Precognition

In parapsychology, precognition (from the Latin præ-, “prior to,” + cognitio, “a getting to know”) is a form of extra-sensory perception wherein a person perceives information about future places or events before they happen (as distinct from merely predicting them based on deductive reasoning and current knowledge).

A related term, presentiment, refers to information about future events which is perceived in the form of emotions or feelings at the autonomic level. These terms are considered by some to be special cases of the more general term clairvoyance.

Introduction

Throughout history people have claimed to have precognitive abilities, and prophecy is a feature of many religions.

Just as prevalent are anecdotal accounts of precognitions from the general public, such as someone "knowing" who is on the other end of a ringing telephone before they answer it, or having a dream of unusual clarity with elements of content that later occur. While anecdotal accounts do not provide scientific proof of precognition, such common experiences motivate continued research.

Skeptic and magician James Randi, in his book An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural, wrote "Knowledge of a future event or circumstance not obtained through inference or deduction, but by paranormal means."

History

J. W. Dunne, a British aeronautics engineer, undertook the first systematic study of precognition in the early twentieth century. In 1927, he published the classic An Experiment with Time, which contained his findings and theories.^{[citation needed]} Dunne's study was based on his own precognitive dreams, which involved both trivial incidents in his own life and major news events appearing in the press the day after the dream. When first realizing that he was seeing the future in his dreams, Dunne worried that he was "a freak." His worries soon eased when he discovered that precognitive dreams are common; he concluded that many people have them without realizing it, perhaps because they do not recall the details or fail to properly interpret the dream symbols.

Joseph Banks Rhine and Louisa Rhine began the next significant systematic research of precognition in the 1930s at the Parapsychology Laboratory at Duke University.^{[citation needed]} Rhine used card-guessing experiments in which the participant was asked to record his guess of the order of a card deck before the deck was shuffled.

London psychiatrist J. A. Barker established the British Premonitions Bureau in 1967, which collected precognitive data in order to provide an early warning system of impending disasters. Barker succeeded in finding a number of "human seismographs" who tuned in regularly to disasters, but were unable to accurately pinpoint the times.

The Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Lab began in 1979 with precognitive experiments have since been done in a variety of formats by various parapsychologists, for example by the remote viewing researchers. This facility is now closed.

Precognition in fiction

• A precog is a shorthand for a fictional precognitive, who has an ability to foresee future happenings, or it may refer to the precognitive vision itself. It is often featured in the stories by Philip K. Dick, such as Minority Report.
• Dream Girl of the Legion of Super-Heroes is from Naltor, an entire planet of precogs.
• Jedi Knights, depending on their knowledge of the "force," often have precognition talents which lead to them to demonstrate adroit-reactions and dexterity, as they see physical changes in their environment before they happen and can anticipate them. Luke Skywalker sees his friends suffering, and Yoda tells him 'It is the future you see.' Precognition is also used in battle when Jedi use their lightsabers to deflect blaster bolts, often back to the person who fired them.
• Spider-Man's "spider-sense" is a limited precognitive sense.
• Destiny of the X-Men comics series has a precognitive sense.
• Lilith of the Teen Titans comics series had a precognitive sense.
• It appears briefly in White Palace, but is not a major plot element.
• In the anime Weiss Kreuz (Knight Hunters), Brad Crawford, the leader of opposing group Schwarz, has the gift of precognition. Accordingly, his little-used (or perhaps fan created) codename is "Oracle."
• Rei Hino of Sailor Moon had precognitve sense due to her miko powers.
• Maia Skouris, a child featured in The 4400. was sent back from the future with precognitive abilities, and is commonly referred to as a precog by other characters.
• Johnny Smith of The Dead Zone has been gifted (or cursed) with precognition.
• Precognition, and the implications of wielding a power like it, plays a significant role in Frank Herbert's Dune series.
• Radar O'Reilly of the TV show M*A*S*H could always anticipate his commanding officer's requests, often walking in just before called, with the documents required already in hand. He was always aware of when the choppers were approaching.
• Milo, a character in Dan Abnett's Gaunt's Ghost series, had similar abilities to predict incoming artillery barrages and superior officer's requests
• Joanna Star, a magically transgendered cheerleader from The Wotch and The Wotch: Cheer!, seems to have psychic/precognitive abilities.
• Stephen King uses precognition in some of his novels, most notably The Shining and The Dead Zone.
• In The Dark Tower, possibly written by C. S. Lewis, the author explores the concepts of precognition and interdimensional travel.
• In Stargate SG-1, the DNA Resequencer gave Jonas Quinn precognition.
• In The Matrix, the Oracle and later Neo both appear to have precognitive abilities within the simulated reality. The exact nature of these abilities is questioned multiple times, but never fully explained.
• In Supernatural, the television series, Sam Winchester has visions in the episode 'Nightmare.' At first he dreams of future events, which are followed by his having visions whilst still awake. Towards the end of the episode he also discovers he has telekinesis, and after seeing a vision of his brother being killed, he instinctively moves a large dresser out the way when trapped in a closet, and promptly goes off to save his brother's life.
• In The Power of Five by Anthony Horowitz, the first of the five, Matt, could see into the future, but all his visions were of disasters.
• In Final Destination, the character Alex has the ability to see disastrous events before they happen, particularly dealing with death of himself and people he knows. Firstly through visions, and later through signs, which girlfriend Clear Rivers is eventually able to do. This was the base of the next two films, with Kimberly Corman and Wendy Christenson also having precognitive sense. Additionally, Wendy's pictures from her cameras reflected the subject's forecoming deaths.
• In Clamp's short-lived manga series Legal Drug, Kakei, the owner of Green Drugstore, has the ability to see visions. Whether or not he can control these is unknown. His lover, Saiga, also refers to him as a precog.
• In Charmed , Phoebe, one of the witch sisters, has the power to see the future and past through premonitions, usually unintentionally brought on by physical contact with an object or person.
• In Heroes, Isaac Mendez has the ability to see and paint pictures from the future.
• On Terry Pratchett's Discworld, Mrs Cake is a Medium (verging on small) who has the disconcerting habit of answering questions before they're asked.

See also Category:Fictional characters with precognition

• Princess Zelda from The Legend of Zelda series has the ability to feel and see things before they happen. An example of this is when in Ocarina of Time she had a dream about some dark clouds which covered Hyrule and a child glowing in green make them to dissapear. It is obvious that the clouds symbolize Ganondorf while the child is Link (Legend of Zelda series)
• Raven Baxter from That's So Raven has the ability to see future events, which is a main focus of the show. These occur suddenly and unpredictably to Raven, who then feels compelled to change the future to either avoid or to cause these events to occur.
• Doctor John Vattic from Second Sight eventually finds out his last psychic power is Precognition, which explains why he has been mentally visiting the 'possible future' and changing it through his actions in the present.

Retrocognition

In parapsychology, retrocognition (also called postcognition), is the ability to observe the past of an object, place, or occurrence through paranormal means. The term was coined by Frederic Myers. Psychometry and past life regression can both be considered types of retrocognition.

A widely known depiction of Retrocognition drama is in the Canadian television series, Seeing Things, or the Stephen King novel The Dead Zone and its film and TV adaptations. It can also be seen in the popular TV show Charmed, with the character Phoebe Halliwell. The Marvel Comics character Snowbird possesses this ability; she can scan the past 6 hours or so of a given place. In Torchwood episode "Ghost Machine" contained a device which allowed its user to see a past event in a specific location, etched by a psychic imprint of strong emotions.

Second sight

Template:Cleanup Second sight is a form of extra-sensory perception whereby a person perceives information, in the form of vision, about future events before they happen. Foresight expresses the meaning of second sight, which perhaps was originally so called because normal vision was regarded as coming first, while supernormal vision is a secondary thing, confined to certain individuals.

History of symbolical visions

Though we hear most of the second sight among the Celts of the Scottish Highlands (it is much less familiar to the Celts of Ireland), this species of involuntary prophetic vision, whether direct or symbolical, is peculiar to no people. Perhaps our earliest notice of symbolical second sight is found in the Odyssey, where Theoclymenus sees a shroud of mist about the bodies of the doomed Woors, and drops of blood distilling from the walls of the hall of Odysseus. The Pythia at Delphi saw the blood on the walls during the Persian War; and, in the Argonautica of Apollonius Rhodius, blood and fire appear to Circe in her chamber on the night before the arrival of the fratricidal Jason and Medea. Similar examples of symbolical visions occur in the Icelandic sagas, especially in Njala, before the burning of Njal and his family. In the Highlands, and in Wales, the chief symbols beheld are the shroud, and the corpse candle or other spectral illumination. The Rev. Dr Stewart, of Nether Lochaber, informed the present writer that one of his parishioners, a woman, called him to his door, and pointed out to him a rock by the sea, which shone in a kind of phosphorescent brilliance. The doctor attributed the phenomenon to decaying sea-weed, but the woman said: "No, a corpse will be laid there to-morrow." This, in fact, occurred; a dead body was brought in a boat for burial, and was laid at the foot of the rock, where, as Dr Stewart found, there was no decaying vegetable matter.

Second sight flourished among the Sami and the Native Americans, the Zulus and Māoris, to the surprise of travellers, who have recorded the puzzling facts. But in these cases the visions were usually induced, not spontaneous, and should be considered as clairvoyance. Ranulf Higdons Polychronicon (14th century) describes Scottish second sight, adding "that strangers setten their feet upon the feet of the men of that londe for to see such syghtes as the men of that londe doon." This method of communicating the vision is still practised, with success, according to the late Dr Stewart. The present writer once had the opportunity to make an experiment, but to him the vision was not imparted. (For the method see "Kirks Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies," 1691, 1815, 1893.) It is, by some, believed that if a person tells what he has seen before the event occurs he will lose the faculty, and recently a second-sighted man, for this reason, did not warn his brother against taking part in a regatta, though he had foreseen the accident by which his brother was drowned. When this opinion prevails it is, of course, impossible to prove that the vision ever occurred. There are many seers, as Lord Tarbat wrote to Robert Boyle, to whom the faculty is a trouble, and they would be rid of it at any rate, if they could.

Second sight and its association with death

Perhaps the visions most frequently reported are those of funerals, which later occur in accordance with the sight, of corpses, and of arrivals of persons, remote at the moment, who later do arrive, with some distinctive mark of dress or equipment which the seer could not normally expect, but observed in the vision. Good examples in their own experience have been given to the present writer by well-educated persons. Some of the anecdotes are too surprising to be published without the names of the seers. A fair example of second sight is the following from Balachulish. An aged man of the last generation was troubled by visions of armed men in uniform, drilling in a particular field near the sea. The uniform was not Englands cruel red, and he foresaw an invasion. It must be of Americans, he decided, for the soldiers do not look like foreigners. The Volunteer movement later came into being, and the men drilled on the ground where the seer had seen them. Another case was that of a man who happened to be sitting with a boy on the edge of a path in the quarry. Suddenly he caught the boy and leaped aside with him. He had seen a runaway trolly, with men in it, dash down the path; but there were no traces of them below. The spirits of the living are powerful to-day, said the percipient in Gaelic, and next day the fatal accident occurred at the spot. These are examples of what is, at present, alleged in the matter of second sight.

Second sight and health

Taisch was the Gaelic name given to "second sight," the involuntary ability of seeing the future or distant events. It originated in the Scottish highlands.

The sight may, or may not, be preceded or accompanied by epileptic symptoms, but this appears now to be unusual. A learned minister lately made a few inquiries on this point in his parish, at the request of the present writer. His beadle had the sight in rich measure: it was always preceded by a sense of discomfort and anxiety, but was not attended by convulsions. Out of seven or eight seers in the parish, only one was not perfectly healthy and temperate. A well-known seer, now dead, whom the writer consulted, was weak of body, the result of an accident, but seemed candid, and ready to confess that his visions were occasionally failures. He said that the sight first came on him in the village street when he was a boy. He saw a dead woman walk down the street and enter the house that had been hers. He gave a few examples of his foresight of events, and one of his failure to discover the corpse of a man drowned in the loch.

Second sight and extra-sensory perception

The phenomena, as described, may be classed under clairvoyance, premonition, and telepathy, with a residuum of symbolical visions. In these, corpse candles and spectral lights play a great part, but, in the region best known to the writer, the lights are visible to all, even to English tourists, and are not hallucinatory. The conduct of the lights is brilliantly eccentric, but, as they have not been studied by scientific specialists, their natural causes remain unascertained. It is plain that there is nothing peculiar to the Celts in second sight; but the Gaelic words for it and the prevailing opinion indicate telepathy, the action of the spirits of the living as the main agents. Yet, in cases of premonition, this explanation is difficult. Conceivably an engineer, in 1881, was thinking out a line of railway from Oban to Ballachulish, at the moment when four or five witnesses were alarmed by the whizz and thunder of a passing train on what was then the road, but was later (1903) usurped by the railway track. (For this amazing anecdote the writer has the first-hand evidence of a highly educated percipient.) If the speculation of the engineer was wired on, telepathically, to the witnesses, then telepathy may account for the premonition, which, in any case, is a good example of collective second sight. That second sight has died out, under the influence of education and newspapers, is an averment of popular superstition in the south.

The examples given, merely a selection from those known to the present writer, prove that the faculty is believed to be as common as in any previous age.

Study of second sight

The literature of second sight is not insignificant. "The Secret Commonwealth" of the Rev. Mr Kirk (1691), edited by Sir Walter Scott in 1815 (a hundred copies), and by Andrew Lang in 1893, is in line with cases given in "Trials for Witchcraft" (cf. Dalyell's Darker Superstitions of Scotland, and Wodrow's Analecta). Aubrey has several cases in his "Miscellanies," and the correspondence of Robert Boyle, Henry More, Glanvil and Pepys, shows an early attempt at scientific examination of the alleged faculty. The great treatise on Second Sight by Theophilus Insulanus (a Macleod) may be recommended; with Martin's Description of the Western Isles (1703, 1716), and the work of the Rev. Mr Fraser, Dean of the Isles (1707, 1820). Fraser was familiar with the contemporary scientific theories of hallucination, and justly remarked that the sight was riot peculiar to the Highlanders; but that, in the south, people dared not confess their experiences, for fear of ridicule. (A. L.)

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

External links

• Precognition, Presentiment & Remote Viewing - Dean Radin
• Scottish Executive - The work of precognition agents in criminal cases This report examines the small-scale use of precognition agents in Scotland
• The Best Case for ESP?
• Failed Psychic Predictions for 1998
• A simple experiment for validating Dream Precognition
• Online Psi Experiments Links to precognition experiments (Parapsych.org affiliate of the AAAS)

• Edgar Cayce: Twentieth Century Psychic [1]

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