I
often wake up remembering extremely detailed stories and images from
my dreams. Last night, for example, I woke up remembering a very
vivid and elaborate dream: a story of a rich man with a huge mansion
who had some woman redecorate his mansion in some
astonishingly colorful way.
But
on about 9:00 AM EST on March 7, 2014 I awoke from a dream with the
following strange thought in my mind: 6 Indian women murdered.
I didn't remember any story associated with this dream, and couldn't
recall any images associated with it. All I remembered was a phrase:
6 Indian women murdered.
After
I ate breakfast and turned on my computer, I recorded my dream in a
text file in which I occasionally record dreams I have had. I did a
Google search to see whether there was any news report of six Indian
women having been murdered. I found nothing, so I forgot about the
matter for several days.
A
few months ago I had started recording my dreams because a certain
number of months before the attack on the World Trade Center on
September 11, 2001, I had a dream that the World Trade Center
collapsed. In the dream I was an observer in the World Trade Center,
and the floor gave way. I and everyone else plunged downward as the
whole building collapsed. I then woke up, as I always do whenever I
reach a terrifying or horrifying point in any dream I am having.
I
mentioned to my wife that I had a dream that the World Trade Center
collapsed, but then gave the matter no further thought until the
events of September 11, 2001.
When
I later realized this coincidence, I did a web search to find out how
many Indian people on the jet died. According to this link there
were 6 Indian people who died on the plane – 5 Indian nationals,
and one Indian person from Canada.
If
we assume that Flight 370 was lost because of a deliberate act of
terrorism or because of a suicidal pilot, then there would be a fairly close
match between my dream and the reality. I had dreamed that 6 Indian
people were murdered on the same day that 6 Indian people may well
have been murdered.
But
I didn't quite get things exactly right – because only three of the
Indian people who died were women. But presumably if precognition
occurs, it is a rather hazy thing; so we wouldn't necessarily expect
it to be 100% accurate.
There
has been controversial research suggesting that precognition
(knowledge of the future) actually occurs, most notably the “Feeling the Future” experiment done at Cornell University by Daryl Bem.
Studies have been done on what is called presentiment, which is the
alleged tendency of the human mind and body to start reacting to
phenomena an instant before they occur. A recent meta-analysis
examined 26 studies of presentiment, and concluded that there was a
statistically significant effect that is unexplained (see here for a similar scientific paper).
Some
people think that precognition can occur in dreams. A writer named J.
W. Dunne wrote a book called An Experiment With Time, in which
he claimed that after he started recording his dreams after waking
up, he found that many of them came true.
One
fascinating theory is that when events occur, they create ripples in
some cosmic field, rather like the ripples caused when stones are
dropped in a pond. Such ripples may travel forward in time or
backward in time; and the more significant the event, the larger the
ripple. Somehow
the human mind might be able to pick up some of these ripples coming
from the future. Such a theory could make sense only in a larger
philosophical framework with an enlarged concept of the relation
between the human mind and nature, one that transcended the
reductionist dogmas of naturalistic materialism.
Was
my dream an example of precognition, or was it merely a coincidence?
I have no idea. I
have no proof for the tale I have told here, so you can believe it
occurred as I have described it, or you can believe I am just making
it up.
I
offer my heartfelt condolences to the families of all the people who
lost their lives in Flight 370.
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