Future Dreams

At one point in my life, I methodically recorded my dreams every morning. Like Gary Lachman [ FT415:32-38], I recorded a number of striking precognitive dreams, all of them pertaining to insignificant details of my life, and often relating to things seen on minor trips around town. It occurred to me that if humans had any kind of access to psi powers, then evolutionary pressure would certainly have exploited and developed them to the extent possible during the long development of our species. And perhaps this is what happened. During our endless millennia as hunter/ gatherers, any sort of foreknowledge of the day’s events might prove crucial to survival, as it did to the woman in the article whose dream prevented her child’s death by drowning.

I won’t speculate as to how this might happen, but the possibility that precognition might be an evolutionary capacity is a suggestive avenue for research. Strong and reliable precognitive powers might be a clear adaptive advantage, so the fact that evolution has only been able to grant us

weak and unreliable ones could indicate several possibilities. Perhaps the future is only weakly predetermined, or perhaps reliably forecasting it is in some way beyond what our minds can evolve to do. A more sinister – and I think realistic – possibility is that strong, reliable precognition is actually a maladaptive trait, leading to apathy and fatalistic resignation.

By the way, the “round-faced monk” discussed in Lachman’s article was Alexandra DavidNeel’s adopted son Aphur Yongden (1899-1955). I can think of few more remarkable women than her, and recommend her books to all forteans who might share her interest in adventure and the outer limits of human capacities.

Kora Drexler

Turner, Oregon