The Non-Religious Perspective (and Q&A)

If people saw they end of the WTC how could they have stopped it and moreover is it their responsibility to stop the event, if it was meant to be then it was meant to be the question is what is the purpose of knowing what is going to happen if at the time you don?t realise it or powerless to stop it.

I don't think we're questioning whether something could have been done to prevent it as much as whether individuals could/did save their own lives by "sensing" there was danger and not going in. As in the Stand passage, this premonition can manifest itself as an upset stomach, a small cold...anything the body can do. Since this premonition doesn't break through to the conscious, but only stays in the sub/unconscious, then theer would be little if any chance of someone trying to prevent the attack, just saving themselves.

 

I had something of a prophetic dream last weekend. Or it was more like clairvoyance (sp). I dreamt about my best friend sitting in a dark room, crying endlessly. I was with her, holding her. As it turns out, she was indeed depressed that weekend. I know my best friend suffers from depression but this is the first time I dreamt about it. And it strikes me as significant.

 

I would like to offer that i believe people have many dreams offering many different possible scenarois. Sometimes these scenarios come true. Most of the time(99.9%) they do not come true. So when something does come to pass after seeing it in a dream we call it prophetic. The fact is we have so many dreams that some are bound to come true. I would say it is more coincidence then anything else.

 

What about the initial instigator of this subject, however...What about the subconscious warnings/notices...I'm not talking dreams here, but rather the premonitions manifested in feeling ill so you don't board Flight 73...that kind of thing...is that purely coincidence? Especially considering these studies....

 

Most of the time(99.9%) they do not come true. So when something does come to pass after seeing it in a dream we call it prophetic.

My ratio is a bit more impressive than that. I've worked on lucid dreaming for years, and worked on dream interpretation and refining. I'd say something like 20% of my dreams indicate something that's going to happen. BUT while some of these dreams are utterly uncanny, some of them are simply things like a friend betraying me, and then it happens. In the latter type, I believe it's just a case of my unconscious mind putting together from subtleties in my friend's body language and behavior that something is amiss, or there's deception there. It comes to me in dreams then simply because my mind is not so full of daytime thoughts and so on. So while you could call these "prophetic" or "warnings", I don't think there's anything we can't already explain scientifically about them.

As for the really uncanny dreams I've had, I have two good examples - one is of something uncanny yet pointless, and the other had a point.

In the first, I was about 8 when a boy in my class went to the hospital for 3 weeks. We had no hint he was coming back anytime soon, and I dreamed of him being in class the next day, with a shirt that had 3 strange sbbreviated stripes on the sleeves. I desceibed the dream in detail to my classmates the next day, and in he walked wearing the shirt. Uncanny? Sure. Point? Not a clue.

Another dream example comes from my mother. She dreamed that she flew home to see her folks, and the entire huge family was there - this never happens unless there's a big event. She couldn't figure out what the big event was, but noticed her father wasn't there, and a famous actor I won't name was there. I was also not there. She told me about the dream, and then we forgot about it for a while.

A few months later, I was working in film and going to school and very, very busy, and Mom got the feeling she should really fly home and visit her folks because it had been a while. Her father was feeling great, in high spirits, so happy to see her and know that she was well, and very peaceful for a change (my grandfather was wonderful, but he always seemed to be in a turmoil about something). She was so happy to have had the visit... and two weeks later he was rushed to the hospital, and the prognosis was bad. We didn't have the money to just fly back and see him - besides, he was in a coma - so we decided to wait and see how his prognosis developed. I felt terrible for not having flown home with her on the last visit, but we simply couldn't afford it, and I just didn't have time off to do it.

In the meantime, I ended up getting to know the actor who'd been in Mom's dream - in the dream where my grandfather was absent and the whole rest of the family present. Six days after I met the actor, my grandfather died rather suddenly and peacefully.

What does this all mean? Hard to say, but I do think maybe it subconsciously prompted Mom to go visit before my grandfather was too ill to communicate with her - that provided her (and my grandfather, I think) a level of peace at his passing that really is about all you can hope for when you lose someone. He was about the only relative Mom felt a true kinship with, as most of our family is just.... well, horrid people who like to cause suffering (for example, some of them debated in my comatose grandfather's presence about pulling the plug so they could have the funeral before their vacation time ran out).

If that dream DID prompt Mom to go home and have such a wonderful visit for the last time, you can't ask for better results than that from a dream.

 

I think the second one had alot of variables in it, but the one about the boy with the stripes on his shirt is pretty intriguing.

I love lucid dreams! I have one or two a week, but i can never stay totally aware, i drift in and out.

 

I think the second one had alot of variables in it, but the one about the boy with the stripes on his shirt is pretty intriguing.

Agreed, but it's the second one, ironically, that had more impact on my life, and actually seemed to have a point.

 

I think I want to ponder before saying more... I'm afraid to say I can't recall ever having any incidents similar to this myself.

 

Welll i definately agree with your mind interpreting small things and only revealing it to you in dreams. But when it comes to the premonitions that you talked about yet again they are only two occurances amongst thousands, millions of dreams. Coinscidence in my opinion

 

Sleazo, 2 points. First, the whole point of the discussion is, what IS a mere coincidence? What does that phrase mean to you? That the universe is so poorly organized and nature is so inefficient that we have bizarre things happening simultaneously all the time, like a badly written film? Or perhaps you think it says something about the nature of time - synchronicity has no meaning, because time really doesn't exist, for example. To simply say "coincidence" about these things is a bit like me saying, "Well, people are just that way" in regards to the divorce rate. It's not offering new information or thought.

Second point, those are only 2 examples. I have a lot of prophetic dreams - on average, probably 25 a year. I also have several incidents a day where I'll, for example, say something just before someone else. For example, when I was working at a bookstore one holiday season, we were very busy and this poor customer was having trouble getting out his words.

He said, "Could you show me where.... uh.... the, uh...."

I blurted out, "Humor section?" which was, oddly, the most INfrequent request next to the automotive section.

He stared at me funny and said, "Yes."

I realized what had just happened, decided to play it off, and simply walked him to the section, said something nice, and left as fast as I could. Several times he looked like he was going to ask how I'd done that, and I was desperate to avoid it because I had no idea.

This sort of thing happens a lot to me. I don't even count it when it's with family, though friends observing such episodes between my cousin or my mother and I think it's weirder than most families. But it happens with complete strangers, and it happens at least once a week. I've just learned to keep my mouth shut instead of scaring the hell out of them.

 

If this commonality with lucid dreams / premonitions are ways of seeing what is to come, is also not true in saying that the sub-conscious could be the cause of these visions, in the cases at hand from contributions it seems to me that in most cases the mind perceives an end result based on previous encounters with the people or situations.

Is it not simply the mind trying to make sense of the events in ones life, I do not dismissing these commonalities with lucid dreams mealy trying to find out if premonitions are sensing what is to come, and if lucid dreams are the sub-conscious trying to make sense of one life, as not all events can be initially be accepted for what they truly mean until one has had time to digest the event or events in ones life.

Though it is intriguing to say in the least that one gets a sense of what is to come in ones life before the event takes place.

On a ligter note and being aware this belongs to the Bush thread I thought Humor was needed.

http://www.miniclip.com/bushaerobics.htm
http://www.miniclip.com/dancingbush.htm

Sincerely

Master-Aries
(MA)

 

MA, I think a lot of it IS simply the unconscious mind putting the pieces together better than the conscious mind does.

By the way, did anyone read the hologram paradigm I provided a link to? Or maybe I didn't link? Anyway, it is a physics theory to explain all of this - coincidence, precognition, etc. Basically, physicists found that very small particles seemed to communicate instantaneously over any distance. They assumed some unknown form of communication was taking place, and looked for evidence rather futilely. Then a physicist proposed that the universe we see is basically a hologram, and part of the nature of a hologram is that each part has all the components of the whole - therefore, I knew that guy wanted the "humor section" because I was operating on a level at which we all are actually part of the same thing. Yes, this sounds like a lot of new age theory and Buddhism, but it's based in physics.

Uh, it sounds so stupid when I try to summarize, but the article was awesome. I could repost it in here if anyone wants. It's a very, very long article, but I found it fascinating because I've always believed that (A) "ESP" happens and (B) there's nothing supernatural about it, only stuff science hasn't explained yet. This hologram paradigm could be the explanation.

 

I would be intrigued to read more....Do you want to give us an abridged version?

 

Honestly, I wouldn't know how to abridge it. So here's a link to the topic where it was being discussed. Unfortunately, that topic quickly degenerated into a battle of "See, this proves my previously held beliefs were right and yours were wrong!"

The Hologram Paradigm

 

treecave i would have to say that time does not exist in the nature that we think it to exist. I have read about the nature of everything to contact every other thing in the universe. I do not know if that means that us as humans can do this. Perhaps only in our subconscious dream state we can. I do believe this is posible because our waking selves cannot see the truth because we are so weighed down by our evoulutionary needs. Perhaps we can see the future. Personally i have not seen anything that shows me that the future has already been written. The future in my opinion is quite maleable.
I still take everything with a grain of salt. I have had dreams in my own life that have come true. When i was 5 i dreamt of a woman falling off of a building and i saw the exact same thing happen in real life two days later with my grandfather. I have had other experiences liuke that occur. I have also have had so many other dreams that have felt so real that i woke up surprised that they were in fact dreams. We have so many dreams that some of them are bound to be true either to our own subconcious revealing something or by sheer coincidence(the universe has no true plan).
Im still not sure myself. This is what i believe currently. the study you mentioned also refers to the effects of lsd and while i was on the substance i felt something very similar to what was described.
However as someone who is always skeptical i need soem sort of proof.




By the way i hate the angels. Bastards.

 

See, this proves my previously held beliefs were right and yours were wrong!

 

No homo sapiens sapiens beliefs are ever right. Frankly we are not as bright as we like to think we are. Especially when we continue to wage war upon our brother(something that is bred into us by the way).

 

Sleazo, I hope nothing in this sounds harsh, but just in case, let me tell you I'm playing devil's advocate with you here and taking a firm line. So if my phrasing sounds overly critical anywhere (a problem I tend to have online), it isn't meant to.

treecave i would have to say that time does not exist in the nature that we think it to exist.

Agreed. If time DID exist as we imagine, there would be one correct calendar and all others would be invalid. Obviously, this is not the case - the Jewish calendar, the Chinese calendar and the Gregorian we use in the US and Europe all make sense, because time is arbitrary and you can measure it in many logical ways.

Personally i have not seen anything that shows me that the future has already been written. The future in my opinion is quite maleable.

But you're thinking chronologically here! The future is only malleable IF we assume it hasn't happened yet. While we can assume we haven't perceived it yet, I don't think we're qualified to say if it's already occurred or not. You'd almost have to step outside the influence of linear chronology to make that determination, and we can't.

for example, if we stop thinking chronologically, it's illogical to assume the past is unchangeable but the future is changeable. They are both time periods we have no access to - they are both the same, from the perspective of the present.

I still take everything with a grain of salt.

Well, you're taking everything that goes against traditional western beliefs with a grain of salt. You have no problem seeing the past as fixed and unchangeable, because tradition holds it so. Why?

I have had dreams in my own life that have come true. When i was 5 i dreamt of a woman falling off of a building and i saw the exact same thing happen in real life two days later with my grandfather. I have had other experiences liuke that occur. I have also have had so many other dreams that have felt so real that i woke up surprised that they were in fact dreams. We have so many dreams that some of them are bound to be true either to our own subconcious revealing something or by sheer coincidence(the universe has no true plan).

This is a valid view. I don't think it has to be a simple matter of whether the universe has a plan or not, but that's because I'm trying to take chronology out of the equation, since I believe it's a fluke of human perception, not a true law of the universe. Not that I can prove this - it's just a feeling I get.

However as someone who is always skeptical i need soem sort of proof.

Skepticism is good. I'm very skeptical of everything, and the reason that may not be obvious to you is that I'm skeptical of the traditional scientific wisdom as well as the "mystical" stuff. Gravity generated by two bodies interacting upon each other sounds like a hilariously far-fetched theory compared to a theory of some force at work. The theory of aan actual force is much simpler and more elegant, and yet the mass attraction theory holds up better in the lab. We have to be skeptical of what we've been taught to take granted as well as be skeptical of the stuff that's scoffed at. Otherwise, we make science a religion, and like a fundamentalist, blind ourselves to better answers that the ones we're currently accepting.

 

you do not need to apologize. treecave i do stand corrected. As much as the future is so is the past. as a human i cannot truly comprehend either. Still at the same time i wonder if a human can really see the difference

 

Depending on ones point of view I would have to say that ?time? is a manifestation of man perceived perception, we needed time in order to qualify past memories and events, yet as has been pointed out nature has no time.

At the end of the day it is perception that dictates time or the perceiving of it, the universe cannot have time otherwise it would be predictable. The classic theory regarding Schrödinger?s cat where depending on opening the door would dictate the result was finally questioned and the new theory that choice has been made and alternate universes would be created on the choice taken. Simply put you have a stack of cards facing down, as soon as you turn over the card 54 universes come about, you and the card now revealed, 52 universes regarding the other possibilities and the 54th being that you never turned over the card in the first place.

As Einstein theorised it is all relative to where you are, to say that alternate universes are created just because one has made a choice is arrogance to say in the least, the same goes in saying that based on consciousnesses reality is dictated for the individual.

I would have to say there is not enough information so support either view time seems to be based on Gravity, where there is Gravity there is time, the reasoning for my saying there is no time, in that light is dependant on Gravity but, the absence of light is not, since light is energy and depending on this energy time has value. Remove light hence absence of light no time can exist, therefore consciousness cannot be.

Or so the argument pertains, we perceive what we perceive here on earth, perhaps if not based in an area where gravity exists could we see what we see, or is what we see an illusion based on our arrogance that what we perceive and inline with consciousness is reality.

Since Quantum Mechanics is not my area of expertise I would have to say this theory is hopelessly flawed, time has no relevance only in that time seems to be getting shorter and shorter, as life becomes faster and faster, another issue for discussion.

Merely my humble point of view

Sincerely

Master-Aries
(MA)

 

TreeCave: Thanks for the link to the Holographic topic. This is the same thing as is discussed in greater length in the book I mentioned - The Holographic Universe by Michael Talbot.

It's a strange theory and I don't totally understand it. In particular, the way it deals with time is confusing. On one hand, due to the connected nature of everything, the past and future are as "present" as the present. We just normally don't know how to interact with them.

However, the book also discusses the possibility that there may be several holo-universes, and that we can sometimes jump from one to another. This is why the future is not really fixed.... It is fixed in one universe, but we still have the ability to choose to go over to another universe that has a different future. I probably need to read it again to understand it better.

 

I'm going to have to read the Talbot book, then! There's a lot I still don't understand about it either.

As for time, it hit me the other day that there really is no present. By the time you percieve events, they're already just seconds or even split seconds past. Ironically, I got this info separately, from a physics student and a book on the Tibetan Bon teachings, over a period of about 18 hours. From both a spiritual standpoint and a physics standpoint, it makes a difference - there IS no living "in the moment", which is why Bon emphasizes living in the spaces between moments rather than the Zen idea of living in the here and now. Now that "spaces between moments" sounds nice and mystical, but I'd love to see a physics discussion on that very topic!

As for multi-holo-universes.... I'm pretty convinced the PAST isn't even fixed, or that I've switched pasts a couple of times. As I mentioned in another thread (and possibly this one, can't remember), I have a lot of very specific memories - and sometimes other people have them too - that are now apparently incorrect. They seem to be mostly trivial things so far.

What if this past century was simply the first time we had enough record keeping, stored where everyone could see it and compiled during and after events for us to notice there are little gaps and holes in space-time, not unlike continuity errors in a TV show? That makes a lot of sense. What is harder to explain is why we have various scenarios and jump from one to another, or why reality shifts around in small ways. You almost need intelligent design to explain this - not necessarily a god, but even just something like the man behind the screen in the Wizard of Oz, or the evil AI in the Matrix.

But I do think it shouldn't be surprising that history seemed a lot less concrete once we were all able to log our information and make our reports about things as they were happening. Live coverage, web coverage, etc.....

 

On the past not being fixed:

This is mentioned in the Talbot book as well. There was an experiment involving sounds randomly recorded onto tapes and mailed to volunteers. As the people listened to them, they tried to telepathically affect the recorded sounds. When the tapes were later analyzed, the sounds deviated significantly from purely random. One interpretation of this is that the listeners were able to alter the past.

It's interesting that you've experienced something similar.

It seems there are a few ways to approach evidence like this. One way may be religious - to attribute these things to divine interaction. How do other non-religious people approach this? Discard it as new age hocus-pocus? Look for a scientific explanation? Write it off as something humans are not able to fully understand? I'm somewhere between these last two -- I think things like this are real, but I think it may be that we just aren't equipped to fully wrap our minds around what's actually going on.

 

Hello All

The latest bombings in Bali have caused me reflect upon the increasing violence afflicting the world.

With the advent of ?terrorism?, (another ism), the world?s mindset seems to be one of uncertain unity apropos a faceless enemy. Governments use of ?sorrow and pain?, and the ?quick kill them all attitude? which seems too convenient for me. It is as if recent and past events seem choreographed for the public to ensure their undying trust in their respective governments.

It is that what I wish to question, do our governments hold our interests at heart or are we merely being taken for a ride?

History is replete with violence and war. The respective control mechanisms have used and abused religions, fear and the promise of conquest to lure and hold the attention of the people to command them to do governments? bidding.

When the governments, could no longer fulfil promises, they have been forcibly removed and summarily executed. Today it is not that simple. We vote in one regime for another, even if no choice is offered as in the case of Iraq. More seductively however, the American system, where if one is an observer, one only sees one government and not two independent parties, more recently the Bi-partisanship compounds the issue and no distinction can be made.

Governments? no longer safeguard the interests of the people. The collaboration with the church has now been replaced with commerce, and economics. For instance, post WWII where industry was hurriedly geared for mass production of weaponry, and other institutions were created such as espionage and counter intelligence, all for the protecting of the country, deemed necessary for the time. Instead of dispensing with these industries or limiting them, both sides funded and fuelled the arms race, and now with the threat of nuclear fallout waning, but not altogether gone, a new more seductive threat has reared its ugly head.

It is this new threat that breathes life into an industry that no longer has a place. The world is getting too small there is no where else to go. The selfish attitudes of the Europeans and Americans and the rest of the world are not making matters any better. Their blatantly racist policies have given credence to the power hungry and shallow governments of the world. It is time that people place their selfish and self-centred beliefs aside and concentrate on the more pressing issues at hand. If our governments no longer offer what we expect, what do we put in their place? Will this newly formed institution continue where its predecessor left off or will conclusive and creative change take its place?

We are the only species to have a brain disproportionately large to our bodies. We have been geared to outthink any perceived threat and outwit even nature, but we have created a political prison, that with commerce has taken hold of our lives without regard for the future. This system seems to have taken on a life of its own and it is up to us to replace it. With what and can we timeously provide a solution before wiping ourselves out, or annihilation the only way out?

Sincerely

Master-Aries
(MA)

 

I'm somewhere between these last two -- I think things like this are real, but I think it may be that we just aren't equipped to fully wrap our minds around what's actually going on.

Yes, I've always believed anything that happens IS real, and it's not SUPERnatural, it's just natural in a way we can't scientifically udnerstand yet. To deny anything that science can't prove is just as dogmatic as denying anything not found in a particular scripture.

As for altering the past.... I just keep thinking time (as we perceive it) and therefore chronology don't exist. I keep trying to think about events in my life without keeping them chronological, and when I have any success at it, it can be very enlightening (in terms of understanding why things have happened). My life is full of things that simply happened to me, as opposed to things I brought on myself (although there are a lot of those too, naturally). Looking at events backwards and forwards, sometimes it seems to make more sense. Of course, this is only worthwhile if I get better at making decisions from looking at things this way. It shouldn't be so hard - one of my writing projects for the past 14 years has been a story that analyzes everyone's assumptions about something that did or didn't happen years ago, which causes them to interpret everything that happened since completely wrong - until they all get together and share perspectives.

It is as if recent and past events seem choreographed for the public to ensure their undying trust in their respective governments.

I think your whole post is very correct. Just speaking to the cultures I'm most familiar with, the English and their offspring, the Americans, are particularly fond of brainwashing. I think the midieval English almost had their peasants believing "poor is good! serve the rich, it'll make you a better person". Looking back, that was the first really obvious PR campaign the rich staged against the poor. It's been pointed out that political 2-party systems are most effective as smokescreens that keep the public from asking the right questions - there is no real debate between parties, except "how best do we steal from the citizens so our useless rich selves and our useless offspring can continue to evolve while everyone worthwhile becomes extinct?" I'm somewhere between these last two -- I think things like this are real, but I think it may be that we just aren't equipped to fully wrap our minds around what's actually going on.

See, we've turned survival of the fittest on its head. We survive through manipulation, and the average of the species plot viciously against the well-endowed - the beautiful, the brilliant, the athletic - to own them and pimp them out rather than to let them have the lives the better endowed deserve by nature. The average make themselves look good by tolerating handicapped people - whom they believe are no evolutionary threat to them - and having lots of kids they then scream about the rest of us needing to take into account in our political views. Those kids are valued more by politicians as consumers their business pals can sell crap to than as human (non-voting, remember) beings.

For the record, I have no use for any politician in the US. The Democrats have crawled so far up the Republicans fannies that it pretty much proves they're all united against us, and none of them give a crap about anyone. So it would suit me fine if they all caught a nice exotic disease and died, because I know they couldn't care less if I died. There are so many simple things we could do to improve this nation - a sensible welfare system, learning not to pass laws about how people think or what they do in their bedrooms, etc. - that their failure to do any of these things proves they're not there to run the country.

At least here in Hollywood, we choose to make-believe for a living - we don't get confused into believing our own PR all that often. Washington could use some lessons from us.