This time, I'm actually going to explain why I believe something. I'll even make a good, logical "scientific" argument for believing in the ability for all of us, not just special, gifted people, to tell the future.

I'll will start with certain assumptions. I assume that there is a part of the mind called the unconscious which stores the memories of everything that ever happened to us. Freud and Jung studied the unconscious/subconscious extensively and came up with many ideas on what it does and how it works. They might not have agreed with each other; for instance, Jung came up with the idea of a collective unconscious: an underlying level of the unconscious common to all men. I'm not sure if Freud ever accepted this idea, but I do. If the materialists were right (they're not), our brain would just be an organic computer. At some base level, all our brains have certain structural things in common. This could be like the built in, hardwired elements of your computer, and could account for the collective unconscious.

As indicated above, I don't believe we truly forget anything. There have been certain studies involving hypnosis which indicate that false memories can be created, but this does not prove that the true, accurate memory does not exist.

It has been proposed that one of the functions of dreams is involved with learning. People who have been deprived of REM sleep (rapid eye movement: that phase in which scientists believe dreams occur) do worse at school. (Most college students are hurting their performance by staying up all night). It's theorized that during REM sleep, our brain reorganizes its information into patterns. Often times, students will go to bed stuck on a problem, and wake up the next day and find the answer to be obvious. Sleep is not necessarily required for this; if one concentrates on a subject, gets stuck, moves to another subject or just takes a break, on returning to the area one was stuck, the unconscious may have already solved the problem for you.

So putting all this together and tying it into the subject: our unconscious minds are perpetually at work, and can solve all sorts of problems using the perfect memory it contains. It does in fact work on every question you ask yourself. If you ask yourself, "When did Colombus discover America?" your unconscious spits back immediately "1492" and a little later it might say "actually he discovered Cuba and other Carribean islands; he never set foot on the U.S." and so on. If you ask it, "If I ask him/her out, will he/she go out with me?" It may have to think about it. Whenever you have a "hunch" that turns out to be correct, this demonstrates the operation of the unconscious's ability to predict the future (this theory doesn't account for hunches that turn out wrong).

Once it is accepted that the unconscious can predict the future, the next question is: how can I actually access my unconscious so I can predict the future deliberately? This is where it gets difficult for the logical, scientific mind to accept things. When one tries to predict the future, our logical minds get in the way. Also, a certain amount of wish fulfillment enters in. As in reading fiction, one must enter the state of "willing suspension of disbelief". The logical mind must be put and hold. The established methods of predicting the future are ways of getting around the logical mind: astrology, tarot cards, I Ching. I myself have had some limited, minor success with tarot cards. Wish fulfillment gets in the way here.

Once (and only once!) I went to a tarot card reader. He told me certain things would happen which I very much wanted to happen, but they didn't. This made me quite angry at him. Some say that such abilities should not be used for material gain. I'm not sure I agree totally, but until the ability to predict the future becomes a "scientific fact", perhaps it's best if people don't use their abilities to makes money. There could well be a large number of fakes out there, and as long as money is involved, there will be a tendency for the "fortune-teller" to simply tell the client what he/she wants to hear. If the ability to tell the future were scientifically analyzed, we could have fortune-tellers have to prove their abilities and get a licence.

Perhaps the tarot-card reader's prediction didn't come true because I'm too unpredictable. Or perhaps it's "If you continue what you're doing, X will occur," and I did something wrong. Or he just told me what I wanted to hear. Maybe he was even fake, but even though his prediction didn't come true, I will not accuse him of that.

[Some "unscientific" ideas: in Frank Herbert's "Dune" series, some people are able to experience the memories of their ancestors. I thought this was "just a story" when I read it, but maybe there could be some form of genetic memory. Also, if we reincarnate, we have the potential of recovering vast amounts of memories. Reincarnational and/ or genetic memories may be affecting us on an unconscious level.]