The Philosophy of Time and Precognition: My Problem With Linear Causation:

I've known things before they happened. Not vague premonitions or lucky guesses, but specific, verifiable information about future events.

This shouldn't be possible according to our everyday understanding of time. The future doesn't exist yet. You can't know what hasn't happened. Causation flows forward, not backward. The past influences the future, never the reverse.

And yet.

I've dreamed about conversations that happened word-for-word the next day. I've known about accidents before they occurred. I've had clear impressions of future events in shamanic journeys that later proved accurate down to specific details I couldn't have predicted or deduced.

As someone trained in physics and philosophy, this creates a profound problem. My experiences seem to violate basic assumptions about time and causation. But what if the problem isn't with my experiences? What if it's with our assumptions?

Let me explore what precognition implies about the nature of time, and why our common-sense model of linear causation might be wrong.

What is time???

What I'm Actually Experiencing

First, let me be specific about what I mean by precognition, because the term covers a lot of territory.

Not: Vague feelings that something will happen (anxiety about flying that 'predicts' a crash)

Not: Inference from current conditions (predicting rain based on clouds)

Not: Self-fulfilling prophecy (predicting something and then unconsciously making it happen)

Not: Retroactive fitting of memory to outcome (remembering a dream as more specific than it was)

What I mean: Clear, specific information about future events that I had no way of inferring from present conditions, that I couldn't have caused, and that proved accurate when verified.

Example: I'm journeying for a client I've never met. I receive detailed information about a conversation they'll have with their sister in three days, including specific phrases, the location (a blue kitchen I can see clearly), and the emotional resolution of a conflict I knew nothing about. Days later, the client confirms: the conversation happened exactly as I'd described, in a blue kitchen, with the exact phrases I'd mentioned.

This happens regularly enough that coincidence doesn't adequately explain it.

The Standard Model of Time

Our everyday, common-sense understanding of time looks like this:

Time flows in one direction: Past → Present → Future

The past is fixed: What happened already happened and can't be changed

The present is real: This moment, right now, exists

The future is open: It hasn't happened yet and doesn't exist

Causation is forward: Past causes present, present causes future, never backwards

Knowledge flows forward: We can remember the past and experience the present, but we can't know the future because it doesn't exist yet

This model is called 'presentism', meaning only the present moment is real. The past existed but doesn't exist anymore. The future will exist but doesn't yet.

Presentism makes precognition literally impossible. You can't know what doesn't exist.

So if my experiences are genuine, presentism is wrong.

Alternative Models of Time

Philosophers and physicists have developed other ways of thinking about time that don't make precognition impossible. Let me explore the main alternatives:

The Block Universe (Eternalism)

In this view, all moments in time exist equally: past, present, and future all exist simultaneously in a four-dimensional block where time is just another dimension like space.

What this means:

• The future already exists, just not here-now

• All events (past, present, future) are equally real

• Our experience of 'now' moving forward is subjective, not a feature of reality itself

• Time is like space. The future is 'over there' in time the way London is 'over there' in space

  
  

How this accommodates precognition: If future events already exist in the block universe, then knowing them isn't impossible; it's just accessing information about a region of spacetime you haven't reached yet in your subjective timeline.

It's like looking ahead on a map to see what's coming. The destination already exists; you just haven't arrived yet.

The problem: If the future is already determined and exists, do we have free will? If I see a future event, can it be changed? If not, what does that mean about choice and agency?

The Growing Block Universe

A compromise between presentism and eternalism:

What this means:

• The past and present exist

• The future doesn't exist yet

• Reality is 'growing' as new moments come into existence

• The past is fixed, the present is real, the future is genuinely open

  
  

How this accommodates precognition: This one's harder. If the future doesn't exist yet, how can you know it?

Possible answer: Maybe you're not seeing the future. Maybe you're seeing high-probability trajectories. The present contains enough information to determine likely futures, and precognition is accessing that information.

But this doesn't explain cases where future events seem genuinely undetermined by present conditions.

Branching Time

From quantum mechanics and many-worlds interpretations:

What this means:

• Multiple futures exist as possibilities

• At each decision point, reality branches into multiple timelines

• All possible futures are real in different branches

• We experience one timeline, but others exist

  
  

How this accommodates precognition: Maybe precognition accesses one of many possible futures. Sometimes it proves accurate (you're seeing the branch you end up in), sometimes not (you saw a different branch).

The problem: This predicts precognition should be unreliable, as you'd see many futures, not the one that actually happens. But my experience is that precognition, when it occurs clearly, is remarkably accurate.

The Timeless View

Some physicists and philosophers argue that time itself might be an illusion:

What this means:

• At the fundamental level, there is no time

• What we experience as temporal flow is an emergent property

• Past, present, and future are all artifacts of how consciousness organises information

• Reality is fundamentally timeless

  
  

How this accommodates precognition: If time is illusory, then past/present/future distinctions break down. Information isn't inherently temporal. Consciousness just experiences it that way.

Precognition might be accessing information without the temporal structure we normally impose on it.

What Physics Actually Says

Here's where it gets interesting: modern physics already challenges our common-sense view of time.

Special Relativity

Einstein showed that simultaneity is relative, that what counts as 'now' depends on your reference frame. Two events that are simultaneous for one observer happen at different times for another observer moving relative to them.

This means there's no absolute 'present moment' that's the same for everyone. The 'now' is observer-dependent.

If there's no universal present, then presentism is already undermined by established physics.

The Relativity of Future and Past

In special relativity, whether two events are in each other's past, future, or present depends on their location in spacetime. For events outside each other's light cones, different observers will disagree about their temporal order.

This suggests that 'past' and 'future' aren't absolute features of reality: they're relations between events from a particular perspective.

Time in General Relativity

Einstein's equations for gravity are time-symmetric, as they work equally well forwards or backwards. At the fundamental level of physics, there's no arrow of time.

The asymmetry we experience (time flowing forward, causes preceding effects) emerges from thermodynamics and entropy, not from the fundamental laws.

Quantum Mechanics and Time

Some interpretations of quantum mechanics have strange implications for time:

Retrocausation: Some interpretations allow future measurements to influence past states

Delayed choice experiments: Decisions made now can apparently affect what happened in the past

Quantum entanglement: Correlations exist outside of normal temporal sequence

None of this proves precognition is real. But it shows that our common-sense understanding of time is already known to be wrong at fundamental levels.

My Actual Experiences and What They Suggest

When I experience precognition, whether in dreams, in meditation, in moments of sudden knowing, what does it actually feel like?

It doesn't feel like predicting: It's not inference or calculation. It's more like remembering. The information has the same quality as memory, except it's about something that hasn't happened yet.

It's experienced as already actual: The future event doesn't feel probable or possible. It feels real, like it already exists and I'm simply accessing it.

It has spatial-temporal specificity: Not just 'something bad will happen' but 'a blue car will run the red light at this intersection tomorrow at 2pm'. The kind of detail you'd have if you were describing something you'd witnessed.

It can be altered sometimes: This is the strange part. Some precognitions feel fixed, like they're going to happen regardless. Others feel more fluid and more like a warning. When I act on the warning, the future changes.

This last point is crucial. If the future were completely fixed (block universe), warnings would be useless. But if the future doesn't exist at all (presentism), precognition would be impossible.

My experience suggests something more complex: multiple possible futures with different degrees of probability or fixedness, some accessible now, some changeable and some not.

The Problem of Retrocausation

If precognition is real, it implies that information can flow from future to past. This is called retrocausation, where future events influence past events.

This seems to violate causation as we understand it. How can the future cause something in the past when the future hasn't happened yet?

But notice the assumption: 'the future hasn't happened yet'. That's presentism. If you adopt a different model of time, retrocausation becomes less paradoxical.

In the block universe: All times exist. Information could flow in either temporal direction. What we call 'causation' might just be information transfer, and our feeling that it only flows forward might be a limitation of our perspective, not a feature of reality.

In quantum mechanics: Some interpretations already allow backward causation. The Wheeler-delayed-choice experiment suggests that measurements made now can affect what happened in the past. This is controversial, but it's taken seriously by physicists.

In consciousness: Maybe consciousness isn't fully embedded in time the way physical processes are. Maybe awareness can access information across temporal boundaries that physical causation can't cross.

The Free Will Problem

Here's where precognition gets philosophically tricky:

If I know what will happen, is it still free to not happen?

Case 1: Fixed Future If the future is determined and I'm just seeing what's already fixed, then free will is an illusion. Everything is already decided. This is depressing and conflicts with our sense of agency.

Case 2: Probable Future If I'm seeing a high-probability trajectory that could still be changed, then my knowledge might itself change the probability. By knowing it, I might prevent it (or cause it). This preserves free will but makes precognition unreliable.

Case 3: Multiple Futures If many futures exist (branching time), I might be seeing one possibility among many. The future I see is real but not the only real future. Which one I end up in depends on choices not yet made.

My experience suggests something like Case 3 with nuance: Some futures feel fixed (resistant to change), others feel fluid (warnings that can be acted on). This suggests degrees of determinism: some events are highly constrained by present conditions, others are genuinely open.

This matches our intuitive sense: Some things are inevitable given current trajectories. Others depend on choices not yet made.

What Shamanic Practice Suggests

Shamanic traditions have their own frameworks for understanding time and precognition:

Non-linear time: Many shamanic cultures understand time as cyclic, spiral, or multi-directional rather than linear. Past, present, and future are not rigidly separated.

Dreamtime/mythic time: Time in non-ordinary reality doesn't follow clock time. You can journey to the past, the future, or outside time altogether.

Time as navigable: Shamanic practitioners don't just predict the future; they sometimes work to change it. Healing work can address future probabilities, preventing outcomes that haven't happened yet.

The spirits know: In my experience, helping spirits have access to information across time. When I journey for guidance about future events, the information comes from spirits who seem to exist outside linear time.

This isn't a scientific model. But it's a framework developed over thousands of years of practice in cultures that take precognition and time manipulation seriously.

What shamanic practice suggests: Time is more fluid, more navigable, and less rigidly structured than our clock-measured experience suggests.

Living With Temporal Anomalies

Here's what I've learned from years of experiencing precognition:

The future feels real: When precognition arrives clearly, it has the quality of already-existing fact. This phenomenology supports the block universe more than presentism.

But it's not always accurate: Sometimes I'm wrong. Sometimes what I see doesn't happen. This suggests probability or branching rather than single fixed future.

Acting on it changes things: Warnings can be heeded. Futures can be altered. This preserves agency while still allowing genuine foreknowledge.

It creates ethical complexity: If I know something will happen, am I obligated to warn people? What if knowing changes it? What if it doesn't? What are my responsibilities toward future events I've witnessed?

Why This Matters

This isn't just abstract philosophy. How we understand time affects:

How we think about death: If all times exist eternally, death isn't the end of existence; it's just the boundary of your timeline. You continue to exist at all the moments you ever existed.

How we understand agency: If the future can be known, what does that mean for choice and responsibility?

How we relate to the past: If time isn't as linear as we think, maybe healing past trauma has more possibilities than we imagine.

How we approach the future: If it can be sensed, changed, or navigated, our relationship to possibility shifts.

Scientific research: If precognition is real, we need new models of time and causation that can accommodate it.

The Position I'm Left With

I can't prove precognition is real using scientific methods. My experiences don't constitute proof.

But they do constitute evidence, not of the kind that would convince a skeptic, but of the kind that forces me to take seriously possibilities I might otherwise dismiss.

What I believe based on experience:

• Our common-sense model of time (presentism, linear causation) is inadequate

• The future has some kind of reality that allows it to be accessed now

• This reality is complex and is not simply fixed or open, but something involving probability, multiple possibilities, or degrees of determinism

• Consciousness can access information across temporal boundaries in ways we don't understand

• This doesn't eliminate agency, but it complicates it

  
  

What I can defend philosophically:

• Modern physics already undermines presentism and absolute time

• Alternative time models (block universe, branching time) are philosophically coherent

• Retrocausation isn't ruled out by physics

• Precognitive experiences, if genuine, require rethinking causation

  
  

What I acknowledge honestly:

• I don't know how it works

• I could be wrong about the interpretation, even if the experiences are real

• The evidence isn't sufficient to establish precognition scientifically

• This remains genuinely mysterious

  
  

An Invitation to Mystery

Linear time and forward causation feel obviously true because they match our everyday experience. The future doesn't exist yet. The past is gone. Only now is real.

But maybe our everyday experience is misleading. Maybe consciousness experiences time differently than matter does. Maybe the apparent flow of time is an artifact of how we process information, not a fundamental feature of reality.

I've experienced time being less rigid, less linear, and less one-directional than our common-sense model suggests. I've known things that, according to presentism, shouldn't be knowable.

This doesn't mean I understand time. It means I know our standard model is incomplete.

The universe is stranger than we think. Time is stranger than we think. Consciousness is stranger than we think.

And I'm okay with that strangeness.

I'm Kathy Postelle Rixon, researcher at Cambridge studying physics, Chair of The Philosophical Society: Oxford, and shamanic practitioner who has experienced precognition regularly enough to question our basic assumptions about time. I don't have answers, but I'm sitting with better questions. If this resonates, reach out at kathy@magicinharmony.com or visit www.magicinharmony.com.

Have you experienced knowing things before they happened? How do you make sense of it? What model of time makes sense of your experience? I'd genuinely love to hear your perspective.