I Remember Flying

A link to this video can be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Soe2swgtsE

Last post was a song about contemplating death. One of the central ideas of Imagining the Tenth Dimension is that the system that represents our consciousness is independent from but interacting with the system that represents physical reality. Within that framework, what happens when we die? I believe that the "chain of attention" that represents a personality collapsing the indeterminate wave of possibilities that we look back upon as the line of time has a choice at (or near) death - it can continue to focus on the line of time (Ghosts of Flight 401, anyone?) or it can disperse into its component memes. Here's a few paragraphs from chapter seven ("The Paradoxes of Time Travel") of my book:

It should come as no surprise that the science fiction authors of more recent decades are the source of a cornucopia of delights when it comes to discussions of the nature of time and space. The gifted science fiction author Greg Bear wrote an excellent series of books (“Eon”, “Eternity”, and “Legacy”) in which a privileged class of scientists acquires the ability to navigate through the worldlines that represent the alternate futures and pasts of our universe. Mr. Bear is blessed with the ability to write science fiction that incorporates enough hard science to make his suppositions feel very real, and the “theory of the universe” which he implies within his writing–in not just these particular novels but a number of his others as well–tends to be completely compatible with the multi-dimensional nature of reality as we are describing it here. I owe him a debt of gratitude for the ways which his writing has expanded my own concepts of how space, time and consciousness work together.
Likewise, Stephen Baxter’s “Manifold” series of novels eloquently express the processes of repetition and exploration which are implied within these pages, and are useful in expanding one’s concept of what our universe’s different pasts and futures could contain. In particular, his descriptions of what the “end of the universe” could be like were influential in some of the ideas expressed in these pages.
It could be that there are other ways of navigating through higher dimensions that don’t require us to invent a time machine. What if vivid dreams were actually our minds navigating through other fifth-dimensional realities as we sleep? What if dreams that had illogical/unpredictable jumps in them were because of sixth-dimensional “folds” that jumped us from one fifth-dimensional line to another? What if dreams of flying were actual memories of parts of our system of memes and beliefs (or, if you prefer, our soul) remembering what is it like to be free of our physical bodies and navigate through multi-dimensional time and space, free and unfettered? We’ll explore ideas such as this more in chapter nine.

Personally, I have had vivid dreams of being able to "fly" (or perhaps "levitate" would be a better word for the experience) for as long as I can remember. I had another of those dreams just last night, as a matter of fact. Here are the lyrics to my song about this idea, which is one of the 26 songs associated with my book.

I REMEMBER FLYING
words and music (c) by Rob Bryanton (SOCAN)

I remember flying
Flying so high
I’d push off from the ground
And push into the sky
I would leave the surly bonds
Of gravity behind
I remember flying
From some other time

I remember floating
Ascending to the clouds
Achieving elevation
Then descending to the ground
I remember thinking
It was natural as can be
To be up there floating

I remember moving
In languid slow motion
Like some giant creature
Deep in the ocean
Flying, diving, swooping, soaring, climbing, looping, laughing...

I remember flying
From so long before
And I think that there will come a day
I’ll be flying once more
I remember flying
From more than my dreams
I wish I was flying
Right now

Enjoy the journey!

Rob

Tuning In to Reality

All around the world, a new group of thinkers and dreamers are popping their heads out of their gopher holes and catching sight of each other for the first time. Scientists and philosophers, it would seem, are being drawn towards a common set of central truths as to the nature of reality, and what is really happening behind the scenes when we use words like consciousness, spirit, time, and entropy.



The eleven minute animation that vaulted Imagining the Tenth Dimension to popularity continues to draw new fans on a daily basis. Although I must continually point out that the ideas in this animation originate from a non-scientist (me), and are not what you will be taught today in a physics class, I am also gratified at the number of people who have thanked me for what is most commonly being referred to as a new and mind-blowing experience.

As an inquisitive eight-year-old, I was introduced to some of the basic ideas of dimensions and the folding of spacetime through Madeleine L'Engle's transcendent children's book "A Wrinkle in Time". Did L'Engle get all of her science right? No. Does that matter? To the extent that this wonderful book (as it did for countless other fans, I'm sure) expanded my young mind's perception of the universe to want to know more about these topics, those approximations and tiny liberties she took in creating her work of imagination matter very little. Previous generations to mine might have been drawn to the writing of H.G. Wells, or that granddaddy of creative books about dimensionality, Edwin Abbott's 1884 classic “Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions” (from which came my use of the concept of two-dimensional Flatlanders).

More recently, books by science fiction visionaries like Greg Bear and Stephen Baxter, and movies as diverse as The Matrix or Groundhog Day are really about the same ideas that I have been exploring all my life: that our reality is being created from branching possibilities that already exist across the dimensions. This idea, I believe, finds a useful balance between hard determinism and free will, showing how there are certain outcomes which appear to be inevitable based upon the trajectories and choices already taken within the "sum over histories" that got us to this moment, but how each of us still has a great deal of control over our own version of reality from any particular moment forward.

Last blog I mentioned The Secret. Someone wrote to me and suggested that Imagining the Tenth Dimension is a more well-balanced, less simplistic representation of the same ideas as are advanced by Rhonda Byrne and her team: a fact that I find fascinating since I did not hear about The Secret until well after my book was published. Likewise, I have been contacted by fans of Neale Donald Walsch's "Conversations With God" series of bestselling books, telling me that the ideas I present are completely compatible with Neale's, and perhaps even offer an explanation for how the processes he describes could be manifesting themselves. How do coincidences of thought like this occur when I had never read any of Neale's work? Must be spring, hello all you other gophers!

Right now I'm reading an exciting new book by Gevin Giorbran called "Everything Forever: Learning to See Timelessness". This beautifully illustrated book is a gold mine for anyone interested in a cataloguing of the many ways that science (and philosophy!) have shown us that time can be thought of as much more than the limited one-way-arrow that we experience. Gevin has some remarkable insights into the underlying dynamic tensions that create the reality we are witness to, and I'm sure I will be talking about this book more in upcoming blogs.

One email I received a couple of weeks ago had this to say about Imagining the Tenth Dimension: "this isn't string theory, but it's right!". That feeling of something clicking, of seeing new ideas and having a little "A-ha!" light of recognition come on, is one of the things I have heard most from fans of this project. Is my eleven minute animation the "Wrinkle in Time" for up-and-coming minds of the twenty-first century? To the extent that I believe that my "new way of thinking about time and space" can be a useful step towards a more enlightened view of reality, I would be very proud if that was how this project someday grew to be remembered.

Enjoy the journey,

Rob