Review of The Power of Premonitions
How Knowing The Future Can Shape Our Lives by Larry Dossey, M.D.
May 17, 2009
The Power Of Premonitions: How Knowing The Future Can Shape Our Lives is a fascinating and educational book about premonitions. It’s quite detailed and must have involved a lot of research.
Premonitions Defined
A premonition is simply a forewarning of something that will happen in the future. It may come as a feeling, hunch or vision in a dream.
Larry Dossey shares his own experiences with precognitive dreams and how he came to the conclusion that they were more than mere coincidences. He acknowledges that everyone doesn’t agree that premonitions are facts. He also cautions others not to confide to people who might think they’re crazy.
Cases of Premonitions
The first chapter involves actual cases of premonitions and how people who heeded their hunches dodged disaster. As an example, a woman named Amanda dreamed about a large chandelier falling in her baby’s crib. “Amanda felt foolish until around two hours later, when she and her husband were awakened by a loud crash”, Larry Dossey M.D. writes. Why her baby’s crib was placed underneath a chandelier is unclear, but it’s an interesting story. Other cases expanded upon involve surprisingly correct predictions of medical diagnoses and disasters.
Evidence Of Premonitions
Dean Radin is a psi researcher who is famous for his experiments that show evidence that people can predict future occurrences. Many of the participants somehow reacted physically to emotional pictures before they were shown. There is more information in The Power Of Premonitions about other studies and experiments, but people can also read more on Radin’s blog Entangled Minds.
Reading about premonition in animals was particularly interesting, as well as the fact that Einstein was open to the idea.
Why Do Premonitions Occur?
Chapter three explores this question. One of the obvious reasons is survival, although confessing predictions to the wrong person ironically could cause someone’s demise. Larry Dossey M.D. explains that this is precisely why some people suppress their premonitions of disaster. He also delves into why predictions aren’t always crystal clear and how to interpret them.
Chapter four goes further to answer whether someone should cultivate their precognitive abilities. This of course depends on an individual’s beliefs, personality, support system and emotional state.
Premonitions and Our Worldview
Continuing on the premise that premonitions are real, Dossey then takes it further to suggest people can go forwards or backwards in time. It’s natural to be skeptical of such a suggestion, but he makes a convincing case for it in The Power Of Premonitions (Larry Dossey, M.D., Penguin Group, ISBN: 9780525951162, 2009).
Larry Dossey, M.D. is also the author of the best selling book Healing Words, which is about how prayers affect healing. For more information see Larry Dossey's Official Website.
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