Can "nondual" folk know the future? their brains can, but they can't

An often described experience by mystics and advanced meditators over the millenia, particularly non-dual ones, is the sense of knowing the "past, present and future", "timeless awareness" and "unusually spacious awareness that extends through time". Knowing the past is not that "special", we call that "memory", and most folk, if they are paying attention and aren't carried away by their thoughts, get a glimpse of the "present". However, the sense of knowing the future, perhaps on an on-going basis, is the most fascinating, and also, the most difficult to prove scientifically.

i was in an Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) study for "advanced nondual meditators" which started in 2009, which attempted to measure if such folk could actually be shown scientifically to know the future. "my" EEG run was done at the Science and NonDuality Conference (SAND) in San Rafael, CA in October 2009. After attending my talk, two of the principal researchers @ IONS, including the director of research, asked if i would participate in their study. The reseachers who conducted the study were Dean I. Radin, PhD, Cassandra Vieten, PhD, Leena Michel, (seen adjusting my EEG "head net), who were all from IONS, and Arnaud Delorme, PhD, from the Swartz Center for Computational Neuroscience, University of California, San Diego.

The open literature, peer-reviewed paper, which describes that work, has just issued, "Electrocortical Activity Prior to Unpredictable Stimulii in Meditators and NonMeditators", by Radin, et. al. in Explore 2011; 7:286-299, published by Elsevier.


IMHO, it is a very carefully-designed, control-based, statistically-sophisticated, EEG study. It has to have every conceivable "base" covered as this is such a controversial area and there are many doubters. The IONS approach was to use sounds and light flashed at randomly generated spacings and permutations. The premise was that the consciousness of "advanced nondual meditators" extends through "past, present and future". If this is the case, there would be "presentiments", as EEG indications, before the actual stimulus occurred as consciousness, knowing the future, would react prior to the stimulus.

The distinction between "presentiment" and "procognition" is an important one; "presentiment" is what was investigated here as it is the most scientifically-determinable one. Presentiment can be perceived as "exceptional situational awareness" by folk like airplane pilots, or even martial arts folk, who respond in critical situations faster than they should be able to, through seemingly having "anticipatory systems".

The most important difference is that in presentiment, one is not consciously aware of future events. Rather, there is some aspect of consciousness that can sense future events which could be scientifically detected through unconscious variations in the autonomic or central nervous system. Advanced nondual meditators would not know consciously what was about to unfold, but there would be some unconscious presensing or prefeeling which could effect what actions took place.

The classical work of Libet, which has been validated many times, demonstrated that the motor cortex initiated actions well before the conscious mind became aware of them and before they occurred. Presentiment could be very valuable, given it could impact the motor cortex which is the source of action, even if one was not conscious of the knowing, particularly if one were in a sword fight.

Previous studies have reported increases in EEG gamma frequencies in advanced meditators compared to nonmeditators, and it has been proposed as an electrocortical correlate of sustained attention and conscious awareness. Consistent with those
findings, the average of all 32 electrode sites showed higher gamma activity (35-50 Hz) in the advanced non-dual meditators
versus the control group (P <08, two tailed) during the five minute meditation/rest period between the two test sessions.

The hypothesis was that advanced non-dual meditators would show awareness extending over present and future. The further prediction was that if that were true, that EEG activity would be different before unpredictable audio as compared to unpredictable light stimuli.

The control group of non-meditators showed no significant differences. However, the meditation group showed significant differences in 5 of 32 electrodes between unpredictable light and audio stimuli at P <.05, mostly over the right occipital region (optical cortex at back of head). No differences were observed prior to light flashes for either meditators or non-meditators, but before audio tones there was a big difference; 15 of 32 electrodes were different (P < .05) and 8 electrodes very different (P <.005) for the advanced non-dual meditators; several regions of the meditators' brains anticipated the audio tones.

If one looks as what happens over time at just one electrode to see how the meditators' EEG signals changed before a light flash versus how it changed just before audio tone stimuli, one sees a significant difference. The mean and one standard deviation envelopes for audio and light stimuli for the two groups, are shown from two seconds before the stimulus to one second after the stimulus. It is clear that the "advanced nondual meditators'" brains had highly significant levels of "presentiment" 1 to 1.5 seconds before the stimulus occurred.

Given the controversial nature of such a conclusion, there is much excellent analysis in the paper of possible alternative explanations, artifacts, errors, etc., none of which were deemed significant.

As was discussed earlier, and as i experienced, this is not something of which "i" was "consciously" aware, yet the EEG detected it. A possible "conscious" use of this phenomena is in assessing if one is "awakened" or not, which would give a valuable third-party scientific determination of something which has been at worst, self-reported, and at best, determined by another hopefully skilled and awakened folk.