I’ve always been interested in time travel sci-fi and alternate realities. In most time travel fiction, the paradox of meeting yourself is solved by spontaneous destruction - or something similar. Yet in the latest Star Trek, Spock meets his elder self, and lives to tell. Sorry to go on so much about Star Trek, just be glad I haven’t yet seen Avatar!
I find this idea very intriguing. Is there an “older and wiser” version of my self in an alternate universe? Glad you asked! According to Charles Burke:
Physicists and mystics agree that all of time co-exists simultaneously. The way we experience time, with one moment following another moment after another moment, is (they say) an illusion. In reality, all moments of time are hanging around together, and our consciousness is threading its way through and among those moments of time.
This concept is consistent with the “frozen time block” experience of Salvia Divinorum and Shamanic ritual that engender an “ego-death” experience. Ego-death is the destruction of the illusion created by our experience of individual (egoic) consciousness, which is threading its way through and among the frozen time blocks - like a snake.
They also say that there are an infinite number of variations of each possible moment. That's what they call "parallel universes" in the science fiction movies. As it turns out, those parallel universes are not actually science fiction after all. They're really there-the physicists say so. We just can't usually see them.
Hmmm. My egoic experience appears to be limited to one time block at a time. Sorta like this Apple Cover Flow™ feature on my iMac - here showing one file at a time in a seamless flow from one to the next, sorta like a movie? (hella snake, btw) Curiously, the apple is associated with the snake and the tree of knowledge. Is this “snake” my own ego, navigating (scheming) itself from one time-block to another, always on the look out for an upgrade? Funny how upgrades always cost you money.
This synchs very strongly with the series of events from the infamous Dreams of Future Past, where the middle dream featured a snake-like movie house usher. Perhaps this “movie house” represents the illusion of egoic perception? The downside is that ego consciousness always ends with death... every movie comes to an end. And maybe that’s what the story of Moses and his brazen serpent was all about:
And Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole, and it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived. Numbers 21:9
In other words, anyone who saw through the illusion of ego, who “watched for snakes”, was saved.
4 comments:
Once again. . .you are kidding me with this new post. Can you please just take a moment and go to ConGrim and check out the Doppelganger post I put up yesterday about the multiplication of the self.
We basically wrote the same thing. . .
Apparently we still share non-locality! Wow!
Ray (T.)
Interesting post. Do you watch LOST? They deal with a lot of time travel. It's my favorite t.v. show.
K&R - awesome. Your Doppelganger post is resonating through me as we speak...
GM - I don't actually have a TV. I just rent movies and occasionally see stuff on Hulu. I think I would like LOST a little too much.
If I remember my Bible correctly, however, the Israelites were then admonished or punished for revering the snake pole (Ego takes over again?).
I've actually been thinking about parallel universes this week! Considering some decisions I've made, I've been wondering how the me in those other universes is faring.
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