ABSTRACT
We have noted a great many remarkable features of our dream life. Among these are our sensitivity to triggering events in our lives and their potential importance (the day residue), the powerful backward scanning mechanism at our disposal that lights up hidden recesses in our memory, and the magnificently appropriate way in which we manage to locate and use images to express the drama we are experiencing. But while all these data are truly remarkable, there is still another rather puzzling fact about our dreams, namely, our ability under certain circumstances to include in them information about events going on in the outside world, now or in the future, about which we could have no knowledge through ordinary channels of communication. I am referring to paranormal dreams and the dreamer’s ability to pick up information telepathically (from someone else’s mind), clair-voyantly (events not in anyone’s mind), and precognitively (events that have not yet happened). (These abilities are 295collectively and popularly referred to as ESP. Researchers in the field often prefer a more neutral designation, the Greek letter “psi,” to include the various forms of ESP and other paranormal effects such as psychokinesis or the influence of mind over matter.)
