FUTURE NOW

Premonition, precognition, second sight – three labels often applied to the ability to see into the future. This is, infact, one of the most troublesome areas of paranormal research. This is so for two reasons.
The first is the sheer volume of supposed cases – everyone, it seems, has hints of the ability some time in their lives. And second, the apparent impossibility of being able to see the future before it happens.

THE THEORIES

Many exotic theories have been attempted to explain the ability to see the future. Typical is the ‘bow wave’ effect. Here it is argued that, just as a boat leaves a wake from its bow, so, too, with time, sending ripples of a future event back into the past.
Consciousness has often been used to explain premonition. Typical is the idea that we have several states of consciousness, some bigger than others, and witnessing events ahead of the consciousness we already experience.
The problem with such theories is not simply the fact that there is no real science to back them up. Unfortunately, experience of being human places immense stumbling blocks upon accepting the ability as credible.

PROBLEMS, PROBLEMS, EVERYWHERE

The first major stumbling block to accepting an ability to see into the future is ‘free will.’ It is self-evident that we seem to have it. But free will can only be true if the future is an unknown country. If it was mapped out, free will would become an irrelevance.
A similar problem arises with the law of causality. Stated simply, a cause must come before an event. If premonition is to be accepted, then it has also to be accepted that knowledge of an event can come before the cause.
So it seems, at our present level of knowledge, there is nothing in science or experience that allows us to see into the future. But this is not to deny that ‘premonitions’ occur. It simply suggests that whatever is going on has to be tied to the present.

LAWS OF CHANCE

We can, perhaps, answer the problem on many different levels. The first is to understand an important point about paranormal phenomena. We have a habit of tying phenomena to the individual. But often an explanation can come from a wider society.
Consider, in a country such as the United States, chance dictates that there could be upwards of a million nightmares on a particular night. Of these, it is inevitable that some would hold imagery of, say, a particular type of disaster.
If such a disaster happened in the days following such a nightmare, it would be tagged as a premonition, when, in reality, it is nothing more than an inevitability of chance. In a society, such coincidences are bound to happen.

UNCONSCIOUS PERCEPTION

Not all premonitions revolve around major disaster. Some are more personal. Consider when someone dreams, or intuits, an explosion from a gas leak, for instance, the dream waking them and literally saving their life.
To answer such an event, all we need is an understanding of the mind to take in information from the outside world that does not register in consciousness. For instance, the dreamer unconsciously smells the gas, thus providing a dream based on the data.
It is often the case that cases of premonition can be answered in this way. No absolute knowledge of a future event is required. A natural outcome is deduced from unconscious perception of the environment around the experiencer.

ELECTROMAGNETISM

Unconscious perception of the environment can work on other levels. Prior to an earthquake, for instance, it is known that animals can remove themselves from danger. Some people have even claimed to have premonitions of such events, and fled.
It is known that much atmospheric and geo-physical disturbance is preceded by electromagnetic disturbance. Could such changes have an effect on the consciousness of those in the area?
This cannot, yet, be proved. But we do know that electromagnetic bombardment of the brain can change the chemistry of the brain and cause experiences identical to perceived paranormality. An intuition of a coming disaster is not out of the question here.

COLLECTIVE PSYCHE

One final possibility concerning premonition is a little more esoteric. In Paranormal Mind I argued that, seeing we can be reduced to an electrical vibration, the ‘information’ contained in the subatomic universe must pass through the cellular to the person.
This information would be communal rather than individual. And in this way, we could have an answer to clairvoyant abilities. However, what would be the effect of such mind-to-mind contact in the dream state?
Arguably, dreams could merge on a collective level, and just like an internet surfer, likenesses could cause elements of another’s dream to enter yours if you are both dreaming of a similar event or place you are about to go to.

A POSSIBLE FUTURE

The implications of the above are many. Feelings of déjà vu can be an infiltration of someone else’s experience of a place you go on to visit. You could even see the person at the location you dreamt of, the merger placing the person in your dream.
Thoughts upon future action could merge, so it is not impossible for someone to dream of someone else’s intent to commit a crime or other action. Indeed, the possibilities of merger in a collective psyche are endless.
But the important point is this: no matter how esoteric this concept may be, there is no invasion of a definite future. Any of the people involved in the merger could decide not to do what they dreamt, or thought, of doing. And free well, and the law of causality, are left intact.

© Anthony North, May 2007

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