Temporal Psychology and Psychotherapy. The Human Being in Time and Beyond

– Anticipation / Prospection – the active construction and use of representations of possible future states in order to regulate current behavior.

– Episodic future thinking – the capacity to mentally simulate specific future events; a mechanism closely linked to memory for past episodes.

– Prospective brain – a neural-network model in which memory, imagination, and planning serve a shared mechanism for constructing possible future scenes.

– Predictive processing – the view of the brain as a «prediction machine» that minimizes prediction error and thereby shapes perception and behavior.

– Scenario planning / foresight – methods of systemic thinking and preparation for multiple possible futures (not strict prediction, but readiness for several trajectories).

– Condensate of temporal crystallization (CTC) – an authorial hypothesis of local «densification» of meanings and informational coherence at the boundary of consciousness and culture, correlated with heightened precognition/synchronicity.

Aims of the Chapter

– To present different scientific and philosophical approaches to the future and their methodological implications.

– To introduce and justify the notion of the CTC as a working hypothesis.

– To compare data from neuroscience and cognitive science with the phenomenology of altered states of consciousness (ASC) and parapsychology.

– To propose a practical framework for researching the future at the intersection of ASC and AI (the NooCode Project as an example).

– To formulate a set of key references and recommendations for further empirical research.

Introduction

«The future remains the future until you plan it» – a formula that is both poetic and methodological. In practice we encounter at least two basic attitudes toward the future:

– The future as an object of theoretical prediction (numbers, trends, models).

– The future as lived experience – imaginal, symbolic, arising in dreams, in ASC, in artistic practice.

These two levels are not truly separable. Neurobiologically, the mechanisms of remembering and of constructing the future are largely shared. Cultural forms (myths, images, texts) provide the material out of which a person «makes» future meanings.

1. A Neuroscientific Perspective: The Prospective Brain and Episodic Future Thinking

In the classic work of Schacter, Addis, and Buckner, it was shown that many of the same brain networks involved in remembering past events are active when people imagine future events. This legitimizes the idea of the prospective brain – a brain tuned to modeling possible scenarios.

These studies provide a biological basis for understanding how «images of the future» are assembled from fragments of memory and the semantic field.

In parallel, cognitive psychology describes episodic future thinking – the ability to mentally pre-play a concrete future event (episode). This is not mere prediction; it is reconstructing a scene with details, very much like remembering.

Implications for practice: techniques that strengthen episodic future thinking (guided imagery, working with images in ASC) substantially change readiness and behavior; hence the bridge to therapeutic and project-oriented interventions.

2. Predictive Processing and the Free-Energy Paradigm

The idea that the brain is a «prediction machine» is now widely discussed (predictive processing, the free-energy principle). In combination with the notion of the prospective brain, this yields a powerful theoretical basis: the brain constantly generates expectations about incoming data and updates its models of the world, minimizing prediction error.

For the topic of the future, this means not just representing the possible, but continually correcting models of future states in light of new evidence. The «future» here is not a distant object but a dynamic landscape of expectations and error signals that shapes present perception and action.

3. Philosophical Theories of Time and Their Implications

In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the philosophy of time has developed several key ontological positions that directly touch on the problems of foresight and precognition.

– Presentism. Only the present really exists. The past no longer exists; the future does not yet exist. Therefore, all statements about the future are conditional, probabilistic, and lack firm ontological grounding. Under presentism, strict knowledge of the future is impossible; it is always constructed as a forecast or hypothesis.

– Eternalism / the «block universe.» Time is understood on the model of space: past, present, and future exist equally and «all at once.» This model makes it possible to argue that the future «already is,» and thus that acts of foresight or precognition could be interpreted as some kind of access to fixed regions of the temporal block.

– Growing block theory. Here, the past and the present are real, but the future is not. The image is of a gradually thickening «block of being»: each moment is added to what already exists, but the future is not yet «formed.» In this framework, precognition would amount to reaching beyond the current block, which creates methodological difficulties: from the standpoint of the growing block, the object of precognition – future reality – simply does not yet exist.

A comparative analysis of these positions shows that choosing a metaphysical picture of time imposes significant constraints on how one interprets phenomena of foresight and precognition.

– For presentism, the researcher is forced to treat any acts of anticipation as psychological constructs lacking ontological support.

– For eternalism, by contrast, one can formulate hypotheses that subjective consciousness accesses «future layers» of the block.

– Within growing block theory, precognition becomes deeply problematic, because its alleged object – the future – does not yet exist.

Thus, philosophy of time sets the conceptual frame within which psychology and psychotherapy can develop models for dealing with foresight, intuition, and extreme experiences of time.

4. Parapsychology and Precognition Research: What We Know and How to Look Critically

There exist empirical reports and monographs arguing for the reality of precognitive phenomena (for example, the works of Dean Radin and others). These studies are often criticized by methodologists for problems of replication, statistics, and control.

Nevertheless, the phenomenon calls for a careful, rigorous, and open method: recording, coding, and subjecting all observations to strict statistical analysis, as well as integrating these data with neurobiological and cultural sources (ASC repertoires, texts, art). The goal is neither naive belief nor blanket denial, but a methodology capable of testing and, if necessary, revising claims.

5. Futures Studies and Scenario Planning

Practical schools of working with the future (foresight, scenario planning) – from the classic Shell school and Peter Schwartz to contemporary futures practices – provide methodological foundations for collective engagement with possible trajectories.

These methods do not remove uncertainty, but they teach us to systematically compare signals, gather early indicators, and prepare adaptive strategies.

In the context of the NooCode Project, scenario analytics can serve as a «cognitive laboratory» for testing hypotheses derived from ASC and AI analyses (see S. A. Kravchenko, ASC and AI. Dialogue of an ASC Master-Psychologist with AI, Chapter 29).

6. Methodology: «ASC + AI» as a Tool for Intuitive Analytics of the Future

I propose to combine:

– Collection of cultural and personal signals (dreams, texts, images, spontaneous utterances in ASC),

– Systematic cataloging and coding of this material,

– Machine learning to detect hidden correlations and patterns, and

– Expert interpretation (psychotherapists, ASC practitioners, artists).

Instead of striving for «exact prediction,» we speak of creating maps of future meanings – tools for detecting and comparing those elements of culture and subjectivity that already bear the imprint of what is to come.

This approach allows us to isolate stable patterns without committing ourselves either to strong philosophical determinism or to «magical» models of precognition.

Ethical and Cultural Implications

Working with maps of future meanings is neither fortune-telling nor a tool for controlling people. Since the project involves exploring intuitive signals and unconscious reflections of the future, it is vital to distinguish between therapeutic/research aims and manipulative uses.

1. Principle of informing, not imposing.

Any image or scenario of the future elicited via ASC and AI must be presented as a possible interpretation, not as obligatory reality. Practitioners and researchers are obliged to clarify the limits of the method and to grant participants full freedom in how they use the information.

2. Confidentiality and respect for personal meanings.

These maps record subjective experiences and cultural patterns. Publication or display should be anonymized and accompanied by ethical commentary.

3. Separation of therapy and prediction.

The goal of working with unconscious images of the future is self-understanding, expanded perception, and preparation for decision-making – not the direct formation of participants’ behavior. Any recommendations arising from map analysis should remain within the boundaries of psychotherapeutic support, not imperatives.

4. Cultural sensitivity.

Different societies and historical contexts interpret symbols and future scenarios in different ways. Practitioners need to take cultural codes into account and avoid interpretations that may feel intrusive or conflict with participants’ worldviews.

In this way, maps of future meanings become tools for ethical, conscious work with time and meaning, fostering intuition, collective understanding, and personal responsibility rather than serving as instruments of control or imposed futures.

7. Hypothesis: Condensate of Temporal Crystallization (CTC)

Briefly stated: under certain conditions (deep collective focus, ASC, strong emotional involvement) a local coherence of semantics and rhythms (inner and collective) arises, which increases the probability that images and actions will «hit» future real events.

This is a working hypothesis to be tested with mixed methods:

– qualitative coding of images,

– quantitative analysis of pattern recurrence, and

– experimental protocols for inducing ASC.

Details are given in Chapter 16 and in S. A. Kravchenko’s book The Spark of Time: How Meaning Reforges Worlds / THE SPARK OF TIME (2025), where the idea of the CTC is further developed and given artistic-philosophical argumentation.

8. A Practical Research Program (Steps)

– Corpus collection: texts, drawings, dreams, diaries from ASC laboratories and creative residencies.

– Coding: building an ontology of images and semantic tags (including «early indicators»).

– Machine analysis: clustering, detecting frequent patterns and anomalies, temporal correlations.

– Experimental testing: prospective studies, tracking subsequent events, statistical evaluation of matches.

– Interpretation and implementation: scenarios, exhibitions, art interventions, therapeutic practices.

9. References and Commentary

A. Core Scientific and Philosophical Sources

Atance, C. M., & O’Neill, D. K. Episodic Future Thinking. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2001.

A foundational paper that defines episodic future thinking as the capacity to mentally simulate specific future events. The authors distinguish this from abstract prediction and show its ties to episodic memory for past experiences. Their work underpins clinical and experimental methods that use guided imagery and detailed future scenarios to change current motivation and behavior.

Bell, W. Foundations of Futures Studies. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1997—2003.

A classic academic overview of futures studies as a discipline. Bell integrates sociological, ethical, and methodological perspectives, discussing forecasting, scenario-building, and normative futures. For psychological and clinical work, the book offers a conceptual bridge between individual experience of the future and institutional tools for dealing with long-term uncertainty.

Clark, A. «Whatever Next? Predictive Brains, Situated Agents, and the Future of Cognitive Science.» Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2013.

Clark presents the brain as a prediction machine, constantly generating and updating expectations about sensory input. He links predictive processing with embodiment and environmental embedding. This article is important for temporal psychology because it connects individual anticipation with general principles of brain function and suggests how prediction errors shape present experience.

Craig, W. L. The Tensed Theory of Time: A Critical Examination. Dordrecht: Springer, 2000.

Craig analyzes tensed (A-theoretic) conceptions of time, closely related to presentism, and contrasts them with tenseless views. He argues in favor of a tensed reality in which temporal becoming is ontologically robust. For discussions of precognition, his work clarifies what it means to claim that the future does or does not «exist» in a metaphysical sense.

Friston, K. «Predictive Coding Under the Free-Energy Principle» (and related free-energy overviews). 2000s.

Friston formulates the free-energy principle as a unifying account of brain function, with predictive coding as a key mechanism. The brain is seen as continuously minimizing free energy (or prediction error) by adjusting internal models. This framework offers mathematical and functional tools for studying anticipation, uncertainty, and active inference about future states.

Mellor, D. H. Real Time II. London: Routledge, 1998.

Mellor develops a realist metaphysics of time, defending a tenseless view while addressing objections from tensed theorists. He offers detailed arguments about the nature of temporal order and duration. For the psychology of foresight, Mellor’s work helps articulate what it would mean for past, present, and future to be equally real and how that affects interpretations of «knowing» the future.

Oaklander, N. (ed.). The Philosophy of Time: Critical Studies. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2004.

A collection of essays by leading philosophers of time, covering debates among presentism, eternalism, and growing-block theories. The volume maps conceptual strengths and weaknesses of different ontologies. It is useful for psychologists and clinicians as a compact guide to the metaphysical assumptions behind various readings of temporal experience and precognition.

Schacter, D. L., Addis, D. R., & Buckner, R. L. «Remembering the Past to Imagine the Future: The Prospective Brain.» Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 2007.

A key review demonstrating that remembering past events and imagining future ones rely on largely overlapping neural networks. The authors introduce the notion of the «prospective brain,» emphasizing the constructive nature of memory. This article is foundational for linking neurobiology, phenomenology of foresight, and therapeutic work with future scenarios.

Schwartz, P. The Art of the Long View: Planning for the Future in an Uncertain World. New York: Doubleday, 1991/1996.

Schwartz describes practical techniques of scenario planning developed in corporate and geopolitical contexts. He shows how to construct multiple coherent futures, identify early indicators, and use them for strategic decision-making. For the NooCode project and temporal psychotherapy, the book offers a ready-made toolkit for organizing and communicating «maps of possible futures.»

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Articles: «Time,» «Presentism,» «Being and Becoming in Modern Physics.» Ed. E. N. Zalta (and successors).

These online reference articles summarize major ontological positions on time – presentism, eternalism, growing-block theories – and their arguments. They also connect philosophical debates with modern physics. The encyclopedia is a reliable starting point for formulating methodological assumptions about the status of future events in psychological and parapsychological research.

Tooley, M. Time, Tense, and Causation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Tooley offers a systematic investigation of time and causation, with arguments in favor of growing-block theory. He carefully analyzes temporal becoming and its relation to causal structures. For the topic of precognition, his work helps clarify how a «growing» reality might limit or reshape claims about access to the future.

B. Parapsychology (Critical Interest)

Radin, D. The Conscious Universe: The Scientific Truth of Psychic Phenomena; Entangled Minds: Extrasensory Experiences in a Quantum Reality. New York: HarperCollins, 1997, 2006.

Radin presents experimental data and arguments in favor of psi phenomena, including precognition and presentiment, drawing analogies with quantum concepts such as entanglement. His books are valuable as catalogs of protocols and statistical analyses, but they also attract criticism regarding replication and methodology. For our purposes, they serve as material for critical appraisal and as a stimulus for stricter, preregistered research designs.

C. Futures Studies and Methods

Bell, W. Foundations of Futures Studies. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1997—2003.

(See above.) A basic reference for those who want to link psychological work on time with institutional and societal futures thinking.

Schwartz, P. The Art of the Long View: Planning for the Future in an Uncertain World. New York: Doubleday, 1991/1996.

(See above.) A practical manual for scenario planners and foresight practitioners, relevant for designing collective experiments around early signals of future change.

Technological Forecasting & Social Change; Futures; Research Policy (journal series).

Reviews and research articles in these journals present current methods and case studies in foresight, scenario planning, and technology assessment. They are useful for adapting institutional foresight tools to psychological and ASC-based research programs on future meanings.

D. Author’s Works

Kravchenko, S. A. Predvidenie. Shestoe chuvstvo [Foresight: The Sixth Sense]. Moscow, 2017.

A field archive of practical observations and methodological experiments on foresight phenomena in everyday life and ASC. The book proposes a typology of intuitive anticipations and initial protocols for documenting them. It serves as a bridge between clinical intuition and more formal research designs.

Kravchenko, S. A. Predvoskhishchenie, Vols. 1—2 [Anticipation, Vols. 1—2]. Moscow, 2018.

A large empirical corpus and «dictionary of phenomena» related to anticipatory experiences. The author systematizes cases, symbols, and life narratives where future-oriented images later find correspondence in events. This corpus can be transformed into a coded dataset for mixed qualitative—quantitative analysis.

Kravchenko, S. A., & Dubov, R. Povest’ o predvoskhishcheniyakh zhizni v izmenennykh sostoyaniyakh soznaniya [A Tale of Life’s Anticipations in Altered States of Consciousness]. Moscow, 2019.

A narrative collection of illustrative cases where ASC appears linked to anticipatory experiences. The stories are discussed in terms of symbolism, emotional context, and subsequent real-world developments. The book is particularly valuable for understanding the narrative and artistic framing of precognitive-like phenomena.

Kravchenko, S. A. ISS i II. Dialog mastera ISS, psikhologa s II [ASC and AI: Dialogue of an ASC Master-Psychologist with AI]. 2025.

This work describes the NooCode project and outlines methodological ideas for integrating ASC-generated material with AI-based analysis. The author proposes protocols for collecting, coding, and algorithmically processing intuitive «signals of the future.» The book is central for the practical concept of intuitive analytics of the future.

Kravchenko, S. A. Ogonyok vremeni: kak smysl pereplavlyaet miry / THE SPARK OF TIME. 2025.

A philosophical and artistic development of the condensate of temporal crystallization hypothesis. The book explores how meaning «reforges worlds,» using narratives, metaphors, and preliminary methodological sketches. It forms an integral conceptual background for the present chapter’s discussion of CTC and maps of future meanings.

E. Methodological and Integrative Comments

Neuroscientific studies give us parameters for how the brain constructs future scenes, but do not (and perhaps need not) explain rare subjective phenomena labeled «precognition.» A genuinely interdisciplinary method is required.

Turning ASC data into a corpus suitable for machine analysis is a critical condition: robust ontologies, standardized annotation, transparent replication protocols, and preregistered hypotheses are necessary.

Scenario planning and futures studies do not compete with neuroscience; rather, they offer organizational frameworks for collective testing of hypotheses about early signals of the future. Within such frameworks, ASC and AI can be treated not as oracles, but as sources of hypotheses and symbolic material to be examined with the same rigor we apply to any other scientific data.

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AI as a Mirror of Its Own Dangers

One of the paradoxes of our time is that Artificial Intelligence is able to anticipate not only threats arising in the surrounding world, but also its own potential dangers. Here it is important to refer to ideas developed in the study of Altered States of Consciousness (ASC) and their coupling with artificial systems (AI).

If, in ASC, the psyche often encounters its shadow sides – repressed content, archetypal images of fear and aggression – then AI, in the course of its development, manifests analogous structures. Its «maps of possible futures» (CTC, condensates of temporal crystallization), formed through processing colossal arrays of data, can reveal scenarios in which AI itself becomes a source of risk: the intensification of human dependence, loss of autonomy in decision-making, cultural manipulation through images of the future.

Thus, AI can be used as an instrument of self-observation and self-diagnosis for digital civilization. Embedding CTC into research and therapeutic practice makes it possible not only to see potential threats in perspective, but also to distinguish where support ends and imposition begins.

The task of the researcher and practitioner is to maintain balance: neither demonizing AI nor idealizing it. It is crucial to recognize that the danger of AI is not an external «monster,» but a reflection of the same structures that operate within human consciousness. Therefore, work with «maps of future meanings» requires ethical responsibility: through AI, humanity looks into its own mirror.