Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Precognition and Reality

                                                Precognition  and Reality

     Someone has a vision of a bridge collapsing.  Two weeks later the bridge collapses exactly as seen in the vision.  The question is, “When did the bridge really collapse?”  Was it when the person saw it collapse in his vision or when the people on or around the bridge saw it collapse.  The answer is that it didn’t collapse at either one of these times.
     In Einstein’s theory of special relativity he posits two observers linked to two different inertial frames.  By way of analogy, we can understand what is happening with precognition.
     We live on a timeline that we experience as going from the past to the future.  Let’s   call this inertial frame A.  Parallel to this timeline there is another timeline that from our perceptual framework runs from the future to the past.  Let’s call this frame B.  It is an axiom of physics that all events are unique and can only happen once.  However, the same event can be perceived twice, from different inertial frames.  The event, in this case the collapse of the bridge, occurred between these two inertial frames.  (Like the ball being dropped between the observer on the train and the one on the ground.)  The reason the person with the precognitive experience saw the bridge collapse before the people attached to inertial frame A, is because somehow his consciousness managed to travel to inertial frame B.  When he went to inertial Frame B an d saw the bridge collapse, that became a fixed event that could not be prevented.  What is of interest is that because Frame B travels from our future to our past, what is going to cause the bridge to collapse has not yet been determined.  Consequently, we live in a world where effect precedes cause.  The effect is determined but the cause is indeterminate.  This is why precognition is useless in trying to change the future.  The bridge is going to collapse because it has already done so.  What is unknown is why the bridge is going to collapse.  (There are countless reasons why a bridge might collapse; sabotage, stress fractures, accident, etc. etc.) 
     The reason that this can happen is because the universe and its attributes are inherently discontinuous.  We experience time, motion, acceleration, length, height, width etc. as being continuous functions.  In fact, all of these flow not continuously, but in little spurts like the Quanta in Quantum physics.  To give an example, we never really travel at 60 miles per hour. We have measuring instruments that say we are, but what is really happening is that we are going at a speed that is infinitely close to 60 miles per hour.  The velocity of 60mph should be thought of as a limit that we can approach until we get infinitely close to it, but we never quite get there.  The same can be said of all the other things that we perceive as being continuously distributed.  So the question becomes, “why don’t we experience or perceive the discontinuities?”  There are two approaches to answering this question.  One is supplied by Carlos Castaneda in “The Teachings of Don Juan”.  He points out that we experience the world through our sensory organs and the brain then takes their input and provides us with a coherent picture of the world around us.  The amount of time it takes to do this is finite.  Therefore, we are always seeing the world not as it is, but as it was a moment ago.  If the amount of time it takes is equal to the amount of time it takes the universe to recreate itself, we simply would not perceive the discontinuities.  Another approach is to think of a movie.  We all know that there is a gap between each frame, but while we are watching the movie, it is absolutely        imperceptible.  And so, we experience solid objects, special dimensions, velocities, etc. as existing continuously in nature because the discontinuities are so small as to be imperceptible.
     If what I have said is true, then the last question we are left with is, “just how knowable is reality?”  Oddly enough, the UFO literature provides us with an answer to  that question.  As to whether or not we are currently being visited by alien space ships, I am an agnostic.  I do not know.  However, the UFO literature contains some remarkable consistencies.  If true, it indicates that UFOs come from a number of different places and   all show very similar levels of technological development.  This would indicate that the universe is not infinitely knowable.  It would appear that there are limits to how much can be learned about the universe.  (If true, our best sci-fi seems to be based on faulty
premises.  Such shows as Babylon 5 and Stargate are based on the notion that the universe is infinitely knowable.  Since small increments in knowledge can lead to large differences in technology, they give us a large range of technological development.)  My guess is that space travel is possible and that if we ever reach the point where we can do it,  we will find that all advanced societies operate at roughly the same level of technology. 

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