By Limor Shiponi
If you can spare the time to watch Brian Green in conversation with Amir D. Aczel, to my humble opinion it’s absolutely worth your while.
Several ideas mentioned by Mr. Green seem totally valid to me and the question of validating them through observation is solved from my point of view; if they are conceivable for both speaker and listener, they are possible. This conversation and within it the part about the quantum multi-verse suggestion reminded me of two storytelling incidents.
One of them appears in a story by Rabbi Nachman of Breslov called ‘The Heart and The Spring’. The story opens with a kind of motto: “And there is a Mountain, and on the Mountain stands a Stone, and from the Stone goes out a Spring”. Later on it says “And this Spring is timeless, for this spring is not within time at all (i.e. it has no day or hour in the world, for it is above worldly time). So how can it exist in the world? (For, in the world, nothing can exist without a time). But all the time of the Spring is only the Heart giving the Spring a day as a gift. And when it comes time for the day to be finished and stopped, then when the day would end, the Spring would have no time and would pass away, God forbid, and then the Heart would pass away, God forbid, and the whole world would be annulled, as mentioned above. So right before end of the day, then they begin to take permission from each other (which they call gizeginin) [wishes and blessings upon departing] and begin to say wonderful riddles and songs (which they call lieder) to each other (in great love and very very great yearning)”.
See the mystery? The only way we know about this possibility is connected to the fact the heart and the spring TALK to each other. That happens where two universes or worlds or whatever you would like to call it – collide. Someone heard the story somehow – in this case the Rabbi who has dreamed it. This story is known to be a ‘dream tale’ and even if it wasn’t known as such, it’s quite obvious. What’s a ‘dream tale’? a tale that appears ‘out of the blue’ in the mind of someone who can’t even be sure he or she actually composed it – you just somehow ‘know’ it fully. These stories are usually ‘special’ by that that they come out complete, well crafted and balanced but with a slightly ‘weird’ imagery or idea.
The second incident happened to me personally: I have a ‘dream tale’ I’m known by. In the story the main character walks in to a shop, asks the shopkeeper a question and gets an answer that hints to the fact that the latter knows what the former is looking for without them speaking about it. The detail revealed is not common knowledge or something that could be the outcome of an educated guess. What buggers me is not how the shopkeeper knew what to say, but the fact that I have no idea, although I’ve supposedly composed this story. Yet I didn’t – It just came to me and where did it come from is a very good question.
If you’re a storyteller, none of this is strange, really. When you tell a personal story for instance, you are in telling time with your listeners (aka present), in past time – when the events actually took place, you can be in past time at a previous telling of the same story and you can be in several more previous telling – all at once.
The gentlemen in the video are talking about “until we have observations”. I can’t see how we don’t already, including the effect of these observations on our universe.
Remember the ‘grid’ search? Look at this sketch –
It’s an image of what Mr. Green is trying to say to Mr. Aczel every time he says “imagine”. Why is he trying so hard to make him imagine if we could suspect Mr. Aczel can very well imagine by himself? Because he’s using the wrong word – It should be “listen and tell me what you see”. The power of the spoken word is working here, it’s power to ignite creation in others’ imaginations.
It’s not because “I said so” but rather because you heard me and by being my partner in exchange which storytelling is about, you validate my words by observing them or what comes up in your imagination while listening, to be true; As Dr. Green said, “trying to get closer to the truth”. Well, in multi-verse there can be many forms of validating something to be true. Physical observation is only one such form.
Pingback: Pondering ‘The hidden reality’ – Limor Shiponi