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69 of 78 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Idea of Premonitions Drives Me Nuts, But..., May 4, 2009
Although a substantial part of my career as a psychologist has been devoted to parapsychological matters for more than 50 years, one part of the field has always been especially troublesome to me, the idea that people sometimes get information about the future, premonitions, precognitions, when there is no reasonable possibility of them getting it, given what we know about the nature of the physical world.
I am thoroughly acculturated, like practically everyone, to believe that the past is gone, the future is not yet here, only the present moment is real, so time marches on. Sure, we can predict probable things - the sun will rise tomorrow - or things we know the causal mechanism of - the car will stop running soon if I don't put more gasoline in the tank. But then you can't help but hear stories on the order of "I dreamed this really improbable set of events that resulted in my being run down by a green car on such-and-such a street, although I don't usually go there, and sure enough this green car suddenly dashed around the corner and would have killed me if I hadn't been forewarned by the dream and so alert enough to jump back."
The devoted materialist has no trouble with such stories, banishing them with words like "coincidence." In Dossey's new book he mentions the medical version of this: a story that indicates something you don't believe in is an "anecdote," one that confirms your beliefs is a "careful case history."
In my recent book The End of Materialism, out just a month before this new Dossey book that I want to praise, I am forced to include precognition with what I call the Big Five psi phenomena, the ones that have been so thoroughly and rigorously tested that I see no reasonable doubt that they exist (telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, psychokinesis and psychic healing). Yet while I include precognition there because there is so much evidence for it in rigorous lab studies, in point of fact I find the idea of knowing the future so incomprehensible that I don't really think about it. When I discovered massive precognition effects had sneaked into my own laboratory data, e.g., I found I wasn't even psychologically "defended" against the idea, premonitions were just too far out to worry about.
Now Larry Dossey, well-known physician, author and alternative medicine expert, has devoted a whole book to all aspects of premonitions, and I'm going to have to think about it. Indeed I've told Dossey that his book captured me. I have very little time for reading, I'm sent dozens of books people want me to read and that, given my interests, I would like to read, but never get time for. The Power of Premonitions: How Knowing the Future Can Shape Our Lives is so readable and fascinating, though, that I read the first 190 pages continuously and have taken it on my camping vacation with me to finish. It's too good! Spontaneous cases from real life, lab experiments, connections with the latest understanding of brain functioning, and, especially important, why it would be useful to develop our premonitory abilities, are all covered. I can't recommend it highly enough!
Charles T. Tart, PhD
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26 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Back to the future..., May 18, 2009
"O, that a man might know the end of this day's business ere it come!" Julius Caesar, Act V, Scene I.
Time and other thieves... The good Doctor has unleashed an outstanding contribution to our attempts to understand the chaos of being, and the very nature of time itself.
In a work that manages to be both deeply scholarly and highly entertaining, Dr. Dossey has fashioned a mosaic of strange bedfellows that will at the very least help us to start asking the right questions.
As expected, the book is a masterpiece of research, supported by acres of notes and references, dealing with numerous core topics, such as the block universe, chaos, entropy, repression and a look into the paradox-drenched quantum arena as a whole.
While the case examples are fascinating and well chosen, the book also looks into cases of people successfully acting on premonitions, and the rituals of some cultures whereby destructive dreamed premonitions might be negated and dark outcomes averted.
For me, the book's crowning magic lies in the closing sections, in which Larry Dossey cites examples of how mystery and embracing the unknown can be good for our psychological and physical wellbeing. We do indeed seem to need just enough chaos and uncertainty in our lives. In the same way, one of the theories about reincarnation is that we are not supposed to remember details of our previous lives, lest it bias our thoughts and actions in our current life.
There's an allegorical song by Ani DiFranco called Little Plastic Castle, in which she sings...
"They say goldfish have no memory
I guess their lives are much like mine
And the little plastic castle
Is a surprise every time..."
Good job, given the dang size of the bowl...
Dr. Dossey takes the unusual and insightful step of asking the reader whether they want to invite premonitions into their consciousness, given the responsibility that may come with it. This dilemma was beautifully captured in the Garth Brooks classic, The Dance.
"Hey who's to say, you know I might have changed it all
And now I'm glad I didn't know
The way it all would end, the way it all would go
Our lives are better left to chance
I could have missed the pain
But I'd have had to miss the dance..."
Live with passion.
Steven Cain (Sirius Moonlight, One Star Awake)
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13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
More Courage to Explore from Dossey, January 18, 2010
This review is from: The Power of Premonitions: How Knowing the Future Can Shape Our Lives (Hardcover)
I have extreme bias here. I just admire Larry Dossey for being so open to the possibility that the universe may have more in store than we could ever imagine. This must be very threatening within the medical community. Even among those that believe that spirituality affects health outcomes, his writing is seen as threatening, as "unscientific." Yet he writes with love and interest and a truly open heart. Hats off to you! As to this book, there could have been a little better organization. I don't mind anecdotal evidence, but I truly don't know much about the more "legitimate" scientific experiments with psi, and here they seemed to be interwoven a little too haphazardly for my poor brain, in bondage as it is to space and time, could take in. Yet it was an encouraging read for those who, like me, suspect there is more to life than what our limited vision may allow us to see.
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