THE BRANE AND I
A few months ago I was lying in bed, crossword in hand, that evening’s PBS program adjusted with just the right narrative drone to lull me to sleep. Somewhere in the process of nodding off to Dreamland, my brain registered the words coming from PBS: “membrane” “dimension” and “multiverse.” Dreamland faded away.
The narrator was explaining the extension of the String Theory called “The Brane Theory.” As I listened, my own brain shifted into overdrive with the potential ramifications.
Starting with a layperson’s very brief explanation of these theories:
Per the String Theory, electrons and quarks within and atom are not zero-dimensional objects, but rather one-dimensional oscillating lines called strings. String Theory unites the infinitesimally small to the world we know through our senses.
From the String Theory, we go on to the Super String Theory, which unites all four forces of the universe: the strong and weak nuclear forces, electromagnetism and gravity. Super String Theory holds that there are ten dimensions: the three we know about (length, width, depth), six others within space and time, and time.
M-Theory, an extension of Super String Theory, proposes eleven dimensions: ten parallel dimensions separated into multiverses by a membrane. These ten parallel dimensions share the eleventh dimension of time. The added dimension (eleven, up from ten) contributes a new kind of string which could be stretched infinitely to create a floating membrane. Our universe exists on a floating membrane along with infinite parallel universes each on their own membrane. Infinite membranes exist that each support a separate but parallel universe. M-Theory with that added constituent of membranes is also referred to as “The Brane Theory.”
Physics has officially introduced the concept of parallel universes. Perhaps it had done so before, but certainly not with the impact of the Brane Theory. No longer is the concept of parallel universes confined to the various theories of spirituality and/or science fiction.
I must now warn you, to paraphrase Rod Serling: We are moving into a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas. We are crossing over into... the Twilight Zone.
If our universe as we know it exists in one of these ten parallel dimensions, what exists in the other nine dimensions? If life exists in our dimension, who is to say that life does not exist in any of the other dimensions?
If these dimensions are so close, separated by this membrane, what is to prevent, what has prevented, life forms from any one of these dimensions from interacting with another, if anything indeed has prevented this at all. Consider the infinite possibilities.
We all have read stories, even have known people, who have heard voices, had visions, usually dismissed as results of imaginative minds, hallucinating schizophrenics, religious ecstatics, ambitious spiritualists. But wait a minute. Perhaps in the light of the Brane Theory it isn’t so far-fetched that contacts have been made with an “other side.” Perhaps the voices heard were legitimate; perhaps the visions real. Perhaps our dreams are reflective layers of the varying events occurring in the multiverse.
Let’s leave behind for a moment (in the light of the ramifications of the Brane Theory) the possibility that the people who hear and have heard voices really have heard or do hear voices. Let’s also leave behind for now the possibility that people who have had visions were not victims of overactive imaginations or victims of severe psychosis. Let’s leave the “possibilities” behind and enter into the “real world” of a few recorded instances of noted historical figures . . . generally accepted credible figures . . . who have openly acknowledged voices or dreams:
· Joshua Slocum, the first to sail single-handedly around the world in 1898, claimed to have been aided by the ghost of Christopher Columbus’s helmsman.
· Mahatma Gandhi relied on what he believed to be the “Voice of God,” for guidance. He affirmed “. . . . not the unanimous verdict of the whole world against me could shake me from the belief that what I heard was the true Voice of God.”
· Philip K Dick, who wrote “Blade Runner,” “Total Recall” and “Minority Report,” described a voice he heard as feminine which guided him and spoke to him sporadically.
· Sigmund Freud wrote, “During the days when I was living alone in a foreign city….I quite often heard my name suddenly called by an unmistakable and beloved voice….”
· Socrates relied on an inner voice that he heard only when he was about to make a mistake.
· Winston Churchill, politician, British Prime Minister, heard voices. During World War II, Churchill said his voices would tell him to “sit here” or “sit there.”
· The Roman Emperor Marcian dreamed he saw the bow of Attila the Hun break on the same night that Attila died.
· Plutarch relates of the ill Emperor Augustus who, through the prophetic dream of a friend, was persuaded to leave his tent which a few hours later was pierced with enemy swords.
· Hannibal based his battle plans against the Romans according to a prophetic dream.
· Abraham Lincoln dreamed of his own death just days before his assassination.
· The defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo was foretold in a prophetic dream.
· Peter Sellers had a ghost that travelled with him which he was always sure was his guiding spirit through life.
· During a cross-country flight, Vincent Price looked out of the airplane window and saw the message "Tyrone Power is dead” spelled out across a cloud bank. When he landed he learned that his friend, Tyrone Power, indeed had died a couple of hours earlier.
Any existing inability or unwillingness to accept the proposition of legitimate occurrences of visions, voices and dreams from an “other side,” in the light of the Brane Theory, might signal that an overall shift in mind-set is due. Visions, voices and dreams just might have their origins in one or more of those multiverses that exist on other membranes.
While we are currently still treading in the waters of theory and speculation, it is fascinating, is it not, how scientific theory and what we term spirituality (extreme cynics might use the word hallucination) are becoming closer allied, rather than pitted against each other in an “us vs. them” intractable conflict.
Until the next time, LLAP!
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