Today, I want to focus on precognition - being able to see into the future, being able to predict events that have not yet happened. Generally, I am sceptical of people advertising such powers, but I sense that on some small level they do exist.
I see it this way: no one, but no one, in late summer 2019 was predicting a pandemic. No budget planner, no strategic forecaster had taken into their financial models or assumptions the fact that one would break out. By mid-autumn there was a possibility - especially since the first rumours were beginning to emerge from Wuhan in November of that year. By the end of January 2020, however, the probability of a pandemic was being taken seriously by governments and business. And by some astrologers who are now pointing out how prescient they were to predict a pandemic in January 2020. I would have been more impressed had they said that three months earlier.
Here, on the micro-scale is a little test. The time - 13:26 today, I'm in my kitchen clearing up after lunch, and happen to glance up through the window at the snowy scene in my garden and forest beyond. Unbidden, into my consciousness intrudes the following thought: "This is the last snow that will settle this winter." I check my phone weather app. Snow is forecast for Saturday night to Sunday morning, and from Sunday night to Monday morning; it is meant to be -2C on both nights. We shall see whether my pure intuition - perhaps guided by 25 winters' worth of experience in Poland - is right or wrong.
On the macro-scale, one intuition I recall from May 1979; it was General Election day. An intuitive moment flashed through me, again unbidden: "If the Tories win today, they will be in power for ages". They did and they were, winning four general elections and remaining in power for 13 years. Yet I cannot say that as a 21-year-old who did not follow party politics I had any kind of intellectual basis on which to have made that prediction - it was pure intuition, not the result of calculation.
One macro-scale intuition to test. When Putin launched the invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, I was naturally extremely worried, very concerned - yet my intuition told me that when it's all over, a better world will emerge.
These precognitive intuitions need to be felt as being pure, untinged by wishful thinking; they require sensitivity to receive, recognise and interpret. They cannot be called for or sought out - they come unbidden.
We humans live in a four-dimensional world; three spatial dimensions plus one temporal dimension. I've posited this before, but imagine a five-dimensional world where the three spatial dimensions are augmented by two dimensions of time rather than the one. Time can run left or right, as well as forward. While still a one-way arrow moving from past to present, it could loop around and come back on itself. Now imagine three temporal dimensions, where the arrow of time can move forward, left or right, and up or down. Again, with the possibility of looping around upon itself. Without having to call on time to run backward.
Extra temporal dimensions, should they exist, would theoretically give us the ability to experience the future from out of our past - a fascinating concept. Physically possible?
Let me now turn to divination - the practice of soothsaying. I turn to Wikipedia: "Divination (from the Latin divinare, 'to foresee, to foretell, to predict, to prophesy') is the attempt to gain insight into a question or situation by way of an occultic, standardised process or ritual. Diviners ascertain how the person asking the question should proceed by reading signs, or directly through alleged interaction with a supernatural agency."
Assume that someone has a gift, even weakly, in a hit-or-miss manner, but still more likely to be right than wrong in most cases. The next question will relate to process or ritual. In the Western world, we are familiar with card readings, palm readings and crystal-ball gazing. Each method has its rules and guidelines, but at the heart of these forms of fortune telling is the diviner. Some are skilled entertainers, able to draw on cues, using intellect and instinct rather than intuition. But I would not dismiss those who genuinely - sincerely - feel an awareness of different manifestations of the future. Those who quietly practice, ideally with no motivation of material gain, but do so for people's good, because they feel they have a gift.
I believe that over time, they can hone their sixth sense, and not only feel what possibilities might happen, but to be able to draw out of the future the better outcome for the person for whom they are divining.
This is all very tentative; it is not a supernatural power that I would claim to have to any significant degree. It is weak, but strong enough for me to recognise from time to time. Practice can improve performance, but I also hold that each successive incarnation of an 'old-soul' consciousness strengthens such skills from one lifetime into the next. I'd like to think that thousands of millennia from now, precognition, telepathy, remote viewing and telekinesis will become well developed in our descendants. Indeed, I intuit so. Prove me wrong!
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