Premonitions and Spirituality
Spirituality involves an awareness of being connected with something greater than the individual ego or self. This "something greater" has traditionally been called God, Goddess, Allah, Great Spirit, the Almighty, the Absolute, and many other names. Some consider it as the Universe, or as a sense of infinite order and beauty. Many individuals prefer to attribute no name whatever to it. But whether named or unnamed, the awareness of a connectedness with something greater than the "I" has been a source of strength and meaning for individuals throughout human history.
Individuals often find that their power of sensing and knowing expands as they mature spiritually. These expanded capacities often involve the capacity to know yet-to-be events that lie in the future, as the unbroken stream of prophets, visionaries, seers, and shamans throughout history attests. A modern analog of this ancient ability to know the future is premonitions, sometimes called intuition, gut feelings, or sixth sense.
Premonitions are often regarded as unrelated to spirituality, but there are profound connections. The most obvious involves love, as in the following example.
Amanda, a young mother living in Washington State, awoke one night at 2:30 A.M. from a nightmare. She dreamed that a large chandelier that hung above their baby's bed in the next room fell into the crib and crushed the infant. In the dream, as she and her husband stood amid the wreckage, she saw that a clock on the baby's dresser read 4:35 A.M. The weather in the dream was violent; rain hammered the window and the wind was blowing a gale. The dream was so terrifying she roused her husband and told him about it. He laughed, told her the dream was silly, and urged her to go back to sleep, which he promptly did. But the dream was so frightening that Amanda went to the baby's room and brought the child back to bed with her. She noted that the weather was calm, not stormy as in the dream. Amanda felt foolish -- until around two hours later, when she and her husband were awakened by a loud crash. They dashed into the nursery and found the crib demolished by the chandelier, which had fallen directly into it. Amanda noted that the clock on the dresser read 4:35 A.M. and that the weather had changed. Now there was howling wind and rain. This time, her husband was not laughing.
Amanda's dream was a snapshot of the future -- down to the specific event, the precise time it would happen, and a change in the weather.
Love appears dramatically as a mediator of premonitions in sudden infant death syndrome or SIDS, the abrupt, unexplained death of an apparently healthy baby between one and twelve months of age. Premonitions are a recurring feature in the experiences of SIDS parents. An example is Don, a physician in a large metropolitan area. During the first trimester of his wife's pregnancy, he sensed the happiness his son's birth would bring would not be lasting. A few months before the birth, he would occasionally find himself contemplating a nearby cemetery, where his son would eventually be buried. The day he was born and Don first held him in his arms, he felt, for no obvious reason that the newborn was not supposed to be with them. Beginning around two to three weeks before his death, Don would be awakened from his sleep with thoughts of SIDS. The day before his son died, he heard a voice very similar to his own say repeatedly, "Take a good look. This is the last time you will see him."
Don's apprehensions increased when his wife planned a flight with the baby to visit her parents, who lived in another state. Although they disagreed about whether the baby should go, Don didn't make his fears clear to his wife. As he was driving them to the airport, negative feelings came flooding in. At the airport, walking to security, he heard a clear warning that he'd never see his son again. He knew his baby would die during the trip. While walking back to the parking lot, the voice told him to go back and get his son. Finally the voice softened and stopped, as Don ignored it and kept walking. Early the next morning his wife called, hysterically relating that their son had died. He later would find that his aunt had similar apprehensions about the baby.
Looking back, Don said, "The process has been a shock to me since I knew before-hand this [death] was going to happen. The only thing I didn't know was when and where... I have no idea of its meaning. The only thing I can say is that perhaps if I would have listened to 'my heart' many mishaps could have been prevented... I think people have the ability to perceive things and give it a purposeful meaning which can be used for any future event."
Many of the SIDS parents experienced dreams, visions, or feelings of being in contact with their infants following death. They felt uniformly positive about these experiences, and were left with a sense that their baby was being cared for and was in a better place.
There are other benefits that are profoundly spiritual. Premonitions open us up to each other and to the greater world. As mentioned, they show that we are part of something larger than the individual self, that we are an element in the great "pattern that connects," as ecologist-philosopher Gregory Bateson put it. Premonitions suggest that we are linked with every consciousness that has ever existed, or that will ever exist.
Many outstanding scientists have realized this. The renowned physicist David Bohm said, "Each person enfolds something of the spirit of the other in his consciousness." Nobel physicist Erwin Schrödinger also believed that minds are in some sense united and one. He said, "To divide or multiply consciousness is something meaningless. There is obviously only one alternative, namely the unification of minds or consciousness.... [I]n truth there is only one mind."
By linking minds across space and time, premonitions reveal the oneness of which these scientists -- and many spiritual traditions -- speak. Premonitions therefore imply that we are not isolated individuals, but beings whose consciousness operates outside the present and beyond our physical body. They suggest that in some sense we are nonlocal or infinite in space in time. When we deeply sense this, we may become "transparent to the transcendent," as mythologist Joseph Campbell put it.
Through love, premonitions link human beings across space and time. There is no more fundamental aspect of spirituality than love. Premonitions are a window through which we glimpse our connection not only with one another, but with the Infinite as well.
(This essay is based on The Power of Premonitions: How Knowing the Future Can Shape Our Lives, by Larry Dossey, M.D., published by Dutton/Penguin, 2009)
Loading comments…
Want to reply to a comment? Hint: Click "Reply" at the bottom of the comment; after being approved your comment will appear directly underneath the comment you replied to
I believe some humans have brain wave antennas fined tune to receive these premonitions and it becomes more "heighten" over time with their acceptance of such reception and their faith in God.
I'm an atheist and I experience this phenomenon on occasion, and not in dire situations but just simple random events. How do you explain that?
Give me an example of a simple random event?
Maybe you are really an agnostic? lol
good algorithms?
Perhaps it's not about believing in god, but simply being connected to the intuitive side of your mind. A premonition could be seen as the mind predicting the future intuitively rather than rationally.
Some spiritual practices, such as mediation, quiet the thinking/rational side of the mind and open up the intuitive side. This is probably why the article states that spiritual people are more likely to have premonitions. It's not that they believe in god, but that they are more open to intuitive thought.
Let's go find one and head to the Preakness.
Spirituality does NOT equal religion, though some people can use religion as a spiritual path.
Most of us are imprisoned in a very limited five sense reality. This is a function of both how our senses are organized and how we are conditioned.
For example, sight is our dominant sense, yet we see only objects that emit or are illuminated by light waves we can perceive. Most of us don’t realize that 95% of the estimated mass of the universe is made up of “dark” matter, and that the electromagnetic spectrum (from gamma rays to the longest radio waves) is only 0.005 percent of that dark matter. In addition, visible light is just 1/70 of the entire 0.005 percent electromagnetic spectrum. This means that we “decode” very little of the universe into physical reality…in fact we’re almost, but not quite, blind. And yet the bulk of humanity is taught that what we can perceive is all that is.
Our education system and culture emphasize our left brain abilities, which are rational and concrete, and ignore the truth that we function within a very narrow range of possibilities. Einstein said that “the intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.”
As long as we don't realize we're imprisoned by a very limited notion of reality, there’s little hope we'll be able to transcend the challenges we, and the planet, are facing. I think love is a good place to start.
This is a well-put comment. People are most often attached to beliefs either because they can only vouch for it through proof or because they were told to believe it something, on faith. Neither situation readily allows for the open possibility that could be wrong. See my comment below about Caribbean island inhabitants greeting Columbus below. A classic well-known example of the power of belief.
Beautifully said Sarasvati... Thank you!
"Amanda's dream was a snapshot of the future -- down to the specific event, the precise time it would happen, and a change in the weather"
Could you please present the verifiable evidence for this claim?
I know stuff like this is hard to prove. For me a lot of the time I only realize it after the fact. I'll have a dream and when I wake up I will think nothing of it, but then I end up doing in real life exactly what I experienced in my dream, that's when it hits me.
I'm an atheist so I don't accept any kind of magical or spiritual explanation, but I do consider the possibility that since essentially we are made of energy (e=mc2) there may be way for this to happen withing the realm of scientific possibility. Kind of like gravity. There is no actual scientific proof that gravity exists, yet we know that "the gravitational effect" is real. Maybe the new Hadron Smasher may help us figure this out and in the process shed some light on other inexplicable phenomenon.
Does anybody believe in hanging chandeliers in nurseries with babies sleeping under them?
Carl Gustav Jung ( a genius) made this mistake also, such claims hold no empirical weight or scientific evidence. Such thought processes are clearly aberrations of the human psyche.
Being a "genius" does not preclude one from believing silly things!
Because something does not have scientific or empirical evidence to explain it, does not mean something does not occur.
When Caribbean inhabits first encountered Columbus, they did not see his ships approaching, even though the vessels were in plain view. This is because they had no concept of ship. It didn't register to their psyche.
We have to keep an open mind that we don't know or understand everything, and that while everything *potentially* explicable, not everything WILL be explained.
I have no problem keeping an open mind, my problem with this type of drivel is that they've already come up with an explanation, without bothering to produce ANY kind of factual evidence. They leap from "What holds up the earth? 3 elephants." To "What holds up the elephants? A big turtle." with seemingly little effort.
That was one of the most absurd claims (and there were MANY) from the movie "What the Bleep Do We Know".
They had never seen ships before, so the ships were invisible to them.
Movies like this are dangerous for the extremely gullible.
Let's see, these "Caribbean inhabits" did not have writing, so they have no written records that they didn't see the ships. They didn't speak Portuguese, so they could not tell the sailors that they didn't see them, either.
It's a nice folk tale, but not incredibly verifiable.
It's more plausible that they did, in fact, see the ships visibly, but had a hard time believing what they saw. Just like someone seeing a UFO might express disbelief today
regarding the baby chandelier premo. She probably heard on news that weather would change in early morn and heard sqeaks and cracks coming from chandelier. I allways thought it was impossible to read a clock in a dream; maybe not.
Would it frighten you to know that if you dream in colors it is a dream of warning? - good or bad!
Someone once told me that men only dream in black and white and women dream in color. I never put much stock in that as I am a man and I always dream in color.
spirituality my favorite subject
One of mine as well.
As a novice vooduon, I believe that the human body shelters 92 spirits. Which explains the longevity of the ancients--those who lived up to 200 years old--all because there isa symbiotic relationship between the corporeal body and the spirits. Namely, for the spirits to keep the human vessel, they have the interest or motivation to protect it . Now, when under threat of harm or death, one is alerted by any of these spirits by way of dreams or outright intervention in real time.
Not 91 or maybe 93 spirits? Mine haven't been doing their jobs!
How come they used to protect it for 200 years and now they don't?
My houngan says that for you to live in the hundreds you have to know your head or boss spirit, devote to it, meditate, give thanks, consult, make offerings. He is saying that your head spirit will command/delegate/refer you to the other spirits in your body in whose expertise/area your problem falls. Of course, you have to have your head spirit activated first before such process.
"Through love, premonitions link human beings across space and time...with the Infinite as well."
Yes; linked with the infinitely silly.
Random apocrypha from 'Amanda' and 'Don' don't lend weight to this blatant product placement post (see the acknowledgment at the end of the article that it is based on a book being published this year by the article's writer).
The adult rationalizing a minimally controllable existence with a belief in this linkage nonsense, is as a child explaining night noises with boogeymen and good fortune with that special rock found on last summer's vacation.
Occasional, maybe even frequent, consideration of the validity of this bandwidth abusing hooey seems to occur in otherwise rational adults. It's the background noise of millions of neurons with nothing better to do. But this is the noise that most be people, having a proper respect for the prospect of scorn, keep to themselves.
Making it a lifestyle or a career choice should be an embarrassment to anyone, doctor.
In case my linkage to the rest of humanity isn't clear enough yet: what simple-minded dreck this be.
Amen! (or would that be inappropriate?)
The whole baby under the chandelier story is just patently ridiculous. Why would anyone hang a chandelier in a nursery? Why would anyone place a baby under it? It makes no sense to me.
Of course that's inappropriate and, consequently, I predict some level of suffering to you or those in your vicinity at some unspecified point in the future.
I agree, this seems to be a thinly-disguised plug for an upcoming book - and a cruelly manipulative one, at that. But there is a kernel of truth here, and because you do not acknowledge that, your disdain is easily dismissed and his false claims become even more powerful.
All of the great spiritual leaders point to the concept of a universal, unified consciousness as the source of all life and the true nature of self. None of them say "you can manipulate this to your advantage. Use it to avoid tragedy - or else."
What they do say is that if you cultivate an awareness of this consciousness within you, and understand that this is who you truly are (not your car, your house, your job, your country, your family, your personality, etc.) you can become free from attachment to this world of form and the suffering that our clinging to impermanence creates, and experience profound peace and joy.
They did not need a religious political structure to access this spiritual truth, and neither do we. It is our birthright, ours to accept or reject as we choose. It cannot be found in the future, where we look with hope because we believe it holds our salvation (that never arrives), and with dread because we know it holds the death of all we love, (which always arrives). It is here, now, in this present moment. This is all we ever have and all that ever exists.
Thank you for saying something that makes sense to me.
You should also mention that premonitions and dream realizations appear to come in waves, and there are dry spells that can lead to a sense of confusion and lack of confidence. Then, when they return, it can be harder to trust or even recognize them. Drinking and drugs diminish awareness, and these kinds of inner experiences depend on being able/willing to pay attention. After many years, I have come to the conclusion that these forms of consciousness are natural functions.
This is a very good point. Years ago, I designed and built a dry climate climate greenhouse, which I'd occasionally sleep in. For a certain period of time, I dreamed about another life in the past. One where I was an inventor in northern Europe at the turn of the twentieth century. I only had the dreams while sleeping in the greenhouse. It is possible that the dreams were an subconscious expression of the engineer part of my psyche, however, the dreams were chronological experiences, no symbolism or nonsensical occurrences or characters morphing into other characters. I would always wake up feeling as though I'd experienced something profoundly different than simply a dream. I forgot the dreams until years later, something triggered a memory of them. These premonitions, rather looking back to another time (life, mine? I don't know). I had three younger brothers, a girlfriend who lived in a nearby town - I remember smoking non-filter cigarettes and ascending a flight of wooden stairs to her flat. Everything was realistic, detailed and had chronological order to it.
I'm skeptical of these types of after the fact claims. And many can be attributed to subconscious perceptions that we're not aware of. But some still are not completely explained. I just don't attribute a "spiritual actor" or intelligence to them just yet. Science is growing by leaps and bounds every day. Hunters in Africa decades ago, used to believe that elephants had a "sixth sense" or were telepathic. Many hunters would recite tales of how an elephant with no knowledge of their presence would suddenly turn and look for them even though they were down-wind. It wasn't until recently that researchers discovered that elephants can communicate over long distances with low frequency sounds that humans can't detect. An elephant that could see the hunter would warn the others, but not in a way that the hunter could perceive. Nothing spiritual or "psychic" about it. If there are ways to "look" into the future or perceive something you're not around and shouldn't know, they will turn out to be completely explainable with scientific fact some day.
You comment, while largely correct to me, relays that you believe that psychic phenomena is not real. According to your own statement, perhaps it that you don't understand that phenomena has a not-yet understood scientific explanation.
Well, I guess you could label it psychic if you want, at least until it's understood. My point is, that in the elephants case, it was labeled psychic until it was shown to be sound waves. What label you apply doesn't really matter, it will still be logically explainable some day.
Science has already proven that time is a dimension. You have a 'probable future', and if you can look into your probable future, you could have a 'premonition'. We live in a probability system, also a scientific proof.
Think of time as being more like space -- a distance stretching out.
Science has also proven that the observer affects the experiment. This has been proven at the sub-atomic level. Think about what that might mean. The power is within the human?
So, if you REALLY understood the known science, you might find that miracles like 'premonitions' are in fact an everyday occurrence. The very fabric of the time/space dimension we live in makes for amazing miracles and 'supernatural' events.
The fallacy is the need for a "scientitific" explanation before anything can be valid. Before microscopes were invented, it was considered impossible that tiny objects which would not be seen by the naked eye, could transmit diseases. It still happened, but scientists denied it because they could not see or measure it. The point being, just because science cannot measure something, does not mean it cannot exist. "Modern" western medicine cannot measure chi, but it is the basis of all Chinese medicine and there is no denying that it works. It just that western medicine cannot explain why it works. Does that make the 5000 yo Chinese medicine bunk science?
Great post.
Wrong, I'm denying that it works. Placebo is a powerful effect, too.
I enjoyed this article. People often say, "Everyone's connected? Connected by what?" I'd like to pose the question, "Separated by what?" Scientifically speaking, all things, including human consciousness, are connected by space, time, actions and matter. In fact, quantum physicists have observed that it is impossible to even observe anything without changing it--it's called the Uncertainty Principle. I don't think it's prudent to say that just because something is difficult to explain or happens rarely, it doesn't exist or make sense. Actually, the U.S. government officially recognizes the phenomena of psychokinesis and telepathy.
Whatever our beliefs, we have a responsibility to observe the universe, in all its infinite beauty and violence, with as much clarity as possible. That can only really be done with love and compassion. Cynicism and nihilism are just as faith-based and irrational as the most ardent love of a big white man in the sky wearing a long beard and throwing lightening bolts at sinners.
Remote viewing comes to mind as something that is very intentional and psychically related.
From what I understand of it, we all have the ability and it has been embraced by some operatives within the CIA and Armed Services Intelligence organizations.
Does it really work? I don't know that much about it.
Good post. I didn't know about the official government position on psychokinesis and telepathy. They probably know a lot more than they're willing to tell us.
Great! Last night I had a dream I was diagnosed with cancer at an amusement park...argh.
I was 7 years old. One night in the wee hours of my sleep I awoke hearing someone screaming my name. I awoke and there was a being at the end of my bed. She then commanded me to run to my mother's room right now. I sprang out of bed and ran out of my bedroom into my mother's bedroom where my mother woke up startled just as I passed out on the floor. I was having a very bad Asthma attack.
My mother got me to the hospital emergency room somehow. I apparently died for several minutes during which time I had the classic "near-death" experience. Traveling toward some light where I saw 3 beings standing. The shortest one, seemed to be the same being that was in my bedroom, told me to go back as this wasn't my time. The next thing I knew I heard the emergency room doctor calling my name and I woke up.
I have heard this being's voice several more times during my life. Seemingly where the course of my life has needed direction or re-direction if you will.
Angels are real.
my grandfather, an anesthesiologist, was the patient in a surgery after a bad car wreck and he died three times during the procedure - my RN grandmother held his mouth closed through the entire hours-long operation to prevent him from choking on his tongue. he later related seeing the gates of heaven three times and being told by Peter that 'it wasn't his time'.
i have had two out-of-body experiences - once when sleepwalking at age four, and once when drunk and having smoked three different kinds of pot.
i still consider myself agnostic, and i am not bothered at all by the fact that i simply can't comprehend the forces at work.
On the evening of Dec. 20, 1988, I was walking across my bedroom when a thought popped into my head out of the blue, a thought of a plane crashing.
My next thought was "so what", plane crashes do happen on occasion... they aren't unheard of.
Then I realized the plane didn't just crashing - it dropped of the sky.
That was a little jolt for a few seconds because I realized planes don't just drop out of the sky.
The next day they announced on the news that Pan Am Flight 103 had crashed into Lockerbie, Scotland, killing all on board.
It was determined soon after that a bomb on the plane had blown up, and that 11 people on the ground were also killed when the plane fell.
I'll never forget how fleeting the thought was that I had the night before - it last all of 5 or 10 seconds, and how I would have forgotten about it if there hadn't been a crash that made national news.
How many other passing thoughts and premonitions come and go and are forgotten about?
As many as people can make up.
It would be interesting if this post were sent to a more conservative leaning website.
My guess, you would have overwhelming support from an audience much more
accepting of faith-based concepts. Human imagination intrinsically works to
fill in the gaps of our limited perceptive capabilities. Often these gaps are filled
with attractive, specious fluff. And when this fluff is adorned and sold as fact by an articulate,
charismatic spokesperson- Beck, Limbaugh and Hitler come to mind- abstracts become accepted.
If individuals are led to believe in something greater then themselves they might be willing to give
up their life for such a purpose. If this emotion undulates within a society, wars could be won.
Victorious in war might be a favorable disposition to pass on genes as well as ones propaganda.
Or possibly, I just dreamt this all up last night and it will fall into the 99.99% of the my dreams that do not have an ounce of premonition.
Spirituality has nothing to do with conservatism or liberalism. It just is.
I would argue spiriuality occurs more frequently in conservatives.
Beck, Limbaugh, articulate and charismatic? Really?
How would you explain their popularity, certainly not from logic.
You must be logged in to comment. Log in or connect with
