BACK TO THE FUTURE

REPORTS OF SUDDEN LEAPS IN TIME ARE INTRIGUING. WHAT IS IT THAT TRIGGERS SUCH EVENTS? HAVE WE PERHAPS ALREADY EXPERIENCED EVERYTHING TO COME?

To most people, time slips are firmly relegated to the realm of ‘the supernatural’ and left at that. Some, however, would argue that the ‘supernatural’, as such, cannot exist, since any event arising in the natural Universe in which we live must have natural origins. So even if we cannot explain a particular phenomenon in terms of the known laws of nature, this must be because current knowledge is incomplete. Who, for instance, could explain the mechanism of an eclipse before the true motions of the planets were known? The mechanism of time slips eludes us still. So all we can do is sift the evidence and search for common denominators among reputed experiences and possibly some relationship with known laws of physics. What we do know, however, is that some sort of a trigger factor usually appears to set the occurrence in motion. There is generally an abrupt onset of the experience; and a sensation of living in two time zones at once, either past and present or future and present. There is, too, almost always a feeling of being an integral part of the experience or a participant in the action; an absence of sound from beginning to end of the time slip; and conditions and those experienced during the time slip. Those who travel in time this way often describe indeed a ‘silvery light’.

ELECTRICAL EXPERIENCES

It seems that certain physical effects often take place, too, the subject seeing and hearing abnormally and experiencing a feeling of disorientation or detachment. Occasionally, people have also reported a tingling sensation or nausea immediately before they experience a time slip, just as particularly sensitive people may react to an impending earthquake or thunderstorm. (It is interesting that several of these sensations also herald haunting or other paranormal happenings.)
One subject wrote describing a tingling in her arms and legs, and a feeling of being ‘plugged in’. She may have been much nearer the truth than she realised, for there are indications that some form of electrical activity may well play a part in many paranormal experiences.
This sort of trigger was a major factor in the case of Anne may, the Norwich teacher who, in May 1973, at Clava Cairns in Scotland, experienced a slip into what appeared to be the remote part of the area. Significantly, it was not until she leaned back against one the standing stones that her extraordinary transition into the past took place, as though a switch had been thrown. Several correspondents have also used that very phrase to describe their individual time slips. The immediacy of the slip is always pronounced, too. It is as though the trigger object (in Anne May’s case, the stone) itself contained the power to evoke the time dislocation she experienced.

PART OF HISTORY

Several people have reported finding themselves actively involved in some historical occasion. One woman, while walking near Bootham Bare, York for instance, suddenly found herself in the past when a shaft of sunlight struck a coat of arms on the medieval city gate. At once, her awareness of the present dissolved and she discovered herself standing in the midst of a medieval scene, where there were milling barrows, carts and a great crowd of people. She also saw mounted horsemen clearing the way for some great personage who followed them. Then the sun went in, and the whole glowing picture disappeared. There seems little doubt that she ‘saw’ an actual historical scene and was herself briefly a part of it.
Here, again the trigger factor is present – in this case, the sudden shaft of light on the coat of arms on the city gate. It may even be possible that the Bar itself had ‘recorded’ this scene from its own past, and that the particular conditions of light provided by the sudden flash of sunshine ‘switched on’ the ‘playback’. But if that were so, why did the Bar ‘choose’ to replay this scene out of all its millions of recorded moments? And why was the scene not witnessed and reported by everyone else present in the modern precincts of Bootham Bar in 20-century York? Perhaps that particular scene had some special significance, such as a spontaneous memory of a past life? Or could it be that this women’s brain was alone in being in the necessary state to receive the information and transform it into pictures and sound?

WAVE PATTERNS

Particularly fascinating is the theory that if the operation of time slips is due to the transmitting of information from past or future into the present, then that information must already be in existence somewhere. Indeed, perhaps every single component of the world in which we live is continually broadcasting information about itself (form, colour, texture, situation, and so on) by means of ‘waves’ as yet unknown to science.

In theory, some of this information may be received and absorbed by surrounding material and, when conditions are appropriate, rebroadcast. Any human being then in the area, whose brain is at the time operating on the same frequency as the transmitter, could – at least in theory – register an audio or visual impression of the original ‘wave’ pattern sent out by the first broadcaster. Thus, in moments of high emotion or stress, you may yourself be sending out signals into the air that will be received years hence by same sensitive individual. Most (though not all) hauntings are attributed by some to this type of mechanism.
The human brain operates electrically and uses several frequencies. But there is some variation from brain to brain, and not all operate on exactly the same frequencies. So it may be possible that persons sensitive to psychic phenomena are merely tuning in to existing wave patterns (either past or future) by accident, their own brain activity being on the correct frequency for reception at the time.

TOMORROW’S WORLD

What, then, are these mysterious waves that seem to have the power to carry pictures and sounds through time? We do not know as yet. But it is a physical fact that all objects radiate electromagnetic waves. Light waves, which enable us to perceive the world around us, are just one example; and radio waves, infrared and ultra-violet waves, X-rays and gamma rays are all electromagnetic. Most of these invisible forms of radiation were discovered only within the last century; so other types of radiation may well still await discovery.
The fascinating branch of physics known as quantum mechanics presents the concept of electrons in atoms moving backwards and forwards in time equally easily. Perhaps, therefore, it could be possible for information from the future to be returned to us by some mechanism. So, if such information can indeed be returned from the future, then that future must already exist ‘somewhere’, in some form. What is more, it may be that we ourselves – and indeed all atomic material – carry within us the seeds of our own future. The behaviour of individual at atomic particles is unpredictable, but it is possible to predict how they will behave en masse. In other words, by cause and effect, all events may perhaps be predetermined. The idea of destiny may even have arisen from an instinctive knowledge of this very fact.

If this were always and wholly true, we and the whole of human history would indeed by predestined and our fortes would be laid down for us inescapably. Do we therefore actually have the power to alter and modify our destiny – at least occasionally – by the exercise of will? When we encounter precognitive experiences, whether dreaming or waking, it may be that we are actually receiving from matter already existing (people, animals, or buildings) information about the future. In the short term, it seems possible that such information is likely to prove true; in the long term, less so – for over a longer period of time, there is greater likelihood of human will being used to intervene in the cause and effect process. With more time available, in theory there should be more opportunities for action, and therefore more opportunities for change. However, there are exceptions. Occasionally, precognitive experiences will come to completion accurately several years after they have been initially uncounted. Indeed, there are cases where there has been a full 20-year lapse between the precognitive experience and its accurate fulfilment. This is, however, unusual.
The view is also sometimes expressed that many bizarre time experiences can be explained as hallucinations. Memory is incompletely understood, and the subconscious mind has proved to be very complex, dreams and hypnosis revealing a level of creativity inaccessible to the conscious mind. The full scope of the human mind has by no means been fathomed, leaving the possibility that time slips may perhaps be the result of imaginative responses, hysteria, drug usage or even illness at times. However,
Even when all these factors have been considered, there still remain experiences that cannot be accounted for – or which can only be accounted for by analogies that relate to the electromagnetic force field every human possesses, and through which we doubtless give and receive information. If electrical data fed into the brain from outside sources is indeed capable of being translated by the brain into terms of pictures and sound, than many psychic phenomena, including time slips, may thereby be explained.