Do you believe in premonitions or visions of what will happen in the future?

In my earliest childhood days, I often had a recurring dream. It wasn't very pleasant, though. In the dream, I would be walking on a street when suddenly, my pants would fall down, exposing me to the whole world. Shame, anguish, and anxiety would grip me, and I wouldn’t know what to do. The dream would then fade away. This dream came back to me repeatedly over the years. Much, much later in life, there was a period when I had to endure those same feelings of anguish, shame, and anxiety—not because I was exposed physically, but because I felt as if I were left alone without hope or help. I managed to get through it unscathed after undergoing severe stress, and only then did the dream stop.

About ten years ago, I used to visit Pondicherry frequently for eye injections to treat macular degeneration. I must have visited the hospital there at least fifteen times. During each visit, my elder son would call us while we were traveling to check if everything was alright. After ten or twelve visits, we had an accident on our way back. A stray cow suddenly appeared in front of our car. With a divider on one side, the car hit the cow on its side, and the front door was crushed. Fortunately, the cow went unhurt. Perhaps my elder son had sensed something troubling. After we returned unharmed, his mind seemed to settle.

Occasionally, before starting something, we get an internal warning not to proceed. If we ignore it, many times, the warning turns out to be true. But how do we distinguish between intuition and fear? Maybe we should develop the skill to dispassionately interpret these warnings. Similarly, do negative thoughts invite negative events, and vice versa with positive thoughts? I do believe so, but if you ask for a scientific explanation, I have none to offer, though there might be many theories floating around. To use a cliché, "the proof of the pudding is in the eating." If I have experienced this, that is what it takes.

Others have similar experiences...

Continued in 212. See Saw - Part 2