Parallel universes

I had an interesting idea earlier today. I was contemplating existence, as I often do, and the thought of parallel universes popped up in my head and I had an interesting theory that may or may not be true. I'd like your thoughts on it, if you will.

So the multiverse theory states that there are an infinite amount of universes that run parallel with our own universe that play out all possible scenarios. My thought was that what if each and every one of us is our own "parallel universe", meaning each of our unique perspectives constitutes as one of these "alternate" realities.

Some theorize that we create our own reality, and for the most part I agree with that. Just think about how vast the universe is and how much life there could possibly be within it. We live our lives "parallel" to others, and right now, in this exact moment, there is life happening on the complete opposite end of the universe, meaning everything is happening everywhere all at once.

If everything is happening everywhere at once, that would mean that all "possible" scenarios are being played out every second of every day and have been for billions of years. So my theory is that these "parallel universes" are really just all the unique perspectives within this universe, and all perspectives run "parallel" in time with one another.

What do you think? Sorry if I didn't make my point clear enough, but it's kind of hard to articulate what I am thinking and put it into words because it is such an abstruse and abstract idea.

reply to post by 3NL1GHT3N3D1


After I read your OP I figured this relates to your idea in a way.
Give or take the religious/creator/intelligent design

The EGG by Andy Wien

 
You were on your way home when you died.
It was a car accident. Nothing particularly remarkable, but fatal nonetheless. You left behind a wife and two children. It was a painless death. The EMTs tried their best to save you, but to no avail. Your body was so utterly shattered you were better off, trust me.
And that’s when you met me.
“What… what happened?” You asked. “Where am I?”
“You died,” I said, matter-of-factly. No point in mincing words.
“There was a… a truck and it was skidding…”
“Yup,” I said.
“I… I died?”
“Yup. But don’t feel bad about it. Everyone dies,” I said.
You looked around. There was nothingness. Just you and me. “What is this place?” You asked. “Is this the afterlife?”
“More or less,” I said.
“Are you god?” You asked.
“Yup,” I replied. “I’m God.”
“My kids… my wife,” you said.
“What about them?”
“Will they be all right?”
“That’s what I like to see,” I said. “You just died and your main concern is for your family. That’s good stuff right there.”
You looked at me with fascination. To you, I didn’t look like God. I just looked like some man. Or possibly a woman. Some vague authority figure, maybe. More of a grammar school teacher than the almighty.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “They’ll be fine. Your kids will remember you as perfect in every way. They didn’t have time to grow contempt for you. Your wife will cry on the outside, but will be secretly relieved. To be fair, your marriage was falling apart. If it’s any consolation, she’ll feel very guilty for feeling relieved.”
“Oh,” you said. “So what happens now? Do I go to heaven or hell or something?”
“Neither,” I said. “You’ll be reincarnated.”
“Ah,” you said. “So the Hindus were right,”
“All religions are right in their own way,” I said. “Walk with me.”
You followed along as we strode through the void. “Where are we going?”
“Nowhere in particular,” I said. “It’s just nice to walk while we talk.”
“So what’s the point, then?” You asked. “When I get reborn, I’ll just be a blank slate, right? A baby. So all my experiences and everything I did in this life won’t matter.”
“Not so!” I said. “You have within you all the knowledge and experiences of all your past lives. You just don’t remember them right now.”
I stopped walking and took you by the shoulders. “Your soul is more magnificent, beautiful, and gigantic than you can possibly imagine. A human mind can only contain a tiny fraction of what you are. It’s like sticking your finger in a glass of water to see if it’s hot or cold. You put a tiny part of yourself into the vessel, and when you bring it back out, you’ve gained all the experiences it had.
“You’ve been in a human for the last 48 years, so you haven’t stretched out yet and felt the rest of your immense consciousness. If we hung out here for long enough, you’d start remembering everything. But there’s no point to doing that between each life.”
“How many times have I been reincarnated, then?”
“Oh lots. Lots and lots. An in to lots of different lives.” I said. “This time around, you’ll be a Chinese peasant girl in 540 AD.”
“Wait, what?” You stammered. “You’re sending me back in time?”
“Well, I guess technically. Time, as you know it, only exists in your universe. Things are different where I come from.”
“Where you come from?” You said.
“Oh sure,” I explained “I come from somewhere. Somewhere else. And there are others like me. I know you’ll want to know what it’s like there, but honestly you wouldn’t understand.”
“Oh,” you said, a little let down. “But wait. If I get reincarnated to other places in time, I could have interacted with myself at some point.”
“Sure. Happens all the time. And with both lives only aware of their own lifespan you don’t even know it’s happening.”
“So what’s the point of it all?”
“Seriously?” I asked. “Seriously? You’re asking me for the meaning of life? Isn’t that a little stereotypical?”
“Well it’s a reasonable question,” you persisted.
I looked you in the eye. “The meaning of life, the reason I made this whole universe, is for you to mature.”
“You mean mankind? You want us to mature?”
“No, just you. I made this whole universe for you. With each new life you grow and mature and become a larger and greater intellect.”
“Just me? What about everyone else?”
“There is no one else,” I said. “In this universe, there’s just you and me.”
You stared blankly at me. “But all the people on earth…”
“All you. Different incarnations of you.”
“Wait. I’m everyone!?”
“Now you’re getting it,” I said, with a congratulatory slap on the back.
“I’m every human being who ever lived?”
“Or who will ever live, yes.”
“I’m Abraham Lincoln?”
“And you’re John Wilkes Booth, too,” I added.
“I’m Hitler?” You said, appalled.
“And you’re the millions he killed.”
“I’m Jesus?”
“And you’re ever.

reply to post by navione


Cont from above

“And you’re everyone who followed him.”
You fell silent.
“Every time you victimized someone,” I said, “you were victimizing yourself. Every act of kindness you’ve done, you’ve done to yourself. Every happy and sad moment ever experienced by any human was, or will be, experienced by you.”
You thought for a long time.
“Why?” You asked me. “Why do all this?”
“Because someday, you will become like me. Because that’s what you are. You’re one of my kind. You’re my child.”
“Whoa,” you said, incredulous. “You mean I’m a god?”
“No. Not yet. You’re a fetus. You’re still growing. Once you’ve lived every human life throughout all time, you will have grown enough to be born.”
“So the whole universe,” you said, “it’s just…”
“An egg.” I answered. “Now it’s time for you to move on to your next life.”
And I sent you on your way.
 
 

Originally posted by 3NL1GHT3N3D1
I had an interesting idea earlier today. I was contemplating existence, as I often do, and the thought of parallel universes popped up in my head and I had an interesting theory that may or may not be true. I'd like your thoughts on it, if you will.

So the multiverse theory states that there are an infinite amount of universes that run parallel with our own universe that play out all possible scenarios. My thought was that what if each and every one of us is our own "parallel universe", meaning each of our unique perspectives constitutes as one of these "alternate" realities.

Some theorize that we create our own reality, and for the most part I agree with that. Just think about how vast the universe is and how much life there could possibly be within it. We live our lives "parallel" to others, and right now, in this exact moment, there is life happening on the complete opposite end of the universe, meaning everything is happening everywhere all at once.

If everything is happening everywhere at once, that would mean that all "possible" scenarios are being played out every second of every day and have been for billions of years. So my theory is that these "parallel universes" are really just all the unique perspectives within this universe, and all perspectives run "parallel" in time with one another.

What do you think? Sorry if I didn't make my point clear enough, but it's kind of hard to articulate what I am thinking and put it into words because it is such an abstruse and abstract idea.

edit on 4-5-2013 by 3NL1GHT3N3D1 because: (no reason given)

I have had more or less the same thoughts, when i thinked about parallel universe.
I would add that our higher selfs (souls/or the part of god that is in everyone of us) can handle as many of
realities as how many people there are.
(well maybe as many as we know of, as we dont have much contact with everyone on earth)

I thought that for them this may be a game like the sims, where they are infact controlling us in multiple univeres.

Parallel Universe Theory begins with the electron cloud. In the space where the electron orbits the nucleus of the atom? There are many more orbiting the same nucleus but in a different Universe.

Beyond that Parallel Universe Theory also reference objects outside of what we today refer to as the Universe, this being an object about 40 to185 billion light years wide. In this regard when one considers ones place in such a perspective I relate to being a facet in a diamond or a cell in another organism.

I once had a dream and in that dream I was a small male child waking up from a dream where my life, to him was a dream.

From there I went into the third person and observed the life of this child for about a minute.

Any thoughts?

Originally posted by Kashai

I once had a dream and in that dream I was a small male child waking up from a dream where my life, to him was a dream.

edit on 4-5-2013 by Kashai because: Modifed content

Ah, I had a similar dream. I was dreaming like normal, and then i woke up fully lucid. I thought it was reality for a while and got up and went downstairs, then i woke up again into the real world.

To the OP: I understand your theory, and have thought about it many times myself. But things happen when we are not here to see them. There is much more than our (or any alien) inner perspective.

At the quantum level everything is everywhere at once. And so everything that could happen is happening all at the same time. We (you and I (whatever that even means)) are just set in and perceive one splice of what could happen.

Originally posted by 3NL1GHT3N3D1
I had an interesting idea earlier today. I was contemplating existence, as I often do, and the thought of parallel universes popped up in my head and I had an interesting theory that may or may not be true. I'd like your thoughts on it, if you will.

So the multiverse theory states that there are an infinite amount of universes that run parallel with our own universe that play out all possible scenarios. My thought was that what if each and every one of us is our own "parallel universe", meaning each of our unique perspectives constitutes as one of these "alternate" realities.

Some theorize that we create our own reality, and for the most part I agree with that. Just think about how vast the universe is and how much life there could possibly be within it. We live our lives "parallel" to others, and right now, in this exact moment, there is life happening on the complete opposite end of the universe, meaning everything is happening everywhere all at once.



If everything is happening everywhere at once, that would mean that all "possible" scenarios are being played out every second of every day and have been for billions of years. So my theory is that these "parallel universes" are really just all the unique perspectives within this universe, and all perspectives run "parallel" in time with one another.

it sounds like you are describing the Many-Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics that states everything that has ever happened, will ever happen, has already happened where time is an illusion and that the past, present, and future exist together simulteanously, so all "probabilities" have been played out on a not-apart of time level.?

The many-worlds interpretation is an interpretation of quantum mechanics that asserts the objective reality of the universal wavefunction and denies the actuality of wavefunction collapse. Many-worlds implies that all possible alternative histories and futures are real, each representing an actual "world" (or "universe"). It is also referred to as MWI, the relative state formulation, the Everett interpretation, the theory of the universal wavefunction, many-universes interpretation, or just many-worlds. The original relative state formulation is due to Hugh Everett in 1957.[2][3] Later, this formulation was popularized and renamed many-worlds by Bryce Seligman DeWitt in the 1960s and 1970s.[1][4][5][6] The decoherence approaches to interpreting quantum theory have been further explored and developed,[7][8][9] becoming quite popular. MWI is one of many multiverse hypotheses in physics and philosophy. It is currently considered a mainstream interpretation along with the other decoherence interpretations, the Copenhagen interpretation,[10] and deterministic interpretations such as the Bohmian mechanics. Before many-worlds, reality had always been viewed as a single unfolding history. Many-worlds, however, views reality as a many-branched tree, wherein every possible quantum outcome is realised.[11] Many-worlds claims to reconcile the observation of non-deterministic events, such as the random radioactive decay, with the fully deterministic equations of quantum physics. In many-worlds, the subjective appearance of wavefunction collapse is explained by the mechanism of quantum decoherence, which resolves all of the correlation paradoxes of quantum theory, such as the EPR paradox[12][13] and Schrödinger's cat,[1] since every possible outcome of every event defines or exists in its own "history" or "world". In lay terms, the hypothesis states there is a very large—perhaps infinite[14]—number of universes, and everything that could possibly have happened in our past, but did not, has occurred in the past of some other universe or universes.

Many worlds interpretation
"


And that everything is 99.999% empty space so there is plenty of room for other universes to overlap ours as well.

reply to post by Belcastro


Not exactly, I believe this moment in time is unique to any other moment in time ever. What I mean is that every moment has been unique and every moment will continue to be unique forever. Freeze time and imagine every minute detail of the universe frozen, that unique moment in time will never happen again, meaning all possibilities are being played out because what happens in one moment is the only thing that is possible.

Hopefully that makes sense. I don't think there are diverging time lines or anything like that because there is no need for them in my opinion. Everything that is possible on a moment to moment basis is happening every second of every day.