theplustwo
11-05-2003, 06:01 PM
Anyhow, I was just thinking about some things (dangerous, I know) when I started questioning my view of the universe, and subsequently, reality as I choose to experience it.
Not that your chosen perceptions of the universe and reality change the way you are able to interact with the universe or reality (you'll still get beat up at school if you talk about it too much) but they can change the way you approach problems, and expand your brain. (People who actively think about challenging subjects actually grow more dendrites in their brains, making more connections, and using more of their brain power, and doing heavy thinking causes the brain to become a more muscular structure, rather than the somewhat mushy structure of, say, a total couch potato.)
So anyway, I was thinking about how Scott Adams said one way to perceive the world would be as a series of alternate universes, through which your consciousness (or "spirit" or "soul") travels. As you perceive fluid movements and thoughts, you are actually skipping down a line of universes, and out of the infinite possibility of universes for you to inhabit, you tend to travel for the norm.
So for the instant you were reading that (it's gone now) there were an infinite possibility of universes you could have skipped to, but, tending toward the norm, you naturally skipped through the universes (think of each one as a suspended instant in time) that contained you staying in your chair and reading the rest of the word, sentence, paragraph.
This is a somewhat startling way of thinking about things, if you ponder the fact that at any instant in time, the next universe could be the one where time ends. Suddenly there aren't any universes left for your consciousness to inhabit. What happens then? Will the universe go on forever? Is there a God who created the universe(s) who will bring all of our conscious minds to a special resting place?
This is not necessarily the view I hold of the universe, but I can see it as a perfectly logical one. Although there would be a lot of unexplained phenomena occurring, that wouldn't be so different from the universe we do inhabit (not that we know which one that is).
Also, the world could be expanding. At every moment, the world (and every object in it) could be expanding at ten, twenty, thirty times per second (or however fast you want to suppose). If the expansion was constantly going faster and faster, objects which left the surface of the earth would naturally be returned to it, as the planet grew underneath you to reach your feet. Kind of makes you feel dizzy, huh?
So, as you travel instantaneously from universe to universe, as each one expands endlessly, can you really take the full advantage of each moment you spend in that particular space and time? And is time travel possible? Could you go back to a universe you inhabited previously and take a different course through the space-time continuum? Certainly it seems possible, although how would this affect the billions of other people as they instantly skip from existence to existence?
It really instills a sense of wonder and beauty to the universe(s), this infinitely gigantic and intricate dance of exquisitely defined and miraculously created planes of existence we inhabit. Especially when you factor in how many have gone before us and how many will come after. I see visions in my head of an infinite amount of dancing solar systems, spinning and spinning, yet constantly staying within perfect control. Could this have happened by accident? And are the notions I've postulated here any stranger than the universe as we accept it (and take it for granted)? I think the real universe is infinitely more strange, and that is what is so great. Contrary to the NBC slogan "The more you know," I believe that "The more you learn, the more you realize that you don't know."
Not that your chosen perceptions of the universe and reality change the way you are able to interact with the universe or reality (you'll still get beat up at school if you talk about it too much) but they can change the way you approach problems, and expand your brain. (People who actively think about challenging subjects actually grow more dendrites in their brains, making more connections, and using more of their brain power, and doing heavy thinking causes the brain to become a more muscular structure, rather than the somewhat mushy structure of, say, a total couch potato.)
So anyway, I was thinking about how Scott Adams said one way to perceive the world would be as a series of alternate universes, through which your consciousness (or "spirit" or "soul") travels. As you perceive fluid movements and thoughts, you are actually skipping down a line of universes, and out of the infinite possibility of universes for you to inhabit, you tend to travel for the norm.
So for the instant you were reading that (it's gone now) there were an infinite possibility of universes you could have skipped to, but, tending toward the norm, you naturally skipped through the universes (think of each one as a suspended instant in time) that contained you staying in your chair and reading the rest of the word, sentence, paragraph.
This is a somewhat startling way of thinking about things, if you ponder the fact that at any instant in time, the next universe could be the one where time ends. Suddenly there aren't any universes left for your consciousness to inhabit. What happens then? Will the universe go on forever? Is there a God who created the universe(s) who will bring all of our conscious minds to a special resting place?
This is not necessarily the view I hold of the universe, but I can see it as a perfectly logical one. Although there would be a lot of unexplained phenomena occurring, that wouldn't be so different from the universe we do inhabit (not that we know which one that is).
Also, the world could be expanding. At every moment, the world (and every object in it) could be expanding at ten, twenty, thirty times per second (or however fast you want to suppose). If the expansion was constantly going faster and faster, objects which left the surface of the earth would naturally be returned to it, as the planet grew underneath you to reach your feet. Kind of makes you feel dizzy, huh?
So, as you travel instantaneously from universe to universe, as each one expands endlessly, can you really take the full advantage of each moment you spend in that particular space and time? And is time travel possible? Could you go back to a universe you inhabited previously and take a different course through the space-time continuum? Certainly it seems possible, although how would this affect the billions of other people as they instantly skip from existence to existence?
It really instills a sense of wonder and beauty to the universe(s), this infinitely gigantic and intricate dance of exquisitely defined and miraculously created planes of existence we inhabit. Especially when you factor in how many have gone before us and how many will come after. I see visions in my head of an infinite amount of dancing solar systems, spinning and spinning, yet constantly staying within perfect control. Could this have happened by accident? And are the notions I've postulated here any stranger than the universe as we accept it (and take it for granted)? I think the real universe is infinitely more strange, and that is what is so great. Contrary to the NBC slogan "The more you know," I believe that "The more you learn, the more you realize that you don't know."