Precognition is knowledge of things to come that we cannot conceivably know about through ordinary channels. A precognitive dream contains specific data about a future event that is not available to you outside the dream. You receive confirmation of a precognitive dream when an event takes place that corresponds to your dream in specific ways. Here is an example from my own journals:

 I dream of a silly little dog decked out with fake antlers for a Christmas show. The dog runs out on the road and is killed. Later he is magically revived by a bizarre character.

When I woke from this dream, my feelings were neutral. I had been a detached observer. The dream experience had been almost like watching a movie. I had no particular associations with the dream, and barely had time to write it down in my journal before rushing to the airport to catch a plane. I was bound for Denverthat day, but missed my connection and was put on a different flight. When the in-flight movie came on, I looked up at the screen and saw a silly little dog decked out in fake antlers for a Christmas photo-shoot. Later in the movie, the dog runs out on the road and is killed. He is magically revived by a bizarre character – a low-flying angel portrayed by John Travolta in the movie Michael. I realized I had previewed the movie in my dream the night before.

This seems to me to be a quite straightforward example of dream precognition. I had no way of knowing what movie they were going to show on the flight toDenver. I wasn’t even scheduled to be on that plane at the time of my dream. If I had heard of the movie Michael at that time (which is possible, though I don’t remember it) I did not know the plotline and had never considered going to see it. A hardhead skeptic might say that the correspondence between my dream and the waking incident was “coincidence”. I can agree with that statement, as long as we drop the notion that coincidence is “merely” coincidence, as Jung and many others have rightly urged us to do. When coincidences of this kind multiply again and again, we begin to realize that something very interesting is going on.

Let’s look at it this way: If it is possible to dream a coming event as trivial as the in-flight movie on the wrong plane, isn’t it likely that we dream about more important things that lie in our future? From what I have observed and experienced, the answer is clear. We do it all the time. I enjoy the tiny, trivial examples of precognition at work because they demonstrate that this phenomenon is not only entirely natural; it is normal. History is full of examples of big precognitive dreams – Lincoln dreaming his death, Caesar dreaming his way across the Rubicon – but, in the context our own everyday lives, the little dreams are wonderful teachers. When our future dreams center on death and disaster, it is easy to get scared off. We may not want to look at these things, perhaps because we feel powerless to do anything about them. The little dreams show us that psychic dreaming is a gift, not a curse. They teach us to trust our intuition. And when we do that, we learn that if we can see the future, we may be able to change it for the better.