…What if forward causality could somehow be reversed in time, allowing actions in the future to influence outcomes in the past? This mind-bending idea, known as retrocausality, may seem like science fiction grist at first glance, but it is starting to gain real traction among physicists and philosophers, among other researchers, as a possible solution to some of the most intractable riddles underlying our reality.
Buddhist speculation: It has long seemed to me that sometimes (or maybe often, always) future life events have influenced events in the past. In Buddhist philosophy, time is cyclical. Since Buddhism is an always evolving and always deeply personal system of thought, there is no need to accept cyclical time if it does not comport well with other ideas important to you.
Time as it is generally conceived today means that the entire cosmos ‘disappears’ every moment only to ‘reappear’ in the next. In this view, time is not at all like a river since there is no river behind us and no river in front of us.
I like conceiving of the future as having a sort of ‘gravitational’ influence’ on the past, sometimes deeply particular in its details and sometimes (or always) more general. For example, are we heading toward WW3 because collectively we are the same fools we always have been or because WW3 has already happened in the future and no matter what we do it will occur?
Did what led you to Buddhist thought arise solely from past conditions or did some of it arise from what was then your future, your now current understanding of the Dharma? Maybe there is a mix of causation between past and future and something like WW3 is only probable but not definite. ABN
American Buddhist Net 