I’ve always questioned the matter of human prescience, the sensation in our souls which we at times deem an immutable foreboding of our own joy or tragedy. Is this foreknowledge to be considered commonplace, or can we ascribe to it something a bit more out of the ordinary and beyond our human means of comprehension? When we act upon an imminent desire, and have a sudden realization that it could go horribly wrong, or feel that its completed act will bring about a positive end, with what certainty do we act upon such a revelation?
It is a matter of questioning the source of these innate forebodings. Innate, as they are, means they have come from some level of consciousness in our understanding of the present situation. If we act upon our will, it is the conscience behind that will that will irrevocably augment that little voice inside of us to say ‘yes, this is good, your action will bring about an end in your favor’ or on the other end, ‘this is wrong, you have erred and will soon face some unpleasant moment.’ Many will recognize this presentiment as just that: our own gut feeling of an event’s consequence in the form of the little voice reflecting back as an expression of the human conscience.
However, there are those who will choose to mystify such revelations and find them anything but commonplace. I would look to situations where one does not act in any way to promote their will, but feel presentiments all the same. If a mother is suddenly showered with sensations of tragic foreboding for her son or daughter, and soon comes across the fact that the said son or daughter has suffered some misfortune, she will look to the heavens and say ‘I knew it in my heart that he/she was in danger’ and be more likely to attribute such presentiment to a higher power. Is it God that strategically places these sensations in people at the right times, hoping they would act upon such a preternatural presentiment and prevent some future misfortune? Or can one ascribe these feelings of sudden revelation to the other ordinary emotions solely produced by our own penchant to worry and logically infer?
To argue against faith for logic and vice versa would not be a conducive means to analyze such subjects. It takes more than faith and more than logic to comprehend with a lay man’s perspective the revelations of presentiments. I would argue that faith in higher powers and mystified vagueities complement and at times are products of the innate development of our psyche that makes it possible to produce specific forethoughts. It is the love of a mother that will yield such presentiments for her children. It is the gut feeling produced by our conscience that will dictate the presentiment towards the outcome of our actions.
Looking to the actual outcomes of the objects of our presentiments can also provide a telling picture. Were we correct in believing that our actions produced the forethought result? More often than not, we are not correct; we have little control over the complex character of our external environments. But for those presentiments that proved right, we can safely pat ourselves on the back and acknowledge a keen intuition on our part to predict (most often by experience) what future joys and tragedies will befall us.
