Signs and Reverse Causality

Posted on February 10, 2008
Filed Under Awareness, Movies, TV and Media |

“Signs” is a pretty good movie - even if the acting is a little hammy in places. The most interesting thing about the film isn’t the alien invasion or the crop circles, but its comments on the nature of causality. This becomes apparent at the end with the movies ‘plot twist’, yet it is more than a simple twist; it is the entire point of the movie.

*Plot spoilers ahead*

Reverse causality - as the pairing of the words implies - is cause and effect in reverse. That is to say the effects precede the cause. That may seem crazy or based in fantasy, but the truth is that modern science recognizes this as fact in the field of quantum physics; on the sub-atomic scale it is often noted that effect can and does indeed precede cause.

Now our experience of time is linear and in what we perceive as a ‘forward’ motion. Time, on the other hand is not linear, so events can flow backwards and forwards in time. So when an event is flowing backwards whilst we are moving forwards - we see the event as reverse causality.

If you haven’t seen it for a while then it is worth watching ‘Signs’ again with this in mind. This principle is what Graham Hess realized at the end of the movie - it is what his wife asked him to ’see’ with her last words, as during that moment she stepped outside of linear time.

The movie cleverly embeds an idea that would otherwise be controversial within a B-Movie plot-line.

Right from the start of the movie there are Signs (the title of the movie doesn’t refer to crop-circles) of what is to come. Each of these signs are effects from the future cause. The odd behavior of the dogs, the girl Bo’s phobia of drinking water, Merril’s inclination to always swing in baseball (he says himself at one point, ‘It felt wrong not to swing’), and of course Morgan’s asthma.

People often experience reverse causality; “If I hadn’t been delayed, we would never have met.” We see these things as reasons. The implication in ‘Signs’ is that Bo’s phobia of water would lead to water being in the right place at the right time by the end of the movie. Yet there is another way of looking at; it is reasonable that a young girl would develop a phobia of water after witnessing the traumatic event at the end of the movie. Reverse causality means that Bo developed the phobia before the event occurred.

It’s an interesting premise, which can be applied within our lives. So much is down to how ‘in-tune’ we are with reality; as we develop our awareness we may begin to perceive synchronicity - and in fact this is a phenomena an increasing amount of people are starting to accept. The next stage in awareness is experience of reverse causality.

Keep a mental note of any unusual events which occur, you may be surprised to later notice their cause…