The future cannot be foreseen - that is, we cannot know the future in the sense of perceiving the future as if it has already-happened, and cannot be changed. I am solidly convinced of this now.
Firstly on metaphysical grounds; in the sense of the nature of reality is such that the future is not predetermined.
For many reasons.
If reality consists in Beings, then beings are free by their nature (not as a gift of God). And in an ultimate sense, reality is indivisible, bits of foresight are not really viable - not least be the context of the bits of foresight is not knowable, so the future is not knowable.
I have explored in some detail accounts of several people who claimed, and had some evidential grounds for, to foresee the future - and none of them could do so - in the sense that they were often wrong about matters about which they were confident.
And I have myself experienced exactly this: I have been convinced about what would happen in the future, in a specific and timed way (although I didn't regard my sense of conviction as necessarily true - nonetheless I "felt sure"). And it did not happen.
I take this to have been a learning experience.
I conclude that the future just is not the kind of thing that can be foreseen, foreknown.
We only know the future in the usual way of "probabilistic" prediction, informed guessing etc.; based on the nature and motivations of things (i.e. the nature of Beings), extrapolation, understanding of causality and the like.
5 comments:
Yes and no. Direct precognition is absolutely real, and entirely different from informed guessing, but it is not infallible. Explaining why in any detail requires Dunne.
@Wm I regard Dunne's metaphysical assumptions as untrue. What needs explaining can be explained in other ways, as is always the case for phenomena. I have come to regard it as spiritually essential that we set aside, reject, ideas that the future is or can be something that has already happened.
If the future is unknowable, or most certainly not infallible in terms of our precognition, then why are people so keen on 'sanctifying' and 'absolutizing' their own promises? Sounds like a sin to me. Promises, wows, oaths, swearing by some symbol, assurances of the highest order such as the stuff politicians throw at the electorate (urgh)... why do we hold expressions like this in such high regard when they amount to nothing more than a human attempt at playing God? To my mind, they reeks of human arrogance and desire for power and control.
From childhood I remember children saying it is a sin to swear that you will be doing this or that. I can see it now: it's like some sort of Dunning-Kruger effect in relation to your future Self: to act all clairvoyant about who you will be and what you will do in the future when in reality you have zero power and control over your future self.
There might be a completely different version of you by then, transformed by your own growth and evolution, or by circumstances yet to experience and lessons yet to learn. Then in order to keep past promises you may be forced to abandon your real self at that point in time. How is that in alignment with God's will?
And why would anyone be allowed to issue such guarantees and take themselves so seriously in the name of their future self, as if they were God?
We certainly should take any promises with a grain of salt - not because people are bad, but because people are human.
I only want to see what people do now, every day, every moment and a stated direction for where they intend to go. But no more than that. Let the reality of who they are and where they're at renew itself every day.
Just say: "I promise to do my very best every day of my life as I move forward." It's about as good as it's going to get for us humans, for even Divinity can change its ways.
A friend was doing tarot readings a few days ago. I pointed out that you could just as effectively use an Uno deck for cartomancy, then idly picked a few cards as a game.
I got the blank card you write your own rules on as the card for my future. Learned my lesson lol. Pretty on the nose that.
There are multiple passages in Andrew Gordon's Rules of the Game describing a British officer in the trenches of WW1 that had powerful nightly visions of an imminent great sea battle. Apparently his quality was such that his superior officer took him seriously enough to make travel arrangements so that he could witness this premonition personally:
'On Friday the 26th of May, Major Claude Wallace, a civil engineer and West African explorer by trade but now a staff-officer with the British 32nd Division in the Somme valley, packed his bag and hitched a lift to the railhead. Wallace was a man with a strange mission: he believed his presence to be essential to the sea battle which was about to take place. Night after night in his trench dug-out he had dreamt of a great naval engagement. The dreams remained consistent but grew in detail. Early in May he persuaded his superior, Major-General William Ryecroft, to write to Admiral Jellicoe and ask if he might visit the Fleet. Jellicoe wired back his consent, but left the timing open. Ryecroft probably thought Wallace could do with some leave, and wanted him to get it over with, for there was work to be done before the big offensive for which the French were pestering.
'"But for some indefinable reason I did not want to go: something held me back, although I was longing for a spell out of the trenches. I told the General that, unless he insisted, I should prefer not to go on leave just then . . . During the following days I was practically obsessed by this feeling of witnessing a naval battle, until the very course of the action and the movements of the units of the fleets were added to the general impression. Then, on the 25th of May, on a sudden impulse, I went to Ryecroft, asking him if I might take my leave at once."
'On Saturday the 27th he reported to the Admiralty, where he refused to be palmed off with somewhere convenient, like Portsmouth, Dover or Harwich. On Sunday he received instructions to join the battleship St Vincent in Scapa Flow, headed for King’s Cross and found his seat on the infamous ‘Jellicoe Special’.21
Gordon, Andrew. Rules of the Game: Jutland and British Naval Command (p. 58). Naval Institute Press. Kindle Edition.
There are several more passages of this story in the book which are eerie in the extreme, for this officer indeed personally witnessed the greatest clash between dreadnaughts in history, the Battle of Jutland, which though disappointing on the tactical level, terrified the German High Seas Fleet to a sufficient extent necessary to effect their strategic removal from the rest of the war.
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