Dreams of the Future

You have probably heard of experiments in which people are hypnotised and taken back to previous lifetimes they have lived on Earth. They often describe those lives in very compelling terms and sometimes even report on various aspects of life in the past that are only confirmed by subsequent historical research. You can believe or not believe these accounts or you can, like me, hedge your bets and think there might be something in them but they are not necessarily literally true. Either way, they do pose important questions unless you have decided in advance that they cannot possibly be true because human beings only have one life.

Now imagine you could do an experiment in which you hypnotise a large group of people and get them to progress to a future lifetime to report on what might be the state of the world then. A ridiculous fantasy? Perhaps but this has actually been done and the results published in a book called Mass Dreams of the Future written by a psychologist called Chet Snow who was carrying on the work of another psychologist, Dr Helen Wambach. I haven't read the book, which I believe was based on work carried out in the 1980s, but I have read an account of the experiment and it raises some interesting points.

First of all, we have to ask if the future is fixed. Common sense rebels against this as do one's innermost feelings. The universe is not a machine and anyone with an ounce of spiritual sensibility must acknowledge free will. No free will means no humanity, it's as simple as that. Therefore, the most logical thing is to see the future as something like a cloud of potential which will coalesce into a particular hard reality according to individual human decisions plus the acts, thoughts and behavioural patterns of other forms of life. The future cannot be predicted with precision, though the nearer one gets to it, the more it can be, but various possibilities can be predicated. They are there on a mental level in an inchoate form and the one that solidifies in the physical world is determined by what goes on in the present. I suspect that very advanced forms of life can foresee the future up to a point but I think it unlikely that the actual future has happened on any level before it really does happen. Yes, it will be there in the mental world but it is not fully realised until it takes physical reality and until it does do that it is subject to change and alteration. It's rather like an idea taking shape in your mind before you write it down. That idea arises in the thought world but the form it takes in the physical world can be adjusted right up to the moment it takes form.

It seems that 2,500 people took part in the future lifetime experiment and when their reports of the future were studied it was found that they contained several points of divergence but also some of agreement. Most significant of the latter was that virtually every one of them said that the earth's population had decreased dramatically. It had become considerably smaller than it was at the time (this was in the 1980s, remember). No future date seems to have been given, at least not in the account that I read, but it is safe to assume that the future envisaged has not yet arrived. I think it represents a new age or cycle and we are still living at the tail end of the old one.

The disagreements were over what sort of future we can expect. They split into four categories which were as follows. One was a sterile, technological world of space stations and synthetic food. Another was the exact opposite, a return to nature kind of existence in which people lived in harmony with the natural world and pursued spiritual development. A third was a science-fictiony mechanical world of underground cities and artificial environments enclosed in domes. And the fourth was a post-apocalyptic world of small groups of survivors eking out a living as best they could in the shattered remains of a destroyed civilisation. Futures 1 and 3 were described as 'bleak' and 'joyless'. Future 4 doesn't seem much better. Future 2 seems the best option.

The question is how much of this comes from ideas about the future already existing in the subjects' minds at the time? Quite a lot, I would say. These scenarios are all well known and were in the '80s too, and individuals may have subconsciously picked the one they were most in sympathy with. On the other hand, you cannot rule out the possibility that all these scenarios do exist as potential futures and the real one is yet to be determined. Nor can you rule out the possibility that the actual future is none of these. We can envisage these types of existence now but no one in the 16th century could have envisaged the world as it is today in the 21st. What I do find convincing is the point of agreement about the reduction in population. I think we all know that the situation cannot continue as it is and already, although world population is increasing, the birth rate is dropping in many parts of the developed world. That not withstanding, my feeling is that a great number of souls are being gathered together today to experience a critical time in earthly development but when that phase has worked itself out there will be a return to a lower level of population.

Perhaps these hypnotised subjects tuned into the psychic plane in which the future is gestating but if they did so they did it from the point of late 20th century humans which is to say they were only able to bring through what they could comprehend within the limited framework of their own minds and so they interpreted what they saw according to their own understanding. They didn't see reality (if they saw anything, of course, and it wasn't just fantasy), they saw symbols and patterns which they then formed into images based on what they already knew. So there was an element of projection there. And even within these limitations what they saw were potential futures not actual ones. The 30 plus years since the experiment will have changed much.

The future is a cloud that is taking shape. At a certain point one can detect several patterns in this cloud but the final one in which, so to speak, the cloud descends to earth and takes a concrete form cannot be known until it does that. That is why both free will and destiny are true. Just like you and me, the world has a destiny. It was set up from outside by God and his helpers to go through a certain pattern of development but that pattern is constantly modified from the inside by us.

I don't believe these people saw the future. Given they all saw different futures that's hardly surprising. But they may have tuned into a level of reality in which possible outcomes are beginning to form as mental images. The one that actualises could be any one of these or even something quite different if new information enters the field. What we think and do now determines the future or certainly has an impact on it. This is why one should never give up but always strive for the best.