There are dreams which appear to anticipate a later unexpected event,
which could not reasonably have been inferred from information available
at the time of the dream. About 40% of reported psychic experiences concern
knowing the future in some way.
Premonitions come in the form of dreams, waking
thoughts, waking imagery and sleep onset (hypnagogic) imagery. The most
frequent vehicle is that of the dream.
Premonition dreams have been reported throughout
all recorded human history - they were recorded on cuneiform-script clay
tablets by the ancient Assyrians and Babylonians, and accepted in ancient
Egyptian, Greek and Roman civilizations.
In the bible, several significant dreams were
recorded which offered valuable information at times of crisis, or warned
of future dangers. One such was that of the Pharaoh who dreamed of 7 fat
and 7 thin cattle. Joseph deciphered it as meaning that 7 years of plentiful
harvest would be followed by 7 years of famine. The Pharaoh built up food
stocks and saved the country.
Dr Hearne conducted extensive research into
premonitions after he experienced apparent fore-knowledge of an accident
while travelling on a ferry (See his book Visions of the Future, Thorsons).
He found that people who experience premonitions are mainly female, and
they mostly concern untoward events that will happen to people close to
the 'percipient'.
He categorized different types of premonition
and discovered an interesting sub-group which he labelled the 'media announcement
type'.
This is where the dreamer receives a very realistic communication in
the dream, say from a radio, TV, or newspaper announcement about an event
that has not yet happened. This variety seems to be particularly accurate.
They may be fairly frequent and go unnoticed - the time discrepancy
not usually being appreciated.
Hearne found, with some of his subjects, a
consistent 'latency period', or delay, between the premonition and later
event. Barbara Garwell, for instance, often displayed such a 21-day effect.
Thus, in September 1981, Barbara dreamed of a group of dignitaries in a
Middle East country, at a stadium. A number of soldiers ran up to the rows
of men and sprayed them with automatic gunfire. Twenty-one days later,
on 6th October 1981, President Anwar Sadat of Egypt was assassinated and
several other people killed or injured at an identical event, commemorating
the 1973 Yom Kippur war with Israel.
The big philosophical problem about premonitions
is, of course, that the effect (knowledge of the event) appears to precede
the cause (the event). This is a theoretical impossibility to current conventional
Science, - just as it was thought 'impossible' that the sun did not go
round the earth.
Some of the counter-theories that have been
put forward to explain premonitions are that the events could be inferred,
that it is just chance coincidence or that only good cases are used. More
extremely, telepathy, clairvoyance, or particles travelling faster than
the speed of light have been invoked. Parapsychological experiments in
guessing which card will be shown next, or which light on a panel will
illuminate next, have provided considerable statistical evidence for foreknowledge.
Because of the staggering and consistent amount
of evidence for premonitions, 'Official Science' will in the new millennium
have to change - drastically - in order to accommodate observations that
it has long suppressed or repressed.