I honestly believe this to be a possible/partial explaination for the phenomenon known as “deja vu”. I heard a caller to the Art Bell (um, Coast to Coast AM, actually) show suggest this and it immediately hit me as true.
I’ve had precognitive dreams all my life, most of them mundane, and of the sort I didn’t recall until the event happened (walking down a street and seeing a particular scene like a bird flying by or someone walking a dog in front of me or bending over at the water fountain at school to get a drink, a snatch of conversation) and I often think, if someone didn’t recall their dream, they might have this really weird sensation of “I’ve experienced this before” but not be able to place why or how. Most of the time, I DO recall the dream as the “real life” event occurs, and think, wow, I dreamed this last night or the other night or last week.
FTR, I’ve experienced deja vu a few times, and it is one of the weirdest, most unnerving sensations I’ve ever encountered! It is NOT, as some seem to think, some vague feeling of having been somewhere or seen someone before, but the sensation of having lived the EXACT MOMENTS before, of having a memory of them but one that is only forming as they occur (again). You feel as if you are only watching each instant unfold as you already recall it doing. It is freaky, man!
But I wonder if those few times I experienced it were the few in which I did not, for some reason, consciously recall a precognitive dream I’d had of those moments. Might explain it.
Some other precognitive dreams I’ve had were more “serious”. One I had when I was 8 mths pregnant with my 1st child involved my husband. I dreamed he passed out and a “Dr” figure knelt down over him and I knelt down on the opposite side of his prone body. In the dream, I was so upset and the gist seemed to be that he’d had a a heart attack.
The next morning, I recalled the dream but put it out of my mind (damn those pg hormones) . A good friend of ours came over for coffee and my husband stood to go get a refill and collapsed/passed out. Fell to the floor and the friend and I assumed the exact positions relative to him that we had in my dream.
We ended up taking him to the ER after he came to, as his color was very bad, where he ended up being held for 3 days after they detected an abnormality in his EKG, eventually diagnosed with Marfans (the genetic condition which contributed to his death 15 yrs later, from severe heart and lung disease), and was sent home with a heart monitor.
I dreamed of being pregnant for 6 mths before I actually conceived my son. Woke up almost screaming half the time, lol, since I was SO not ready for it! But after 7 yrs of marriage, I guess I was as it turned out.
In other dreams, I’ve had “visitations” from the dead, including a neighbor I’d just met 2 days before who was killed in a drive-by shooting. He came to me and begged me to go and see his widow and help her through it and I did. She came over and we talked for a few hours and I never saw her again (as she moved away soon after) but she mentioned that she felt her late husband was around her, and said she’d been awakened twice by the the feel of someone (him, she thought) sitting on the foot of her bed. I don’t doubt it.
Many of my dreams are simply fantasy and/or “a bit of underdone potato”, but some are much more…precognitive, visitations, spiritual messages. They feel different. I can tell.
I recall dreams from my childhood and later. Some are just so vivid you don’t forget. Like the one in which I, at 6 yrs old, flew through the neighborhood and into the branches of a magnolia tree in the yard of a neighbor. The next morning, I tried, in vain, to fly off the ottoman, since I so vividly recalled flying around the living room the night before in my dream. (I’m sure I did :D)
I’ve had many others, very vivid, very meaningful. And which are as easily recalled and important to me as any waking memory. Hell, it’s a third of my LIFE!
I kept a dream journal for a few years. I found it very helpful in both recall and understanding. The only reason I stopped was that I found myself spending so much time writing every morning that it became an issue…and the more I wrote, the more I recalled. For those seeking to remember more, try this. Even with an alarm (which I frequently used) just take a few moments to THINK after you wake and shut off the alarm, what did I just do? What did I dream? Where WAS I just a moment ago/last night? Then wait and relax, it will come to you. Allowing yourself this bit of extra time and focus is crucial. If you jump right up and go on with the day you are likely to forgot it all and be one of those who says, “I never dream” or “I can never remember my dreams”. BS. We ALL dream and we can ALL remember them.
I found that writing it down helped me see aspects I would have otherwise mised (even recalling the dream, not to mention the dreams I would not have recalled had I not trained myself to recall them).
One example: I had this long dream/series of dreams involving all sorts of things. It was only after I awoke and began recording the events did I realize that the series of dreams made up the spectrum. As in the first contained something stressing the color RED, the next the color ORANGE, then YELLOW, then VIOLET, then GREEN, then BLUE.
I noticed immediately that the colors were out of their natural order, something I never would have noticed had I not taken the time to write it all down. I interpreted it as a message that my priorities/energies were out of order, and that was true for me at the time.
Yes, I dream in color. Yes I have lucid dreams sometimes.
Dreams ROCK! 
