At 12:20 AM 6/26/08 -0400, Michael Traynor wrote:
And if only you'd posted about these before 9/11, you'd have something, but you didn't and there's no way now to check the extent to which your later knowledge coloured your memory of the dreams. Consider how unreliable eyewitnesses are when it comes to demonstrable events and how suggestible eyewitnesses are and you might understand the skepticism and maybe even apply some of it to your own recollections.
Mike: You are right! If I had posted my dreams on the seven consecutive days, (Sep 4 to Sep 10), before Sep 11, I would have made a much stronger case for something like precognition. However I did not realize the significance of the dreams until after 9-11, when it was too late to post them beforehand. But the point of telling of the dreams now is not to supply proof that will convince skeptics. Probably nothing but personal experience could do that. The point is to tell that I am convinced that at least one of the so-called impossible things considered paranormal does in fact exist. And if precognition does exist, the iron wall of denial has been breached. How many more claims of the paranormal are also true? (BTW, when I say things like this, I feel almost like a traitor to the cause. The skeptics' fight against the flood of irrationality and superstition is difficult enough as it is, even without those like myself going over to the other side.) But I experienced what I experienced, and I know what I experienced because I described the dreams in my dream journal on the mornings after they happened. I know the power of suggestion and wishful thinking. I realize the existence of human credulity and gullibility. If, before I experienced my own dreams, someone else had told me of similar precognitive dreams, I would have said he was either lying or unconsciously adjusting the dream memories to fit the later events, and called it a harmless fantasy. But in my case, I wrote of dreams of crashing planes, horrendous explosions, fire, smoke, and falling buildings on seven cunsecutive days before the event. I have computer files dated before Sep 11 '01 to prove this to myself, but it is still possible to change the dates of computer files, so this is no scientific proof either. (After all, extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.) The main point of all this is that after 9-11, I became very interested in occultism and the paranormal. I read every serious book I could find, and I am still doing so. I still consider most popular stuff like astrology and UFO aliens to be entertaining fantasies. But I found that there is a serious aspect to the paranormal, which I had previously been casting aside as foolish nonsense not worth wasting time on. I now wonder whether skeptics are doing us a service or a dis- service. Are they saving us from drowning in superstition or denying us a realization of greater realities beyond anyone's wildest fantasies. JIM (still skeptical of some things) M.