When I was a child, I once hypothesized to my mom that perhaps physical incarnation is static, and the human conscience merely passes from static moment to static moment. "If that's true", she told me, "then tomorrow's Ed is living in Las Vegas."
It turns out that tomorrow's Ed (which is now 20 years ago's Ed) didn't end up in Vegas until much later, but that's another story.
If you're having a hard time visualizing what I'm talking about, think of it like one of those little cartoon flip books -- each moment is fixed, and the only thing that changes is the page you're viewing. Collectively, moving from moment to moment in a flip book yields animation. Philosophically, your conscience moving from moment to moment equates to life.
If my original hypothesis is true, then arguably all time exist continuously in parallel -- past, present, and future. My body from 10 minutes ago is still eating a peanut-butter and jelly sandwich, while my conscience has moved on to the Ed that is writing this blog post. It's a tough concept to wrap your mind around, but it's quite fascinating if you can.
Anyone who has ever procrastinated can appreciate a small bit of this concept. How many times have you said "I'll worry about that later", and then when later comes, you're angry at yourself? How many times have regretted something you did earlier, or been grateful that "at least I didn't 'xyz'"? (Insert whatever is appropriate for "xyz".)
What will people think of this post? Will they think I'm crazy? Who cares? That's Tomorrow Ed's problem!
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4 comments:
The "Ed" that wrote this post is, obviously, a freak...
So, if your hypothesis is true, then I can do and say as I like now because the Rob of later/tomorrow can deal with the consequence? Hmm, now if only I could figure out how to make my conscience skip a few pages, like when I read computer manuals.
What you described falls neatly into the idea of a Multiverse or Meta-universe. There are a few theories (stemming from Quantum Theory) that describe this. The idea you describe here is covered by Hugh Everett's many-worlds interpretation (MWI). He theorized that there exist infinite universes that exhibit all of the same laws of physics as ours but exist at a different time. It is likely that if out of infinite possiblities, that there is a universe exactly like ours but a second behind us in the time dimension. Another possibility would be a universe exists that is exactly like ours but Ed ate a grilled cheese sandwich instead of pb&j.
Allthough some calculations show positive results from a multiverse, no experimentation has been able to prove or disprove this idea. Hard to experiment on a universe we do not exist in :)
Ed, I never thought I'd get to say this, but you're a Buddhist (more correctly, a Zen Buddhist). I guess there's hope for you after all :)
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