. Krippner himself relates in an article the findings of their telepathy research, including The Grateful Dead helping to have an audience of 2000 people trying to telepathically send an image to a sleeping subject in the research center for 6 nights in a row: a pilot study in dream telepathy with the grateful dead While there were of course plenty of failures, Child (1985) concluded that the hits were significant enough not to be ascribed to chance, and challenged critics of ESP to find fault in the experiment to ascribe and explain the amount of hits.

Krippner is professor in psychology and has performed plenty of studies regarding dreams, hypnosis and trance in tests aimed to make scientific findings on these. And according to him there are

• collective dreams

 Two persons report having had the same or similar dream on the same night. Krippner cites such a report about 2 people having dreamt about a hotel lobby with unique pillars.

• telepathic dreams

Whereby people send information telepathically to the dreamer. Note however, that in the experiments described above, the dreaming subject might have dreamed of elements corresponding to the image telephatically sent to the, they were incorporated symbolically in the dreams just like other sensory input is when dreaming. They did not become the subject of the dream, just part of the symbols used.

• clairvoyant dreams - perceiving distant events

• precognitive dreams 

Meaning providing information about an event that has not yet occurred. Research was done along with telepathic dreams at Maimonides Medical Center and it showed it can occur. I myself do not need to be convinced it can occur. While my own anecdotal experience cannot count as scientific data and evidence, I have had two dreams that would fall under this category. The first was a confirmation what I decided to have faith in, the second revealed the impact a certain relationship would have on me, before I even considered the person in question in that light.

However, a precognitive dream does not need to be a clairvoyant dream. Some are coincidental, others are inferential (as is the above personal example) and based on the dreamer putting data together intuitively that result in a succesful prediction of a forthcoming event. Some are self-fulfilling prophecies (and the next personal example can be seen in that way). Then there is of course the possibilty that some reports are pure lies. And the last category is apparently anomalous because at the time there was neither unconscious or conscious information that can explain the accuracy of the prediction.  

Even if a precognitive dream occurs, the upcoming event will be shown in a symbolical story, not literally, and it predicts but a short time ahead. This makes it often very hard to distinguish the precognitive dream from a normal dream. The only way I realized these dreams were precognitive was because I woke up in shock or surprise and instantly consciously understood the dream was precognitive with a certainty I could not reason away. Because it is so hard to distinguish precognition dreams from normal dreams because of both featuring symbolical language, it is therefore hard to avoid the predicted event if you wish it. However, Krippner et. al. report that 69% of people were succesful in preventing the foreseen event.

So, how do you make sure that a dream is not just a wishing-dream or a precognitive dream? Well, you cannot make sure of it in an empirical way unless after reality caught up with the precognitive dream. But Krippner mentions that usually most people had an intuitive hunch when waking up it was not a usual dream, but a precognitive one. My own two anecdotal dreams describe a similar intuitive hunch. I just "knew" as I woke up, whereas otherwise the thought would never even come to mind, nor am I seeking to get more of them. 

My guideline is that if you feel "hope" (including the hope that you may have a precognitive dream that will prove what special powers you have) and "enjoyment" when waking up, then the dream is a wish dream, and not precognitive. If instead you wake up startled with a surety and yet scepticism that this is just crazy, then chances are you might indeed have had a precognition dream.

• past life dreams - which "appear" to have detail events in a past life we have no way of knowing about 
• spiritual dreams - whereby we are visited by spirits, deities or those from the other side 
  

Any evidence of these two is purely anecdotal or non physical and therefore not admissable within scientific conclusions. Alas, what people see as images during regression hypnosis (with often highly suggestive leading questions) and in their dreams is not physical evidence. Sceptics do try to research the details mentioned in such scenes to check them for veracity, without much success at all. For example the search for Briday Murphy: www.straightdope.com Certainly past life experiences in dreams lack verifiable details, or at the most suggestive. Eventually past life experiences in such cases often rely solely on the credibility of the person who believes they experienced a previous life.

So far the only person who researched reincarnation cases without regressive hypnosis, has been Dr. Stephenson. He studied the cases of children between two and four who claimed they remembered their past lives. He tried to verify the details, including mole marks on the newborn as leftovers of damage done to the body of the supposed previous life. Stephenson stipulated that his study did not provide evidence of reincarnation, but at least was suggestive of it. His work got published in peer reviewed journals. Carl Sagan, a renowned atheist and astronomer, agreed that Stephenson's work is a scientifically enough valid research to lay the foundation to study it more. Meanwhile philosopher Paul Edwards who peer reviewed Stephenson's research called it anecdotal and biased in the sense that most of Stephenson's study cases come from cultures in Asia where reincarnation is generally believed .


Even, from a philosophical point of view, if we do have past lives they are irrelevant to the present life. Past life dreams and supernatural dreams then ought to be treated just like any other dream: conveying a symbolical message on how to solve an issue with yourself or a recent event in your life that had an emotional impact on you. This is furthermore supported by the fact that even scientifically researched and pilot tested clairvoyant, precognitive and telephathic dreams remain to be represented symbolically in dreams. As we have seen there are neurological reasons for it. When we dream the centers that correlate to a coherent real world and language with which to identify real world characters, objects and environment - whether from the past, present or future - are turned off.

While there is no evidence, nor even grounds to believe either dreams to be truthful about past lives and the supernatural, that does not mean they are not useful. They can indeed help someone to solve a present, real life issue, and very soothing and pelasing. While there are no rational reasons to believe, there is every bit of reason to enjoy them (that is if they were enjoable).

• out-of-body - the sensation of leaving the body and able to see the surroundings and object

These experiences often are very much comparable to Near Death Experiences. Work has been done to substantiate that the phenomenon occurs, but little is known of how it works. Is it a true separation? Or another form of telephatic experience? Krippner reports it occurrs in all cultures. La Berge indicates it occurs at sleep onset. A theory has tried to explain it as becoming fully conscious, and yet still be sleep paralized, and so create an out of body experience. However,  it does not explain labaratory reports where a subject perceived objects while in this state, while he could never see the target from the location of his physical body. 

source: science of dreaming
further reading:
Extraordinary dreams and how to work with them