In so far as the conscious energy of the dead exists outside all ties of time, and terrestrial conscious energy can make contact with it, the mystery of prophesy would be solved. What is still hypothesis could in future not only be proved by the conclusions of technical research, but also realized in practice. Hypotheses in the sense of 'accepted suppositions' are the prerequisites for all development.
We only need a little courage to bring them into the conversation. I've got that courage.
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[*] Matter from atoms which consist exclusively of antiparticles. incapable of existence in the presence of normal matter.
---- Let us assume that for one reason or another an otherworldly consciousness is interested in influencing the behaviour of one or several people or a group (peoples, countries, religions, kingdoms). It leaves its timeless state, and makes contact with a terrestrial consciousness. The reverse process is also conceivable. The conscious energy of an earthly person (who else could it be but a prophet?) could in specific situations communicate with the timeless conscious energy of someone from the other world.
From the dead colleague and his intact conscious energy (don't give me that old stuff about the 'soul'!)
it could learn what is going to happen in the future. From historical experience the person knows that the event communicated by energy cannot have taken place yet, and therefore is announced
('prophesied') for the future.
The paradox is that the event prophesied can never be held up or prevented. No visionary saint is that holy.
A man dies. His consciousness (in the form of energy) reaches a 'timeless state'. In this version he 'sees'
his home town swallowed up by the floods. As this event has not happened in his lifetime, it must take place in the future. A consciousness that becomes timeless after death cannot know when the future has laid down the deadline for the catastrophe. Otherworldly consciousnesses (in spite of their energies) still have links with living children, relatives and friends. They strive to win influence over the conscious energies of the people on the old earth with whom they have ties, for they want to warn them of the catastrophe which is pending at some unknown time in the future.
The inhabitants of the earth, tied to the daily round, have not trained the cerebral functions that could perceive such phenomena - the impulses radiated from the other world by the conversion of energy
(the energy principle) do not reach them. The other-worlders have to make their impact through a medium (who has trained the faculties that are capable of reception). In a trance (the state which develops paranormal faculties) the medium 'sees', by the action of conscious energy, a town swallowed up by the floods, but he does not know when it will happen - this is plausible for other-worlders themselves do not know it in their timeless state. So if a medium (prophet, priest, seer) preaches: 'Pray!
Pray fervently, otherwise your town will be swallowed up by floods!' it may be a plausible summons, but its contents are a lie, for the town will disappear at some time or other in any case. If it were not so, the timeless other-worlders would not have been able to announce the catastrophe.
Let us consider a different case. By energy conversion a terrestrial prophet sends his (trained) mental antennae into the other world. He 'sees' events that can only occur in the future, because they have not happened in past history (as known or experienced by the prophet). In other words, the mediumistic visionary does not learn what day is to be ticked off in red on the calendar. He has only one chance of giving a more precise 'message', namely if he has 'seen' the event in such detail that he can work out the approximate deadline for it. But there is one thing that even the cleverest and best trained prophet cannot do: prevent the event he has 'seen'! If it were not programmed for the indefinable future, an otherworldly conscious energy could not have transmitted it and a terrestrial energy could not have
'seen' it. It would be old hat if events which have been in the history books for years were communicated.
Does not this physical and metaphysical hypothesis explain quite plausibly why messages received in
'visions' proclaim and warn of coming events, but can never prevent them? Does not that also clarify why prophetic and visionary messages are often so obscure, 'mysterious' and ambiguous? With their present conscious energy, seers and prophets do perceive future events, but they cannot 'evaluate' them - except in the form of obscure predictions and unverifiable prophecies.
The last book in the New Testament is The Revelation of St. John the Divine. It is the book of a visionary. The prophet sees images of environmental pollution, aircraft, helicopters, nuclear explosions, etc. He uses his own words to reproduce these visions as he received them in communications from conscious energies:
... and there followed hail and fire mingled with blood, and they were cast upon the earth: and the third part of trees was burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up ... and as it were a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea ... and the third part of the waters became wormwood (radioactive?) ...
and the third part of the creatures which were in the sea, and had life, died; and the third part of the ships were destroyed ... (Chap. 8).
And they (the locusts) had breastplates, as it were breastplates of iron; and the sound of their wings was as the sound of chariots of many horses running to battle .... And they had tails like scorpions, and there were stings in their tails .... And ... I saw the horses ... and them that sat on them, having breastplates of fire, and of jacinth, and brimstone; and the heads of the horses were as the heads of lions; and out of their mouths issued fire and smoke and brimstone ...' (Chap. 9).
Is it not crystal clear why John wrote his very accurate descriptions in his own words using his world of ideas? He did not know our modern technical vocabulary. It is stimulating to learn that the atomic physicist Bernhard Philberth [16] has written a modern interpretation of revelation. The only disturbing thing about his technological exegesis is that he always appeals to God in a highly personal fashion for all the prophetic-cum-apocalyptic explanations. That brushes me up the wrong way. I just don't like it when people offer God, the last and highest instance of being, as an explanation for everything, when the goal can also be reached using reason.
It is much the same with the explanation of somnambulist phenomena: the time when they were interpreted plays an important part.
The poet Justinus Kerner (1786-1862) was the centre of the Swabian School of Poets. Many of his poems figured in school-books for generations, many of them achieved the popularity of folk songs.
Justinus Kerner, a doctor, devoted himself to a special field of research, the supernatural. He kept a diary of his observations with scientific precision. For many years his special subject was Friederike Hauffe, the wife of a tradesman. He recorded her somnambulist phenomena in the two-volumed work Die Seherin von Prevorst. I possess the first edition of 1829, and so do not have to refer to extracts from Kerner's work in scientific publications, which often quote him.
Friederike Hauffe came from the village of Prevorst near the Wurttemberg town of Lowenstein, in a mountainous district, whose inhabitants, says Kerner, were open to sidereal and magnetic influences.
Father Hauffe was a gamekeeper. Friederike was brought up 'simply and naturally'. Never spoiled, she grew up to be a 'blooming, vivacious' child. Whereas her brothers and sisters were bothered by apparitions this peculiarity was not found in Friederike, but she did develop a power of foretelling the future that was announced to her in dreams. She became the 'wife of a tradesman', had children and led a bourgeois existence, but her emotional life became so intense that 'she heard and felt everything over the greatest distances'. She could no longer bear the light. Once when an ecclesiastical relative opened the window shutters at midday, she fell into a cramp that lasted for three days.