Small yet untamed, my yard in the Southern Hemisphere is home for much wild life. Every day those critters face the peril and the humdrum of surviving. I marvel at them. How do they perceive their universe? Do they wonder if there is more than their patch of earth? How same or different is it for us humans and our contemplation of reality? Daily pressures can squash these reflections. However some exciting and continuing developments in science revive and stimulate individual viewpoint about being and reality.
Some scientists now say that other universes really may exist and are calling these ‘secret’ places parallel universes. I’d heard this term in fiction but did a double take hearing it from science! Then I found there’s actually now quite a lot of scientific information available on this topic. I’m a layman, so the scientific aspects can be complex for me. But I still got the main message. Our physical world is not an only child. As Dr Michio Kaku, theoretical physicist put it "Our Universe could be just one bubble floating in an ocean of other bubbles".
It is also being said that there could be an endless number of parallel universes. Some may look very much like our world or could instead be quite different. Scientists even say some of these parallel worlds will have life. Whilst we cannot perceive these parallel universes with our physical senses, the science intriguingly says these other universes are incredibly close to us.
Our Universe could be just one bubble floating in an ocean of other bubbles.
I am thankful for scientists who beaver away on these kinds of quests. This science bubbles up many implications, such as philosophical, theoretical and metaphysical. All can add to our individual journeys of unfoldment. One implication relates to non-material concepts. May they offer a gateway to such mysterious worlds?
There have long been concepts of other spheres of being. Fresh contemplation of these is excited by the parallel universe science. Nomenclature, descriptions and so on vary in referring to regions discrete from this physical world. Of course it is the choice of each individual as to which or any, one may relate. For example Buddhist cosmology provides for thirty-one realms divided amongst three worlds. Theosophists refer to seven planes. Spiritual travellers refer to astral, causal, mental, etheric and soul planes. Though there may be difference between paths, common ground includes the premise of existence beyond this physical world. Plato too, advocated that in some way there is another reality, one we cannot reach via physical senses.
Scientific materialists say there is only the reality of the physical world. However there are also those scientists who align with dualism, that we possess a physical body and a non-physical component – spirit or soul. Science being science it is systematic and measured. It’s controlled. All the more tantalising then, if science points to questions of divine foundations of our physical universe. On the individual level there have always been those who affirm that life ranges beyond physical, that the only hurdle to realising this, may be one’s own notions. That each is divine soul, unconscious of it, until one awakens.
Distinction follows between physical and spiritual consciousness. As the science says, we cannot perceive parallel universes with our physical senses. Testimonies speak of the phenomenon; some say a natural one, of experiencing motion of soul apart from the body. Terms include ‘out of body experience ’, ‘dream travel’, ‘shamanic journeys’ and ‘projection of consciousness’. Information about spiritual teachers and travellers, refer to developed souls who have mastered going to other spheres in spirit, conveyed some of what they know and who may assist others.
