The Structure of Reality, and the Subtext of Writing

Reality seems like one thing and is really another, under the surface.  Right now, you’re a person sitting at a computer, reading my writing.  You have a body, a chair, a computer, a place to live, and so on.  Well, on a totally separate level, you’re really light operating at different wavelengths, so that the protons/electrons/neutrons of the light called “chair” don’t pass through the light called “body.”  They aren’t really solid, they’re different waves of light bouncing off each other like stones rippling over the surface of a pond.

 In other words, you may look solid, but you’re really light.  All these tiny little pieces (atoms) floating together close enough that it looks real.  Reality is kind of a big hologram.  In fact, that’s why you can digitize pictures of it (like for television or the internet) and have it travel from place to place to be seen somewhere else on a screen. 

You can’t see without light:  you don’t see a person, you see the light bouncing off their wavelength, that travels from them to you, into your eye, which converts the beam of light into information your brain can interpret.  And your brain is running on light, too, electrical signals travelling through neuron chains.  In relativity theory, Einstein explains how you as the observer are in fact the centre of your universe, and the whole universe’s physics can be understood from your perspective, as the place where the light gathers to be seen.

 

 What I mean by that is, if you’re standing on a boat, throwing a ball up and down, it goes straight up and straight down for your perspective.  The light you see shows you “straight up, straight down, catch the ball.”  Well, if I stand on shore as the boat moves along, I will see that same ball travel in an arc, as it moves with the boat.  From your perspective you were standing still, but from mine you were moving.  According to Einstein, the physics for both are correct when studied from their individual perspectives.  From where I’m standing, you’d look about two inches tall on your boat, because you’re at a distance.  In my reality, according to Einstein, you ARE two inches tall.

 Stuff like that can make your brain hurt.  My point is, perspective is everything.  Each person is the centre of their own information universe, all the light travels inwards towards them to be interpreted.  At the same time, the light that comes in to be interpreted is also bouncing off you and going outwards, radiating so people can see you in their universe.

 

So the source of light is a focal point, radiating outwards, and the receiver of light is a like a focal point, absorbing inwards.  Flowers collect sunlight, minds collect information, and the universe radiates information/light.  With me so far?

Well, my brain has been absorbing a lot of information.  I’ve studied education, theology, literature, philosophy, history, science, mathematics, and languages.  And I have a natural tendency to see the interconnections of these things, rather than as discrete independent categories.  I naturally want the whole picture, instead of pieces, as I make sense of my universe.  After absorbing it, this is what I want to put out there:

 

It is possible for all these different things to be the same thing.  The way your body and chair are in fact light.  The universe is one thing:  light operating at different wavelengths, so that from our perspective it looks separate, but is in fact a whole.  Put white light through a prism and you’ll see multiple colours:  diversity inside unity.  That’s the way the universe works, being two things at once, connected and separate at the same time.  It just takes shifting perspectives to see the whole and the part.

Now, we know light radiates, and it radiates in all directions at once.  We know the universe is made of light, radiating outwards.  Some scientists believe that there are multiple universes, an infinite number.  There’s a universe where you turned right instead of left, so it’s fairly familiar.  And there are universes so different from our own as to be unrecognizable.  That’s the theory, anyway.  There’s even a theory that it’s not your body that moves, but your consciousness, based on your choices.  You choose to go right, so you go into a universe of “right,” while the person you’re talking to chose left, goes to the “left” universe, and you continue the conversation with his dimensional counterpart, who chose to go “right” while talking to your counterpart, who went “left.”  The conversation seems the same, because from your perspective, there was no noticeable transition.

Sounds messed up, right?  But that’s what physics might be indicating, even at the quantum level of the light energy making up your atomic body. 

How does this apply to writing?  Because that’s in the title of this post, and this blog is about me, the writer, ranting about things that are usually relevant to you, my readers, who generally got here from No Man an Island.  Well, all of this is subtext for the novel.  These are things that I thought about while writing. 

Why did I think about it?  Why is it relevant?  Well, this is my idea:  if there is a God, God is the focal point of the multiple universes, radiating the light outwards into Creation.  God is the name we give the source of light, and God can see all the different directions light takes all at once.  So God has access to all the information:  hence, omniscience.  Light exists outside of time and mass, and is infinite.  So God sees the past/present/future all at the same time.  Prophecy is possible, because it’s just telling someone in the past/present about the future that God can already see.  From God’s perspective, it’s already happened.  You and I just aren’t there yet.

And it makes predestination and freewill possible at the same time, from a scientific perspective.  God made/can see all the infinite possibilities from the focal point.  All the diverse realities and universes.  Well, here you are, sitting in your chair in one of those universes.  Your next choice will pop you into one reality, but the opposite choice still exists out there in the multiverse.  You just don’t experience it.  But God does.  At any time, you can change the direction of your life by making a different choice.  Good or evil, a different path.  God sees all of them, and knows exactly where your consciousness is standing amidst the infinite.

So you choose.  You have free will.  Left or right, good or evil, which way to go.  All the possibilities exist, and God keeps track of all of them.  But they existed before you chose, and still exist even when you don’t choose them.  Put it another way:  You want to go from your house to the library.  On the map, there are multiple streets to choose, lots of houses and trees to see on the way.  You have the free will to choose your route.  But the map, the library, the streets, the trees were already there.  You choose your way:  the destination was predetermined.  Free will and predestination at once:  you’re choosing from an infinite variety that God built before you even showed up.

So, in my mind, God lies at the heart of science, the physical building blocks of the universe, light.  I’m obviously not a traditional thinker.  Well, this affects Ethan’s character, he’s thinking about these things too.  Here’s the chapter it comes up:  The Middle:  Different Car, Same Day .  The rest of what I’ve written here is not in the novel, it’s subtext.  But not many of you have probably studied quantum mechanics, the Big Bang theory, or theology.  So I’m including it here so you can learn more about it, and maybe be inspired to learn more on your own.  When I get time, I’ll search down some pages and links for as much as I can find on the internet.

So what am I trying to say?  Anything is possible, and thinking makes it happen.  It’s all light, and words like “you, me, universe, God, atoms,” are just ways of saying the same thing.  We participate in creating what’s around us.  Furthermore, and this is fun:  the ENTIRE universe is inside your body, at the same time you are inside the universe.  What? – you ask.  What am I talking about?  Well, okay, bear with me:  look in a mirror.  The light of the universe (or your bathroom ceiling) reflects off your body to the mirror, showing it what you look like.  And then the mirror reflects the light back to your eye, allowing your brain to interpret the image and see yourself.  Well, it doesn’t matter how far away that mirror is:  a mile, a lightyear, on the other side of the universe — all light travels onwards infinitely, carrying the image of the object it touches, and picking up the images of other objects along the way.  Light keeps travelling, and carrying information.  Light has no density, you can put as much as you want into any volume.  Like focusing sunlight through a magnifying glass, you can’t fill that little spot, you just add more energy.

So, since light carries the image of everything it touched, and carries your image onwards into eternity, you are both here and out in the universe (as light information, someone could pick up a mirror in the next solar system, magnify the image, and watch what you did decades ago).  And, since the light of your body is made of the light of the universe in the original Big Bang, theoretically that light carries all the information of the universe, the way one cell of your body holds all the genetic information of your entire body’s DNA.  Coincidence, I think not.  And I can back that up with some science (I still need to see how much I can find on the internet) because one tiny part of a hologram in fact holds the entire image.  A penlight will reveal your reflection just as much as the sun:  light travels and carries information, no matter how small the source of light.

 Infinite regression and infinite expansion.  I love science.

~ by nomananisland on March 21, 2008.