“Precognition” is the scientific name for abilities that have to do with knowing or using information about the future without drawing on information from the five senses, memory, or logic. Premonitions are one of those abilities. A premonition is a feeling or a sense about a future event. So what exactly is precognition?

If every Thursday you get a call from Aunt Millie, then it’s not precognition to feel that she’ll call on a Thursday. If it’s raining, then it’s not precognition to take an umbrella out so that you don’t get wet. If a particular subject in school is difficult for you and you haven’t studied for a test, then a dream that you might fail the test would not be considered precognitive. However, it might be tragically accurate! In addition, there’s always coincidence, which can explain a lot.

To be reasonably convinced that genuine precognition has occurred in your daily life, you need to meet all the following criteria:

• two or more correspondences between the precognition and the event
• a reasonably short delay between the precognition and the event
• no way of predicting or causing the event yourself in the normal course of your daily life, even using your unconscious mind