edward@ukma.UUCP (Edward C. Bennett) (02/01/85)
Does anyone have an opinion on 'multiple universes'? So that this
question isn't left to too much interpretation, I want to define
each 'universe' as something that is created (for lack of a better
word) when a 'situation' is reduced to a choice of two, such that
for every outcome there is an opposite. To better visualize what
I'm trying to get across, think of a tree with an undefined (if
not infinite) number of branches and every so often they cross,
and this also holds true for the tree's roots. Now to involve this
idea with life (as in "life, the universe and everything" - and for
you "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" fans, I know the answer's
42), consider some part of a non-descript branch to stand for a
person's life and for each decision or action - no matter how
insignificant - another branch is created that eventually affects
some other thing (crossing of another branch). So as to be consistent
with what I mentioned before, another branch is created this being
the other's opposite (the one which we do not experience).
Before I get even more carried away with all of this, am I completely
off the wall, or does anyone else ponder these things? I started
on this particular idea because of a book called "Taking the
Quantum Leap". Someone please reply.
Klare Schmidt
(on edwards account)
{ucbvax,unmvax,boulder,research} ! {anlams,anl-mcs} -|
|- !ukma!edward
{cbosgd!hasmed,mcvax!qtlon,vax135,mddc} ! qusavx -|serge@rna.UUCP (02/18/85)
I refer you to the writings of P.D. Ouspensky, a turn of the century philosopher best known for his involvement with Gurdjeef (spelling? see the film Meetings with Remarkable Men for the story of Gurdjeef's work). I have read two of his books, Tertium Organum and A New Model of the Universe. In Tertium Organum he describes the hierarchy of dimensions and it's relationship to our consiousness and perceptions. In regards your idea of a tree of events, Ouspensky speaks of this dimensionally. Specifically, an instant of what we (physical plane humans) know as time is the third dimension. A string of instants is the fourth dimension. The fifth dimension is a tree of instants. I don't recall what the sixth was. And of course, the magic number seven, was eternity or the whole ball of wax, as it were. Within this eternity, our consiousness moves experiencing those dimensions it is capable of understanding as space and those it cannot as time.