Months before Mount Pinatubo erupted on 15 June 1991 with great force that shook the Earth, a number of Filipinos saw it coming in dreams, visions or sudden thoughts. The same thing with the sinking of the Titanic on 14 and 15 April 1912 and, as well as the terrorist attack at the World Trade Center in New York on 11 September 2001. Major disasters or cataclysms are seen by many people long before these happen.
What is a prediction? How and why does it occur? What type of persons can predict the future?
We can define prediction as “seeing a future event or incident.” The psychic ability involved here is called “precognition,” which literally means “to know beforehand.”
Some parapsychologists are of the opinion that precognition is a form of clairvoyance, only what is seen is a future event rather than the present.
Some people contend that other psychic powers are involved, namely, telepathy and remote viewing.
Major disasters or cataclysms are seen by many people long before these events happen.
Almost everybody has seen a future event at one time or another. It does not take a highly developed psychic ability for it to happen. However, predictions by ordinary people are spontaneous and done without any conscious thought or effort on their part.
For instance, I have no special psychic talent or ability, but I have been able to accurately predict several future events without my thinking of them as predictions at all. Many of them I forget soon after saying them.
In 2003, I was introduced to an Indian, who told me we had met years before in an ABS-CBN television program, Teysi ng Tahanan, where his mother and I were guests on the topic of reincarnation.
“When we were introduced,” he recalled, “you told me I was married to a Filipina, which was not true. I was single at that time and was not going out with any Filipino woman. Four years later, I met Lin, a Filipina, and I married her. That is why I cannot forget you. I only told this to my wife last week when I heard you would be one of the speakers in this symposium, which is sponsored by the company of my wife.”
I vaguely recall having met this Indian man and his mother who guested with me in that TV program, but I do not remember at all having said he was married to a Filipina. I do not know why I said that, if I really did.
This reminded me of several incidents in the past when I spontaneously blurted out remarks which turned out to be true. For example, I vividly recall that in 1974, the first time the Miss Universe pageant was held in the Philippines, I bumped into a well-known cardiologist in a restaurant along Roxas Boulevard. In the middle of our conversation, he suddenly asked me, “Jimmy, guess who was my date last night?” and without as much as a thought, I immediately said, “Miss Japan.”
Shocked, he shot back, “How did you know?”
“Why?” I asked. “Who was with you last night?”
“I was with Miss Japan. But how did you know?”
Frankly, I did not know what made me say that. What I remember is, when he asked me that question, Miss Japan entered my mind and I just blurted it out for no reason at all.
Several years later, I met in a supermarket a former officemate whom I had not seen for more than 15 years. She smiled at me when she saw me and greeted me. But then, all of a sudden, again for no apparent reason, I told her, “Bakit mukha kang Viernes Santo (Why do you look so sad, like it is Good Friday)? Did anybody die?” Her face really changed when I said that.
“Did you now know?” she asked me.
“What?” I curiously asked.
“My son was one of the Ateneo students who died when the bus they were riding fell into a ravine last month.”
“No, I did not know that!”
“I thought you knew, that is why you asked.”
“No, not at all, I am so sorry to hear that.”
How I saw in her smiling face the tragedy that befell her family is beyond me.
Next week, I shall give some examples of real predictions I made spontaneously, which I did not know were correct at the time I made them.