The Multiverse & You: Unmasking The Fractalverse, #2

Part 2: As Above, So Below We’re Gonna’ Have To Shaman The $#@! Out of This…

 

In Part 1, we demonstrated how our current comprehension of physics leads many physicists to the conclusion that our local reality-frame may be part of a wider—perhaps infinite—Fractalverse. In this second installment, we will shed some light on how our ancestral traditions share compelling connections with this scientific rationality for fractalversal cosmology. This will then pave the way for the following phases of our discussion… …where we will arrive at a sense for what all this may actually mean for personal, social and, yes—spiritual development. So, let’s begin.

Pick any age-old civilization, any culture, and it’s no surprise that they all believe in other realms. Well-before we had any astronomical awareness that certain celestial bodies were concrete, physical planets like our own, our ancestors—somehow or other—considered ‘Earth’ to be but a fraction of a wider web of ‘worlds.’ Heaven & Hell…the afterlife…the so called ‘Dreamtime’ of native Australians—these are but a few of the plethora of other planes of existence told of in our various heritages.

From the comfort of our present ‘enlightenment’ it’s all-too-easy to dismiss these metaphysical domains as mythology, or as the efforts of early man to explain forces and phenomena they did not understand. I suggest, however, that we suspend our disbelief long enough to imagine—just imagine—that these accounts have merit beyond even the radical proposals made by the likes of ancient alien theorists.

Remaining rooted in our established grasp of prevailing, cutting edge physics, I maintain that we can appreciate these extra-dimensional abodes to be—quite possibly—as real as you or I…

…though, by the time we’re through, we may need to revisit how we define what ‘real’ is.

 

The Collective Unconscious & The Hero’s Journey

Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung are two paragons of contemporary philosophy and psychology, who posited that there is a reason for this ubiquitous presence of such otherworldly terrains in our multitudes of myths.

Jung conveys to us the concept of the Collective Unconscious…an archetypal awareness that is somewhat subjective, yet resides in our shared subconscious. This is a sort of intuitive ‘idea-space’…operating ‘below’ active thought…quietly informing our cognitive consciousness.

This image of an intermutual, mass-mindscape hints at our common origins. It bespeaks of the governing forces that have brought us all into being…and which continue to shape us and our communal culture, even now.

Similarly, Campbell’s work focused heavily on what is known as comparative mythology—a sort of literary anthropology which reveals how our various religions, legends and lore plainly depict analogous characters, journeys and outcomes…

…suggesting that there is a core impulse in our humanity which we are striving to express.

This led him to the insight of the ‘Monomyth’…the notion that—in a sense—all of these tales essentially tell the same, primal story…that of The Hero’s Journey.

(Not the info-graphic type? The video below nails it…)

(Ah…what the heck…here’s one more quick vid, if you’re interested.)

Along these lines, just as the ‘telephone game’ distorts a ‘seed’ message over time, Campbell’s view is that this initial narrative of the Monomyth branched out and expanded over the eons, as migratory routs took humans to all corners of the globe. Our previously mutual mythology thereby evolved along unique paths…mutating from one generation to the next. This then gave birth to the rich diversity of folklore we have today…all of which continue to point at the same root archetypes and lessons for our collective, holistic well-being.

For many of us, these postulates ring true. Clearly our family ancestry is one-and-the-same, and when we pause long enough to remember that we are all children of the cosmos, we see that the same information that instructs the stars to burn, the planets to form and the trees to grow, so too shapes our psyche, our emotions, our dreams and aspirations…not to mention, our joint history…

…which is still unfolding right in front of us, of course.

As part of the fabric of existence, we, ourselves have—locked within our subconscious being—that very patterning preeminence that gave rise to all there is. Through the millennia, there are those who have pierced the veil of our temporal conditioning to apprehend visions of such gnostic proportions…

…recognizing that reality is not strictly limited to the linear landscape of tangible matter which we call home.

“The day science begins to study non-physical phenomena, it will make more progress in one decade than in all the previous centuries of its existence.”

Nikola Tesla (attributed), Serbian American inventor and the father of modern electricity.

 

The Multiverse In Gods’ Eyes

In the Hindu/Vedic faith, for example, the surety that all forms undergo a birth…life…death…rebirth cycle evokes the sense that our egoic, corporeal coil is but a fleeting fragment of a far grander journey…a transit which transcends the limitations of mortal matter.

While most people are familiar with the idea of individual spirits reincarnating, what they may not realize is that Vedic cosmology considers this to be a process that applies to all forms, as an intrinsic trait of time and space. According to this view, existence itself emerges from ‘No-Thing’…

…then, one day, withdraws—
—back to this eternal void—
—only to be reborn…
…again and again…
…in endless repetition.

This is obviously the same cosmogonical model as what physicists refer to as the ‘Big-Crunch’—whereby, the momentum of the universe’s expansion eventually wanes, allowing gravity to gradually draw all matter back together…until it finally collapses down to the same, super-dense singularity that birthed the ‘Big Bang’ to begin with…

…at which point, it would—once again—blast apart into another, newborn universe.

It’s important to note, that since our observations show the expansion of the universe to be speeding up, this has relegated the ‘Big-Crunch’ hypothesis to an unlikely culprit for our fate. That said, it’s worth mentioning that given the extensive infrastructure of Inflation Theory (see Pt. 1), there could be countless bubble universes that behave this way. Furthermore, presuming they exist, they too would still constitute an additional form of multiversal continuity…

…albeit, one that manifests linearly, in relation to itself.

What’s fascinating, is that India’s ancient texts make numerous references to existence being such a milieu of infinite universes, exactly as Inflation Cosmology predicts.

One such passage, in the Brahma Vaivarta Purana, reads:

 

“Indeed, no one can say how many kinds of creation, or universes or ages are there and in each universe how many Brahmâs, Visnus or S’ivas exit. O king of gods, the servants hold that it is possible to count the particles of sand or the currents of rain water but no one can count the Indras…Like The pores of Mahâ-Visnu, the universes are count-less, which contain many gods like yourself.”

Brahma Vaivarta Purana, translated by Rajendra Nath Sen, (p310 ~1922

 

Another verse, from the Bhagavata Purana:

 

“There are innumerable universes besides this one, and although they are unlimitedly large, they move about like atoms in You. Therefore You are called unlimited.”

Bhagavata Purana (6.16.37)

These and a host of other writings are quite revealing. Here we witness affirmation not only of multiversality and quantum, multiplicity of Being, but also of the macrocosmic composition of the cosmos being reflected in the microcosm of the individual…and vice versa. It conveys the notion that beyond being one with nature, the totality of that veritable vastness is expressed within us…that we ourselves are as expansive and diverse as the whole of creation…

…should we choose to see it.

 

 

“Our psyche is set up in accord with the structure of the universe, and what happens in the macrocosm likewise happens in the infinitesimal and most subjective reaches of the psyche.”

Carl Jung, The Rhizome and the Flower: The Perennial Philosophy, Yeats and Jung (Pg. 72), By James Olney

The array of insights which Indian cosmology has in common with our evolving, scientific grasp of the cosmos does go deeper. In the interest of brevity, however, I will simply emphasize that these archaic assertions cannot be dismissed as mere myth. Modern science has finally begun to echo the conclusions which these folks came to long ago…a fact which should not escape our attention.

 

“After the conversations about Indian philosophy, some of the ideas of Quantum Physics that had seemed so crazy suddenly made much more sense.”

Werner Heisenberg, German physicist and one of the many fathers of quantum mechanics, Pride of India (2006) by Samskrita Bharati. p.56

 

Size Matters

Studying comparative religion, it’s apparent that—despite marked differences—a number of intriguing corollaries can be drawn between the Hindu faith and that of the Abrahamic traditions. For the moment, though, let us solely focus on their shared sense of the Supreme Being…

…as timeless…boundless…
…ever-present and Absolute…
…illimitable…

…with neither beginning nor end.

According to the Pew Research Center, these two cultural branches of humanity account for roughly 70% of our global worldview…forming a fairly dominant, collective-conscious conviction when it comes to conceptualizing the Ultimate.

With this in mind, it is remarkable that with every passing day, the observations of our natural world are leading physicists to strengthen their consideration that the scaffolding of the cosmos may itself be infinite (type 1 multiverse). Balance that with the probabilistic profundities proffered by quantum physics, and it’s no wonder that it leads some scientists to nervously describe such prospects as brushing rather intimately with the domain of the metaphysical…

…while plenty more have begun to openly embrace such transcendental views.

Imagining that the ‘universe’ is never-ending is one thing…but the idea of ‘no beginning’—something that is truly without origin? Our limited, conditioned perspectives have a hard time coming to grips with such implications.

And yet, confronting the possibility that Spacetime is such a singularity is precisely what physicists are grappling with—begging the same, existential questions that wise-ones and philosophers have wrestled with since…

…well, since the beginning.

Jewish mystics strove to decipher this and other difficult mysteries via the occult discipline of the Kabbalah.

The Æternal, unmanifest Godhead…
…juxtaposed by the terminable, mortal toil of Man…
…the Laws of Nature…
…the Enigma of Existence…
…and our purpose within it—

—these are the sort of ontological questions which those who work through the Kabbalah seek to divine…

…and key to these studies is what’s often referred to as The Tree of Life.

Consisting of 10, primary spheres known as the Sephirot (and an 11th,  obscured), this sacred, geometric circuitry describes the attributes of God and Creation, and the means by which mankind may investigate  and relate to these wonders. Each Sephirah corresponds to ideal aspects of God and constitutes a unique plane of perception…

…delineating different dimensions of consciousness, if you will.

Essentially, it is a matrix of manifestation…allowing self-awareness to arise and align with the Divine. Likewise, this spiritual lattice is encoded with a clue that it is but a microcosmic model of a Supreme Superstructure.

When we review Alan Guth & Andrei Linde’s inflationary forecast (Pt. 1)—

—that of a prodigious. branching ‘tree’ of bubble universes—

—it’s hard not to draw the correlation between this Hebraic, rarefied arrangement of reality and where the physics is leading us.

 

 

“Cosmology brings us face-to-face with the deepest mysteries…with questions that were once treated only in religion and myth.”

Carl Sagan, Astrophysicist, Cosmos, episode 10: The Edge of Forever

 

“Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality.”

Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

 

It’s worth a brief note… …that when you include the subject of String Theory in our efforts to map the Fractalverse and a Theory of Everything, the math indicates that—beyond simply our four, familiar dimensions—Spacetime may consist of six or seven extra dimensions which our finite faculties cannot yet detect. This would give us a total of ten or eleven dimensions in all… …which makes the arcane architecture of the Sephirot markedly more intriguing.

 

Mirror, Mirror…in My Mind…

Evoking Campbell’s concept of the Monomyth, this Tree of Life motif emerges again and again throughout our histories. India, China, Ancient Egypt, Mesoamerica—these regions and more have their own lore in which this Axis of Mundi is key.

This ‘world axis’ typically unites our world with the ‘heaven’s above’ and the underworld below…

…forming a vast, multidimensional bridge between worlds.

None, though, are as telling as Yggdrasil, the Nordic World Tree…particularly when its geometries are held alongside the Semitic Sephirot.

Needless to say, the uncanny resemblance between these two systems speaks volumes.

Literally denoting an expansive, cosmic tree, Yggdrasil consists of nine separate worlds—with Midgard, or ‘Middle Earth’, at its center.

While perhaps less esoteric than the Sephirot, this cosmological configuration of multiversality still contains loads of layered ciphers for those inclined to explore them.

Case-in-point, is the legend of how Odhin—the many-visaged godhead of the Norse Pantheon—hung, upside-down, from a bough of Yggdrasil for nine days and nights, in an act of ritual, self-sacrifice…

…to conceive the mysterious Runes of Creation.

The Runes—angular algorithms unto themselves—are effectively the DNA of Yggdrasil. Like the Sephirot, they form and describe the underlying fabric of reality, including the psychosomatic construct of consciousness itself.

Bearing this in mind…

…we may begin to gain an appreciation for how such primal, geometric arrangements spoke to our forefathers.

Sacred GeomeTree ~ The Language of The Cosmos By now, hopefully it’s apparent how essential these geometric formulas are to the fundamental framework of our ancestors’ grasp of what’s what. They weren’t no dummies. They understood that the building blocks of nature are axiomatically geometric—comprising universal, immutable patterns—and that coherent consciousness was no exception to these rules. It’s no wonder, then, that geometry itself has been dubbed sacred by those that recognize its immense majesty…and the innumerable, subtle secrets it holds. Here, we have examined at most a single snowflake on the tip of the proverbial, incalculable iceberg. An infinitude of fortunes await the courageous of heart… Or, take a minute and chill out with this lovely piece…

Before we wrap this $#@! up…

…it’s worth citing that—much like our Hindu, Hopi and Christian ‘mythologies’—this World Tree of the Nordic paradigm encounters a destructive event of apocalyptic proportions, known as Ragnarök…

…which is then followed by the [re]birth of a new Earth. As with the aforementioned traditions, there is the suggestion that such a birth, life, death, rebirth phenomenon is part of a endless cycle of  being and becoming. This would indicate that beyond any sort of ultimate, eschatological judgement day, the living world has a built-in process of everlasting renewal…a primordial principle which promotes perpetual evolution.

Also, it is noteworthy that—like the Celtic and other Indo-European creation stories—Odhin and his kin fashioned the first man and woman from trees. Given our acute interest in asserting that these significantly similar Tree of Life formations are early divinations of the Fractalverse—this origin story of mankind’s photosynthetic ances-tree is a perceptive vision most valuable…

…since it discerns humanity as a direct, biological extension of that hallowed, geometric genome—

—An Arboreal, multidimensional matrix.

 

 

Trees “” Us

To bring this discussion full circle, the archetype of the Tree of Life has become somewhat synonymous with the phrase, “As above, so below.” This saying, handed down to us from the antiquity of Hermetic wisdom, is a lesson intended to impart to us how the microcosmic mechanics of nature mirror the anatomy of the macrocosmos—and vice versa.

In part 1 of this series, we established how this insight is at the heart of our efforts to reveal the Fractalverse.

Large-scale gravitational waves have now been detected ‘above,’ in the macro-realm—physically verifying the phenomenon. This, in turn, invigorates our hunt for the remnants of their reflection…

…operating at the quantum scale, ‘below.’ Should these wee roots be exposed, Inflation Theory will effectively be validated…making fractalversal cosmology a virtual certainty.

Moreover, as we demonstrate that the canopy of modern scientific inquiry into this subject distinctly parallels the foundation of our varied, esoteric underpinnings, it beckons us to acknowledge that these diverging disciplines are—in actuality—two halves of the same whole.

Just as the spiritual scientists of the distant past envisioned existence as a great, cosmic-tree—connecting our world with countless others—today, Inflation Cosmogony arrives at basically the very same assertion.

Some may dismiss this as convenient coincidence…but to me and many others, it’s all-too-clear that the harmony of this accord is a song too sweet to ignore.

Finally…

…it is worth noting how these rich, multidimensional  traditions of our ancestors continue to move us to this day…not only as factors of faith, but also as parables that perpetually propagate throughout our popular culture.

Thor of Asgard, for example, appears before us through comics, novels and a variety of flicker media…

…the eternal war between Heaven and Hell confronts most of us daily, through every facet of our lives…

…and the ever-present Superman is but a messiah-like amalgamation of multitudes of influences from Jewish lore…

…continuously leaping from one ‘fictional’ universe to another…

…repeatedly revised according to his destiny to fight a never-ending battle for Truth and Justice…

…all the while, hinting at our own struggle to become our idealized selves.

—

Again and again these timeless tales are retold…
…endlessly regaling and inspiring…
…speaking to something deep within us…
…reminding us of the monomythic Hero’s Journey…
…of our collective unconscious…
…and of our voyage of evolution through the Fractalverse.

The only question is…

…what are we trying to tell ourselves?

—

 

“A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: The hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.”

Joseph Campbell, The Hero With a Thousand Faces

from “A Fractal Life” by Valerie Jamieson in New Scientist (November 2004) [source: Wikiquote]

 

Next Up: We’ll use this lens of pop-culture to help bring into focus the harebrained hypothesis of how an infinite array of worlds may already be affecting us… …challenging our assumptions about reality itself… …so stay tuned! E!

P.S. ~

Here’s a little parting gift, for all that heavy reading! Enjoy!