No, this phrase isn’t about the economy. It’s about physics and space and time.
According to an article in New Scientist, this theory contends that “different parts of space can undergo dramatic growth spurts, essentially ballooning into separate universes with their own physical properties. The process happens an infinite number of times, creating an infinite number of universes, called the multiverse.”
The multiverse is depicted in this image by physicist Andrei Linde of Stanford University. Each colored ray in this image is an expanding universe.But apparently if you mess with the laws of physics in just about any way you can imagine, life as we know it would not exist. In basic physics, atoms consist of protons (an electrically charged particle within the nucleus of an atom), neutrons (according to wisegeek.com: a tiny subatomic particle found in nearly all forms of matter), and electrons (a negatively charged particle).So let’s say that if protons were “just .02 percent more massive than they are, they would decay into smaller particles. Atoms wouldn’t exist and neither would we.”
So how did we, this universe, just happen to have all the life-friendly properties that allow us to exist? Physics apparently doesn’t have all the answers. In fact, physicists seem to be as clueless as the rest of us. Short of attributing it all to some ultimate source, an ultimate creator, writes Tim Folger in an article in Discover Magazine, “many physicists see only one possible explanation: Our universe may be but one of perhaps infinitely many universes in an inconceivably vast multiverse. Most of those universes are barren, but some, like ours, have conditions suitable for life.”
So what is this multiverse? Is it the same as the Many Worlds Theory of quantum physics? It seems to be. Writers of fiction have tapped into this idea for years. For anyone who watched Lost, the idea of a multiverse is depicted in a sideways storyline that illustrated a parallel universe where the passengers of Oceanic Flight 815 lands in L. A.and the island where the plane crashed is now underwater.Stephen King’s Dark Tower series is built on the premise of a multiverse that is centered in the tower. Michael Crichton’s Timeline enables his characters to travel back to Medieval times. In The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Universe every possible timeline is depicted somewhere.There are others – Philip Pullman’s brilliant trilogy, His Dark Materials; the TV show Slider; the movie Sliding Doors.
So what does any of this have to do with the lives we’re living in the here and now? Well, from my non-scientific, novelistic point of view, this could mean there are multiple versions of every major choice you made. Your divorce? In some timeline, it didn’t happen. You and that spouse are still together. Your marriage? In some timeline, you never even met that person. That beautiful child/children in your life? In some timeline, you were childless. And on it goes, the choices, the repercussions. In the multiverse, they all aren’t just possible, they exist.
But then you come against a book like Biocentrism and its premise that all is consciousness, that there is nothing without consciousness. And you’re left beneath a star-studded sky, contemplating your own navel, your own awareness. It’s humbling, to say the least. In the end, maybe what we perceive to be god, all that is, the ultimate authority, whatever your term, is simply a consciousness that grows and expands as we do. Maybe this grand consciousness sweeps through all probable universes, endowing all of us with the free will to find our own way through the strangeness that is life, truth, the universe, and everything else.
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Just a note. We’ll be on the road the next few days, but checking in.
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Just a note. We’ll be on the road the next few days, but checking in.
Oh, how rude of me. Great post and LOVED Lawrence's synchro. I really get a buzz from those multi layered ones.
ingstin = instinct. 🙂
I walked past a poster at the Dvd shop and thought i would like to see that movie, as I love Naomi Watt's (another fine Aussie girl). The title grabbed me.
Where was I going? To buy some more Angel. My perfume of choice.
wv = prove
Lawrence, shortly after reading your story, I read a NY Times column by Maureen Dowd, and near the end she talks about, guess who? Naomi Watts, who is playing former outed spy Valerie Plame in a new movie.
Naomi's ears must be burning up today! – Rob
Wow, Lawrence. What a string of synchros. Maybe this is all pointing to her return to your life. There're so many levels to the story. Thanks for posting this!
We have mutually decided it is best to 'lose touch' with one another though, without articulating this to each other. She is of a certain type of person who loses touch with most everybody, but I will always love her and accept her for who she is. One of the themes of the film is how we lose touch with those who we care about the most. Watts's character's name in the film – Elizabeth. The name of this woman from my life, do I need to tell you? Elizabeth. Remember the perfume advertised in the postcard is called Angel. What was my term of endearment for my Elizabeth? Yup angel. It was an endearment as you may guess that I used somewhat ironically because she was/is no angel but is certainly as beautiful as one.
I do think it worth mentioning and expanding on how Watts's character relates to this woman from my past, because the more I think about it, the more connections there are that I actually find it uncanny and it may account for why this synchronicity is personally meaningful and striking. I didn't really have any idea what the movie was about when I picked up the DVD btw. As far as this woman from my past is concerned, no we were never married but if there is one woman who was THE woman, who I had the strongest most intense emotional and psychic bond with in my forty years it was her (as messed up as our relationship was). I see her as my soul sister more than anything, even though we have lost touch entirely and for complicated reasons it's all for the best. She will always be in my heart.
To the point – not only does Watts look quite a bit like her (yes this woman from my past is beautiful), more to the point it was the character she played that reminded me of this woman from my past. Both Watts's character and this woman from my life are women who are sharp, clever, manipulative, cruel and cutting especially with other women, and use their beauty to bewitch and seduce whoever they please no matter the disastrous consequences, but of course only leaving the respective seductresses lonely and alienated in the end. In both cases their destructive behaviour rooted in childhood pain and trauma as is usually the case anyhow. In both cases wilfully engaging in dangerous affairs, seeking solace and aliveness in the danger and intensity of it, but naturally in the end it is something that only drives them deeper into despair. Both drifters, secretive and hiding their pasts.
Movie spoiler alert – in the movie Watts's character gets pregnant and leaves her workplace without telling anybody about her pregnancy, including her one lover from work who is the father, although she had more than one lover she knew which lover was the father (as the ending of the film reveals). This woman from my life left our workplace pregnant (we met through work) and she never told anybody from work she was pregnant (except for myself) including her lover who was the father and she had more than one lover and like Watts's character she knew who the father was (no at the time I was not one of her lovers! don't ask it's uh complicated! Our relationship was in the end more a brother-sister one really like I mention further up). In the movie Watts's character has a complicated dangerous pregnancy that puts her life at risk. Yup this woman who left our workplace secretly pregnant had a complicated dangerous pregnancy that put her life at risk (we remained in touch by e-mail). Big movie spoiler alert (but I have to expand on this really given that I have mentioned their respective dangerous pregnancies) – Watts's character's pregnancy ends in tragedy for Watts's character who dies giving birth, the baby lives. The woman from my life miscarries, almost dying but she survives – otherwise I wouldn't know about it of course. For a long while when I didn't hear from her, I feared the worst and was relieved when she eventually e-mailed, even though it was to tell me what I feared – that she had lost the baby. This woman would later fall pregnant again and give birth to a healthy baby girl.
What I have to write about here doesn't relate directly to the theme above but it does to synchronicities in a big way. A very odd or freakish coincidence happened last night to me and I thought it worth mentioning on your blog, since I haven't posted up a comment here for a long while anyhow. And this is a blog about synchronicity after all! So for what it's worth and without further adue.. In 2 posts because it is long.
Last night at home I was watching a DVD movie I had picked up, 'Mother and Child' on TV. It's an independent American movie (incidentally directed by Rodrigo Garcia the son of the Columbian writer Gabrial Garcia Marquez), a very good drama that I recommend starring Naomi Watts, Samuel L Jackson and Annette Bening. I was very taken by Watts's excellent performance as one of the leads but was also disturbed by it, it cut a bit too close to me – the character Watts played reminded me in so many ways of a woman from my past, and I mean the woman from my past. I expand on this further down because I think it may relate to the synchronicity.
Here's the synchronicity itself – anyhow the movie ended and I decided I should do some work in bed, so as the credits to the film were still rolling on my TV, I got out my laptop and started hooking it up. As I opened up the laptop carrying case and proceeded to open the laptop itself, a postcard flipped out of the inside pouch of the carry case itself, landing on the keyboard. Now I have a very occasional habit of picking up free postcards at the restaurants I frequent, sometimes when I take my laptop with me to work on. In the city I live in (not in North America), free picture postcards are routinely available at restaurants, bars and the like. I actually use the postcards as bookmarks, even coasters, I write important numbers on them and then proceed to misplace and lose them. In other words I am a typically scatter brained bachelor with odd eccentric habits. I noticed the postcard picture was of a beautiful blonde woman, probably why I picked it up in the first place rather than another one. I must have picked up this postcard months ago and put it in my inside pouch of the carrying case and then forgotten all about it. So I looked at it a little closer, noticed it was an advert for a perfume called Angel (associated it turns out with designer Thierry Mugler) and I thought to myself "this model in the picture looks a lot like Naomi Watts". How strange. I looked closer, wow it could be her twin I started to think. It then dawns on me, wait a second it is her, it's Naomi Watts! In fact I see in the fine print at the bottom of the picture, it is written Naomi Watts. So it's not that I have mistaken some woman who looks a lot like Watts for her, it really is Watts, the postcard fine print makes sure to tell me that I am not fooling myself here.
Remember the credits for the movie I have just finished watching, in which Watts plays the lead, the pivotal character in fact, are still rolling on my TV. And I have a mini freak out. What the bejeesus? Now no postcard or paper or document has ever leaped out or fallen out of the inside pouch of my laptop that I have had for a few years now, ever before. Ever. And I use my laptop almost every day. Even though I have as I explain above occasionally picked up postcards at restaurants I don't put them in the inside pouch of my laptop carrying case. In fact I don't think I have ever done this before, always putting them in the outside pouch of the case or most often in a book or packet of some kind I usually have on my person when I'm out. Also I still can't figure out how the postcard got out of the tight inside pouch exactly, I mean it seemed to just pop out or fly out and landed on my laptop keyboard as I was opening the computer cover, Watts face up. It was just bizarre. I mean talk about timing!
There can surely be only consciousness as without it there is nothing. There is only our realisation of anything – there is no reality in other words.
As I mentioned in my post on the book Biocentrism – a class on Perception helped me to understand these concepts much easier. I also had a class on the physiology of the brain the same semester. The two classes together were very informative. Literally a whole semester on this stuff. My conclusion is to lean towards the Biocentrism – we are a world in our own minds. The brain is an amazing machine, but it needs the mind to tell it what to do. Compound the fact that everything we hear, see, feel, taste, touch, actually occurs in our brains, and you begin to see that Biocentrism makes more sense than the multiverse theory. But I'm not sure they are exclusive. It could be that both theories are viable in some way that we just can't understand right now.
I think we are on the precipice of some very big breakthroughs concerning consciousness. The world will no longer look the same to us.
Great points, Daz!
You explain this stuff well, Aleksandar!
This approach makes sense to me:
Many worlds interpretation is before the measurement or collapse of the wave function (related to probabilities of events) or when electrons behave like waves. When the measurement happens, the wave function and its complex conjugate value (they both appear in formulas) move in two directions in space and time (past-future, source-target, causal and retrocausal direction) – waves become particles. See John Cramer and Transactional Interpretation. It seems to me (and not only me) that consciousness and decision-making this way – decisions reduce many worlds to one because consciusness works in two directions in time. Computers (causal machines) obviously don't work this way.
I'll take Bio-centrism and its premise that all is consciousness…well in this my current multiverse
anyway .-)
I just can't buy into the Lost/multiverse hypothesis,probably because I hated that show and also because on a gut level I feel while I did have all those possibilities to make different choices along the way,there is only one me and my choices impact on others just as theirs impact on me,but like what's written on the girl's hand in the post below,I think that we are all in this together and that's why all our choices are important.Every choice makes a ripple,no matter how big or small ,on the lives of others whether that be good or bad.
Daz