In her groundbreaking book on parapsychology, Louisa E. Rhine shares the story of a Colorado man who was recuperating from an operation by spending some time with his grandmother in the country. One night he dreamed that she came in from gathering eggs and showed him one three times as large as usual, and longer in proportion. He mentioned the dream to her at breakfast and they “laughed at the oddities of dreams.” But later that morning, as he says, “She came in with that crazy egg!” [Hidden Channels of the Mind, p.79]
This is an example of a precognitive dream. The dream foreshadowed a future event. However, unlike most precognitive dreams and visions, the portended event was not of great significance. It did not bring very impactful or momentous news.
It is reasonable to ask why the psyche (total personality) would care to predict such a seemingly trivial event. There are a few ways to look at this. One perspective would be that the two events were simply coincidental and bore no meaningful connection to each other. This possibility can’t be definitively denied, but its foundation is very weak. Statistically, an egg of such size is rare. The likelihood of it being collected on the same morning of such a dream would be an improbability of even greater magnitude.
Another explanation for the coincidence of these two events rests upon the concept of synchronicity. A synchronicity is a meaningful but non-causal connection between events occurring around the same time. The unfolding psychological process in any individual is expressed through various channels such as dreams, symptoms, relationships and other outer life events. If an egg is a symbol of new life, or the potential for new life, a large egg would symbolize magnified potential. If the dreamer was at the threshold of important new growth, this may have been symbolized synchronistically in both a dream and outer life. Both events would be symbolically significant yet non-causally related.
A third perspective is that the forewarning of an abnormally large chicken egg was not the primary message of the dream. Rather, the psyche may have orchestrated the rare event as an opportunity to help the man and his grandmother become more conscious of its depth and breadth. In other words, it helped them to see that a part of the personality taps into a knowledge of future (and past) events through non-rational and non-material means.
The brief story mentions that the dreamer and his grandmother “laughed at the oddities of dreams.” This statement might indicate that they found dreams interesting but nonsensical and, therefore, not particularly meaningful. And yet, to receive first-hand experience of the time-transcending and non-rational dimension of the psyche is a significant and meaningful event. Perhaps it is not unlike a big egg that will one day hatch into a deeper understanding of psychic reality.