THAT DAY

I'm reading Sidarta Ribeiro's The Oracle of Night: the History and Science of Dreams. He's less rigid than most sleep researchers--he concedes dreams are meaningful and can even be predictive--not, of course, because ESP exists, but because the dreaming brain is brilliant at extrapolating from subtle, even subliminal clues.

What do my dreams think of Ribeiro's dream theory--dream as extrapolation?

THAT NIGHT

I dream I'm in a big library, talking with a sleep researcher--Ribeiro, I think--about apparent psychic dreams. I say flatly "I've collected enough specific, unlikely predictions and parallel/shared dreams to disprove both the traditional scientific line that it's chance plus superstition, and your own theory it's logical extrapolation.

"Over the decades, my opinion has gradually changed from 'ESP in some form seems likely or at least something to keep an open mind about...' to 'seems certain'--because my own data set has grown. Yes, dreaming a few crazy images that show up the next day can be explained away as chance or extrapolation. Your theory's plausible for casual dreamers--those who only remember a few dreams.

"But after the thousandth prediction, such theories just wear thin."

And I wake. Dream-theory in my dreams again!

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