Are We Living Quantum Time Machines Part 2

If your future life can impact your present, as some mind-bending research suggests, do we really have free will or are we ruled by fate?

BY HARV BISHOP

Where is free will if something you do in the future causes something to happen to you in the present. You have no control over what mischief your future self is up to.  This potential for ass-backwards karma gives the Serenity Prayer a whole new meaning.

Buckle up.

Time to get in the DeLorean and head Back to the Future.

Among the head-spinning theories we looked at last week:

1. Experiments in psychic phenomena, and quantum physics, show that events in the future can cause things to happen in the past. In other words, actions we take now are influenced by our already existing future. This is called retrocausation.
2. Why? Spiritual writers Eric Wargo and Mitch Horowitz postulate that time is an illusion. Past present and future exist all at once, and our limited human perception discerns only the perceived present happening one step at a time.

Do Psychic Predictions Leave Room For Free Will?

We also saw that a novelist predicted in his fictional book many of the details of the sinking of the Titanic a full 14 years before the actual event. How is that even possible? In his book Time Loops, Wargo writes about the myriad contingent factors that led to the sinking. It’s mind boggling even if only considering the unusual weather patterns in 1912. There were a larger number of ice bergs than usual making their way into the north Atlantic into the path of the “Unsinkable” Titanic. How could all that be known 14 years before?

Let’s play what if. What if the novelist had known it was precognition? At some point he began to recognize his often-agonizing gift. What if he actually tried to sound the alarm and by some miracle he wasn’t written off as a deluded crank? Could the disaster have been averted?

Can our consciousness make a Quantum Leap?

The 1980’s television series Quantum Leap’s main character would each week leap into the life of someone in the past “to make right what once went wrong.” Might that, as Horowitz says in The Miracle Club,  work in some mysterious way with both with past and future?

Wargo would say no. Fate rules and free will is largely an illusion. Free will is a cultural construct.  You can’t change the past if it would alter the present precisely because the future that depended on yesterday’s choices is already happening. In addition, the present is already happening.  That present is also dependent on our past and future “choices.” Horowitz would say yes.  As we evolve and grow the past and future change with us.

Both writers argee that past, present and future occur simultaneously, but for different reasons. For Wargo everything is happeningatonce. But everything is the one thing that did happen past, present or future. It isn’t malleable. For Horowitz past, present and future possibilities exist all at once. Given the Schrodinger’s cat thought experiment where the cat is both alive and dead until observed. Past, present and future possibilities exist like a gazillion always-present Schrodinger’s cats awaiting our selection.

How Can We Know the Future Years in Advance?

Precognition that occurs years in advance with specific details is one of the hardest things to wrap my head around. For the dream to come true so many contingent events and apparent free will choices have to align.

California New Thought minister Rev. Harriet Hawkins questions the existence of free will in a provocative post on her blog. She writes about a powerful long-ago dream where two spirit beings discuss her future. These beings predicted a new career and a major geographical move.

She wrote about the dream in a journal and then turned her mind to other things. In her words, “… it had no impact on me in my waking life. I [did not] have an intuitive feeling that I was fighting off some nearby fate. In fact, the dream was so impersonal and detached, that though it was interesting enough to write down, I didn’t follow up with much reflection.”

Six years later she came across her journal and realized the dream had come true. In the meantime, she had moved back and forth across the country four times and adopted multiple spiritual practices. How could the spiritual beings in the dream have known her future when she did not? Did she, in fact, have free will she asked? And did the people who assisted her new journey have free will? Looking back, she writes that she sees how her life pointed toward the ministry, but at the time she never consciously thought about being a minster. Again, she asks, where was free will?

Do our souls hold our highest future?

Dean Radin’s research, discussed in his book Real Magic, suggests that our visualizations and affirmations pull from the future rather than push from the past. But, in Hawkins’ case, she writes she had no conscious intention of becoming a minster.

Wargo might suggest that Hawkins’ later passion for the ministry and the feeling of being “thrown” when she found her dream journal caused her precognitive dream six years before and unconsciously influenced her choices towards that future. Horowitz might say that since multiple futures and pasts exist simultaneously time occasionally collapses in dramatic ways that provides tracers of unmistakable deep meaning to a person. At some point, she became conscious of, and selected, rather than created, this potential future.

Hawkins believes that there one best course for our soul’s path held in Divine Will, but many other future possibilities also exist. The dream revealed her highest path. She notes in her comment to part one of this series that she experienced  many other examples of dramatic dream revelations of her future.

A Note of Caution

Wargo and Horowitz clearly reach different conclusions on the complex question of free will given retrocausation. Here I want to proceed cautiously.

First, I’m comparing their works based on my interpretations of their writings. They are not engaging in public debate and, in fact, greatly respect each others’ work. Horowitz endorsed Time Loops and Wargo has lauded Horowitz’s work on his blog The Night Shirt. Both men draw on the research of Dean Radin, lead researcher of the Insitute of Noetic Sciences.

Second, both authors give careful and nuanced arguments in their books resulting from at least half a decade or more of deep reflection. By necessity I’m going to simplify and summarize their conclusions. They are both highly original and provocative thinkers.

Third, retrocausation is so counterintuitive that you may be tempted to write off their ideas. Please don’t do that based on my limited summaries or any critiques or questions I raise in this series of posts. I urge you to read their works in full and reach your own conclusions. Agree or disagree with these writers, reading and contemplating their ideas is exhilarating. They admit they are speculating about ultimately mysterious realms, not offering easy answers or new dogma.

The Case For Fate

Wargo’s underlying theory goes something like this: Precognition is common. Micro parts of our brains operate in quantum realms that can reach into the future. This is also true of animals and even plants and primitive, simple life forms. The precognitive capacity evolved because it increased the likelihood of survival.

In humans the precognitive capacity is mostly unrecognized because of its obtuse and symbolic nature. Wargo writes that precognition is like receiving a letter from the future with no return address and no context. We don’t have premonitions of our actual future with all its complex causes and effects, but instead the dreams and visions capture our emotional state when we experience news of that future.

In his thinking, Hawkin’s shock or being “thrown” at finding her dream notes and seeing them validated could have triggered the events in the past. So too, on a more minor level, my shock at encountering the smart-ass clerk that I discussed in last week’s post would have triggered the dream of seeing her the night before.

How can the future cause a dream in the past?

It would be fair to ask why I would be shocked if I hadn’t had the dream? Or if Hawkins would have been surprised at the validation upon discovering her dream journal minus her dream? In both examples the shock depended on the dream. He is arguing the dream depended on the shock. This is what he calls a “time loop.” Both events in past and future are inextricably linked and cause each other. He admits “time loops” are a tautology and are not easily grasp.

In his view, the horror of learning of 9/11 would explain the high number of reported dreams and other reported premonitions of disaster. He writes that examples such as dreams of large-scale disasters show that people often dream ahead in a way that reflects mistakes in news coverage of disasters rather than the actual event. This, Wargo argues, shows that the precognition is more about predicting our emotional state on hearing of the event.

Wargo works off a model of the universe developed by Albert Einstein’s mentor Herman Minkowski. The universe is like a glass block capturing every moment in time at once. Each person’s life is like a piece of spaghetti moving through the block, sometimes intertwining with other strands. At any given time we see only part of the strand, the part we perceive as our present moment.

The Case For Free Will

Horowitz’s underlying theory goes something like this. PSI experiments, such as Dr. Dean Radin’s discussed last week, suggest strongly that time is non-linear. He pairs that (albeit cautiously) with the quantum physics experiments that show particles and waves exist simultaneously and depend on observation to manifest as one or the other. He also discusses in-depth thought experiments such as Schoedinger’s cat where the imaginary cat is both alive and dead until the box is opened.

Combining the non-linearity of time with multiple co-existing realities Horowitz writes cause and effect might occur in all directions. In The Miracle Club he writes “Time may be less like a straight line than a rotating, infinitely dimensional wheel, spinning out past-present-future as one symbiotic system. We experience linearity only when we view life as an isolated fragment or snapshot.”

Free will is where the theories get tricky

In Wargo’s glass block universe the spaghetti strands (a person’s life) exist all at once. If changing the now would change an already present future or past that change won’t happen. If you went back in time you couldn’t change the past because it would alter an already present future. Likewise if you’re doing something now that would interfere with an already-present future, you won’t be able to do it.

Wait a minute, you might say. What about someone who dreams a chandelier is going to fall from the ceiling and harm people? The dreamer warns people who walk away. The chandelier falls.  The warning saves people from harm. Isn’t that changing the future because of precognition?

Wargo says no. The sense of relief at avoiding disaster in the present causes the dream in the past. The disaster never happened in the future so the precognition was necessary to fulfill that future.

So What Is It? Free Will or Fate?

Changing the past to change the future is a perennial theme in science fiction. Recall the 2012 film Loopers (spoiler alert) where the time traveling hit man Jason Gordon-Levitt kills himself to kill his future self (Bruce Willis) and save the heroines’ child and change the future. This couldn’t happen under Wargo’s theory.

I believe Horowitz’s writings  supports the idea that the same result could happen not through guns but through prayer and communication with our past selves. We don’t physically go back to the future, but we can telepathically change that co-existing reality.

Horowitz definitely makes room for human agency and free will.

Wargo argued mightily against Minkowski’s glass block universe and fate on his blog The Night Shirt in 2013. He called it a hoarder’s universe in which nothing down to the smallest detail ever goes away. Then he believed precognition showed possible futures similar to Horowitz’s view. We can call that Wargo 1.0.

In later blog posts and in his new book Time Loops, Wargo ultimately accepts the implications of the glass block where all our moments are trapped in amber. Time Loops could be called Wargo 2.0.

I resonate more with Horowitz and Wargo 1.0 with precognition showing possible futures and the existence of free will.

Is Life Like Groundhog Day?

I find the 2.0 arguments fascinating, but claustrophobic. I think of it like Bill Murray in the movie Groundhog Day, but without the opportunity for redemption. Imagine the Murray character’s first day endlessly played out with no redos. Of course, my subjective discomfort says nothing about the truth or falsity of Wargo’s 2.0 perspective.

Next week we’ll look all this means for manifestation practice, healing past and future selves, including reincarnation, and telepathy and ESP.

In the meantime, consider the words of Dean Radin, in responding on Facebook  to Part 1 of this series: “It does seem to be true that thinking too hard about retrocausation will create a brain ache. So I recommend limiting retro-pondering thoughts to no more than an hour a day.”

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RESOURCES: You might also enjoy Part 1 of Are We Living Quantum Time Machines? here.  See Part three of the Time Loop series here.

For our visit to the Beatles Abbey Road Studios in London and our discovery that it is sacred space click here. See the three thinkers changing the way I think about spirituality here.

To see Rev. Harriet Hawkins blog on her precognitive dream and the question of free will click here. To see her insightful comments on part 1 of this series including some of her other precognitive experiences and her theory of different levels of consciousness impacting our experiences, click here.

Mitch Horowitz’s new book The Miracle Club, Dean Radin’s Real Magic, and Eric Wargo’s Time Loops  all have my highest recommendation.

See Wargo’s thought-provoking blog The Night Shirt here and his earlier post arguing against the eternalism of the glass block universe model here.