New Evidence for Precognitive Dreams

Dr. Paul Kalas, 2019 IASD International Conference, Kerkrade, The Netherlands, June 24 2019
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Paul Kalas, Ph.D.
Astronomer & Author
University of California, Berkeley, CA
SETI Institute, Mountain View, CA
kalas@berkeley.edu
About the book:
www.oneironauts.org
www.facebook.com/TheOneironauts/
www.amazon.com/dp/B07DRPF64M
About me:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Kalas
http://astro.berkeley.edu/~kalas
https://www.facebook.com/Prof.PaulKalas/
https://www.instagram.com/paul_kalas/
New Evidence for Precognitive Dreams
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Paul Kalas
• University of Michigan (B.S. Physics & Astronomy)
• University College London (Physics)
• University of Hawaii (Ph.D. Astronomy)
• Max-Planck Institute for Astronomy, Heidelberg, Germany
(postdoctoral fellow)
• Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Maryland
(postdoctoral fellow)
• University of California, Berkeley (astronomy faculty) &
SETI Institute (researcher) since the year 2000
My Background

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Discovery of the Exoplanet Fomalhaut b with the
Hubble Space Telescope

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A huge ring of
comet dust
A very bright star called Fomalhaut,
25 light years away, is blocked behind
this black mask
An exoplanet,
Fomalhaut b,
orbiting the star

COULD an astronomer
study the question of
precognitive dreams?
• Yes, scientists are trained and
experienced in using the scientific
method. We are curious about
unanswered questions.
• Astronomers observe and interpret
the nature of the physical universe,
including the properties of space
and time.
5“Webmaster” by Vladimir Kush

SHOULD an astronomer study precognitive dreams?
• No, what a horrible
idea, because that is
not a mainstream
topic, evidence seems
lacking, and prior
consensus knowledge
says it’s impossible.
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And yet…
The physical universe often has surprises that do
not fit neatly into prior knowledge.
The key is to faithfully record observations, make
testable predictions, and communicate with others.

Why WOULD an astronomer be interested in
precognitive dreams.
Because I had one in eighth grade (13 years old):
1981: “The Haycart Dream”
Dream before waking: there is an injured person and another person
asks, “How did you get that?” He answered, “Jumping from a haycart
to a sixteen wheeler.”
A few months later: “I was sitting on the line of the floor of my gym
class, waiting for attendance to be taken. An older girl was sitting to
my left and another older boy came in and sat to her left. He had
injured his knee and there were a lot of scratches and scabs.
The girl asked him, “How did you get that?”
He answered, “Jumping from a haycart to a sixteen wheeler”.
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The Haycart Dream
A Quick Review
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Morpheus (god of dreams)

This experience could be called…
déjà vu
(previously seen)
“…the feeling that a present-day experience is familiar,
as if experienced in an undefined past time.”
(based on Neppe 1983 & Brown 2004)
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2004 Psychology Press
New York
1983 Witwatersrand University Press
Johannesburg

More specifically:
déjà rêvé
(previously dreamed)
Recognizing that a present day experience is a
memory of a past dream
• Same as “precognitive dreaming”
• It is a distinct memory of a past dream, not just a
feeling of an undefined past event
• To recognize means to recall why something is
familiar
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My preference:
the oneironaut phenomenon
(Oh-NEAR-oh-naut)
Oneiro – dream
Naut - traveler
• The phenomenon of perceiving future
information during dreams.
• Dreaming is a VEHICLE for information time travel
• Oneironaut also used to describe lucid dreamers
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This is a natural experience among healthy individuals
442 subjects, age 20–30, 82% female
International Journal of Dream Research Volume 3, No. 1
(2010)

But is the perception of precognition
an illusion of precognition?
• Temporal Lobe Epilepsy
• Flawed memories (e.g., cryptomnesia, mis-identifications,
imagination)
• Pure chance or a guess combined with confirmation bias
• Misinterpretation of normal cognitive processes (during
dreaming) involving planning for the future, anticipation, and
problem-solving.
• Self-fulfilling prophecy
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How does the “Haycart Dream” compare?
• Temporal Lobe Epilepsy: Not me
• Flawed memories: No, the memory is unambiguous. The
dream occurred just before waking and I thought about it
after waking. Also, the dream has a specific sequence of
words—a unique set—like a good computer password
• Pure chance: Highly unlikely, because it’s like guessing a
complex password
• Misinterpretation of normal cognitive processes:
Anticipation is highly unlikely. The boy did not have an injury
in the past, it was a new event, so I would not anticipate his
injury and what he might say about it.
• Self-fulfilling prophecy: does not apply in this case
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Conclusion
• The Haycart Dream is likely to be precognitive, but all
conclusions have uncertainty.
• Uncertainty: Did a third party invent the novel phrase?
– Someone else in that time period invented this unusual phrase.
– I heard or read it, and afterwards dreamed about it, but forgot who
said it (cryptomnesia).
– The other boy also heard it, and said it out loud later.
– It seems like precognition to me.
– If I communicate the story to others, I can test whether or not anyone
else, a third party, uses this phrase.
– Scientific inquiry is a process that takes time, even a lifetime.
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The basics for scientific research
1. Formulate testable ideas.
2. Make observations: what do I see or measure?
3. What does it mean?
4. What should be done next?
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Collecting evidence
• Dream diary
• Déjà rêvé diary
• Comparison, search for other explanations
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332 cases of déjà rêve, average of 37 per year between 2009 and 2016
Source: Paul Kalas (2018) The Oneironauts

The “Fomalhaut Dream”
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Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum
Washington, D.C.
Fomalhaut as
viewed in the
museum

The science back story
these are the first images from the Hubble Space Telescope
November 1, 2004
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Dream log entry from November 11, 1995
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Side-by-side comparison
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1. GEOMETRIC DISPLACEMENT (ring not centered around the star): The star is
“displaced” (offset) to the upper right relative to the geometric center of the belt. The
dream drawing depicts this same displacement direction.
1. THE TILT: The belt in my email is tilted downward to the lower left by approximately
21˚ from horizontal. My drawing also has the ellipse tilted down to the lower left, by
about 27˚.
1. ELLIPSE ASPECT RATIO: In the Hubble image, the ratio of the short side of the
ellipse to the long side is 0.53. In my drawing it is approximately 0.5.
1. THE BRIGHTNESS ASYMMETRY: The Fomalhaut dust ellipse in the Hubble data is
brighter in the lower half than the upper half. My drawing has a single line defining the
lower boundary of the ellipse whereas the upper part is not defined.
1995
2004

Skeptical approach: Are there alternate explanations that do
NOT require information time travel during dreaming?
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1. I don’t have many sketches in my dream log.
2. I haven’t made a huge number of discoveries.
Chance is unlikely

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1. Human knowledge did not have a theoretical
prediction, or an observation, of such an offset.
The theory for an offset was proposed in 1999.
2. The only image of a comet belt in existence in
1995 was around a star called beta Pictoris, which
has a very different appearance than this offset
belt around the star called Fomalhaut.
beta Pictoris in 1995Anticipation is unlikely
Skeptical approach: Are there alternate explanations that do
NOT require information time travel during dreaming?

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1. This sketch from my dream diary, and the subsequent
astronomical discovery, is scientific evidence for
precognition.
2. Alternate explanations do not work.
3. Precognition is a natural phenomenon that will
eventually be quantified and understood much like
physics and chemistry.
Conclusion
This crossed the threshold for convincing me
that precognition exists in nature

1. Formulate testable ideas.
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2525
A puzzling event
evokes
questions to be asked
and tested.
Does precognition
exist?
Satisfactory
evidence that
precognition
exists.

Two more influential precognitive dreams
The Trifid Poster Dream
The Heidelberg Dream
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The Trifid Poster Dream
• If you could see the future,
could you change it?
• Are we merely observers of a
life predestined?
• Or, do we have free will?
One day, when I was in ninth
grade…
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The Trifid Poster Dream: What does it teach?
• The future is NOT predestined.
• Free will exists.
• If you can remember your dream before
the event happens, AND a choice is
available, you can delete an unpleasant
event from your autobiographical
history.
• However, the counterfactual event is still
part of your identity.
• Information can be exchanged between
timelines.
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The Heidelberg Dream
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One day in 2013, I am on my way to a big conference in Heidelberg, Germany
Dream memory: Dining on the Neckar River, at a place with a wood deck and open to the sky.

So now I am LOST. How do I find my friends and dinner?
• The rational path: From prior experience, I know that all the
restaurants are on the Haupstrasse. Walk up the Haupstrasse.
• The irrational path: From my dream, there is a restaurant on the
Neckar River, except I’ve never seen such a place. Walk next to
the river.
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SUCCESS!
I found my
dinner and my
social group
at minimum
cost.

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• Precognition can be used to affirm events that are
desirable but disappearing from your timeline.
• Before I found them, having dinner with my friends
existed as a memory—it had a neural correlate. The
hope of finding them was not a process of the
imagination, but a reconstruction of a memory about a
real future world.
• Hope can derive from perceptions of real future stimuli
The Heidelberg Dream:
What does it teach?
Hope can be about future reality
(not just imagination)

The Heidelberg Dream:
What does it teach?
The nature of instinct
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• The outside world would have seen my decisions and path as
irrational, like animal instincts. However, from my perspective, I
was rational by using information from my dream concerning
unique location cues. How about animals?
• Instinct, in rare but important cases, like avoiding danger or
finding food, is rational decision-making based on future
information. I was not searching for food and friends, I was
returning to food and friends. Animals may also be behaving
rationally when we observe their instincts.
• The trait of precognition evolved via natural selection: it provides
an evolutionary advantage, a benefit at a minimum cost.

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1. Formulate testable ideas

Ensemble of 332 precognitive experiences show
that they are:
• Autobiographical (no Nostradamus).
• Often (73%) involving novel learning experiences.
Hypothesis: the phenomenon emerges from the
biochemistry of learning.
• Comprising approximately 1 – 10 seconds of an
experience.
• Generally useless for predicting the future.

Ensemble of 332 precognitive experiences:
Why are precognitive
dreams generally useless
for predicting the future?
In the Fomalhaut dream of
1995, I called the star beta Pic.
The dream did NOT help me
make the discovery because I
named the wrong star.

Memory & the nature of knowledge
• Implicit memory (e.g., ride a bicycle)
• Explicit memory (consciously recall something)
– Episodic component (as if your senses are recording
devices for video, audio, etc.)
– Semantic component (remembering what things mean,
how they work, what they are called, etc.)
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Example: Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle
Book. The panther Bagheera instructs
the human boy Mogli,
“Go thou down quickly to the men’s
huts in the valley, and take some of the
Red Flower which they grow
there…Get the red flower.”

The problem with information from the future:
You may see/hear/feel it, but you will interpret it using a
library of semantic information from the present and past.
The semantic associations will be incorrect.
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A neuron that
computes
Output:
A new explicit
memory of a dream
Inputs:
New future
experiences
Inputs:
Memories &
knowledge from the
past and present

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1. Formulate testable ideas

Solution: Separate the person from the things they see
(detach the episodic memories from an individual’s semantic knowledge)
• Dreams are personal, involving a mixture of:
A. Memories of past events
B. Imagination about the past, present, and future
C. A few seconds of experiencing some future events
• Create a group of people who will have a common
experience in the future.
• In the present day, record (observe) their dreams—create a
“dreamnet”
• Parsing through the dreamnet data, every individual’s A & B
will be different (like a fingerprint), but the analysis could
isolate the C’s, the common episodic component.
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The dreamnet
records, stores, and
computes

Example: A group of people read the same surprising
story about a plane crash
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Unique elements in
the story:
A rare name in the
news, a Greek person
called “Mavropoulos”
He’s on an unusual trip
in “Africa” for the “Solid
Waste Association”.

The BIG Unanswered Question: How does it happen?
Best guess for a neural correlate: The Hippocampal Formation
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• Déjà rêve often involves new learning
experiences that are compared against
existing memories – a key function of the
hippocampus.
• The sense of space, place, and geometry is
prominent in precognitive dreams – the
hippocampus has “place cells” and the
entorhinal cortex has “grid cells” that
represent location and geometry of the
external world.
• The hippocampus also has “time cells” that
encode and organize the temporal
properties of experience and memory.

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For example: What is the neural correlate of novelty?
A map of where a single grid cell would fire in a room

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For example: What is the neural correlate of novelty?
A map of where a single grid cell would fire in a room

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The neural correlate of novelty provides a testable hypothesis
If you have dreamed of this room before, and it is the first time
you enter it in your autobiographical timeline, then the grid cell
spacings will resemble a familiar room (regular spacing)
instead of a novel room (distorted, expanded spacing).
With precognition Without precognition

Even if we don’t understand the mechanism yet,
how do we make the phenomenon more useful?
• Improve techniques for dream recording.
• Record the dream content directly, without
needing memory recall from the dreamer.
• If the dream is a precognitive dream, then the
recording shows the future at the present time.
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Horikawa et al. (2013) Neural decoding of visual imagery during sleep

Humans will directly observe the future
using the dreamnet and engineer timelines
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Changing the timelines of individuals and
Earth’s history = Engineering Time
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The future plane crash was observed
in dreams, and then the information
is used to delete the disaster from
human history.
The plane crash still exists in one of
the nearly infinite universes (many
worlds), but we have engineered a
new timeline where the plane crash
is counterfactual.
An example of timelines from science fiction (Star Trek)
Timelines
Vulcan deleted
Vulcan OK

Present-day humans go to the museums that recreate past timelines
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Future humans will go to museums that recreate counterfactual timelines
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Summary
• I show the results of collecting new evidence for
precognitive dreams between 1981 and 2016.
• My interpretation is that these are measurements of
information time travel.
• The interpretation is testable by future experiments.
My prediction is that the phenomenon will be
independently verified over the coming decades and
have a significant impact on science and society
over the coming centuries.
• Humans will learn to engineer time.
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Consequences
• Your identity: is not a product of only your present and past experience,
but also includes fragments of information from a future self.
• Human intuition & purpose: are guided by the combination of present,
past, and future experience (the inner voice can be a dream memory of
yourself, in the future.)
• Instincts: humans evolved via the same natural selection as other
organisms. If a trait for precognition was selected for our species, my
hypothesis is that it exists in other species.
• The purpose (or consequence) of sleep and dreaming: To nurture
identity, purpose, intuition, and instincts.
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For more info:
www.oneironauts.org
Email me at
kalas@berkeley.edu

New Evidence for Precognitive Dreams

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