Are precognition and psychic projection linked?
When it comes to paranormal research, we need to challenge ourselves and think a little outside the box in order to gain a better understanding of the possibilities in front of us. Often we focus our attention on the potential spirits we might be communicating with. We research the history of a building, we look at the background of the people who once roamed the halls and ask them questions like "What is your name? How did you die?". We carry a black tool case modified to hold paranormal equipment and ask these questions on a nightly basis all in the hopes that we will be able to document or experience some sort of activity that can be labelled as 'paranormal'. While this is fun and can be fulfilling in a lot of ways, especially in telling the stories of our past, it isn't really getting us anywhere in terms of the bigger questions within paranormal research. Perhaps it is time to shift the focus not on the potential people we feel we may be communicating with, but on the actual activity itself. Maybe there is too much focus on why the activity is occurring such as suggesting a traumatic incident meaning a spirit could not 'cross over' instead of the pivotal question we need to be asking .... where is it coming from? The survival hypothesis (as in life going on after death) is the most popular theory, however, is not the only possibility. I think we all get to a point where we ask ourselves "Is a human capable of 'causing' this activity?"
Extra Sensory Perception
This brings us to the more out-of-the-box type of thinking when it comes to things like ESP. Parapsychologists for decades have been testing people to see if there is some merit here to the thought that a person can in fact transmit their thoughts telepathically. J.B Rhine's trials with Zener cards and the Ganzfeld experiments from the 1970s immediately come to mind. While there was criticism in the controls, they believed there was some merit in the theory, and the results while low seemed to indicate that there could be something there. I am not going to go into much detail as I have written about these trials in the past. It isn't about a person reading another person's mind, it is more about a person sending a message to a person that they can receive, with the main point of difference being it is done with the mind itself. Much like how a walkie-talkie works where it can transmit and receive a message, is that what the pineal gland does? Is it our walkie talkie? While I have theorized in the past that the pineal gland may play some part, it is time to look at the energy itself.
I talk often about the Philip Experiment from 1972 where a group of parapsychologists met on a weekly basis for over a year with the thought that just by focusing on pictures and a story about a made-up 'ghost', that you could manifest this ghost just with a group of people focusing on this information. I myself have participated in different psychic projection experiments and have actually once witnessed first-hand where a person seemed to either predict or project activity. Was this person predicting what was about to happen, or were they projecting it? Precognition is best described as ‘future sight’. It is thought to be a form of extrasensory perception where a person has a psychic ability to be able to see events in the future. A person is not mentally causing an event to happen, they are simply predicting it. Most commonly, people experience precognition in the form of a dream. So it makes me wonder, could precognition actually be a form of psychic projection?
Psychic Projection
If we change our thought process can we change the environment around us? I think about a lot of self-help ideals and affirmations that immediately come to mind. A lot of it is about changing your mindset in a way that you are consciously in control of your thoughts in order to make positive changes in your life. While the figures vary depending on the research, it is said that we have up to 60,000 thoughts in one day. Around 80% of these thoughts are supposedly negative. They are at a subconscious level. Affirmations are positive things that you consciously tell yourself. Things like "I am successful, I deserve happiness, I am strong and confident, etc". When you affirm these things to yourself you are becoming more conscious of your thoughts and you start to believe the things you are telling yourself. Just by changing your thought process, you are making things happen.
When I look at it from a paranormal perspective, I often use Black Rock House as an example to get my point across. We take our guests into a room and explain that this is Annie's room and she was around 56 years old and passed away in her sleep. She was a servant and liked to cook bread etc. I have a room now focused on her story. We start asking questions like "Annie did you bake some bread today?" Is the activity we receiving because Annie is in the room or is it because we are so focused on her story we are unknowingly making it happen?
When I come back to precognition, I wonder how much of it is possibly our own doing? If we have a dream that stays with us for example and we are constantly thinking about it, by changing our thought process and focusing on the details of the dream are we in fact making these things happen? So instead of 'predicting' a future event, are we ourselves making it happen? Of course, this doesn't account for large-scale events out of human control that people report predicting or dreaming of.
Ultimately of course the way we will interpret what we are experiencing is all based on our perception.
Some feel the rain others just get wet.
Bob Marley
If a person has what we think to be a precognitive dream, are they 'expecting' it to happen? There is no way to actually record every aspect of a dream. We have to rely on our memory. Our memory no matter how vivid a dream maybe is not exactly credible. The brain produces what we call false memories. It can be either a distorted recollection, or it could be completely made up! When an event happens, perhaps there are some familiar aspects that trigger the brain to think the dream happened in a way that mimics the actual event. The dream may not have even happened but again some sort of familiarity associated with the event could cause the brain to suddenly remember a dream that didn't happen.
Maybe precognition and psychic projection are linked in many ways we haven't even thought of. There is so much that is unknown about our brain and what we are capable of. What we are left with are possibilities to explore. When it comes to paranormal research, it is important to go beyond the typical questions and start stepping outside the circle. It may just hold the key to the answers we seek.
What do you think?
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Comments
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Joseph Kapusta 5 years ago
you could take this a step further and hypothesize that EVPs as well could source from a psychokinetic process by which the consciousness of living people influences electro-physical processes of electrical equipment, a quantum-type reaction influenced by attention & observation.
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Jamie King 5 years ago
That's the VERY first time I have heard someone explain what it feels like perfectly!