The Power of Premonitions: How Knowing the Future Can Shape Our Lives »

Larry Dossey, M.D., is a leader in bringing scientific understanding to spirituality. He is the author of the New York Times bestseller Healing Words and several other books.

The doctor-and bestselling author-who first demonstrated the healing effects of prayer now offers an unprecedented look at the science of premonitions.

When Larry Dossey was in his first year of medical practice, he experienced a week of premonitions about patients, all of which came true. He had never had them before; they seemed to have come out of left field. After the sensations stopped, writes Dossey in The Power of Premonitions, "It was as if the universe, having delivered a message, hung up the phone. It was now my job to make sense of it-which I try to do in this book."

The four parts of The Power of Premonitions take readers through documented cases of premonitions, including a remarkable instance when an entire Nebraska community skipped church the very day it exploded; an examination of recent science studying what is known as "presentiment"; a discussion of what it all means to daily life; and practical, field-tested techniques for inviting premonitions.

Just as he did in Healing Words, the groundbreaking book that propelled Dossey into the public consciousness, in this compelling new book Dossey uses cutting-edge science to prove the value of what had long been considered spiritual mumbo-jumbo. This is a book for the skeptical mind, but it's also for the believer's heart-because its author possesses the rare gift of having both.

Foreword xiii

Author's Note xv

Introduction xvii

1 The Cases 1

Warnings of Illness 8

Telesomatic Events: The Importance of Feeling 13

Premonitions of Infant Death: SIDS 17

The Aberfan Disaster 21

Premonitions and Immortality: Dunne's Experiment with Time 26

Avoiding Trains and Planes 30

The Exploding Church 41

The Farmer's Almanac 45

Across Space and Time: Two Explorers Test the Limits of Premonitions 45

Making Money 49

2 Evidence 61

Ahead of Ourselves: The Presentiment Experiments 63

Online Evidence 74

Facing Up to the Evidence 76

Premonitions in Animals 78

First Sight and Mindsight 86

Premonitions and the Brain 92

Knocked Psychic? 96

3 Premonitions: Why, What, How? 101

Speaking the Language of Premonitions 103

Why Are Premonitions Not More Accurate? 106

The Repression Effect 108

Evolution and Instinct: Staying Ahead of the Game 114

Entropy and Emotion 114

4 Why Should we Want to Cultivate Premonitions, and How do we do it? 121

Culture and Premonitions 123

Why We Want to Cultivate Premonitions 127

Personality and Temperament 129

The Importance of Belief 134

Respecting Chaos 136

When Should We Pay Attention to Premonitions? 139

Ethics 141

Question the Source 146

The Cost of Denying Premonitions 149

Would History Have Been Different? 157

If We Can See the Future, Can We Change It? 162

Dangers 165

Cautions 169

5 Premonitions and our Worldview 173

Paths Toward Premonitions 175

Our Beloved Time 177

Time in a Muddle 178

Premonitions Do Not Contradict the Laws of Nature 181

Can We Affect the Past? 182

Quantum Possibilities 185

Consciousness 188

Fate or Free Will?195

Loving Mystery 197

Appendix 201

Infinite, Eternal, and One: Scientists on Consciousness 203

Notes 209

References 253

Acknowledgments 271

Index 275