"In the ultimate nature of the Universe there are no divisions in time and space." ~medium Eileen Garrett~

We do love to drive ourselves crazy with “what if” don’t we? What if I took the shortcut instead of the long route? What if I chose to go to school instead of work? What if I married Jill instead of Jane?

Well get over yourself.

We all suffer from hindsight and even better retrocognition. Some of us experience precognition but we don’t always base our decisions on what we envision. What we like to do best is piss whine about what might have been. My personal theory has always been “what could have been was not meant to be.” Do I hear disagreement out there amongst my fellows?  I suppose some of you will say that everything unfolds as it should and this may be despite of our decisions or because of them and then we will all take a trip down the psycho babble road. Why not? What else do we have to do today? Go ahead make my day!

You know what I am going to do. I am going to present a some food for thought that will make you a slightly mad and maybe irritated. My very own brand of psychological warfare. It’s my job. Brace yourself …

SO - Is it possible to construct a theory that may account for the fact that if a premonition of a future event has taken place, it does not necessarily mean the event is inevitable?

In 1908, Herrman Minkowski suggested that the Universe could be described in terms of four dimensional space time. He was describing what has become known as the Block Universe, a static universe with no past, present or future except that which is introduced by the observer. The observer's consciousness travels along his world line through the Block Universe like a spotlight moving over a dark landscape or field. The bits of the landscape the spotlight has picked out, the observer terms the "past " and those that are yet to be picked out the "future."  Suppose that the spotlight on the Block Universe contains everything consciously perceived by the individual at that moment is surrounded by a hazy ring that represents the subconscious. Within this are all the events being perceived by the individual.

Image courtesy of Mysteries of Mind Space and Time

O-kee-doke processors  let’s proceed further …

EXAMPLE: Suppose the world line is that of a young man who is scheduled to take a flight. He buys a ticket, packs his bags and has them loaded aboard and gets ready to embark himself. Suddenly the event of the plane’s crash is illuminated by the ring of his subconscious although it still lies outside the spotlight of his consciousness meaning the crash is still in his future. Somehow a symbolic representation of the horrific scenes perceived by his subconscious manage to cross the threshold between the subconscious and the conscious, and he receives a premonition of his own death. So, he changes his mind about flying thus changing his world line across the dark field of the Universe so that he avoids dying on the flight. In the real future he reads about the air disaster and no doubt thanks the powers that be for his premonition. The two events, death and survival are equally potent because they are both events in the dark field of the Universe; the only difference between them is that the young man's conscious spotlight illuminated one and not the other.

A consequence of this theoretical example is that since the dark field of the Universe contains all possible events and presumably all world lines, both branches of the young man's world line must exist and we must also allow for the potential that there are many branches and junction points. The decision taken at the moment decides which branch of the tree of world lines the conscious and unconscious spotlight will travel along. This is also reminiscent of concept of theoretical physicist Hugh Everett who proposed that there is a multi-branching Universe in which every possibility is realized but only one branch observed. In life experience, this would reflect the proverbial crossroads where one turns right or left. Picture a man in an art gallery at night. He carries a spotlight that he trains on the pictures in the corridor he is traveling. He sees scenes of his boyhood but then comes to a "T" junction where he can go right or left. He chooses to go left and continues to shine the spotlight on the pictures on the wall of the left hand corridor.  He sees himself carrying out various actions, traveling to various places, making various friends etc. until he becomes a man. He NEVER sees the pictures in the right corridor that would have showed him what his life could have been had he made the decision to take the right corridor. He does not see that he would have died at age twenty three of a car accident. Instead he sees himself finishing college, having a good job and marrying.

All of this didn’t make you feel any better did it? Well take heart. Many well known philosophers and psychologists have taken seriously the evidence for precognitions and retrocognitions and have accepted that our common sense ideas of time itself may be false and misleading, in the same way as the theoretical physicists of the late 19^th century came to realize that their ideas about space and time were wrong especially in the subatomic and astronomical realms. Can a human being be looked upon as the sum of the conscious field, subconscious field and a body with that “body” embedded in the Block Universe? Does that mean what we call our body is only an instantaneous slice of a larger and longer entity like a body envelope which the world line travels along? Is a person in a state of consciousness equivalent to the conscious field plus the subsconscious field plus a body envelope? If that is true does that mean an unconscious or dreaming person equivalent to the subconscious field plus the body envelope? What is two subconscious fields but not the corresponding conscious fields intersect? Could that create telepathic communication? After all, it has been suggested by a number of psychologists and psychical researchers that the ring of conscious perception covers the whole lifespan of a human being - that a human being has knowledge of his/her whole life.

Image courtesy of Mysteries of Mind Space and Time

Are you crazy yet? Here - borrow my flashlight.

So now you are probably wondering if I have spoken to anyone who was capable of viewing these parallel roads and who made a decision based upon what was seen. That would be quite a trick aye? Well close but no cigar folks. The closest I came to the concept presented here was a gentleman who claimed he could traverse time on occasion. He claimed he could travel to the “astral world” as he called it and bi-locate while there and inspect just about “parallel” anything thus being able to view what he called, “Road A and parallel Road C disavowing Road B (his current life status).”  What he saw seems to fit the theory presented here since he saw himself in completely different life situations which were basically diametrically  opposed, one being for the most part, happy and successful and the other rather rogue and disappointing. He seemed not to be very affected by this grand mystical experience and made no changes in his life to go down one road or the other.

Brave of him methinks. Or stupid.