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)
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For the hard-core skeptics out there, I suggest Dean Radin's book "The Conscious Universe," and see if you still believe there is no hard, scientific evidence for precognition (or for that matter telepathy or telekinesis). Skepticism is healthy--but uninformed skepticism is simple debunking.
Thanks for that recommend - I love it when people recommend books.
I've had lot of premonitions, generally about my mother when she was alive and she had them about me. We were so close that we both could tell when the other was in trouble even when we were far apart.
I will read that book - I'd like to know more about what has been going on in my head all these years. It seems to run in my mother's side of the family = all the women were like this - precognitive dreams, premonitions - for some reason there seems to be something in the women in my mother's family.
Not meaning to be flippant, but nearly every woman I've ever known has said the same thing that you just said. I decided a long time ago that either all women are psychic, or all women think they are.
Hard evidence would mean the guy was a billionaire from predicting the stock market or the Kentucky Derby.
That would not be hard evidence either. You would just say the guy was lucky.
O dear. This brings up the single most mysterious thing that ever happened to me. In 1968, I was in the front seat of a car with 4 passengers, on the way to the movies. As we were going around a curve, it suddenly came to me entire that we were going to have a bad wreck.
Here's the weird part - I turned to the driver to warn her and the minute I said her name, she turned to look at me and drove off the road.
We flipped 6 times.
I not only knew it was going to happen - I caused it. It has taken me years to realize that. The only conclusion I can draw is that you can't change what is going to happen, even when you know what is going to happen. I knew - I was in a parallel universe in which I knew every single thing that was going to happen and rather than stop it, I caused it.
"Doctor, doctor; bad things happen when I predict them."
"Well then, don't do that."
What brilliant advice!
Thanks for taking one of the most significant things that ever happened to me and turning it into your own little joke.
Whatever floats your boat, but when something mysterious happens to you, don't tell me about it cause I don't care.
Your conclusion is in direct contrast to the Dr's story about Amanda, who's mother dreamt
she was crushed by a chandelier and subsequently prevented it.
I think we get glimpses of future events all the time. We just don't know how to process or interpret the thoughts into meaningful context, so we have trained our brains to ignore them. In this way, we retain our sanity.
You are correct. Repression is something that is going on all the time. When you are at an airport having a conversation and the intercom is asking for Mr. Jones to come to the courtesy phone you will not even acknowledge it. But if the intercom said BillMeLater to the courtesy phone it would stop you in mid sentence. Repression is something that advertisers use to great affect. Premonitions are like deja vu. It's a echo effect in the brain. A memory loop, if you will, that feels as if it has happened before when it is in fact new. Unfortunately we are not always running on all 8 cylinders.
Or, we embrace our insanity and process our random thoughts as premonitions.
I believe.
I used to have pre cognivitive dreams, they always had disaster, but every single one came true. i could tell if a major earthquake was going to hit between 24-48 hours always. never wrong. it got to the point i had to keep telling myself to shut it down. it became a curse, their was nothing i could do about it. esp when i became pregnant with my son, as soon as i found out i knew this baby wouldnt be born, he was a still birth tho i did everything i could to keep him alive and healthy. now i have no such dreams, and until i can find a way to use them to help people, its just torture and they stay off.
if i could have only used them to help people.
And I get cluster headaches every time a storm is approaching. Nothing supernatural, just barometric pressure.
"Supernatural" is an ambiguous term. There was a time when traveling to the moon, communicating to someone on the other side of the world or even having babies was considered "supernatural".
The thing is, what people don't understand or believe to be fantastical, they label as either "supernatural" or a "belief in the supernatural".
Jung wrote of the collective unconscious. Is that supernatural? Only if you are willing to believe you know everything (which you can't) and you're willing to close your mind to possibilities you think are absurd.
I get a serious headache in the fall and the spring every year as the seasons make big their change. I have also awoken from dreams that were not the usual nonsensical type, but were a fully intelligible, logical chronological story. Those dreams seem different to me. And, finally, I never suppose to know whether another's experiences are true or not, simply based on my own experience.
I had a dream once. In it there was no religion, no heaven or hell, no countries to have wars with each other, everyone living in peace, no individual possessions to foster greed, no one starving, every human sharing the world. It never came true. Guess I don't have any psychic or spiritual ability to see the future.
I was smoking pot and listening to John Lennon before I fell asleep.
Peaceful Anarchy!! That's the way to go, but the human race has not EVOLVED enough yet.
spirituality like religion is adult make believe...it gives people a sense of purpose in an otherwise meaningless struggle to survive .Whatever gets the wretched through their lives.Im sure everyone has at one time entertained the notions of there being something more,and of knowing more than there really is to know.In the end we still have to pay our bills and dreams are nice but in reality we always wake up.Id say spirituality is like religion in another way....it requires faith which only works as long long as your luck lasts.Premonitions that come true are a matter of common sense.
btw-why did the mother leave the crib under the chandelier if she was so sure she 'd had a premonition?Who leaves a crib under a chandelier if they have any doubts about the safety of their supposed beloved infant?
What would have made this a really convincing article is if you had statistics on the numbers of people every week who have dreams that someone near them has died, or have dreams about disasters and then compared that to how many came true.
For years I have had occasional dreams where i witnessed airplane crashes, some quite spectacular (I only say that because they were dreams and no one really died, more like movie scenes). During those years there were also many actual air plane crashes. If one of these dreams coincided more closely with a particular well publicized air crash, I would suddenly turn out to have had a "premonition". Since this coincidence did not occur, I just became one of the probably hundreds of thousands of people who had an airplane crash dream in any particular week.
This reasoning reminds me of a classic con game. Someone makes predictions about a particular stock going up or down and sends them to 80 people, 40 being told its going up, 40 told its going down. After the event the 40 people who got the "correct" tip are sent another similar prediction about a future event, 20 getting one answer, 20 getting the other result. Eventually you end up with 5 people who have miraculously received 4 correct prediciions in a row. Those 5 people now believe in premonitions, because it has been "proven" to them!
Larry is giving profound meaning to Schleiermacher's words, a German theologian and philosopher, who once said: "All religion expresses itself in such an awareness of something outside and beyond nature."
On this note, true religion doesn't require a God, a church, a particular canon or a set of dogmas. One only needs to be open minded, compassionate, and fully human and being such explore the deeper strata of mind. This is what religion/spirituality is really concerned with.
Testify, I LOVE IT!!
That is kind of saying dark is the absence of light. Religion is belief without proof.
As soon it is validated then it becomes science. Not all that profound.
Is that what happened three months before 911 when I "Knew" that something was going to happen at WTC along with a premonition that our govt had done the job. Hmmm... Didn't know I was all that spiritual.
Quantum physics calls it entanglement. What it means is everything - everything - in the universe is connected at the quantum level. Premonitions occur because of our connection at that level, and love strengthens the connection. Research indicates a connection can also be established through deliberate intention, without love being a factor.
When people begin to move out of their intellects/egos, which establish separation and dualities in perspective, and into their hearts, which connect them to the fundamental nature of reality, they begin to recognize and realize the spiritual nature of their being. At that point miracles begin to occur.
Until that's done, this kind of thing seems like woo-woo hogwash. That's the ego's perspective. If something is outside the realm of one's experience, or what they consider to be possible, then it can't be true, right?
At one time the prevailing perspective was the world was flat. In those days people who spoke of true spiritual experiences were treated as heretics and often burned at the stake.
What happens when we lose the ego's perspective? We see clearly and without bias. We see that everything truly is One thing, because it's all connected.. We realize that there really is only One of us here.
We become Enlightened.
Throughout the ages, man has been unable and unwilling to come to terms with his own annihilation.
With Hamlet, "I find it most strange that men should fear, seeing death, a necessary end, will come when it will come."
Wistful thinking about a cosmic consciousness, etc., does not make it so.
100 billion people or so in the history of mankind has died since the species began. Not one, not a single blessed one, has returned to tell the tale.
When the brain dies, "the rest is silence."
And, on the part of the survivors, mere wishful thinking and imagination.
I envy your dogmatic certitude, Allocator. As for me, I don't have all the answers, hence I'm forced--reluctantly--to keep an open mind.
Good honest reply.
How condescending.
Your misquoting of Shakespeare (this line is from Julius Caesar, not Hamlet) and other conclusions do nothing to answer the article above. You dismiss it as "mere wishful thinking and imagination." The whole point of this article is that is there are compelling stories in our world which go beyond "wishful thinking." These stories have nothing to do with "wishing" there is something beyond our death. Contrarily, they are evidence of remakable experiences which go beyond what we typically perceive.
These experiences are valuable, but you and those like you will never see the value because you are blinded by your own BELIEFS about reality. And because of your BELIEFS you will always see what fits and dismiss what doesn't because you fear that you may be wrong, which would be quite uncomfortable.
If only we could all be as rational as you, oh wise one.
i'd say your comment was more condescending than the one above.
Touche.
Give it up, Allocator... People like you wouldn't believe even if dead people came back and went on national tv to "tell the tale".... You'd still be saying it was some sort of "hoax" or "wishful thinking" or "mass illusion" ....
Maybe that's the way the game is set up. But who knows?
Jesus Christ did which is why we have Christianity today. And how we know what will happen after our judgment, whether it be Hell, Heaven, or a stop in Purgatory before Heaven. Christ even related a story found in Luke 16:19-31 about a beggar named Lazarus and a rich man who was unkind. They both died, and Angels took Lazarus to the side of Abraham and the rich man who was suffering torment cried out to Abraham for water for his parched lips and also for Lazarus to go back and warn his 5 brothers so that they do not end up where he is. Abraham answers: 'They have Moses and the prophets. Let them listen to them.' [The Rich man] said, 'Oh no, father Abraham, but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.' Then Abraham said, 'If they will not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded if someone should rise from the dead.'" The ironic thing is, after saying this parable, Christ actually does raise a man who had been dead for 4 days. His name? Lazarus. Coincidence? I think not. There have been a great number of people who have been raised from the dead. In the Old Testament, New Testament, and modern Christian History. If you want to read more about these I would suggest "Raised from the Dead: True Stories of 400 Resurrection Miracles." By Fr. Albert J. Herbert, S.M.
I have had premonitions, some came true, others didn't. So it can be difficult to "trust" them. I do believe that premonitions of one's own death are fairly common, maybe more common than we realize because many people would not discuss such a premonition.
I was sure i was going to win!
The parsimonious explanation is that it's all just the mind's attempt to create a narrative connecting inexplicable random occurrences.
A dozen or more times in my life I've picked up the phone to dial a friend or relative, only to have them call me at exactly the same time. Amazing evidence that we're connected? Only if I ignore the 20,000 phone calls I made when this didn't happen.
I had this happen REGULARLY, with 2 people ONLY who were important in my life. The other 20,000. X10 phones calls I made to others ,it did not!
Which makes sense because people important to you are far more likely to call you than other people.
I have had a few in my life.............no one laughs, anymore!
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