The Causal Influence the Future
Whitehead, Anticipatory Feelings, and Precognition
This page is a sympathetic response to the work of Eric Wargo as interviewed at the Harvard Divinity School on November 4, 2024. (see below.) He is an interdisciplinary thinker based in Washington, D.C., holding a Ph.D. in anthropology from Emory University. A devoted science writer and editor, he explores questions at the intersection of the paranormal and the future—especially precognition, retrocausation, and the role of time in consciousness. Wargo is the author of Time Loops: Precognition, Retrocausation, and the Unconscious and Precognitive Dreamwork and the Long Self, and is also working on a book that examines how precognition figures into the creative lives of artists and writers
I offer a Whiteheadian affirmation of precognition: feeling the causal presence of the future through what Whitehead calls “anticipatory feelings.”
While the word precognition can suggest determinism—the idea that the future is already decided—I use it differently. The future, in my view, is a field of possibilities, some more likely to occur than others given causal chains from the past, and thus highly relevant to particular causal chains.
All feelings (prehensions) have objects, and these future possibilities are the objects of anticipatory feelings. Some are consciously felt, but most are felt unconsciously. They are experienced in the present as lures for feeling—invitations, threats, promises, or pressures that influence us without fixing what will happen. In this way, we feel pressure from the future.
Many in the Whiteheadian tradition hold that the future does not exist in any way. I disagree. Indeed, Whitehead would disagree as well. He speaks of our experience of a transcendent future—a future that is felt in the present and will be affected by our actions. I am adding that we are affected by it too. The objects of our anticipatory feelings affect us. Thus the relationship is reciprocal: our choices help shape what will be, but the felt presence of what can occur, and is likely to occur, can also shape our choices.
Amid all this we still make decisions in the present: decisions on how we will respond to he causal past and what Whitehead calls (see below) the causal future. Whitehead’s metaphysics rejects both determinism and the idea that the future is absolutely non-existent. For him, eternal objects (pure potentialities) and propositions (lures for feeling) are among the eight categories of existence in Process and Reality. The future is like this: it is real and really felt, but not yet actual.
The future, then, is not an empty idea but a set of relevant possibilities already related to the actual world. These possibilities have causal power—they tug at us emotionally with feelings of hope, unease, or certainty.
Some may be so likely to occur, given the causality of the past, that when we feel them in the present, we are sensing something that, as it happens, will happen. We are experiencing the future in the present in a remarkably prescient way. We are having a premonition, a sense of what will be, even though it could not be. This is what I mean by precognition.
I offer a Whiteheadian affirmation of precognition: feeling the causal presence of the future through what Whitehead calls “anticipatory feelings.”
While the word precognition can suggest determinism—the idea that the future is already decided—I use it differently. The future, in my view, is a field of possibilities, some more likely to occur than others given causal chains from the past, and thus highly relevant to particular causal chains.
All feelings (prehensions) have objects, and these future possibilities are the objects of anticipatory feelings. Some are consciously felt, but most are felt unconsciously. They are experienced in the present as lures for feeling—invitations, threats, promises, or pressures that influence us without fixing what will happen. In this way, we feel pressure from the future.
Many in the Whiteheadian tradition hold that the future does not exist in any way. I disagree. Indeed, Whitehead would disagree as well. He speaks of our experience of a transcendent future—a future that is felt in the present and will be affected by our actions. I am adding that we are affected by it too. The objects of our anticipatory feelings affect us. Thus the relationship is reciprocal: our choices help shape what will be, but the felt presence of what can occur, and is likely to occur, can also shape our choices.
Amid all this we still make decisions in the present: decisions on how we will respond to he causal past and what Whitehead calls (see below) the causal future. Whitehead’s metaphysics rejects both determinism and the idea that the future is absolutely non-existent. For him, eternal objects (pure potentialities) and propositions (lures for feeling) are among the eight categories of existence in Process and Reality. The future is like this: it is real and really felt, but not yet actual.
The future, then, is not an empty idea but a set of relevant possibilities already related to the actual world. These possibilities have causal power—they tug at us emotionally with feelings of hope, unease, or certainty.
Some may be so likely to occur, given the causality of the past, that when we feel them in the present, we are sensing something that, as it happens, will happen. We are experiencing the future in the present in a remarkably prescient way. We are having a premonition, a sense of what will be, even though it could not be. This is what I mean by precognition.
Eric Wargo interviewed
at Harvard Divinity School
"For our eighth episode, we welcome the author Eric Wargo to the show. Eric is perhaps the world’s foremost expert on precognition. His most recent book, From Nowhere, examines precognition in its relationship to creativity in the lives of major authors and artists. We discuss the nature of time, dreamwork, memories from the future, and the four-dimensional brain. Along the way, we discuss figures like Virginia Woolf, Philip K. Dick, Andrei Tarkovsky, Sigmund Freud, and the sculptor, Michael Richardson."
The Causal Influence of the Future
Introduction
Precognition—the apparent ability to know or sense future events before they happen—has long been a subject of fascination and controversy. In the work of anthropologist Eric Wargo, it receives a provocative reinterpretation. Drawing on the physics-informed “block universe” model of time, Wargo envisions our lives as continuous arcs--Long Selves—stretching from birth to death within a four-dimensional space-time continuum. In this model, the future is not an empty abstraction; it is already “there,” and under certain conditions we can feel its presence. Wargo suggests that dreams, intuitions, and synchronicities may be moments when later segments of our Long Selves impress themselves upon earlier ones—what he calls “time loops.”
While this framework is compelling, it is also static: the block is complete, and the future is as fixed as the past. Alfred North Whitehead’s process philosophy offers a different metaphysical background—one in which the future is real in some sense, yet still open and in the making. By bringing Wargo’s imagery into conversation with Whitehead’s thought, we can envision a hybrid model: an unfolding block, where the future exists as relevant possibilities—some of them so probable and so “congealed” that they can exert a persuasive influence on the present, making certain kinds of precognition possible without resorting to strict determinism.
Precognition—the apparent ability to know or sense future events before they happen—has long been a subject of fascination and controversy. In the work of anthropologist Eric Wargo, it receives a provocative reinterpretation. Drawing on the physics-informed “block universe” model of time, Wargo envisions our lives as continuous arcs--Long Selves—stretching from birth to death within a four-dimensional space-time continuum. In this model, the future is not an empty abstraction; it is already “there,” and under certain conditions we can feel its presence. Wargo suggests that dreams, intuitions, and synchronicities may be moments when later segments of our Long Selves impress themselves upon earlier ones—what he calls “time loops.”
While this framework is compelling, it is also static: the block is complete, and the future is as fixed as the past. Alfred North Whitehead’s process philosophy offers a different metaphysical background—one in which the future is real in some sense, yet still open and in the making. By bringing Wargo’s imagery into conversation with Whitehead’s thought, we can envision a hybrid model: an unfolding block, where the future exists as relevant possibilities—some of them so probable and so “congealed” that they can exert a persuasive influence on the present, making certain kinds of precognition possible without resorting to strict determinism.
Whitehead on Feeling the Future
Advocates of process philosophy influenced by Whitehead often speak of what we call “the future” as not yet existing, and thus as a mere construct of the present imagination. Whitehead, however, takes a more nuanced view. He speaks of the future as something that can, in certain ways, be felt in the present through what he calls “anticipatory feelings.” In Process and Reality he writes:
Advocates of process philosophy influenced by Whitehead often speak of what we call “the future” as not yet existing, and thus as a mere construct of the present imagination. Whitehead, however, takes a more nuanced view. He speaks of the future as something that can, in certain ways, be felt in the present through what he calls “anticipatory feelings.” In Process and Reality he writes:
“The subjective aim is the selection of the balance amid the given materials. But one element in the immediate feelings of the concrescent subject is comprised of the anticipatory feelings of the transcendent future in its relation to immediate fact. This is the feeling of the objective immortality inherent in the nature of actuality. Such anticipatory feelings involve realization of the relevance of eternal objects as decided in the primordial nature of God. In so far as these feelings in the higher organisms rise to important intensities there are effective feelings of the more remote alternative possibilities.”
As I read this passage, Whitehead is not claiming that the future is predetermined. Indeed, in another passage he refers to “the undecided future.”:
As I read this passage, Whitehead is not claiming that the future is predetermined. Indeed, in another passage he refers to “the undecided future.”:
..it is to be noticed that ‘decided’ conditions are never such as to banish freedom. They only qualify it. There is always a contingency left open for immediate decision. This consideration is exemplified by an indetermination respecting ‘the actual world’ which is to decide the conditions for an immediately novel concrescence. There are alternatives as to its determination, which are left over for immediate decision. Some actual entities may be either in the settled past, or in the contemporary nexus, or even left to the undecided future, according to immediate decision
The point is not that the future exists as a fixed outcome, but that it is experienced—felt as a “transcendent future” that will itself be shaped by the present concrescing subject. Moreover, these anticipatory feelings are not merely passive impressions; they can be effective, participating in the shaping of what is to come.
The point is not that the future exists as a fixed outcome, but that it is experienced—felt as a “transcendent future” that will itself be shaped by the present concrescing subject. Moreover, these anticipatory feelings are not merely passive impressions; they can be effective, participating in the shaping of what is to come.
Elsewhere in Process and Reality, Whitehead also speaks of “the causal future,” linking it to the felt presence of a region in the space-time continuum (the extensive continuum) that will be influenced by the present:
“In the first place, there are three loci defined by causal efficacy, namely, the ‘causal past’ of M, the ‘causal future’ of M, and the ‘contemporaries’ of M. An actual occasion P, belonging to M’s causal past, is objectified for M by a perspective representation of its own (i.e., P’s) qualities of feeling and intensities of feeling. There is a quantitative and qualitative vector flow of feeling from P to M; and in this way, what P is subjectively, belongs to M objectively. An actual occasion Q, belonging to M’s causal future, is in the converse relation to M, compared to P’s relation. For the causal future is composed of those actual occasions which will have M in their respective causal pasts.”
Relevant Possibilities and Lures from the Future
From this perspective, the future can be felt not merely as eternal objects—pure potentialities abstracted from the actual world—but as relevant possibilities: potentialities already related to the actual world and likely to be actualized. These possibilities have causal influence as they are “congealed” into propositions—lures for feeling—that point toward objective conditions and subjective experiences likely to occur. They are, in this sense, lures from the future.
Precognition can then be understood as a unique kind of anticipatory feeling—conscious or unconscious—that senses these lures from the future and is causally affected by them. Such feelings arrive with a distinctive subjective form—a certain emotional tonality or mood—that colors the experience. It might be a flash of foreboding, a quiet certainty, a wave of déjà vu, an inexplicable excitement, or the dreamlike sense that one has “already been here.” In Whitehead’s terms, the lure is never bare information; it is felt as an affect-laden invitation or warning, a qualitative push or pull on the present moment.
Wargo’s Energetically Persuasive Tendencies
If this way of thinking about future events in a a given causal past (Whitehead's emphasis above) make sense, it dovetails with Eric Wargo’s notion of future events or states that exert a felt influence on the present precisely because they are so strongly probable, so “congealed” within the unfolding block of space-time, that they press back on earlier moments in the form of images, intuitions, or dreams. Wargo’s Long Self offers a visual metaphor for this process: our lives as continuous arcs, with later segments (as affect-laden lures for feeling) capable of impressing themselves upon earlier ones.
Whitehead’s metaphysics reframes that metaphor dynamically—these impressions are not messages from a fixed future, but persuasive vectors from relevant possibilities that are highly likely to actualize. Dreams, in particular, may be a privileged arena for this encounter. Loosened from the filtering structures of waking consciousness, the mind in dreams may be more open to subtle prehensions of the causal future—receiving the pull of lures from what is to come and translating them into symbolic, affect-laden narratives.
If this way of thinking about future events in a a given causal past (Whitehead's emphasis above) make sense, it dovetails with Eric Wargo’s notion of future events or states that exert a felt influence on the present precisely because they are so strongly probable, so “congealed” within the unfolding block of space-time, that they press back on earlier moments in the form of images, intuitions, or dreams. Wargo’s Long Self offers a visual metaphor for this process: our lives as continuous arcs, with later segments (as affect-laden lures for feeling) capable of impressing themselves upon earlier ones.
Whitehead’s metaphysics reframes that metaphor dynamically—these impressions are not messages from a fixed future, but persuasive vectors from relevant possibilities that are highly likely to actualize. Dreams, in particular, may be a privileged arena for this encounter. Loosened from the filtering structures of waking consciousness, the mind in dreams may be more open to subtle prehensions of the causal future—receiving the pull of lures from what is to come and translating them into symbolic, affect-laden narratives.
Conclusion
In this synthesis, precognition is not about reading a fully written script of the future. It is about feeling the pull of relevant possibilities before they actualize, and allowing those possibilities—already shaped by the momentum of the past and by the creative advance of the universe—to shape the present in turn. Wargo’s time loops and Whitehead’s anticipatory feelings converge into a common picture: the present and future in mutual influence, where the future’s persuasive tendencies are part of the web of causality. This hybrid model preserves the openness of the future while acknowledging its felt reality, offering a philosophical home for precognition within a process-relational view of time.
In this synthesis, precognition is not about reading a fully written script of the future. It is about feeling the pull of relevant possibilities before they actualize, and allowing those possibilities—already shaped by the momentum of the past and by the creative advance of the universe—to shape the present in turn. Wargo’s time loops and Whitehead’s anticipatory feelings converge into a common picture: the present and future in mutual influence, where the future’s persuasive tendencies are part of the web of causality. This hybrid model preserves the openness of the future while acknowledging its felt reality, offering a philosophical home for precognition within a process-relational view of time.