I used to do very well in high school exams. One of the reasons was that I frequently previewed the exam questions in my dreams. When I mentioned this at a talk to the Bermuda Rotary some years ago, a former minister of education in the island government stood up and announced, in a fine British accent, “I just want to confirm the statement by Mr Moss that we can dream examination questions ahead of time. I used to do this too.”
My friend Wanda Burch reports that in Persepolis 2, the second of Marjane Satrapi’s graphic autobiographies of growing up and surviving in Iran in the time of the ayatollahs, there is a terrific account of succeeding in an exam by a streamlined version of Istikhara (the Muslim technique of praying for dream guidance):
Marjane must pass a special exam in order to go to university. The exam might be on anything and chances of passing are slim, so she asks God for a dream. God appears in her dream and tells her the name of the philosopher and the specific book that will be the theme of the essay she’ll be required to write. She calls her mother and asks her to also say prayers before bed for her. She walks into the exam room and the examiner presents her the name of the philosopher and the book; they are each the ones from her dream. She beams – and she aces the exam with the highest marks given.
I don’t recall bringing God into my efforts to preview exam questions in high school. Which doesn’t mean that a larger power did not come into play – at the very least the dream self that is a time traveler and can scout out the future before we get there.
Read Previous Post
