1. The future is probabilistic
2. The future is ultimately deterministic
3. The future is partially deterministic
4. We create our future
5. Tying it all together - my theory
1. The future is probabilistic
This is the way mankind and science prefers to view the future. Since the future hasn't happened yet, we think of it as somewhat deterministic, but with a random variable. This is how we can predict where a quantum particle is. By using probability. There is a very high probability that the sun will rise tomorrow and a very low probability that all of the air will instantly navigate to the four corners of the room. Both possibilities are possible, but differ in their probability.
There is a lot of evidence that this is not true with regard to predicting the future. It seems that unpredictable quantum random events are JUST as predictable as highly probable deterministic events. The future, as evidence will show, seems to be quite deterministic in fact.
2. The future is ultimately deterministic
In this theory, all futures - that is, all future time frames (next minute, next hour, next century) are non-random, pre-determined since the birth of the physical universe. Purely the result of cause and effect and completely predictable. Evidence for this theory lies within the basics of Remote Viewing. To be able to see the future at all indicates that it must be deterministic to some extent. The greatest example is to be able to accurately describe a photograph that is chosen from a library of thousands by the flip of a random number generator - AFTER the description of the photo has been generated. This has been done successfully MANY times.
As an example of just how predictable seemingly random and improbable "chance" events are can be dramatically demonstrated in some of my remote viewing sessions where errors and other anomalies have caused the normal course of the experiment to re-rail slightly.
My favorite example of this is what I refer to as the cowboy session. During a remote viewing session, my perceptions of an amusement park were interrupted by very clear and strong perceptions of a cowboy with a gray, bushy mustache, brown leather hat, and graying hair. Later, the next day, at around my feedback time, I was searching the Internet for a source of photos. I had been through about a dozen random stock photo web sites and was loading a new site called "photostogo.com". I opened a new browser window and let my current work load in the browser window in the background. When my feedback time came, I looked at my monitor to see my target, and my attention was momentarily sidetracked, as the page in the background finished loading. I was shocked to see a cowboy's face in a small picture frame in the lower right hand corner of my monitor! If you stop to evaluate what happened to lead up to that photo, you would be sifting through hundreds if not thousands of random acts by me in order to get to that photo at the exact feedback time. Starting with the notion to search for stock, and accounting for every search request at a search engine, all of the links clicked on, etc, etc, etc. That session can be found at http://www.remote-viewing.com/outtakes/feb4.html
Another example of successfully predicting a completely random future event happened when my judge's finger slipped as he accidentally pushed the wrong button on the computer program that manages the targets and feed backs. He had just finished judging a session - that's where he compares my remote viewing perceptions to two potential targets and chooses the best match, and his error caused the computer program to crash. He thought, however, that he had corrected the mistake in time, as there was no sign that anything was wrong, so he did not tell me and let the remainder of the experiment take it's normal course. What had happened was that the application substituted an old target still in cache for either of the two actual choices. He had scored the session very low, because neither of the two photos he had to choose from was even remotely close to my perceptions. That's because at the feedback time (the time when I get to see my target), unknown to either of us at the time, I was shown the WRONG photo - the old one from cache. Although my perception of either of the two potential targets was very weak, my perceptions of the actual target I was shown (the old one from cache) was VERY clear! It's exactly as if I had predicted that his finger would slip and hit the wrong key hours before it happened. That session can be found at http://www.remote-viewing.com/outtakes/July1-H.html
Further evidence that the future is ultimately predictable can be found in a series of experiments conducted by Louisa Rhine at the Rhine Institute. She discovered that low probability futures had the SAME chance of being predicted than did high probability futures. Details of her experiment can be found in the book; Parapsychology. And even more evidence was discovered by Dr. Dean Radin where he successfully demonstrated that subjects had a noticeable change in electrodermal skin activity seconds before being exposed to emotionally charged photographs. The photos were selected at random by the computer AFTER the bio feedback equipment had registered a dramatic change in their autonomic nervous systems such as electrodermal activity, blood volume and heart rate. Details of Dr. Radin's experiment can be found in his book: The Conscious Universe
Some evidence that might dispute the theory of the future being predetermined is the fact that fewer people ride the train on days when there is a train wreck. This indicates that although the future may be predetermined, we have the ability to change it. That suggests that we have control over our destiny, but who's to say that the supposed (imagined) "control" wasn't also predestined? Who's to say that a remote viewer who remote views a plane crash and cancels his flight wasn't always predestined to do that anyway?
Quantum physicists would refute the determined future theory by stating that it has been proven that truly random events happen at the quantum level. In quantum physics, uncertainty is the rule and probability is used to predict what a particle might do next, or where to actually find one when we look. But just because we are unaware of any 'cause' doesn't mean it doesn't exist. It could just be a case of where the smaller particles or 'causes' have not yet been discovered. It could be, in fact that these 'causes' are indeed nothing more than consciousness itself. More on quantum theory in the book: Schrodinger's Cat
3. The Future is partially deterministic
This theory says that the future is pre-determined at various points and un-determined at other points. Something else governs how the future rolls out giving us free will at certain points and denying us free will at other points. What exactly governs this may be impossible to understand. A good analogy is to view the course of time like a winding river. We ride in a canoe on the river and every so often we run into an eddy - a spot in the river where the river actually runs backwards - where time runs backwards. The rock downstream causes the backflow of water allowing us to 'see' downstream or into the future. Time might just work this way. It may flow forward, but occasionally, we may be able to experience a time eddy where information from the future flows backwards. This might happen at many different time frames as well. From the uneasy feeling you get seconds before an accident to the remote viewer sensing his target one hour from now, to the 1930 stock market crash that may have been caused by a giant eddy from the future 1987 crash.
Another way to view this would be to imagine the future as actually 'causing' the past - backward causation - where time flows (however briefly) backwards, where a future event actually causes a reaction in the past - and even possibly it's own cause. I've witnessed something similar many times in a remote viewing session. It seems that information gained when remote viewing sometimes arrives in a 'thought package' that when unraveled, is actually information in reverse order - or backwards. For example, in one particular RV session, I imagined the Partridge Family bus, but I somehow knew that there was more. Upon further consideration, I realized that it was the family itself, a group shot from the shoulders up. As I contemplated that, I realized that there was still something more specific - it was Danny only - an image of him from the shoulders up. The actual target was a young boy who resembled Danny and who was about Danny's age complete with red hair and freckles. http://www.remote-viewing.com/outtakes/mar31.html
But what actually governs when or what future events flow backward to allow us to sense them? That may indeed be a question that is impossible to answer. It may not be something that can be understood by us as we currently exist in this physical world. Then again, it may be based on something as simple as our conscious intentions, hopes and fears. We may be completely in control, and indeed responsible for our own destiny.
4. We create our future
In this theory, we are ultimately responsible for ANY future possibility - of all of the possible possibilities, we are able to freely choose which path we take. We don't actually predict the future - we MAKE it. For example, in remote viewing when I perceive a door and hallway, in some way, I am actually responsible for making that target happen. From the selection of that target from the database in the future or to influencing the photographer who shot the photo in the past, I can in some way to some degree influence that future possibility. And we may create our futures at many different levels from personal to collectively as a society. For example, imagine hundreds of millions of conscious minds actually working together to create our general reality. Within that general reality - a consensus reality - we work personally to influence it in our own direction a bit at a time. This would explain why new sports record are being set every year when physiologists in the 1950's calculated that we had reached our potential as human animals. We are slowly changing our consensus reality by collectively believing that breaking a sports record is desirable and possible. This theory also might explain why against odds of a million to one, the quintuplets ALL lived and are expected to live healthy normal lives. It's because we all wanted and believed it could be.
And just how are we actually creating this reality? Let's revisit theory #1 - determinism for a second. I finished by talking about how quantum physicists don't agree with determinism because of the uncertainty principal in quantum physics - then I added that just because we aren't aware of a cause doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. Possibly that 'cause' is our conscious minds itself, where we as individuals and collectively as a society and even to some extent globally as a universe, are the invisible 'cause' that makes the particle appear here and not there. In fact, matter broken down to it's most basic element may indeed be nothing more than consciousness itself. Not only are we possibly responsible for creating our futures, but we may indeed be responsible for creating our entire environment - the physical universe. Imagine an almost infinite array of conscious 'thoughts' from the future and past interacting with each other. A vast, unlimited mass of thoughts interacting with each other - like thoughts attracting, unlike thoughts repelling, and the struggle between the two finally resulting in actual matter.
The theory that we 'create' our future is convenient, but implies that free will governs our destiny and that predicting the future with any degree of success would be impossible - something that we know IS possible with a high degree of success. So where does that leave us?
5. Tying it all together - my theory
Certainly most of the evidence points to a completely pre-determined future. I believe that to be the case, however, I also believe that we are responsible for creating our own future, both on a personal conscious level as well as on a cosmic conscious level.
But how can our futures be predetermined and undetermined at the same time? I think the answer lies in our interpretation of "predetermined". I believe that determinism, which must exists in order for us to accurately predict the future, and free will, which must exist in order for us to 'create' our future can co-exist.
I believe that we do not understand determinism. Although everything may be calculable ultimately, I think that we still have free will. Here's a good example of what I mean. If you look at a transcript of all that you did, saw, experienced and said yesterday, you could view that as something that is final. You can't change that - it happened in the past and can only be observed now. Well, if you imagine yourself at some point in yesterdays transcript where you could have taken an alternate path - a point at which you had a decision to make - get out of bed on the right or left hand side. It's futile to imagine what would have happened that day if you got out on the right rather than the left because it's a done deal - it already happened - you already made that choice - you can't change that. Well the future may be thought of in much the same way. You had free will as you woke up and made a conscious decision to get out of bed on the left hand side. You COULD have chosen either side, but you chose the left NOT the right. You had free will, but you can't change what already happened. You made ONE decision. That's where determinism fit's in. If you view the future in the same manner that we have just viewed the past, you can understand how a predetermined destiny can co-exist with free will. We have free will, which is necessary to create our future, but in the end - we always make a decision and that decision becomes unchangeable history.
If time is an illusion, then it may run backwards as well as forwards. The way in which we know we can't change our past may indeed be the same as how we can't change our future even though we created our past, and are currently in the process of creating our future.