Free Will Vs. Precognition
Jacob Schwartz
May I be granted the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change,
To change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference.
--Author unknown
The wisdom to know the difference between what we can't change and what we can succinctly summarizes the fate versus free will dilemma. Precognition is the ability to perceive an event before it happens. Some people refer to it as extra sensory perception (ESP) across time into the future. And precognition tests afford some of the best evidence for extra sensory perception, since sensory leakage from a target or object which has not yet been determined seems impossible.
In early studies psychically gifted persons were able to identify the order in a pack of cards before it was shuffled. One of the simplest ways to explain how this ability works, although not why it works, is to assume that all experiences are predetermined. That there is an order to all things in the universe, and that the observer and that which is observed are distinctly different and separate things. Assume that the sequence of cards in a deck still to be shuffled is known in future time. Assume further that all such events are recorded in the perception of something by someone.
Remember that there are two spools of video film or audio tape, one that has recorded or shown what has already happened, and the other spool still to run through the projector or amplifier, containing information yet to be seen in the future. The psychic perceiving what's in the tape yet to be run simply expands her or his perspective to include the entire tape, past and future. In other words they embrace the wholeness of all time and space and become one with it, just like your fingers are part of your body and mind, so future time and knowledge are part of the expanded present, or as some call it The Eternal Now.
While many people reject ESP because it seems to contradict the classical laws of science, precognition is even more difficult to accept because of opposite reasons -- it implies a mechanically predetermined universe.
For example, in the precognitive card sequence studies, one could say that the subject psychokinetically (mind over matter) caused the sequence of cards to conform to the predicted order. Or perhaps the experimenter determined the psychic's prediction and ordered the cards accordingly. In any case, whatever is happening, whether you call it precognition or psychokinesis or telepathy, something beyond the usual information transmission is taking place, and that has led researchers to use the more general term psi to refer to the collective paranormal experience.
Do People Psychically Avoid Accidents?
A study conducted by W.E.Cox and reported in Volume 50 of the Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research implies that people do avoid railroad trains involved in accidents. He compared the number of passengers aboard 28 trains involved in accidents with the number of passengers in the same scheduled trains a week earlier, and trains on the same schedule a few days after the accidents. Significant numbers did avoid the accident-bound trains because there were significant fewer passengers on those trains than compared with passengers taking the same trains over the weeks before and days after. Cox hypothesized that many potential passengers were aware of the oncoming tragedy but not on a conscious level.
Haven't you at times felt an inner voice, or call it a hunch or a gut feeling, not to drive or walk down a certain road only to later learn of an accident or other tragedy on that path. Most of us have some foresight every day of our lives, and we act upon those "vibes" or vibrations all the time, either accepting or rejecting them.
In fact, studies of precognition among corporate executives showed that the more successful executives had higher ESP scores than less successful CEOs. Persons in higher levels of management often have to make major decisions based on a minimum of information in which they must trust their intuition and feelings (referred to as gut feelings, hunches, vibes).
The future has a reality that we can be sensitive to and respond to. But destiny interacts with our freedom of choice. As the Indian Swami Vivekananda said, "Our thoughts, our words, and deeds are the threads of the net which we throw around ourselves."
In other words, what we sow is what we reap. If we want to create happiness in our lives, we must sow the seeds of happiness. Concepts like destiny and precognition imply an unalterable path. Many of us have consulted psychics, astrologers, mediums, sensitives who have seen in their mind's eye, and told us of, events in future time. The clients who receive these descriptions have a choice to accept these descriptions or not, just as a patient can choose to accept the forecast of a health practitioner regarding the effects of diets or smoking upon a bodily illness.
But if you step back a moment, and make the choice of observing yourself making a choice whether to accept or not accept a forecast -- psychic or scientific, the very act of choosing to observe yourself is itself empowering. When you accept the predictions of an expert, such as a successful psychic with a very good reputation recommended by friends, or a scientist based upon years of personal experience and reputation, there are two choices you can make.
First, What are the consequences of the choice I am making? Your inner voice, your consciousness will know the answer to this question. Secondly, Will this choice bring happiness to me and to those around me either now or in the long run? Your inner voice will know the answer to that also. If the answer is yes, go ahead with the choice, if not then don't make the choice.
The Third way to handle karma is to transcend it, transcend fate and free will. After all precognition and free will are simply another polarity, another challenge of opposites not unlike the challenge of male and female, good and bad, right and wrong, fortunate or unfortunate (see sidebar #2). To transcend karma is to become independent of it by confronting it each time removing debt, little by little. Meditation, and being alone and allowing yourself the privacy of quiet introspection is one of the best ways to dive into the Self and discover your debt of service.
From an infinite number of choices available, there is only one choice that will create happiness for you and those around you. And the universe has provided us with a mechanism to measure how correct our choices are. At the moment you make a decision, observe the reactions of your body. Ask your body, If I make this choice of acting as though a precognition or forecast will happen, what happens to be mind and body? If your body feels comfortable, then follow through with the prediction. If you have aches and pains especially in the heart, or with headaches, colds, accidents, an upset stomach, nausea, then the choice is not appropriate.
Many precognitions or forecasts justify the experience of pain by referring to karmic debts. For example, some say you are suffering now because your spirit inhabited a body in another life bringing pain and suffering to others. And you're paying off a debt of service or guilt by bearing the pain now. But this is also a choice you make, to accept the debt and the method of payment, and the first Law of Karma states that no debt goes unpaid. There is a perfect accounting system in the universe with constant exchanges of energy.
The second Law of Karma is that humans have a choice of transmuting or transforming the karma paid to a more desirable experience. Make the choice of asking yourself, What can I learn from the experience? What message does the universe have for me? and How can this experience be useful to my fellow human beings?
Your body knows the laws of karma.
Medical Prognosis and Free Will
One of the most frequent examples of precognition is an attending physician's prognosis to a patient diagnosed with a terminally ill disease. The physician, using the tests available and the data of life expectancy from previous patients, makes a prediction. And it is a statement about experiences in future time. Weather forecasters do the same thing. Although based on reason and logic rather than intuition, the prognosis does represent a prediction about the future. And sometimes it is true, while other times it is not. Let's say the physician predicts (and clearly sees the outcome in their mind at the time of the forecast) the patient has three months to live. And, as so often happens, the patient survives well beyond the predicted death date. The physicians prognosis is incorrect, just as weather forecaster are also often incorrect.
Yes, we can change expectation and predictions, whether by psychics or scientists.
Can we change the event that we see, or that someone else sees for us? That is the question. Let me answer that by describing a situation in one of the psychic skills classes that I teach.
A woman in the class asked a very perplexing question. She would have a similar dream night after night. And in the dream she saw a three engine airplane with one engine on fire and going down in flames. Two remaining engines were not sufficient to stabilize the aircraft. She is very sensitive and internalized the fear and pain felt by passengers and crew before the plane impacted the earth killing everyone. And she often awoke suddenly and felt her heart pounding from fear. This experience so terrified her that she was often afraid to go to sleep for fear of re-living the same dream, and being helpless to change anything. How could she have a peaceful night's rest, she asked.
My recommendation was to apply the laws of karma identified above:
First she had to acknowledge that eventually she would go to sleep, but that once she experienced the dream it was very important to be conscious of the choices she had. She had to commit herself to the assumption that she was no longer going to be a helpless victim of a dream which she felt she could not control. She was stronger of character and spirit than to passively observe a tragedy without intervening in some positive way. The important key here was her attitude toward her own strength. By several examples, she became convinced that thoughts are things, and that positive thoughts can affect a positive outcome.
Her ability to visualize the engine's fire extinguishing itself and the plane leveling off and successfully completing the flight was crucial. She practiced by visualizing all this in the waking state before going to sleep. She asked herself the two basic questions of karma: What are the consequences of my choice? And secondly, will this choice bring fulfillment and happiness to me and those affected by this choice? The consequences of visualizing a successful journey for the airplane relieved her fear. And the choice to see a successful normal journey and landing of the airplane certainly brought her happiness.
Her choice to project her own positive power onto a precognitive tragedy changed her life from that time on. When she visualized the plane completing a normal safe journey she awoke and her heart no longer was pounding in fear. Her body gave her the first clue, a message of comfort.
If there are no Strings Attached, why do we Feel There Are?
What scientists and psychics are beginning to acknowledge more and more is that there can be parallel universes, each one real to the person perceiving it. We just may experience the world the way we do because we choose to experience it that way. The psychic making a prediction about a future reality is describing the reality made clear to her or him. But that is not the only reality. It becomes the reality when someone else accepts the description and acts as though it were the only outcome. But there can be alternative realities which can be visualized, and the more we act on the assumption that an alternate reality is real, the more it is likely to happen. So often psychic counselors advise others simply to act as though the outcome you desire had already happened. For example, the parking space is waiting for you because you visualize it and you agree to take the test of trust by passing up other parking spaces because you "know" the best one is waiting for you. Or you assume the job promotion has been approved and you act the part of the acknowledged leader. And strangely enough, those expectations combined simultaneously with being in the moment and the space you are in have a way of fulfilling themselves.
Here's a parody on a familiar radio emergency alert message that relates to the precognition-free will dilemma: This life is a test. It is only a test. If it were a real life, you would be given instructions on where to go and what to do. But we do have instructions that are already within us. We have a nervous system aware of the energy and information that gives rise to our physical body. We experience this field as thoughts, emotions, memories, instincts, and beliefs. But it's all the same stuff. As an ancient seer once said, "I am that, you are that, all this is that, and that's all there is." Your body is not separate from the universe; there are no sharp edges. The human nervous system is uniquely capable of being aware of different realities. Under hypnosis, for example, we are capable of experiences impossible in the waking state. We can consciously change the energy and information content of the physical body and influence the extended body, whose limits have no measure. And you can cause things to manifest in the extended body: the universe. Precognition is one possible reality; our free will con conjure up infinitely more varieties each capable of being.
SIDEBAR #1 223 words
One of the most famous incidence of this is that of the former editor of Saturday Review Magazine, given three months to live when diagnosed with cancer. Norman Cousins, the editor, was determined not to die, he had too much work that needed to be done and that he wanted to do, too many articles to write and editions to see published. He had a purpose to live out. And he felt the best way to survive was to laugh himself silly. So, he isolated himself in a rural retreat, away from disturbances from the outside world and surrounded himself with the funniest movies he could find, Marx Brothers movies were especially important in his recovery, he later described. When he returned to civilization weeks later, his physicians could not believe the tests. The symptoms of cancer had virtually disappeared. The medical term for a patient recovering by themselves without the use of drugs or surgery and without any known medical explanation is Spontaneous Remission.
If Cousins had accepted the prediction of his impending death, he well may have died. But he had a positive purposeful attitude, and was convinced that his way of thinking could effect the future as much as a medical doctor's expectation. Cousins had his own imagery that saw health, humor, and the shrinking of his cancer into invisibility.
SIDEBAR
Once upon a time, a farmer's son brought home a wild horse to tame and ride. The farmer showed it to a neighbor who said, "What good fortune, acquiring this horse!" To which the farmer replied "Well ... maybe." While taming the animal, the son fell off the horse and broke his leg and rested several months while the leg healed. The farmer's neighbor saw this and said, "How sad your son is injured." To which the farmer replied "Well ... maybe." While his son was bedridden healing the injury, the army marched by on their way to fight a war brought about by a family feud between the king and his brother claiming the throne, and they stopped by the farmer's house expecting to forcefully recruit his son, but seeing the injury, they passed on. "How beneficial that your son escaped the army," said a neighbor. To which the farmer replied "Well, ... maybe." The sons of neighboring farmers were recruited into the army, receiving clothes and shoes, and when the war was over they received a pension. When the farmer's neighbor said that the son was unfortunate not to have served in the army, the farmer replied with his usual "Well, ... maybe." When feuds erupted between the neighbors with their new wealth, hatred and competition replaced friendship and cooperation. How fortunate not to receive the money?" The farmer replied with his usual, "Well, . . . maybe!"