A Scientific Perspective on Precognitive Dreams: Subconscious Forecasting


Precognitive dreams are one of the most fascinating subjects to read about. Some people say that these are dreams sent by God, but Aristotle shot that one down in his On Divination in Sleep. Some people say it's psychic energy, but a lot of that's so poorly understood it's not even worth considering.

My hypothesis is that the subconscious can "forecast" events. The subconscious is a mysterious entity of which we only came to know more about in the late twentieth century. That, and because it happens to a decent number of individuals suggests it may be a function of the subconscious to try to see what's up ahead and give warnings based on what it "calculates."

The "forecasting" hypothesis also is a satisfactory explanation for the varying degrees of accuracy in precognitive dreams. When meteorologists give a forecast of the weather, they don't (well, aren't supposed to) act like what they say *will* happen. They can only make an educated guess based on prior trends. Same could happen with the subconscious. If this hypothesis is true, it would logically follow that children, with less life experience, would have less accurate precognitive dreams than their more experienced adult counterparts.

Therefore, for anyone (including me) willing to test this out, the discovery of the phenomenon of lucid dreaming allows us to induce these "propethetic" dreams! I encourage anyone well-versed in the lucid dreaming skill to give it a shot at least once and see how accurate you get. Tell us your age, the prediction, and its accuracy. There is probably a better way to test this hypothesis, but it escapes me at the moment.

Feel free to offer up your thoughts on this idea.