Are we capable of premonition?
Published: 10 November 2009
Author: Kathryn Pryde
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[ 3 ] Comments
Author Dr Dossey concludes that we are all capable of premonition
Examining both anecdotal and empirical evidence, bestselling author Dr Larry Dossey assesses the human capacity for precognition - seeing the future - in his new book The Power of Premonitions. Exploring and collating a wide range of evidence, from memories of the 1966 Aberfan colliery disaster to the scientific experiments of researcher Dean Radin, Dr Dossey concludes that we are all capable of premonition.
Parameters for premonitions
As well as considering the available data, Dr Dossey also investigates the elements that seem to influence the experience of precognition, citing factors including personality and temperament, and the significance of belief in one’s ability to see into the future. He also suggests parameters for assessing the need for a precognitive experience to be heeded:
- when the incident is accompanied by physical symptoms
- when it is especially intrusive
- when it signifies death
- when it is intensely authentic
Famous premonitions
Perhaps the most famous recorded premonition is that of Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States. He vividly foresaw his own death in a dream during which he attended his own mourning and in which he was (accurately) advised that an assassin had caused his demise. Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) is also recorded as having accurately predicted that he would pass away when Halley’s Comet was seen in the sky as it was on the day of his birth.
Paranormal or normal?
Although the popular view of precognitive abilities is that they must be paranormal in nature, Dr Dossey asserts that consciousness - from which premonitions originate - is a non-local or infinite phenomenon; something which is omnipresent and not constrained by linear notions of time. Thus we can tap into knowledge of events that have not yet occurred and experience premonitions.
Premonition, Dr Dossey maintains, is not a function of instinct or the way in which the brain processes background data. As he told Sideways News: “Certainly the brain can process subtle, sensory information instinctively and reflexively. But precognition is not like that. It is not inferred. It involves the ability to know future happenings in the complete absence of subtle cues or sensations.”
Scepticism
Sceptics deny that there is a paranormal element to precognition or that it is even a genuine phenomenon. A major objection to the existence of true presentiment is based in statistics: given that there are billions of people alive at any given moment, it is actually likely (statistically-speaking) that a handful of them will be thinking or dreaming about something that later comes to pass. Selective memory - whereby people tend to remember events that are supportive of their point of view, while forgetting things that contradict it - can also operate to alter the way in which simple coincidences are perceived as premonitions.
Critics of Dr Dossey’s work insist that it is flawed by his reliance on anecdotal, rather than scientific, evidence. And, whilst the concept of a non-local flow of time has merit, the idea that we can tap into time using only our minds has been rebutted by Michio Kaku, renowned physicist and author of Physics of the Impossible, who states that the energy required to traverse time is comparable to that of "an exploding star".
SIDEWAYS News for fresh perspectives
Comments
Having read The Conscious Universe, By Dean Radin, Psychic Discoveries , Parapsychology and the Unconscious, Mind Reach, and Joseph McMonteagle’s Remote Viewing Secrets, (all with scientifically based studies on psi) to name a few, I can confidently say that there is plenty of valid research being done on paranormal experiences, also known as psi.
Although many scientists may “believe in” psi events, it is scientific nature to seek objective data and, as always, to be skeptical of even their own results.
Therefore as work of this nature is done and published, it is always met with criticism- that does not in anyway de-value the nature of the work being conducted.
Hats off to Dr. Dossey for his continued vision- I look forward to reading his latest book!
PS. Here is a point to ponder, however: Why is it that we can see the catastrophes so much clearer than the celebrations of life, so to speak? Why is it that we sense the agony and not the ecstasy so often; is it because that is what we have co-created thus far? You know what goes around comes around; we must become the peace we seek before we can see it?
As a researcher and author of Tranceformers: Shamans of the 21st Century, that is in fact a compilation of future earth changes visions for era-2012, I can state unequivocally we can see the future. Indeed, one of my near-death experiencers, Ned Dougherty, in New York City, saw the terror events of 9/11/01 in advance and put it in writing months before it happened in great detail including the situtation at the Pentagon. I also know that once we go to war in Afganistan, extremely severe weather and climate change will strike the USA, specically earthquakes and tsunamis on both the East and West coastlines. If interested, see http://www.johnjayharper.com and http://near-death.com/experiences/experts13.html.