Reading through Eric Wargo's Time Loops

But Eric Wago seems  a little to infatuated  with his own ideas. For my taste

I would say that the impression I got from online interviews was very different from the impression I got from the book.

My doubt about his ideas is the same one Max raised on the other thread - whether they can really explain all the observations. If there are observations that they can't explain, the argument becomes a lot less compelling.

As Sciborg says, in any case there's a lot of interesting background material in the book, much of which was new to me. Having said that, I did find it a bit difficult to finish the book, because - although it remains interesting - I think it does get more psychology/psychiatry-centred and speculative towards the end.

I would say that the impression I got from online interviews was very different from the impression I got from the book.

My doubt about his ideas is the same one Max raised on the other thread - whether they can really explain all the observations. If there are observations that they can't explain, the argument becomes a lot less compelling.

As Sciborg says, in any case there's a lot of interesting background material in the book, much of which was new to me. Having said that, I did find it a bit difficult to finish the book, because - although it remains interesting - I think it does get more psychology/psychiatry-centred and speculative towards the end.

Based on the above endorsement,  I ordered the book.( Thank you Chris.) I'm only a couple of chapters in but so far, I'm quie enjoying the read.

I first came across Eric Wargo's work on his brilliant TheNightShirt blog several years ago (think I even posted a link with some praise on the old Skeptiko forum!). I purchased and read Time Loops a few months back now. I really enjoyed the book, but in my personal reading of Eric's "oeuvre", I have read it as an extension of his earlier imo  breathtakingly mind-bending blog posts.

I personally find Eric's writings to be utterly fascinating, thought-provoking and indeed mind-bending. The very best sort of writings to read!! 

However, I'm not sure if how I read these writings is how others do, and perhaps more worryingly, exactly as the author intends us to! 

To me, the value in these ideas as Eric proposes them, is in how they get us to think in different conceptual frameworks or contexts, ie. to re-frame and re-contextualise our own experiences within different models. Doing so can create cracks or fractures in our previously held unexamined assumptions, beliefs etc, and this can allow us space to perhaps forge new concepts, models or indeed entirely new "realities" in our mind/consciousness space. (perhaps this is why Kripal so endorses this book, more in keeping with his passion with subjective "magical" narratives than any objective scientific theories? PS - my current read is Kripal's "Secret Body".....Wow. An absolutely brilliant author, easily one of my favourites of all time!!)

I'm not sure I'm expressing myself clearly, but for me reading Eric's work has been a mind-blowing EXPERIENCE, and has generated all sorts of new questions, realities, ways of looking at things etc. Ie, it has generated some confusion. And I love confusion!! 

All this said, I understand a lot of readers are looking for definitive, objective "models" with scientific materialistic "evidence" to explain all reality and  with no remainders  (good luck with that y'all!!   ). , I think Eric Wargo is attempting to provide this kind of support for his theory too......indeed, Eric's theory seems to be deeply grounded in science, even if somewhat speculative or cutting edge science.

From that kind of "objective", scientific theory perspective (ie. not in an "imaginal narrative" sense), whilst I find Eric's theory deeply fascinating and with something important to say, I do not feel it adequately explains what I would call the complex of paranormal, mystical, supernatural, synchronicity etc type experiences and phenomena.

Again, this is a deeply complicated subject & this comment is far too long already, but to briefly take as an example, much of the phenomena Eric is saying could be explicable by retro-causation or memories of a future event etc, are imo an intrinsic part of a "complex" of phenomena that occurs in perhaps slightly different forms in other contexts, for eg. taking the random example of "poltergeist phenomena" (which shares many phenomena with mediumship, alien abduction experiences etc). Whilst some of the experiences that can occur with a "poltergeist haunting" could possibly be explained within Eric's "Time Loop" model, there is a great deal of phenomena that cannot, such as macro-PK, apports etc.

Personally, after having spent a life time experiencing and researching these subjects and phenomena, I find the ultimate "explanation" for these things is far more likely to be singular rather than a multitude of forces/energies.........and quite possibly, based on my own experiences, centred around "consciousness", a "consciousness" which is beyond objectivity, measurement, scientific theory or even any concepts at all.

That said, it's fun to play around a little, speculate and let the imagination loose within the architecture of the mind.......and from that perspective, Eric's work is brilliant, even essential!

Cheers!

I think you may have just posted the "One true and correct answer."
Bill Hicks.

Based on the above endorsement,  I ordered the book.( Thank you Chris.) I'm only a couple of chapters in but so far, I'm quie enjoying the read.

Would love to have someone else also post their thoughts on each chapter!

I need to play catch up here.

Would love to have someone else also post their thoughts on each chapter!

I need to play catch up here.

So catching up a few years later...Wargo goes into the process necessary to create the iceberg that rammed into the Titanic. The churning of ice and water in Greenland, the current, and so on are arguably improbable events when considered at the level of QM. What we've talked about in the past as the "adequate determinism" that arises from the averaging of indeterminate quantum level events.

He then contrasts this with a collection of precognitive experiences regarding the sinking of the Titanic as searched out by Ian Stevenson. These papers titled "A Review and Analysis of Paranormal Experiences Connected with the Sinking of the Titanic" & "Seven More Paranormal Experiences Associated with the Sinking of the Titanic.".

An attempt to find freely available online copies didn't turn any links up sadly. However here are some examples Wargo draws from Stevenson's work ->

1. The case of J. Connon Middleton. This is one example of someone who canceled passage on the Titanic, with more also given in a blog post from All About Heaven ->

Unaccountably, from April 3 to April 10, several persons, including banker J. Pierpont Morgan, cancelled their passage. Many gave the excuse that it was unlucky to sail on a ship's maiden voyage. Not everyone, however, is a human seismograph and most of the passengers had no such fears.

On March 23, 1912, seventeen days before the date of sailing, passage was booked by a gentleman named J. Connon Middleton, a London businessman. A week later Mr. Middleton had a disturbing dream, far more vivid than his usual dreams. He saw the Titanic "floating on the sea, keel upwards and her passengers and crew swimming around her." The next night he had the same dream. Middleton did not see himself struggling in the water. He "seemed to be floating in the air just above the wreck."

Middleton began to have the pre-disaster syndrome. He felt uneasy, then depressed. Yet because his business in America was urgent, he did not cancel passage. He was a practical man, not given to belief that dreams come true, and he tried to put his two dreams out of mind. Mercifully, his life was saved in another way. About four days after his first dream, he received a cable from New York urging him to postpone his trip for a few days. Before the ship sailed, he told members of his family and friends about the recurring dream, and they corroborated his story later...

2. The case of Reverand Charles Morgan, which is included among some other cases in a blog post by J.H. Moncrieff:

...Shrugging off the disturbing dream, he went back to sleep, but the same nightmare awakened him. This time, he felt compelled to act, so he posted a new hymn number on the board.

When the service began, the congregation sang the hymn from Morgan’s nightmare–an odd hymn for a church thousands of miles from the ocean. “Hear, Father, while we pray to Thee, for those in peril on the sea.” Still upset, Morgan’s eyes filled with tears.

Soon afterward, the reverend learned that as they were singing the hymn, the Titanic was sinking on the North
Atlantic. Several prominent Winnipeggers lost their lives on the ship...

Wargo notes this happens about two hours before the actual collision.

3. The case of Clara Cook Potter who had a dream also before the collision took place:

“I saw what seemed to be a high structure,” she said, “something like an elevated railroad. There were people hanging on the outside of it as if they were holding on by their hands to the top rail of a guard fence. Many of them were in their nightclothes, and they were gradually losing their hold and slipping down the inclined sides of this structure. I felt they were dropping to certain death.”

Wargo, Eric. Time Loops: Precognition, Retrocausation, and the Unconscious . Anomalist Books. Kindle Edition.

4. The case of "Mr. Black", report to the ASPR wasn't precognitive but was a clairvoyant account of the sinking.

5. A Vancouver Woman, "Mrs Henderson", who a few days after the collision had a visionary day dream type experience of her sister-in-law & niece "crying and clinging to each other". Later she learned her brother had perished as he'd been on the Titanic.

6. The precognition of Spiritualist W.T. Stead, as noted in the Encylcopedia Titanica. [see also his Psi Encyc. entry]

Stead occupied cabin C-87 (? C-89) but while the ship sank he sat quietly reading a book in the First Class Smoking Room.

Curiously, on 22 March 1886 Stead had published an article entitled 'How the Mail Steamer Went Down in Mid-Atlantic, by a Survivor'. In the story an unnamed steamer collides with another ship and due to a shortage of lifeboats there is a large loss of life. Stead wrote 'This is exactly what might take place and will take place if liners are sent to sea short of boats. - Ed'.

An 1892 edition of the 'Review of Reviews' carried the fictional story of an accident involving a White Star Line vessel. In the story - entitled 'From the Old World to the New' - the Majestic carries a clairvoyant who senses a disaster to another ship that has collided with an iceberg. The survivors are rescued and the Majestic manages to avoid the ice.

Wargo has some additional notes about the second story & some additional [premonitions] Stead and his fellows had:

...a sole passenger (the narrator) is rescued by another ship, the real White Star liner Majestic, captained by its real captain, Edward J. Smith.10 Stead turned this story into a novel, From the Old World to the New, which was published the following year, in 1893.11 The real Captain Smith, nearly two decades later, became captain of the Titanic, and, of course, went down with his ship. In 1900, Stead also described a premonitory vision of his own death that may have corresponded to the reality in the early morning hours of April 15, 12 years later: “I had a vision of a mob, and this had made me feel that I shall not die in a way common to the most of us, but by violence, and one of many in a throng.”12 Two psychics Stead had been fond of consulting also reported to him premonitions of death or disaster at sea, although he ignored them.13

Wargo, Eric. Time Loops: Precognition, Retrocausation, and the Unconscious . Anomalist Books. Kindle Edition.

Wargo then gets into perhaps the most famous case of arguable precognition about the Titanic sinking, the novel Futility by Morgan Robertson. This is a pretty extensive case and Wargo will mention it later so I'll go over this part in the next post.