About age fifteen, I had been sick and my mother woke me up around three a.m. to give me my medicine. In doing so, she woke me out of an unusually bright and colorful dream of a girl who was right in front of me dancing upside down. This had seemed so unusual, I described it to my brother and mother on the way home from school the following day: How the girl had blonde hair rolled up on the back of her head. How the wall behind her was lit up bright blue as though it was made of blue plastic with bright light bulbs inside of it. How it was only her head and chest I could see, close up in front of me. And that the most unusual feature was that she was dancing upside down, as though standing on her head! I also told them there was a white squiggly line about the width and length of a pencil moving to the left below her head.
Then we went inside, sat down in front of the TV, and turned it on. When the TV warmed up, there was the girl, EXACTLY the girl I'd seen in the dream as I had described to my mother and brother. It was a live TV show, not prerecorded, so no one could have known in advance what would be done or seen, and with the studio's special effects equipment, she was then shown upside down, just her head and chest displayed. The bright blue "plastic" I had described was the color of the wall behind her, and it seemed lit up blue from within because the color on our old-school color TV was turned up too far, creating an effect like a blue light bulb inside. Then came the final touch: A news bulletin came scrolling across the screen, forming the white squiggly line I'd described to them moving toward the left below her head.
Obviously, I'd seen the future, in precise detail. Every detail was exactly correct. But even my mother and brother refused to believe me. They refused to believe it possible for anyone to see the future. My mother insisted it had to be something similar by coincidence and I just thought it was exactly the same. Had they seen both my dream and compared it to the TV image, there is no way they could have denied they were identical. But my mother was not paying attention to the TV, and of course, neither had seen my dream. They only had my word to go on, and that was not enough.
But it was certainly enough for me. Even her spontaneous dance moves were all
exactly the same as in the dream. Obviously, the future does fully exist already in some form, complete enough to be seen accurately in full detail. This was a fantastic eye-opener for me about the nature of reality. There was no way I could ever forget it.
It now seems obvious to me that the future already exists in every detail, and yet it is also clear we still have our freedom to choose and do whatever we want in that future, even though it is already complete. The proof is that we are choosing and doing as we wish today, even though today must have already existed millennia ago.
I was riding home a few years ago while listening to a particularly intriguing episode of "Radiolab/WNYC Studios" on my car radio. In this podcast an artist and a physicist were being interviewed, both of them claiming the future already exists and that time is only an illusion. The episode is titled "Beyond Time" (and elsewhere titled "A Simpler Time"). At moment 22:20 the artist David McDermott of Dublin Ireland explains:
Time is here, has always been here, and always will be here. In other words, this moment in time that we're experiencing has always been here and always will be. That this moment in time, as you're listening now, on the radio, as my voice comes across the wireless, this is a permanent fixture of the universe. That I've always spoken on the radio, and I always will speak on the radio, and you will always be listening, and you always have been listening. Do you understand the concept?
Ha! Yes, I get it. I also get that it's not only the TV that works for me. And I get it that I'm not alone in my viewpoint, for truly great minds agree with me, even though my family did not.