Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 exptools 1/6/84; site hlexa.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!security!genrad!grkermit!masscomp!clyde!floyd!harpo!ulysses!mhuxl!ihnp4!hlexa!hsf From: hsf@hlexa.UUCP Newsgroups: net.books,net.philosophy Subject: Time and Immortality (part 14 (conclusion)) Message-ID: <1042@hlexa.UUCP> Date: Mon, 23-Jan-84 18:53:22 EST Article-I.D.: hlexa.1042 Posted: Mon Jan 23 18:53:22 1984 Date-Received: Fri, 27-Jan-84 06:33:52 EST Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Short Hills, NJ Lines: 227 (c) Copyright 1983 by Henry Friedman (Copying for personal use by users of net is authorized.) -- There You Are Again! (conclusion) In his book "Alternate Realities," Lawrence LeShan examines how the idea of survival after death would be viewed in each of several different reality systems. He has no difficulty with everyday reality (the "sensory modes"), in which death clearly means the end of our personal existence. The real- ity of the spacetime continuum (which LeShan terms the "clairvoyant modes of being") is clearly favorable to some type of survival, and he has no difficulty there. But when he comes to the mythic dimension (the "mythic modes of being"), LeShan admits to being somewhat puzzled about the implications of this reality system for survival after death. When I first read "Alternate Realities," in the summer of 1978, I believed I might have the answer to LeShan's puzzle, as I had been formulating the concepts presented in this series for several years. This led me to consider formally developing the material. But the final motivation came in 1980, after reading John Gribbin's "Timewarps," which offered support for my belief that reincarnation experiences were related to psychic communication through time. (How- ever, Gribbin did not extend that idea into a concept of actual personal survival after death.) So that is a bit of background about how this material came to be. But before the series can be concluded, there is one additional question that was mentioned above that still must be addressed: the question of mental communication through time. For if such ESP phenomena do not really occur, then there can be no valid basis for time twins, the mythic dimension notwithstanding. Serious research in the field of parapsychology to date has apparently left the issue of the validity of ESP largely unresolved. Although many experiments have yielded highly favorable statistical evidence for ESP, the results are often not consistently repeatable. (There is, however, a question of whether consistent repeatability is a fair stan- dard for such research.) Most of us *are* probably aware of the campaigns that have been underway for some time in the popular scientific literature attempting to completely discredit all such research and researchers. These attacks seem to stem largely from what is perceived as the psi researchers' presumptuous behavior in insisting on the right to join august scientific associations. Also, fairly recent highly publicized instances are alluded to in which such research- ers were the victims of psychic scams perpetrated by some of their subjects. The critics claim that such incidents prove that psi researchers are too biased in favor of the subject to do objective tests. But to some people, such arguments are academic. Although our personal psychic experiences may be too subjective to prove anything, many of us -- though not "psychics" -- have on occasions had apparent psi experiences that were person- ally compelling. As long as it appears that the jury is still out on the question of scientific evaluation of psi, some of us will decide the issue for ourselves based upon such personal experiences (or, in many cases, weigh the evi- dence and reject psi as nonsense). An earlier version of this series expressed the opinion that if ESP phenomena were purely synchronistic, the phenomena might then not occur regularly enough to support the concept of time twins. However, I have since developed doubts about that conclusion, and now question the present usefulness of speculating about quasi-, convoluted, or reverse-causal explanations for ESP. Even if the evidence for the existence of ESP phenomena ever appears incontrovertible, we may nevertheless do little better in explaining why than to accept ESP as an intrinsic quality of the mythic mode, that is, as synchronistic phenomena (which, in turn, as stated previously, cannot be completely explained). Nevertheless, for the sake of a more complete discussion, I will briefly review some of the more common quasi-causal explanations for ESP phenomena. One explanation for ESP is basically the same as the possi- ble explanation for synchronicity that was discussed in the preceding chapter: the ESP experience merely indicates that one's awareness has taken the path among the parallel universes that fulfills it. The two personal apparent ESP experiences which I recall the most vividly could possibly be explained by such "track switching." The first ESP experience occurred when I was a child at sum- mer camp. We were having dinner in the dining hall, seated at round tables by cabin group. I noticed one of the campers, a girl of my age, returning from across the dining hall to her table, which adjoined mine. I visualized (or fantasized?) that she would catch the front of her shorts on the pole-back of a chair, across from me, as she threaded her way between the tables, ripping her shorts open. And that is exactly what then happened. (Believe me, I'm not trying to spice up a dull manuscript with some softcore kiddie porn; this really did happen!) The second experience occurred some years later. After read- ing a book about mental telepathy, I decided to try an experiment. As the book had instructed, I visualized the other person, my "girlfriend," at the other end of a long tube. For several minutes, I repeatedly implored her to telephone me. Now, back in those days (don't make me con- fess how far back!), it was not acceptable for a young woman to telephone a young man; and she had never done so. But within five minutes, she did telephone me. Later, I felt very guilty about using such "psychic manipulation," and vowed never to do anything like that again. (Besides, the book issued the most dire warnings about the use of psychic powers for "evil purposes.") Another attempt to explain ESP is based upon neuropsycholo- gist Karl Pribram's hypothesis of holographic memory (that human memory is stored in the form of wave interference pat- terns). When this idea is combined with a variation of Bohm's "implicate order" (discussed earlier), interesting ramifications are possible. This explanation for ESP presumes that the entire universe and the spacetime contin- uum are themselves projected, as it were, from a super- reality, existing in the form of wave interference patterns (analogous to a 3-D laser hologram). And since the brain would be naturally adept at processing holograms, there would then presumably be nothing unusual about the brain's ability to translate information stored in the holographic super-reality. A third attempt to explain ESP is based upon a combination of general relativity and quantum physics: the "quantum gravity" effect. General relativity states that gravity is not really a "force acting at a distance," but is rather the result of the warping of spacetime itself, caused by the presence of massive bodies. In other words, gravity would be considered a geometric phenomenon. The "Heisenberg uncertainty principle" of quantum physics would permit very large masses to spontaneously generate without violation of the conservation laws, so long as the newly formed matter disappears in an extremely minute time interval. Combining those two scientific laws, physicists speculate that, in the world of extremely short time intervals, space is not smooth, but is spongy and full of "wormholes," as a result of the gravitational effect of such spontaneously generated matter. Some parapsychologists speculate that such "wormholes" through spacetime could serve as communication channels, as it were, for ESP phenomena. This would be analogous, on the psychological level, to the speculation by some astrophysi- cists that "black holes" may serve as physical gateways to other times or places in our universe, or even to different universes. The final possible explanation for ESP that will be men- tioned here depends upon the existence of a hypothetical elementary particle called the "tachyon." Although rela- tivity forbids anything from *reaching* the speed of light, it would not be inconsistent with the existence of a parti- cle that has always, from birth, traveled *faster* than the speed of light. Some scientists postulate that tachyons exist, although they have not yet succeeded in finding them. A particle that traveled faster than light would appear to be traveling *backward* in time. And some parapsychologists speculate that interaction with tachyons in the brain might explain ESP phenomena. Despite the above attempts to explain ESP, most serious psi researchers spend their time in experiments that may lend statistical support to ESP, not in trying to explain why ESP occurs. Such researchers will usually only note that modern physics, by showing that our view of reality is incomplete, leaves room for the existence of ESP. To conclude this series, I will use an analogy from elemen- tary astronomy. One of your earliest grade school science lessons may have been that the planets are held in their orbit around the sun by a balance between centrifugal force and the pull of gravity. In college, a physics teacher may have lectured that there really is no such thing as a cen- trifugal force that pulls outward on the planets. The idea of centrifugal force is a figurative construct to simplify the effect of the *inertia* of the moving planet. Still later, you may have studied general relativity and learned that Newton's idea of gravity as a "force at a dis- tance" is not literally correct. As discussed above, Ein- stein showed that gravity is a result of a warping of the geometry of spacetime. In following their elliptical orbits around the sun, the planets are actually traveling in the closest path to a straight line in warped spacetime. But just because we found that our old ideas about astronomy were not literally true, we didn't fear that the solar sys- tem would suddenly become unhinged. For one thing, we had the direct evidence of our senses that the earth still pro- ceeded on its usual course. And furthermore, science had substituted new explanations for the old -- explanations that still provided for our familiar solar system. But it is quite a different story with respect to the old concept of the soul that formerly ensured our immortality. The loss of this concept leaves us to face a cold new real- ity: our personal annihilation at death. Only the discovery of new concepts to replace the old could restore our belief in immortality. The purpose of this series has been to try to arouse interest in whether such new perspectives are possible, and also, to suggest some directions in which the answers may lie. If we continue the search, we may indeed find that our immortality is cradled in the very fabric of space and time. END OF SERIES (Any and all comments and critiques of this series would be most welcome, either by mail or on the net. Even if you just write to say how many of these articles you have read, I would appreciate it very much. Would a new generation of readers several years down the road be interested in this material? If so, should I present it any differently then?)