Precognitive dreams

[Hellvor]

I am just here curious as to what others have about this. I have Precognitive dreams but want to know if anyone else has them and if they have been able to know if a dream will be or will not be a Precognitive one. My Precognitive dreams are always 100% accurate. What I mean by this is that regardless if it is a still frame or a few seconds long. When it comes the time that they happen in life, they happen exactly as they did in the dream. It has happened to me like this my entire life, but only tonight I have wondered a lot about it. I am not frightened or worried about anything and that is not what sparked this interest. I am simply curious about it. Just seems weird that somehow I can see an exact moment that has yet to happen. How is it possible? Can it be something we can control (not the dream itself but having a Precognitive dream) can we somehow force ourselves to see the future. What does this say about time and space? Does everything happen randomly or has the future been set and we just live it?

[Venryx]

I know your intention was to ask for general discussion about the topic, rather than get grilled by skeptics... but can you give some examples? The idea is certainly fascinating, but I've never actually seen a large set of clear examples from any given person (which I would expect if the phenomenon were true). It's entirely your choice of course, and if you don't want to derail the main thread you could also use private-messaging. Just thought I'd ask since you mentioned it's happened many times for you. (ie, if there is evidence of the phenomenon, good to get a large batch of it to begin with)

[Hellvor]

No worries, I appreciate your response. Not sure if I took this the correct way but for evidence I have none other than my memory. I do not record my dreams down and see which ones become precognitive or not. For instance today when this occurred. I was looking at specs of a PC component. I had then asked someone about the product while a certain scene of a movie played. Now I did some reading and people say that these kinds of dreams can be produced by sub-conscience or they can be almost made due to what might be happening around you or you might be thinking about. However when I had this dream, I in no way shape or form had any interest or knowledge that I would be looking at computer specs in the future so I don't think this can be a reason why I had the dream. As far as other dreams, I can try to recall them but there has been many of them over the years. I guess now the only thing I could do is record down when I realize this occurs and when I had the dream of the time and place. If I were go to the extreme measure, I could keep a log of what dreams I have (those that I remember the next morning) and describe briefly what happens and date it. Then mark which dreams become precognitive. They often seem to happen roughly 2 months prior the the incident occurring. One of the more "famous" dreams I remember having is about a movie. To be more specific it was of the movies Bad Boys 2. If you have seen it, I had a dream of the scene in the beginning of the movie when the bust a drug deal. I had dreamt the exact scene and specific parts about it but never had seeing it.

[snoop]

Your examples aren't detailed enough for me to be convinced they were actually precognitive, speaking honestly. Usually I take how sure the person is of the fact that their dreams were indeed precognitive to be some measure of their credibility in judgment. Maybe that's not fair to do, but I feel like anybody who isn't willing to even entertain the possibility of being wrong most likely doesn't critically analyze things with an appropriate level of scrutiny or skepticism, especially given the subject matter here. Please don't take offense to that statement, it's just a heuristic approach to dealing with people and obviously employs some amount of generalization--that is to say, it may not be the case with you, necessarily. That being said, usually what the allegedly precognitive dreams people have predict, from what I've seen, tend to be very isolated occurrences. The predicted incidents that happen in real life don't span much more than a single moment in time, the incidents only loosely fit what actually happened in the dream, and/or the incidents themselves are counted as being predicted even when the dreams occurred months or even years before their occurrence (in which case, how is it a prediction rather than chance finally allowing for a coincidence to occur). On top of that, memory is corruptible, especially dream memory. I've found, after verifying with dream journal entries, that I've completely overlayed memories of real-life incidents on top of dreams before, altering some of what happened, who was involved, and the manner it happened in. Despite all that, I was sure that's how those dreams happened until I read the dream journal entries again, and this has happened for dreams no more than a two weeks old before. I find my own memory of dreams so dubious that I tend to doubt everybody's dream memories. This may turn out to just be a bias of mine, but given how lofty dream recall is universally, I really wonder how much of it is simply bias and how much is warranted. Needless to say, I'm highly skeptical of precognitive dreams or precognition in general. I'm not totally opposed to the idea of it happening, but since there is less evidence for it than against it, I don't find it easy to believe.

[JoannaB]

I've thought a couple of times that I had a precognitive dream. One of them I admit though was a bit of a stretch and most likely not precognitive. The other time though I dreamed that I had a job interview during which they asked me a question about breast feeding. Upon waking up I thought that is weird, I have not thought about breastfeeding in years since my boys are long weaned, also since my work has nothing to do with it, how odd that I would connect work and breast feeding. Then I went into the office, and was shocked to find that same morning an email from our HR inviting all employees to log into a "webinar on the benefits of breast feeding." My first reaction was that surely there must have been a previous email on this or a flyer posted in our company kitchen that I had noticed subconsciously, but despite searching for any such prior mention of this webinar, I found no evidence that I could have known in advance this email was coming this morning. I worked at that job for about six years, and as far as I know this was the only time breastfeeding was ever mentioned in an email like that.

[Xaqaria]

No worries, I appreciate your response. Not sure if I took this the correct way but for evidence I have none other than my memory. I do not record my dreams down and see which ones become precognitive or not. Here's the thing; memory can't be trusted, memory of dreams especially. Its too easy to rationalize some feeling (like deja vu) after the fact and say "I dreamed this". If you really believe that you have precognitive dreams you should be writing down every dream that you have. Only when you can think, "I dreamed this" and then actually go to your journal and verify the details to be similar beyond coincidence can you even begin to figure out if your dreams are actually predicting the future.

[JoannaB]

Verifying details beyond coincidence is a very modern science approach, and sure it has merits. Interestingly enough, though, if one leads one's life believing that there are no coincidences, and that every weird detail has meaning, it works surprisingly well, and leads to interesting insights. I recommend trying it sometime.

[oneironautics]

i have had a few precognitive dreams, but usually its about a general feeling, the details in the dream can be quite foggy, for example this was a while ago i dreamt i was walking up a flight of stairs i had never been to it was in a sunny climate, it was a nice dream which 'stuck out' but i sort of forgot it a few months later i went on vacation to some random sunny destination and when i was there had super serious dejuvu it was same flight of stairs and exactly same 'feeling' also a few years before i met my husband i dreamt i got married, i didnt have a bf wasn't even interested in relationships, but nevertheless a few months later i found 'the guy' Anyway i sort of believe in predestiny maybe b4 you were born you planned your life out now your just following out the plan, watching the consequences, alot of tribes around the world used to listen alot more to there dreams and do what happened in them and then they would be able to do better in hunting or whatever :-)

[snoop]

Verifying details beyond coincidence is a very modern science approach, and sure it has merits. Interestingly enough, though, if one leads one's life believing that there are no coincidences, and that every weird detail has meaning, it works surprisingly well, and leads to interesting insights. I recommend trying it sometime. I think doing that while also keeping in the back of your mind that things may actually not be related is entirely possible though. I find myself often thinking of things as not coincidence plenty of times, while at the same acknowledging that it probably actually is. It enables an intellectually honest and skeptical outlook on life while still allowing for personal whimsy and feelings of things being connected in your life that you'd otherwise lose if you simply banished these thoughts altogether. I think when we're speaking about something like this in public on a forum, it warrants having a more scientific outlook. We're talking about whether these things are actually real vs. merely feeling real to you, personally. It's perfectly fine for you to have a personal vs. public opinion on a controversial matter like this. For instance, I've had a few really weird and creepy experiences that concern spirits or ghosts... or otherwise paranormal activity at my friends house. It only ever has occurred there, and these phenomena are beyond rational explanation. Unlike many other paranormal stories where I can think of plenty of reasons why something would happen, I simply can't for these; it simply defies explanation. Despite that however, my opinion on the matter in public and in general is still that paranormal things aren't actually paranormal, and that they can be explained rationally and scientifically.