So many intrigues, so little time...!
Allow me to begin by saying I value each of your views greatly. But if I may be allowed some input...
"maybe it's our primative brain responding to the wave form collapse... somehow sensing it?"
"I like Vajradhara's idea. There've been some intriguing studies that show we react on a purely subconscious/unconscious level to sensory input a fraction of a second *before* that input exists--just before a disturbing photograph is flashed on a screen in front of us, for instance. Some have speculated that this has to do with collapsing waveforms, as Vaj suggests--that the waves travel through time, both forward and backward."
If I am to understand the "Tao of Physics" correctly, components of atoms are able to shift in time. As these components are by definition quite small, those time shifts are also quite small, on the order of nanoseconds. This might account for the precognition WHKeith implies, but it does not account for my dreams being weeks, months, or as much as a year in advance of the actual happening. Even so, are these "time" shifts a natural occurrence, or are they the direct result of the experimental collisions? If particles react as waves, I am inclined to think there would be few, and only in certain circumstances, that would oppose the flow thereby gaining access to the conditions to shift in time. And even if the atomics themselves could be related to storybooks, say "little red riding hood" and "the three bears", the collisions would necessarily scramble the coded letters and present an unreadable text. My precognitive dreams are not scrambled. They are very condensed, that is, brief. But they are quite explicit.
"Other otions: sometimes we pick up on information "leaking" across from a parallel universe, again because our participation as an observer is necessary to create the branching of the metaverse. And, of course, there's that old standby, we're reacting to a past life or higher-life memory."
But this is answering a question with a question, answering a supposition with a supposition. Parallel universes are a mathematical supposition, which by their nature cannot be proven. Just as spirit cannot, by its nature, be proven.
As for past-life or other-life memory (no offense intended whatsoever) suppositions, why would I even see, let alone pass on, images of relevence to me here now, that are likely irrelevent there and then? For example, in the one dream I was specifically driving in my specific car and stopped at a specific stop sign beside a specific railroad track, specifically to make a right turn. As a dream, it was insignificant. Months later, as I was attending driving school to become a long distance truck (lorry) driver, I chanced upon that exact same specific scenario. It was a time of significant change in my life (as my dreams have to this point always foretold). Such a specific message would have no significance to any other life at any other time. Why would my WWII German grunt past life, for example, be driving a specific make and model car not even made yet to a stop sign in Florida? Or why would my futuristic nom de plume bother to relay such triviality back to me? And the time lag involved precludes parallelism.
"One other concept that's been batted around: in a quantum sense, we are all entangled with one another and with the universe; we literally are one, as the sages have always claimed. Sometimes we get flashes of that oneness--picking up on someone else's thoughts, or something that hasn't happened yet. Since this is a nonlocal phenomenon, it happens with no time delay. When the actual event finally reaches our awareness through more traditional modes, we experience a flash of having seen this or been here already through some type of neurological resonance."
I can relate to the web of one idea, and am inclined to go along. But that still would require an immediate sense of precognition. It has yet to address genuine precognition, that is, on the order of prophecy. Whether wave or web, the reaction is almost immediate. These do not consider cognition across expanses of time.
Let me close by saying I appreciate all three of you, very much. I, Brian, Vajrhadhara, and WHKeith, you are all among my favorite contributors. But I must return to my statement, "It shouldn't exist, yet it does. So we have yet another quandary."
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