THE UNEXPLAINED

Suddenly a nice day was shattered. I had to look into those two black propeller cones and know it was going to crash. It was terrifying. Then a practical reaction – how to avoid the disaster. Get off the road?

Then: not this one.

A reprieve! How was it decided? Or perhaps it was just a ghastly vision. Such things do occur, so just keep on driving.

So then it happened. History! At a safe distance, but little comfort in that. Talk about foreseeing the event and I would be humored, at best. Which would be dismal. Even worse though, what if I believed it?

I buried it under layers of current events. The scientific norm, as much as I had, was already hanging by a thread, effectively ignoring telepathic experiences, an out of body trip, strange resonances that with a little patching up were somehow rationalized. This clear precognition, if dwelt upon, would snap the thread. Then what?

More than 40 years passed.

The knowledge kept to itself, as had earlier stuff held in protective custody. Barely acknowledged was the Rebel Without a Cause, what is this miserable life, and why? and joys without cause, some mistaken ones mixed in with meditative realizations, all flowing over a slowly rising certainty of that day, age 5, when I'd gotten a jump on it, and the books unwritten because already obsolete, popping up like toast before getting enough time to eat. Something's happening, Mr. Jones, and you don't know what it is, do you?

Gravity, famously illustrated by water not flowing uphill, and what about knowing a plane will crash?

There's nearly universal agreement on gravity. Belief in it is supported by a hypothesis, and experiments anyone can repeat. It takes place within a framework called the order of time.

Think about a glass of water on a hot day. Put a cube of ice in it. To begin, the hot water molecules randomly jump around. They are more disorderly than the ice, which is a tetrahedral lattice, a source of low entropy. The ice is melting, its entropy increasing. The two forms of water gradually become indistinguishable, and when the lattice is gone, equilibrium is realized. The ice cube will not come back. Entropy is uniformly distributed, and generally increased. In this one-way exchange, entropy always increases; a process expressed in the second law of thermodynamics. Think of an hourglass that cannot be flipped back over. And in fact this law is the basis for the order of time, which runs from the past, through the present, into the future, and never the other way round.

Compare this with precognitive knowledge of a plane crash that ignores the order of time, without reliance on data of any sort, that happens all at once, spontaneously. An experience is established without reference to beliefs. Something else, indeed, is happening.

For more than 40 years I was like a delta, grasslands morphing, small grains arriving that were traceable further upstream to a thinning ancestry of bits and pieces, further up spacing out, fewer and fewer, untraceable. Beyond limitations.

And that day by the creek? It's called a kensho, when suddenly, quietly, all is one. For lack of words let's just call it throwing a frisbee. You know it as you know you have bones.

Precognitions and kenshos are spontaneous, way beyond me, having no cause in my personal intent. Such experiences are unowned, possible for anyone. Needless to say, consulting the extensive record of like events, I'm not the only one contributing such reports. What matters most, I am able to think about this without having to defer to any opinions about the reality of such experiences.

I am laughing! The old order of time needs an update.

dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones . . .



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