It would be grossly unscientific, unreasonable and censorious not to include
here information about dreams which appear to have a paranormal aspect.
Orthodox Science has more or less dictated that such 'psychic' phenomena
are not permitted to exist, but the stark fact is and always has been that
there are too many cases to ignore.
Anomalies in any area of research indicate
that the current thinking is erroneous in some way. To pretend not to know
of relevant data is a cardinal crime in Science - which should seek to
find the truth, even if all the comfortable concepts of before have to
be irrevocably overthrown.
Telepathic dreams occur when the dreamer seems
to pick up information about an event somewhere while it is happening -
it is as if the dreamer is reading the mind of someone present. Considerable
research was carried out in this field in the last century in England by
the founders of the Society for Psychical Research and reported in Phantasms
of the Living (Gurney, Myers and Podmore, 1886).
Often, the dream would provide unexpected
information about a person - say, that they were ill or in an unusual predicament.
There are many reports of people dreaming of the death of someone at the
precise time it happens.
Dream telepathy has been studied in the sleep
laboratory. In a series of well-designed experiments at the Maimonides
hospital in New York in the 1960s, Ullman and Krippner found evidence
of a telepathic effect happening in the dream state.
What happened was that a 'receiver' was wired
up and woken after each REM period to give an account of any dreams. Each
time the receiver was dreaming, the awake 'sender' tried to influence the
dreams of the subject by concentrating on certain material that had been
selected randomly. Different target material was selected over the several
nights of the experiment. 'Blind' judges later rated the amount of association.
Statistical tests determined the likelihood of telepathy being responsible.
In one study, the sender focused on a specific painting
each night. The target pictures were :
(result)
1 Bedtime by Keene Miss
2 Yellow Rabbi by Chagall Hit
3 The Sacrament of the Last Supper by Dali Hit
4 School of the Dance by Degas Hit
5 Paris Through a Window by Chagall Hit
6 Persistence of Memory by Dali Hit
7 Apples and Oranges by C‚zanne Miss
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