Dreamland this week: Eric Wargo, author of Time Loops, joins us to discuss his provocative theories about dreams, time travel and the true nature of the future, and how it affects our lives in the present.
Eric was last on Dreamland in 2018 to tell us about Time Loops, and it was one of the most popular shows of the year for a reason: he has some very unique ideas, and yet they are grounded in solid logic and–surprisingly–accepted science.
There may really BE a future that already exists, and not only that, very real time travel may become possible in it. Listen as Eric explains this, and also tells us why we won’t see time travelers until the moment arrives that the process becomes possible. It’s all very strange and mind bending, but it explains a lot about precognition and lucid dreams in ways we’re just not used to hearing.
Fascinating show and FASCINATING BOOK! To order it, click here.
Reach Eric on his blog The Nightshirt.
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Whitley, I suppose this would be a good time to relate one of my precognitive dreams to you (I’ve had them all of my life, although less frequently as an adult than I did as a child).
I had a spiritual awakening in December of 2006. Not long after that, I discovered your book Communion, and read it, and also found some audio interviews of you and listened to them. At this point, I knew who you were, but had never seen a picture of you. One night I had a brief dream in which I was watching a video of a white-haired gentleman being interviewed by a young dark-haired man with a mustache/goatee. A couple of weeks later, I saw a video of you being interviewed by Dave Navarro. My dream was the last 15 seconds of so of that interview!!
Eddie,
I will be listening to this interview later today, but…
Whitley may not remember it, but several years ago, I too had a strange thing happen as I was listening to that interview with Dave Navarro, and I contacted Whitley right away about it. He responded, and what I saw was more of a very personal, emotional connection to the being that followed Anne and Whitley from their cabin in New York to their apartment in San Antonio. Apparently, that interview with Navarro was more than it seemed, and I would be curious to know if any other people here watched that interview and if it resonated with them.
I look forward to listening to this new interview with Wargo later.
The Top play button is not working but the bottom mp3s are.
Novelist Madeleine L’Engel did not coin the term tesseract. She borrowed the term from mathematics, in which it is one of several terms for a fourth dimensional hypercube. The word was first used in 1888 by British mathematician and science fiction writer Charles Howard Hinton, who was interested in higher dimensions. “In geometry, the tesseract is the four-dimensional analogue of the cube; the tesseract is to the cube as the cube is to the square. Just as the surface of the cube consists of six square faces, the hypersurface of the tesseract consists of eight cubical cells.” Wikipedia article on “tesseract”
Thanks for the correction, Syzygy. You’re absolutely correct that Hinton, not L’Engle, coined the term tesseract. I even had a few paragraphs on Hinton and his tesseracts (he was quite an interesting character) in my first book, Time Loops, but forgot this origin in my conversation this week with with Whitley. 🙂
For some reason this isn’t downloading on the subscriber RSS feed.
There was a misconfiguration which hopefully has been resolved. It should now be present in the feed.
I just wonder whether Eric has tried to prove his time loop theory by intentionally trying to send back information to himself on a regular basis… Like a number from 1 to 100, or a Zener / ESP card…then seeing if any of them errupt into his dream world.
I’m just remembering that some early members / students of the Stanford Research Institute, proved to themselves that there was something real going on, by successfully predicting lottery numbers using Remote Viewing techniques.
It almost feels like Remote Viewing and time loops are cousins. One is openly but purposefully receiving from a specific remote target, the other is more of a random receiving of information from a local target.
Also, I wonder what the brainwave patterns of someone receiving precognitive dream information would be like, compared to that of a Remote Viewer whilst receiving remote target impressions?
I have friends attempting those kinds of experiments. The problem is that when the reception of the information (e.g., dream) precedes the sending, you have to have somehow forgotten the dream by the time you send it, otherwise there’s no way to tell if it worked. So for instance one friend will send herself a message into the past, and then check her dream journal for the date she chose. She has had success, but there’s no way to prove (to a skeptic) that she didn’t remember that dream when she created her experiment. This, incidentally, is the big problem when trying to prove retrocausation in physics experiments too.
I guess that is where the randomness of the lottery numbers comes in. If the experiment was to focus on sending back the first lottery number that was chosen on Saturday. It wouldn’t really matter if you remembered the dream or not, as the number was randomly chosen. As part of the experiment, you would have to make a pact with yourself to take the effort to focus on sending the number back, whether you remembered the dream or not.
But what might bake your noodle later on, is if you start to get some success in precognitively receiving next week’s lotty number correctly but then decide NOT to send it back in time…in that case, how did it get into your dream in the first place?!
Unless, like telling someone NOT to think of an elephant, the very act of trying not to do something, focuses enough energy back in time to accomplish the task regardless?
In principle, you could conduct such an experiment. The trouble is that it’s rare to dream literalistically and consistently about things like numbers — occasionally happens, but it is not very controllable. In practice, it would be really hard to get results in this kind of experiment.
Regarding the other problem–called “bilking” in retrocausality experiments–you’d find that your results were unreliable before you ever had the idea of failing to follow through with your experiment. This is because whatever you did in the past, or however you affected the past, is already part of the backstory of your present actions. This is why the famous “grandfather paradox,” even if it makes a fun SF premise, is actually no danger at all. History will always be self-consistent — even if it drives the time traveler insane 🙂
I am only including excerpts here, the three dreams I have posted (2 from the past and 1 current) were very emotional. This first dream especially. I am wondering, have we as souls made absolute choices created in our long ago past that then created our future predispositions and probabilities? I have also experienced (totally sure other people have as well) picking up thoughts/actions of other people while in the dreaming sleep state but not realizing this until something comes up that brings that particular dream experience back to mind. This can be problematic, not knowing what the dreamer owns and what the dreamer is picking up from another person’s mind/consciousness.
FIRST I want to include a few e-mails I had sent to Anne Strieber…….
06/01/2009…….
“Before going to sleep last night my intent was to try and sneak a peek into the chambers beneath the Sphinx after listening to the William Henry Revelations. I had my dreaming self wide open and perhaps why I believe I was in contact with all of those passengers. Please Anne, no need to write back, I think I am just struggling with all of the emotion at the moment…..I wish all of those loved ones left behind could know that the most precious ones in their lives are all right and that they want them to know that…..With all my heart I wish for a miracle and that they are still alive in the physical.”
“Anne, I woke up with a few more thoughts this morning. I am wondering if my SOUL was indeed traveling toward the Sphinx at the same time and going in the same general direction as the Air France Jet? Could all of our souls been out of body at almost the same moment? Did our paths collide as I was traveling from St. Louis? I know this idea probably sounds strange but now I am at the point of trying to understand how this could have happened. Also, does a living body with a soul doing it’s nightly thing look different then a soul that is no longer attached to the physical body? How did the passengers know that I was different? These are only thoughts that I am pondering and am thinking out loud. Thanks Anne…..Just needed to have someone listen.”
06/01/2009:
SOMEONE NEEDS HELP/THE VOICE IN THE JUNGLE
I have posted this dream before……
When I woke up and read about the AIRPLANE that went down I immediately felt connected with those on board…..
DREAM: I am in a forest/jungle? There is a long Jesus type table set up there with many people sitting around it; they have papers in their hands, pencils, pens, etc. I am with them but have decided to walk away; I am feeling overwhelmed and tired. There is desperation in the dream and they are all asking me for something that I do not know if I can deliver. Now I am driving a car trying to get away and the feeling is that they are begging me to stay and help or maybe send for help. I am emotionally distraught.
CHANGE: I find myself back in the jungle but alone. A female voice booms out of the ethers. She doesn’t want me to abandon them here and at the end of her speech she is starting to cry. Another woman to my right is telling me that the woman is getting too theatrical…..I wake up from this dream experience VERY upset, as though there are people out there needing help. (Thinking there is a plane filled with people, lost in a jungle that need to be rescued). Air France Flight 447.
ANOTHER DREAM…….
I was hoping this was finished but apparently it isn’t…..I don’t want to make a pest of myself but this feels so important.
Anne, I told myself a few days ago that I was going to let this Air France thing go. But I think this experience is related; the last part woke me up in terror. I have never actually seen anything like the Grey E.T. that you describe Whitley but nevertheless here it is…..a first for me.
On Thursday I purchased a small solar angel yard ornament. I charged it all day on Friday and turned it on when it got dark. Before going to bed I went out to admire it and jokingly said to myself, “HERE IS MY LITTLE LIGHT SOMEONE OUT THERE, SEE IF YOU CAN FIND ME.” I remembered Whitley saying something in the chat room about people that have had visitor experiences often leave the lights on at night and this was probably not a wise thing to do. Easy to find…..
06/06/2009:
TERROR, TINY AIRPLANE, THREE SMALL BOYS
DREAM: I am sitting in what looks like a doctor’s office waiting room but it shouldn’t be. I am here for a hair cut and I do not see any hair dryers or such. A receptionist comes and sits down next to me on this leather type couch and takes me into the room where my hairdresser is waiting. I look around and this is not right. I am told to lie down on this hospital bed. No, this can’t be right; all I came for is a haircut.
CHANGE: I am now outside walking down a road with an unknown person. She/he is taking me to a beautiful lush place. When we get there I am told that we should start walking down this steep grassy hill. We do so but within a few minutes I realize something is wrong The person next to me tells me not to worry about anything that I should just keep walking. I CAN’T AND WONT. The grass/ground is starting to feel waterlogged; it is turning into a swampy area then further away into a body of water. I AM SICK AND TERRIFIED. Please don’t make me do this, it is a certain death.
CHANGE: I cannot see a face, only a form but it feels like a male presence next to me. An airplane is swooping down directly in front us; it is silver and red but is extremely small/tiny. There is a body of water but more like a large lake with other similar small type airplanes here as well. Wait, something is wrong, it is flying to low, and it crashes into the water. There is a silent and quiet panic; I start screaming MAY DAY, MAY DAY, PLANE DOWN. I am still standing on the other side of the road from where the plane went down and see a shadowy man holding something in his hand. It is the size of cell phone so I am assuming that is what it is. I tell him to call 911 for help.
CHANGE: I have been taken to a house and for some reason I walk over to the front door. I open it and on the doorstep, face upward is an E.T. His head is way too large for his body and has the typical GREY look. Although in a panic I take notice that there are three circles around his neck almost as though the head has been attached to the body and can be taken off if needed????? It is hurt but I am to frightened to do anything. I run into the bathroom and see a small boy sitting in the bath water. I immediately start to bath the small boy until there is a knock at the door. I am told to come out. Sitting next to the bathroom door are small boots and other small clothing items. The voice on the other side of the door tells me to wash my face, do not put on any makeup because we are leaving here immediately.
CHANGE: I open the door and again a faceless person tells me to come out and look at the two other people that have just arrived. The first entity is the same E.T. that I saw on the doorstep earlier only he has been made well again. In almost the same moment it has changed form to look like the little boy in the bathtub. Another one approaches me but seems to be looking at me as more of a curiosity.
CHANGE: We leave this place and there are five us now including the small entities sitting in a large car. We are traveling down a highway when out of the blue another vehicle looking much like the one we are in comes directly towards us. It skids and our vehicle hits the whole right side of it; it becomes a ball of orange fire. The interior of our car lights up a bright orange. (This part is horrible…..no pain, no nothing, only stunned into silence.) I BOLT UPRIGHT IN MY BED AND IT IS 4:05AM…..
Note, I can’t be sure if this was in the dream or if it actually happened in wake time but I remember a red and white check tablecloth with round wood objects set inside the squares, perhaps a map of sorts.
NOW FOR A CURRENT DREAM…….I especially wanted to type this out since it is so close to PASSOVER as well as PALM SUNDAY.
A dream I had and still feel the sting of it. What did I do that would have locked me out of this room? It was not like a typical church place but WAS/IS a room akin to it.
DREAM:
Friday morning, March 12, 2021
As I write this, I am only including the parts of the dream where there was total clarity
I am in a stairwell, deep inside a building and descending to a lower level. There are many people with me but I am detached from them. I DO NOT BELONG TO THIS GROUP. They are all semi-physical, in-between a total physical human and an ethereal being.
Now I am standing in front of double doors. The upper part of these doors are reminding me of stained glass windows, the colors are extremely vibrant. I try to open the doors but they are locked and cannot enter the room. I am devastated. I put my forearms, my palms and forehead up against the glass and sob uncontrollably. This room has been closed to me.
A man approaches from my left and hands me a simple copper colored cup/chalice… Amazon.com | Copper Vintage Wine Glass Chalice Goblet Stainless Steel Interior – Unique Wine Chalice 10 oz Capacity by Alchemade: Wine Glasses…He says,”Everyone who is human has a cup, this one is yours.” I look into the cup and see it has ashes inside. WHAT IN THE WORLD HAVE I DONE TO DESERVE THIS? I turn the cup over and pour the ashes out onto the floor when a polishing cloth has somehow appeared in my hands. I say to the man,” I will clean this cup, it will shine and am praying I will be given another chance to enter the room.
Notes. I was deeply disturbed with this dream and although I have done some things in my life that I am not particularly proud of, I cannot think of anything that could have caused such abandonment. Is this revelation more about something/karma from a different lifetime?
I would love a reference to the moccasin fossil mentioned at the end of the show please
I can’t find it on the internet. I think that Anne and I saw it when we were touring caves in Texas back in the early ’90s. It was part of an exhibit of dinosaur and human footprints, but not the one in Glen Rose known as the Delk Track, which is the strangest one in Texas, I think.
The nearest I can come is the Polk County Moccasin Track in Missouri, but it is not as detailed as what we saw.
Whitley, I’ve been trying to figure out which tracks you are referring to. I’ve been to Glen Rose, seen the tracks from dinosaurs, as well as the alleged human footprints, and they are very well known. The only other caves I can think of here in Texas that may be where you are referring to are Kickapoo Caverns near Bracketville, but no dinosaur tracks. Interestingly, there is a place in Utah called Moccasin Mountain Dinosaur Tracksite. (?)
There is MUCH that I could talk about regarding the interview with Eric Warnock, because ‘Time’ is my thing and what I relate to more than any other topic…That being said, one of my most recent precognitive dreams is actually documented on Twitter from March 29, 2020 (So, last year):
‘Had a weird dream that included this old episode of ‘Star Trek’, Operation Annihilate’. The dream was about me trying to convince everyone about the importance of sunlight in defeating Covid 19, I used this episode to plant the idea into our collective consciousness , since I knew no
one would seriously listen to me. Let me know if it works. ‘
I included a link about the ‘Star Trek’ episode.
On April 18, 2020, I got a response on Twitter from Jack Brewer @TheUFOTRAIL:
“You hear about this?” He sent a link to a new story that states, “Sunlight destroys virus quickly, new government tests find”.
There have been recent studies that show sunlight may lower mortality rates with COVID, and not related to Vitamin D. These studies are observational at this point, so stay tuned. Beyond COVID, I have felt for many years that sunlight’s effect on us and our health is big, so I look forward to, hopefully, researchers finding out more in my lifetime. (By the way, I am one of those ‘burn-and-freckle’ people, so I am not advocating being reckless with sun exposure.)
And it’s kind of strange that I just now realized that my posting on Twitter referenced above was on March 29th, my son’s birthday. Jack’s response to me was on April 18th, my mother’s birthday. 🤔
Found 2 references, Not sure if they are what you seek
Sandal or moccasin prints have also been seen in the gypsum of the White Sands in New Mexico
On the north slope of a boulder strewn hill near the mouth of the Little Cheyenne River, South Dakota, lies the flat, dazzling white rock of magnesian limestone, which scientists say was laid down and hardened over 100 million years ago. On it are three prints of moccasined feet. In size they seem to be those of a woman or adolescent, and to judge the length of the stride (4 1/2 and 5 1/2 feet) the person who made them was running. In one of the prints, the impression made by the heel is deeper than that made by the ball of the foot, which again lends credence to the theory that whoever made the tracks was running. The depth of the tracks varies from 1/2 an inch to 1 inch. All three clearly show the instep and faint toe impressions, and all show the same amount of weathering as the unmarked surface of the surrounding stone. According to an interview which was obtained with Mr. Le Beau, who had lived in the area for over 26 years, local Indians knew nothing of the origin of the footsteps, but viewed the stone as a “medicine rock.” (William R. Corliss, Ancient Man: A Handbook of Puzzling Artifacts, p.649).
http://www.clinicalgaitanalysis.com/art/footprints.html
The “yearning that created the universe” made me think of these Hidden Words by Baha’u’llah (translated from Arabic): “3. O SON OF MAN!
Veiled in My immemorial being and in the ancient eternity of My essence, I knew My love for thee; therefore I created thee, have engraved on thee Mine image and revealed to thee My beauty.
4. O SON OF MAN!
I loved thy creation, hence I created thee. Wherefore, do thou love Me, that I may name thy name and fill thy soul with the spirit of life.
5. O SON OF BEING!
Love Me, that I may love thee. If thou lovest Me not, My love can in no wise reach thee. Know this, O servant.
12. O SON OF BEING!
With the hands of power I made thee and with the fingers of strength I created thee; and within thee have I placed the essence of My light. Be thou content with it and seek naught else
13. O SON OF SPIRIT!
I created thee rich, why dost thou bring thyself down to poverty? Noble I made thee, wherewith dost thou abase thyself? Out of the essence of knowledge I gave thee being, why seekest thou enlightenment from anyone beside Me? Out of the clay of love I molded thee, how dost thou busy thyself with another? Turn thy sight unto thyself, that thou mayest find Me standing within thee, mighty, powerful and self-subsisting.
14. O SON OF MAN!
Thou art My dominion and My dominion perisheth not; wherefore fearest thou thy perishing? Thou art My light and My light shall never be extinguished; why dost thou dread extinction? Thou art My glory and My glory fadeth not; thou art My robe and My robe shall never be outworn. Abide then in thy love for Me, that thou mayest find Me in the realm of glory.”
Alah u Abha from MI! A greeting of love to all!! I feel so strongly that we must work NOW with our dreams! This may be what could prevent further destruction! I took a Toltec shamanic dream course recently and so many indigenous medicine people say those who don’t remember and work with dreams are like the living dead. Our dreams, I feel, have an immense power to transform our consciousness! Now is the time to use these untapped potentials.
‘Every dream left unexamined is like a gift left unopened” C.G. Jung
Can someone please fix the subscriber feed so that I can listen to this podcast.
Thanks
Rick
Fundamentalist Materialism includes the false notion that Consciousness is a byproduct of the brain and since Precognition has been proven in peer review science (as well as other Psi abilities) there is an immense effort to disprove the notion of the Soul, of Consciousness existing independently as a super natural aspect of this universe and indeed being the primary basis of what is perceived as manifestation. Time loops is an attempt to ascribe precognition and the Souls transcendence to the material space time continuum as an aspect of a superpower of the Brain. I do not believe that Whitley’s vision of the past and the hose in the gutter was a precognition of seeing a picture of a hose in a gutter at a later time, rather the soul can sometimes journey independent of the body senses and the brain (receiver/transmitter – interface) and some OBE experiences transcend time. As in the case of the woman who perceived the tennis shoe out on the window ledge during her NDE (Leslie Kean – Surviving Death) the soul can perceive independent of the bodily senses and nervous system.
Thus far I have no idea why the spirit picks specific events for offering a precognitive glimpse, but it does indicate a Universal Sentience is involved in the flow of time and what events become ‘real’ by falling out of the statistical multiverse of the future and collapsing into the present to write the past.
I think that the pseudo powerful people who are so adamant about the Philosophical Materialist view that there is no Soul and that consciousness is a byproduct of the brain are really afraid of dying and having to face their past deeds, but their past deeds are already known and written in the cosmic record from a higher dimensional view and they will have to live with themselves and their deeds for all of eternity, may the Divine Consciousness have Mercy and wake them up to Love.
The truth of the Souls existence is the most essential wisdom for the survival of humanity in this great extinction level event we are in the midst of. Wisdom of the souls existence is the basis for humanity to start making wise choices and abandon our suicidal species plunge to our death. Only by knowing the Soul can humanity find the true Joy of life.
All the phenomena cited could also be explained within the ancestor simulation hypothesis too.
https://builtin.com/hardware/simulation-theory
Another posible clue
In Quantum physics one of the most intriguing ideas is the probability matrix, which is an interpretation of how subatomic particles can exhibit properties of both a wave and a solid particle at the same time. At the level of an electron or a photon, the wave is interpreted as a set of probabilities of where the particle might be at any given time. When we observe a particular possibility, then the probability wave is said to “collapse” and we see a single particle in a particular location.
Some interpreters have taken this to the macro level to say that there are a set of probabilities in which we exist both in the present and in the future.
Physicist Fred Alan Wolf, for example, says that information from these possible futures is coming to us in the present and that we send out an “offer wave” into the future, which is interacting with the “offer waves” coming from the future to the present. Which possible future we navigate to depends on which choices we make, and how these two waves super-pose on each other (or cancel each other out).
These are startling results. Future probable selves are sending back information to the present, and we are consciously choosing which path to follow.
https://hackernoon.com/the-great-simulation-why-quantum-physics-artificial-intelligence-and-eastern-mystics-all-agree-b6c185213a18
Perhaps that is another way to say the consciousness is the true essence and is engaging the Sentient mystery, while the world we perceive is an illusion, a construct of the mind/ego, truly a ‘dream’ compared to what is real. SonoLuminous Holofield shows that at every point (plank level division?) in space there is a Vast amount of information and we each have but a single point of view. A sea of Infinite Potential lies below the plank level. So Consciousness, the Soul of Perception is the truth and the Mind as Ego falsely claims to be ‘I’ and is tricked by its delusions. The Sentient Mystery and Consciousness are one in experience, but then the mind reviews the experience and filters it into this dream, this world view. We (the living souls of consciousness) are offered ‘A New World’ if we can take it!!!
Indeed the Planck Length question actually supports the simulation hypothesis.
According to simulation believers, we may have already found the pixel-sized building block of the universe: the Planck-length, the point at which our concepts of gravity and spacetime no longer apply. If our world is simulated, the Planck-length would be equivalent to one bit of information, or a pixel.
What they find is interesting. They say that the lattice spacing imposes a fundamental limit on the energy that particles can have. That’s because nothing can exist that is smaller than the lattice itself.
So if our cosmos is merely a simulation, there ought to be a cut off in the spectrum of high energy particles.
It turns out there is exactly this kind of cut off in the energy of cosmic ray particles, a limit known as the Greisen–Zatsepin–Kuzmin or GZK cut off.
This cut-off has been well studied and comes about because high energy particles interact with the cosmic microwave background and so lose energy as they travel long distances.
Other things like the Mandela effect, missing aliens and the odd behavior of particles are all listed in the link below
n physics’ famous double-slit experiment, electrons are fired at a photosensitive screen through slits in a copper plate, usually producing an interference pattern that indicates wavelike behavior. But when the same experiment is conducted under observation, electrons behave like particles, not waves, and there’s no interference pattern. Some have taken this to mean our simulation is conserving its resources and rendering certain things only when it knows we’re looking at them.
Of course if one were to simulate reality and consciousness, the very first line of code would almost have to be the preconception that consciousness cant be simulated, that no machine could ever be conscious. Its the best way to convince a simulated consciousness its “a real boy”. If the simulation is pre programmed to believe simulations/machines CANNOT be conscious, then i must be real and not a simulation.
some of the points in the link make interesting food for thought
https://www.vulture.com/2019/02/15-irrefutable-reasons-we-might-be-living-in-a-simulation.html
Why do it ?
Why create a simulated reality containing simulated conscious people who truly think they and their reality is real ?
Lets assume our reality is as we think it is ie not simulated. Lets look at all the technological discoverys and inventions this one reality has spawned.
Lets jump forward 500 years and look back at earths history and the discoverys made since fire…..
Thats one reality and set of inventions.
We could then create ancestor simulations lots of them and see what they invent, we can tweak each simulation as well some we might introduce wars, to drive technology development, in others disease to see what novel medical technology gets created. Environmental problems and see what technology they create to combat that and so on. Instead of enjoying the technological marvels of one reality stream, we could mine hundreds, millions of reality simulations for the advances and technology they each come up with as the simulation progresses.
I will read more when I am free of working, but for now I ask ‘missing aliens’ – What the heck is this delusion? The extraterrestrial presence is ancient and vast and has increased greatly in the last century! The Navy has confirmed the Tic-Toc video. Any thought that the Universe and most galaxies are not teaming with conscious life is pure foolishness of anthropomorphic ego.
The Universe breads increasingly more conscious beings. The vastness alone argues against the ‘Video Game’ mythology as being anything more than a clever story of the illusion of materialism seeking to deny the basis of what is (words (being limited symbols) poorly reflect the experience of life and even the best poets can only hint at what Love feels like).
The missing Aliens aspect refers to the Drake equation, the eerie silence , The hypothesis being that the simulation isnt bothering with much more than a localized reality. The double slit experiment is another supposed example. Just as in a video game the software only renders in any detail the immediate surroundings, Things in the distance lack high resolution until you actually go there, and then the system renders them in better detail. A simulated reality doesn’t in and of itself preclude aliens, since it may well be aliens who are running the sim. One interesting twist on the idea is a hybrid reality. You start off as a real person, but at the point of death are uploaded into a sim that gradually exposes you to this reality over time to avoid mental shock. That an interest in topics and discussions like this are classic examples of the transition sim. Waking up after death in a post biological reality where you find yourself in a galactic society of post biological entity’s of multiple species might freak most people out.
It’s a pretty neat idea, and very popular with scientists. But it carries a bizarre implication. Because the total number of pocket universes is unlimited, there are bound to be at least some that are not only inhabited, but populated by advanced civilisations – technological communities with enough computer power to create artificial consciousness. Indeed, some computer scientists think our technology may be on the verge of achieving thinking machines.
It is but a small step from creating artificial minds in a machine, to simulating entire virtual worlds for the simulated beings to inhabit. This scenario has become familiar since it was popularised in The Matrix movies.
Now some scientists are suggesting it should be taken seriously. “We may be a simulation … creations of some supreme, or super-being,” muses Britain’s astronomer royal, Sir Martin Rees, a staunch advocate of the multiverse theory. He wonders whether the entire physical universe might be an exercise in virtual reality, so that “we’re in the matrix rather than the physics itself”.
Is there any justification for believing this wacky idea? You bet, says Nick Bostrom, a philosopher at Oxford University, who even has a website devoted to the topic ( http://www.simulation-argument.com). “Because their computers are so powerful, they could run a great many simulations,” he writes in The Philosophical Quarterly.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/be-warned-this-could-be-the-matrix-20040722-gdje84.html
In Quantum physics one of the most intriguing ideas is the probability matrix, which is an interpretation of how subatomic particles can exhibit properties of both a wave and a solid particle at the same time. At the level of an electron or a photon, the wave is interpreted as a set of probabilities of where the particle might be at any given time. When we observe a particular possibility, then the probability wave is said to “collapse” and we see a single particle in a particular location.
Some interpreters have taken this to the macro level to say that there are a set of probabilities in which we exist both in the present and in the future.
Physicist Fred Alan Wolf, for example, says that information from these possible futures is coming to us in the present and that we send out an “offer wave” into the future, which is interacting with the “offer waves” coming from the future to the present. Which possible future we navigate to depends on which choices we make, and how these two waves super-pose on each other (or cancel each other out).
These are startling results. Future probable selves are sending back information to the present, and we are consciously choosing which path to follow.
https://hackernoon.com/the-great-simulation-why-quantum-physics-artificial-intelligence-and-eastern-mystics-all-agree-b6c185213a18
I may not have understood this correctly but one take away I got from Eric’s concepts is that precognitive dreams may show us a glimpse of the future, however, it’s not possible to change that future based on what we’ve seen. In other words the future is fixed because it already exists. My own experience with precognitive dreams is that this is not the case. Back in June of 2004, my 19 year old daughter and I were going to the Bonnaroo Music Festival in Tennessee, driving down from the suburbs of NYC. Two nights before we departed I had a vivid dream that we were stopped by a Virginia State Trooper with a K-9 sniffer dog. In my dream we had weed in the car and we were in the process of getting busted when I woke myself up. I told my daughter about the dream the next day, and told her that under no circumstances could she bring marijuana to the festival. In my dream the state trooper was following us for a long while at a very close distance. We were going exactly the speed limit in the slow lane. Out of fear, I decided to take an exit ramp and, as soon as I did, the trooper followed us, flipped on his lights and pulled us over at the bottom of the ramp. Two days later, we’re driving through Eastern Virginia, and it looked exactly like where we were in my dream. I look in my rear view mirror and there’s a state trooper a couple of yards behind us, also exactly as in my dream. I tell my daughter a trooper’s behind us but ask her not to turn around to look but to just act nonchalant. I also ask her if she’d brought weed with her even though I’d asked her not to. She admitted that she did and was on the verge of panicking. To make matters worse, and this is very strange but absolutely true, I had a cd playing on the car stereo. It was a compilation of songs from Quentin Tarantino films. The track that was playing was a Bruce Springsteen song called State Trooper. The plaintive chorus of the song is, “Mr. State Trooper, please don’t stop me.” My daughter through clenched teeth says, “turn that off now!” I did and I almost could have laughed if we weren’t so scared. I just kept driving and the trooper just kept following us minute after frightening minute which seemed like forever. Then I saw the exit ramp from my dream. There was no way in hell I was taking it having been forewarned by my dream. Shortly after we passed it, another car of young college aged kids just blew by the trooper and us. I couldn’t believe they did that! They looked like the types that were also going to Bonnaroo. State troopers knew about Bonnaroo and they also knew that many of the attendees would have weed and possibly psychedelics or other drugs in their vehicles. The trooper pulled off our tail and followed them and a minute or so later pulled them over. If it wasn’t for that dream, I may have pulled off at that exit and we would be the ones busted by that trooper and his sniffer dog. So, I firmly believe that precognitive dreams can sometimes be warnings. A potential future outcome can be changed if only we heed the warning and modify our actions.
This is a terrific precognitive dream example. I discuss this type of apparent warning dream in my book. Since dreams are really (I argue) pre-presentations of our future thoughts (not objective events), what they often show us is our dire imaginings during or after close calls. It may even be the case that we took a deliberate course of action based on the dream, and we then perceive that this averted a catastrophe (i.e., what I call a time loop); what the dream is showing us is not some “other timeline” where history turned out differently, but dramatization of our own anxious “whew, that was close!” thoughts. If precognition is a form of memory, then this is really no different from the kinds of calamitous ruminations we might have when reflecting on any close call in our lives–we imagine catastrophes that didn’t actually occur. Precognitive dreams focus on our survival of perils, so your dream is a wonderful example, I think.
Thanks Eric. Well that makes sense and you have certainly delved into the subject of precognition far more than I have. I very much appreciate your detailed reply. Still, I’d prefer to think the future is malleable and can be changed by our actions. Using Occam’s Razor, the simplest explanation to me is that I was warned by the dream and then changed my actions which then changed the outcome. I’ll probably never know for sure, but we live with the consequences of our actions either way, I suppose.
Thanks, Eric and Whitley, for such an interesting conversation.
From November 2019 to February 2020, I had a series of dreams about space craft coming to Earth in a way that profoundly affected the whole planet and human race.
In one dream, great squadrons of vessels flew overhead while i watched from an empty city street that seemed to have lost its meaning. There was some panic but mainly a great sense of calm.
At the time, I hoped it meant literal spacecraft were coming. Not yet, sadly, but the dreams took a new resonance when i first walked through the strange, empty streets of Sydney after the first COVID-19 lockdown.
On dinosaurs, I once dreamt that I jumped through a number of doorways that were portals leading back to the time of the dinosaurs. There, I saw something that can only be described as a dinosaur chicken – a towering t-rex half covered in feathers.
In the way of dreams, I realised that *I was* that dinosaur chicken in a past life, and was shown that the evolution of human consciousness did not begin with the human race but rather the human body is just one form of expression that an ever-evolving, eternal consciousness may choose.
Our long self might be much longer back than we think!
Whitley, I never expected to have anything in common with your experience, but I was shaken by your tidal wave and flood dreams. I have been having tidal wave dreams for the past couple of years. I have no idea of the meaning, but I do float or swim to the top of the wave or flood, which is both frightening and exhilarating.