Can We Really See into the Future?

Many Scientists Are Skeptical—But the Evidence Is Growing . . .

The future has always fascinated humankind. Throughout the ages, people have sought ways to glimpse what lies ahead—through dreams, oracles, intuitions, and more recently, science.

 

Over the past hundred years, scientists have tested claims of precognition and other forms of extrasensory perception (ESP). Early research had limitations, but modern experiments—conducted with rigorous methods by physicists, neuroscientists, and psychologists—are producing results that support the reality of precognition. These findings increasingly appear in peer-reviewed journals and challenge the long-standing assumption that information about an event cannot be known before the event happens.

 

Still, precognition remains controversial. Many mainstream scientists argue that it conflicts with causality—the principle that a cause must always precede its effect. Meanwhile, some parapsychologists interpret ESP as a challenge to materialism, proposing that consciousness itself is needed to carry information across space and time. Such a philosophical stance has further alienated many scientists from the field.

 

But what if there were another explanation—one that did not depend on mystical ideas or post-materialist philosophies? What if there were a physical theory to account for the transfer of information? What if there were a way to show that precognition is not only real, but also a natural biological process that is beneficial for our survival and well-being?

 

This is what Jon Taylor’s research is about.

Jon Taylor is an interdisciplinary scientist with a Cambridge MA in Natural Sciences. He has dedicated more than 25 years to a rigorous investigation of anomalous phenomena related to cognition. He suggests that ESP can be explained according to currently understood principles in physics and neuroscience – his work aiming to bridge the gap between parapsychology and mainstream science. Jon has lectured at international conferences and his work has been published in peer-reviewed academic journals. He is a professional member of the Parapsychological Association and a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Jon lives in Puerto de Santa Maria, Spain.

What Is Precognition and How Does It Work?

Precognition is the cornerstone of ESP. It literally means knowing that something will happen before it actually does happen. But what we connect with is not the future event itself—rather, we connect with our own future knowledge of that event. The precognition is due to a transfer of information from the brain in the future to the brain in the present. It similar to telepathy, in which information is transferred from another brain.

 

To explain how this is possible, Jon Taylor draws on Einstein’s special theory of relativity and David Bohm’s interpretation of quantum mechanics. Both suggest that future events already exist in space-time. Precognition arises when there is a correlation between our present and future brain states. The information is conveyed by a non-local influence—from outside of space and time—and detected directly within the brain’s neural networks. This avoids the need for signals to travel backward through time, or for us to possess a sensory organ to detect the signals.

 

Neurocognitive evidence suggests that precognition is a normal, though subtle, process. It often occurs whilst we are dreaming, or when we have a sudden feeling that something unexpected is about to happen.

 

However, precognition rarely delivers complete information. It tends to come in fragments, referring to experiences in the near future and that are emotionally significant to us. The mechanism explains many day-to-day experiences, and even such unusual ones as déjà vu and love at first sight. More importantly, the mechanism explains intuition, where hints from the future can guide our choices, helping us to survive and fulfil our needs.

What About Telepathy?

Direct communication between different brains may be difficult, precisely because the brains are different. Laboratory tests of telepathy have yielded little convincing evidence, since apparent successes can often be attributed to the participants’ use of precognition to detect their future knowledge of the targets—knowledge obtained on receiving feedback of the target information.

 

On the other hand, a person might be able to create weak telepathic influences that can sometimes affect the behaviour of others. For example, it is well known that people who are optimistic can have a positive influence on those around them. Furthermore, Taylor’s investigations suggest that in a borderline situation, we might be able to influence another person’s decision in such a way as to tip the balance in our favour.

Why Clairvoyance Is Unnecessary

Precognition experiments consistently show that participants make contact with the future—but not necessarily with the target objects themselves. Early researchers assumed “clairvoyance”—a direct perception of the target. Jon Taylor, inspired by J. W. Dunne’s classic An Experiment with Time, concluded otherwise: what people access is not the event itself but their own future experience of reading about the event or watching it happen.

 

Taylor finds no solid evidence for clairvoyance. Physics offers no clear way to explain how information about external targets could be encoded and transmitted. But if a person later receives feedback about the target, then their future brain already holds the information in a suitably encoded form. Precognition simply involves transferring that information back to the present brain.

 

By discarding clairvoyance, ESP is simplified: it is information transfer between living brains, across space and time. Nothing more.

 

David Bohm with H.H. The Dalai Lama

David Bohm was a leading physicist who contributed unorthodox ideas to quantum theory. He proposed the concept of an implicate order, based upon the zero-point energy field that exists outside of space-time. The implicate order unfolds to create the successive moments of the universe with which we are familiar – the explicate order – and these moments are then immediately re-enfolded back into the implicate order. Bohm turned to Eastern thought to develop the idea of a quantum potential which guides the process of unfolding. He suggested that similar structures ‘resonate’ in the implicate order and tend to unfold in a form in which they are more similar to one another – and this represents a transfer of information when the idea is applied to living brains.

 

When Bohm first put forward his ideas in 1952, they were considered a threat to scientific orthodoxy. Today, renewed interest is being shown towards the quantum potential, and both University College, London, and the University of Toronto are performing experiments to prove its existence, so far with successful results. 

The Institut Métapsychique International Centenary

Jon Taylor was among the 30 scientists who participated in the IMI Centenary workshop, held in Paris, July 2019. Delegates were convened from France, Germany, Holland, Portugal, Spain, UK, and USA, to examine theoretical approaches to explaining psychic phenomena.

 

The consensus was that whilst the reality of ESP has been established beyond any reasonable doubt, no final agreement was reached with regard to the mechanism.

Jon Taylor shares a brief introduction to his work on ESP and its implications

The Power of Intuition

What Is Intuition and How Does It Work?

Intuition is often described as the ability to understand something instinctively, without the need for conscious reasoning. Many psychologists attribute this to knowledge we already possess, but which lies below the threshold for awareness. The information somehow leads to an immediate understanding, without requiring logical analysis.

 

This description gives no indication as to how  the immediate understanding is achieved, nor does it acknowledge the fact that intuition often seems to include information from the future.

 

Jon Taylor’s research suggests that information does come from the future, but in a rather subtle way. First, we use precognition (unconsciously) to try to obtain the knowledge that we shall successfully fulfil an intention to do something. But if we are unable to fulfil our intention (e.g., because an accident would prevent us) there is an absence of precognition, which we instantly perceive as an intuitive warning —a feeling that “something is wrong”. We deduce that it might be due to an accident, and we avoid the accident by changing our intention and doing something else instead.

 

This explains why intuitions tend to be vague. We may sense a threat without knowing its nature, or feel drawn towards an opportunity without knowing why. Crucially, it avoids any paradoxes such as would occur if we obtained direct knowledge of a future accident, and then we used that knowledge to prevent the accident.

 

Taylor proposes that intuition is far more common than we realize and serves many purposes:

 

  • helping us make faster and better decisions, sometimes leading to creative insights and flashes of inspiration
  • explaining how animals find their way home when normal senses are insufficient
  • illuminating the workings of the I Ching, which enables us to access the future and obtain the best advice on how to solve our problems
  • providing a basis for remote viewing, as practiced in STAR GATE—the US government’s 22-year covert program in psychic intelligence.

Seen in this light, intuition is not a mysterious gift but a natural extension of precognition, woven into everyday life.

 

Intuition and precognition are fully described in Jon Taylor’s award-winning book Contact with the Future: The Amazing Power of Intuition and Precognition.

Parapsychological Association Convention, Paris, July 2019

Jon Taylor presenting his model for intuition at the Parapsychological Association Annual Convention. The PA is an international professional organization of scientists and scholars engaged in the study of psi (‘psychic’) phenomena. First established in 1957, the PA has been affiliated to the American Association for the Advancement of Science since 1969.