A Visit from the Future

[Giulia]

This experience happened to me around 1997.

I was at home asleep when I sensed the presence of someone in my hall. I realised I was awake but in my astral body. I got out of bed to see what was happening in the hall. To my great surprise, there before me was a relative of mine who, for the sake of this account, I will call Lucy. At that time, Lucy was 25 years old, 11 years my junior, and lived, as she does now, almost 500 miles away from me. The odd thing was that Lucy seemed to be 10 years older than her actual age. Her hair was longer than I was used to seeing it and it was a slightly lighter shade of blonde. She was dressed very elegantly, suggesting her standard of living had considerably improved. In fact, at the time of my OBE, she was still a student living at home with her parents and dressed very casually. I realised that Lucy was visiting me from the future, so I decided to ask her a few questions. First, I wanted to know if my husband was alright, since at the time he was going through a rough patch health-wise. She reassured me that he was fine. Then I asked if she was married (at the time of this event, she was between boyfriends). She said she was indeed married and told me her husband’s nickname. At the same time, I noticed a sad look in her eyes, despite the good financial standing she now appeared to have. She said something like, ‘It wasn't worth it.’ I realised this comment had something to do with her lifestyle. Then the OBE ended and I woke up.

The next day, I rushed to call Lucy. We were very close and sometimes called each other several times a day. However, as we lived quite some distance apart, I did not know any of her more recent friends. I told her about my experience but, so I would not cause her any anxiety, I said nothing about the sadness I saw in her eyes and her feeling that it had not been worthwhile. To my amazement, she told me that she had recently met someone. The name she gave me was different from the nickname I had heard in the OBE. But, extremely surprised, Lucy said the nickname was the name his parents and brothers called him, although no one else outside the family did. Naturally, we were both dumbstruck.

I set the experience to one side, partly out of superstition, although it did come to mind every once in a while and I would consider, with some trepidation, Lucy’s words, ‘It wasn't worth it.’ I knew Lucy really wanted to have children, but a diagnosis she had received after various health problems seemed to suggest it would be unlikely. Three-and-a-half years after my OBE, Lucy married her boyfriend. Although he had been offered different career prospects, her husband opted for a position as head of accounts, with long working days and a modest salary. Lucy, on the other hand, decided to devote all her attention to doing something about the issues that prevented her conceiving.

Their standard of living was not as I had seen it in my OBE. The years went by and as the ten-year mark approached, I realised, looking at photos of her, that Lucy's hair was indeed longer and slightly fairer. After a number of hardships, which I will not go into, their first daughter was born, not long before the 10-year deadline I now feared. Lucy and her husband were overjoyed and a second child soon followed.

Now, almost 27 years after my experience, they are a happy family of four, though they certainly do not lead the standard of living I saw in my OBE.

So, what to make of it? The OBE faithfully matched a series of key factors (namely Lucy’s marriage to a specific person and my husband's health) and other minor factors (the colour and style of Lucy’s hair); but one aspect had not been confirmed: their standard of living. It would appear that her husband’s choice of career and Lucy's decision to dedicate body and soul to having a family were the variables that defied the scenario I had envisaged, in which ‘it wasn't worth it’.

What does this mean? I am sure we all possess free will, not only in our physical lives but also as discarnate beings. I also think sometimes, in the here and now, we can look through the window of non-linear time and take a peek at the ‘probabilities’ that lie before us. There is evidence of this in the many accounts of people who have had near-death experiences, who have seen the future lives of their loved ones without them and decided to return from the Afterlife to change that future.

What remains to be discovered is the kind of dimension in which these various alternative scenarios exist. It is likely to be different from the dimension in which we live our everyday lives. Moreover, if these alternatives do not occur on the physical plane, it is nevertheless likely that they merge with our experiences in support of our future decisions.

[DTR1975]

A question I have is: since that future never happened, what happened to that future version of Lucy? Does she no longer exist? Or did she change into a different future version who had no reason to contact you? And why did that future version of Lucy exist at all since that future never came to fruition?

[DTR1975]

Tony,
If human life is the afterlife, then we must all be in hell.

[Giulia]

A question I have is: since that future never happened, what happened to that future version of Lucy? Does she no longer exist? Or did she change into a different future version who had no reason to contact you? And why did that future version of Lucy exist at all since that future never came to fruition?

Good morning, Derek.

Many NDEs include visions of POTENTIAL future scenarios displaying the life of the Experiencer’s loved ones, should the Experiencer NOT go back to his/hers physical life and chose to die. One example is seeing one’s spouse getting remarried to somebody else.

So your questions also address this aspect of NDEs.

Regarding Lucy, the key lesson for me is that we all have free will.

As I have also noticed with mediums’ predictions, free will can be so strong that certain aspects of the future are set in stone.

In 1995, when I was in a terrible job and the situation was so bad that I went to England for a week to the Arthur Findlay College hoping to get advice about how to get out of that job, a medium told me not to worry, that in six months’ time I would be out of that job and there would also be a geographical move. Within the following six months I received a phone call by the Managing Director of a company located a few hundred kilometers away, whom I had known during my previous job as a Personal Assistant in the pasta industry: he asked me to become his secretary and move from the Milan area, where I lived at the time, back to Piedmont. I accepted and moved to this small town in the Cuneo area. The medium was right. So this version of the future was, by May 1995, set in stone, because of my furure boss’ determination to call me and my own determination to leave.

Now, in a ten-year period, more variables may exist. My husband’s health and Lucy’s marriage and physical appearance were obviously set in stone. However the determination to have children was obviously still up to Lucy and her future husband.

That specific version of Lucy’s future, married but without children, did not manifest on the physical plane, because the couple’s determination to have children was soon to become extremely strong. So I believe that the version of Lucy I met on the astral plane only existed on the astral plane. At the time of this experience, Lucy did not know yet that she had physical problems that would make it difficult or even impossible to conceive a child. So Lucy and her new boyfriend I knew nothing about had not addressed the problem yet.

I have never seen things that do not exist when I visit Heaven. However, when my OBEs involve the physical plane, as in this case, a potential version of the future can be so solid that it “seems” real. I have come to the conclusion that the astral plane is very fluid, compared to the spirit plane inhabited by discarnate spirits. By being fluid, the astral plane can also contain alternative versions of ourselves. I believe that these alternative versions of ourselves merge with us as we make our choices about the future. The sadness I saw about Lucy’s potential future actually started manifesting in the physical when she was told that she would never have children: this was yet to happen at the time of my experience. However, her determination to overcome that problem, combined with her to-be husband’s determination, soon created a new version of the future. Sadness helped of course, it was a stage of their lives during which they both did their best to have a happy future.

So I believe that that specific version of Lucy’s future that was only solid on the astral plane nourished Lucy and her husband’s life, by generating the determination to have children. In other words, that version of the future was not set in stone.