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origins. We not only see future events; we can choose — to varying degrees, and according to our level of consciousness — which among many possible future events will manifest.
    It's my impression that we are dreaming the future all the time.
    If you are not yet aware you are doing this, consider the times you have had the experience of déjà vu. I have yet to meet someone who has never had that feeling of encountering a person or a place for the first time — in ordinary reality — and knowing you have seen them before. Most often déjà vu is experienced when waking events resemble something we have dreamed. We may have forgotten the dream, but when a physical event catches up with it, recognition stirs from a deep memory bank.
    If you adopt the practice of recording your dreams and comparing the dream data with subsequent events, it won't take long for you to notice some matchups. The incidents you preview in your dreams may be trivial or terrifying, blah or wonderful. They may be events in your own life, or events in the future history of the world.
    In our dreams, we have several kinds of engagement with the future.
    Precognitive Dreams
    Through precognition , we see events and circumstances ahead of time, as they will be played out. A precognitive dream may be literal or symbolic or both. For example, a dream of a tsunami might turn out to be both a preview of a literal disaster and advance notice of an emotional storm that will hit with the force of a tsunami. We may not understand what we have seen in a precognitive dream until a physical event catches up with that dream. It may also be difficult for us to understand what we have seen because we are looking at things from a certain angle, perhaps the perspective of a different person. But with practice, we can learn to recognize markers that a dream relates to future events, and we can then move to clarify and use the dream information.
    Such practice becomes very interesting when our dreams show us possible future events that can be changed for the better. We may call such dreams early advisories ; they may be early warnings or early signals of coming opportunities .
    Early-Warning Dreams
    Some dreams are early warnings of a possible future problem — a crisis at work, the bust-up of a relationship, a health problem, a car accident. We may not want to focus on any of these unpleasant possibilities. But if we are willing to study what an early-warning dream is telling us, we will often find that it is giving us vital information that can help us avoid the problem if we take appropriate action.
    Here's a simple, everyday example: Cara dreamed that a good friend pulled up beside her on the right side of her car and pointed at the front right tire, signaling that there was something wrong. On waking, Cara inspected the passenger side of her car — something she was otherwise unlikely to do — and found that the fairly new right front tire was flat. The dream advisory enabled her to take care of the problem immediately and get on her way safely without a major hassle.
    Sometimes we dream the future for the benefit of another person, or even of a great cause. What will then happen depends on whether we can find an effective way to get the dream information to the person who can best act upon it. What follows is an example of a dream that changed history when it was passed on to the right person.
    The Dream That Saved the First Roman Emperor

Rome may never have had emperors but for a dream that saved the life of Octavian, Julius Caesar's great-nephew. In 42 BCE — in a scene made famous by Shakespeare 's play Julius Caesar — Octavian and Mark Antony commanded legions that were gathered at Philippi, in Macedonia, to avenge Caesar's murder. Arrayed against the army of Octavian and Mark Antony in strong defensive positions were the forces of Brutus and Cassius, the murderers of Caesar who called themselves liberators of Rome. Before the first battle of Philippi,