Multi-Dimensional Realities: Enter the Paranormal! - Part 2

I'm pleased to welcome Anne Whitaker, a new contributor to 'Phantoms and Monsters'. The following narrative is the second of a six part article that will be continued here.

2. Paranormal Experiences: Where Do They Come From?

My view is that we exist as ‘droplets on the wave’ of a vast sea of universal energy which is present everywhere always. Humans could be envisaged as minute packets of energy flashing in and out of existence, contained within the universal matrix. Space, time, matter and energy which allow us to conceptualise our world according to the five physical senses, are features of the dimension in which we think we have our total existence. But this material level is one thin slice of a much more complex multi-dimensional reality.

How complex, has just been theoretically revised yet again! The latest thinking from physics, via M-theory, had been that there may be up to eleven dimensions in all. However, since March 2007, things have taken a newer twist, as mathematicians have revealed, for the first time, the internal secrets of one of the most complicated symmetrical structures ever studied. This 57-dimensional shape, known as E8, has long intrigued academics since it was first devised in the 19th Century. It is suspected that its symmetrical properties might be intimately linked to underlying patterns in creation in some way.

E8

As reported in the UK’s Sunday Times on November 18th 2007, independent physicist Garrett Lisi “astonished the scientific world” two weeks earlier when he announced he might have found an answer, via contemplation of the newly revealed mathematics of E8, to the great problem which has defeated scientists including Albert Einstein: that of creating a grand theory of everything. It appears that Lisi’s theories are being taken seriously by the heavyweights of the scientific community. As the Sunday Times’ Steve Farrar so eloquently put it:

“If Lisi’s calculations are correct, the intimidating beauty of E8 could be the key to uniting all of the fundamental forces and particles in the universe. Science would have an overarching explanation for why the cosmos is the way it is for the first time.”

(Much is made in the article of 39 year old Lisi’s informal career as a surfer and snowboarder. He lives in Lake Tahoe, where California and Nevada meet in the beautiful Sierra Nevada Mountains. It is clear that the beauty and grandeur of Nature inspires his tireless scientific efforts.)

So there you have it! We may have between eleven and fifty-seven dimensions to play with – which, to quote William James again,

“...must contain experiences which have a meaning for our life also; …. although in the main their experiences and those of this world keep discrete, yet the two become continuous at certain points……the total expression of human experience, as I view it objectively, invincibly urges me beyond the narrow ‘scientific‘ bounds.“ (15) (my emphases)

My long time view has been that since paranormal phenomena undoubtedly exist, but cannot be encompassed by the terms of reference of ‘ordinary’ reality, they must take place somewhere, in some space created by the intersecting – for reasons and by mechanisms at present unknown to us – of other levels or dimensions of reality with the material plane on which we live, move and have our being for most ordinary purposes most of the time. I found it hugely helpful to hear Professor Carr express this as his view in his 2007 lecture. Ordinary reality, as he put it, is “a mere slice of a higher dimensional Reality”.

15 “The Varieties of Religious Experience” (1902) Modern Library Edition New York 1994, pp 563-4

Anne Whitaker 2010 © - Wisps from the Dazzling Darkness