#3
by Mike Odd on July 22, 2012 at 10:46 AM
Several years ago while practicing Zen meditation, it occurred to me that future and past are essentially the same thing; illusions perceived from "now", i.e. tomorrow is imagination, yesterday a memory with neither having any provable physical substance in our reality ("now") other than the way we have learned to perceive them: we see the past as real and verifiable because we have experienced it and have memories of it; we see the future as not real because we have not experienced it and therefore cannot verify it. This seemed to me to be an erroneous assumption based on how we condition our minds in a one way linear fashion. I felt the illusory future/past or the "stuff" on either side of the "now" should be more equally "weighted" and that conceptually we should be able to "remember" the future if we would only try to train our minds to do so. It seemed sensible to me that in the same way memory works (i.e. it is easier to remember events that happened yesterday than events of a week ago or a month or a year ago), it should be easier to foresee events in the near future than in the far future.
With this in mind I set out to do a personal experiment. During my daily meditations, I would consciously attempt to project my perceptions into the future rather than dwelling on past events. Within a week I was perceiving images in my mind of things or situations which had not happened in my actual "reality" that would then occur. These included spontaneous precognitive visions of meeting people I did not know, as well as situations and objects that I would then encounter within a day or two.
I have no doubt that my experiment was successful, however, it took a great deal of concentration, and over time as I got away from daily meditation, precognition quickly faded.

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by Mystic Marc on July 23, 2012 at 3:53 AM
Could your perception of the future be the result of a more dominant right brain hemisphere (intuitive mind) functioning during meditation, and a corresponding reduction of the left brain hemisphere (intellect/reasoning mind) functioning? The latter is strongly dependent on and attached to the so-called subject-object experience of normal everyday human awareness, that constantly moves or progresses from a present-cognitive awareness to a past-recollected awareness kind of continuum. On the other hand, the former opens the individual to a multidimensionality of mind that could include probable projections of future scenes or outcomes.

Additionally, you said that: "During my daily meditations, I would consciously attempt to project my perceptions into the future rather than dwelling on past events." Is this not contrary to the practice of Zen meditation which aims to still the mind and not stir it into more agitation? Also, can you be more specific with the methodology or technique you applied during meditation, beyond the one-liner I just quoted from your post?

I would like to hear back from you. You may reply to contemplation@live.com. Thank you for your post. I found it both interesting and fascinating.

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