IF you find this week’s post neither educational nor entertaining, then I would
like to hear from you. Hell, I’d like to hear from you anyway. This is going to be a relationship between you and me. All is relationship, after all. We won’t let this be a “rant” page. If you don’t want to read it, then I don’t want to write it. As Bernie Madoff said last year, “We’re all in this together…”
– Of Quantum Physics, Art and Fishing
A friend of mine in Atlanta has gently poked me about actually writing about
parallel universes, knowing full well that I’m a musician, not a quantum physicist.
Thought I’d get the real challenging stuff out of the way early on so we can talk and laugh about the *fun* elements in life more. God knows, life can get serious on us in a heartbeat. Or in the lack of one.
I can hear it now… “Hulse, you don’t know squat about quantum physics. You’re lucky to be able to spell it…” Ha. That’s where you’re wrong. I can spell it. I’ve done a lot of thinking about quantum physics and about parallel, or alternate universes.
Not necessarily because I’m interested in it, but because it keeps coming up in matters of spirituality and the perception of time, both of which I’m very interested in. Matter of fact, I even have my own homebrew theory on a parallel universe a la quantum physics. For instance, I thought I just *felt* about a dozen pair of eyes roll around the country. Ahh, you non-believers. Stick with me here for a few paragraphs and I will try to deliver an element of this new blog that I promised you.
Most of us are caught up in some form of working with and creating “new, different, better.” My friend in Atlanta records music and voices, using the latest digital technology and processes. Nearly all his tools are in the computer, in software form, in “ones and zeros” form, yet his final product is in tangible form, or soundwaves. I admit, sound is barely tangible. We can’t see it, but since we can hear it/perceive it with one of our physical senses, it is indeed tangible. That said, my recording friend has just completed a cycle… a cycle that started with a human voice – tangible – that was recorded as a vibration into his computer, manipulated in the digital realm and spit back out as a different, better voice. Hm. Where are we going with this?
Simple. Just about all our self-made elements go through a cycle of created-delivered-it’s new-it’s old-it’s replaced, with “new, different, better.”
I think we live in an alternate universe, and we are trying to create the real one in tangible form while living here in our tangible world. Sometimes we succeed, often we fail. Think about it… if we keep remaking our stuff and spouting that it’s “improved,” doesn’t that suggest that we didn’t get it right the first time?
Now take nature, and all the natural elements that we’re not able to screw with, like trees, mountains, rock formations, streams… well, we’re screwing with them, sure enough, but not in a positive way. Anyway, that’s not the point. The point is that natural things, the elements we did not create and don’t know how to make, seem to retain their freshness and original beauty in our eyes. Now why is that? Because the entity that created trees and mountain streams knew more about creation than we do, and got it right the first time. We’ll chat about what that *other entity* might have been some other time. ;^)
Rolling right along here, we need to play a quick round of the Parallel Universe Game. Friends of The Sagebrush Chronicles, come on down!! All right! Here are the rules… since we live in a nearly totally tangible world, it’s an easy stretch to imagine our parallel universe as nearly intangible, or nearly totally opposite from ours. Now, let’s dodge that pithy bullet of whether it’s possible to exist in any form in our alternate universe… hell, you’re not interested in that stuff anyway, right? So let’s just slide over into it for a minute or so and, and, Hey! This is WAY COOL!!! Well of COURSE it is… and all we had to do is imagine it. Wait… imagine it?? Yes. See, it turns out, at least in my perception, that WE are the links which connect the universes. That’s right, it’s US. Thoughts start out in our brains as tiny electrical charges, connecting synapses and forming…. ideas! Okay… but where do those ideas come from? Do we *invent* them? God no, we’re not nearly as bright as we think we are. Look what we’re doing with our world these days… oops, sorry. No, my theory is that our ideas, our new, fresh, “original thoughts” which we call ideas, are not ours.
We’re simply not that good. They come from our parallel universe, and we receive them as electronic and vibratory messages in our brain, which translates them into
ideas!! Then we have the gall to take total credit for them. Hmph. But look at all the great art, in its many forms, all the great music and great writings, of which much of its greatness we attribute to the genius of the artist/composer/writer. I say that genius is simply a normal person who is able to perceive, interpret and bring into tangible form, the ideas and concepts of our parallel universe better than you and I can. You might think of them as “hot-wired” to the other wildly creative and intangible parallel universe.
Good. Now that we understand “the rules,” let’s play!! You and I are two intangible spirits, residing in the parallel universe, or, let’s say, the real universe. We have no time/space elements to deal with, and the incredible beauty all around us is intangible, as are we.
You – “Hey, look at that woman in India. She’s tapping into that swirl of color right behind your head.”
Me – “Yeah. Fairly accurate, too. Amazing how close they come sometimes, and how far they can miss it by…”
You – “You send her that?”
Me – “No. I’ve seen her do that before. She kind of knows where her inspiration comes from, but she’s not ready to admit it to herself yet, so she’s inconsistent.”
You – “Why don’t you help her, send her some of the really good stuff??”
Me – “You know why… because it’s a process. That’s why she’s there, to figure as much of it out as she can on her own. I send her the good stuff, pretty soon we’ve got a female Picasso or a Ghandi on our hands. And she’s definitely not ready for that… and besides, she’s slowly getting here on her own, and the completed tangible cycles she’s sending back to us feel pretty darn good.”
That’s right… the tangible cycles. See, my theory is that we bring the intangible into our tangible realm, make our tangible art the very best we can and put it out there into the world. When… and this is a big “when” – when our intentions for our art are not to make a bunch of money, but to make our art the very best it can be, then we attach a “purity of intent” to our art. It is sensed, picked up and enjoyed by other humans. In that enjoyment, the tangibility of what we’ve created is transformed by the emotions of others back into intangibility, or back to the ‘real’ universe, and we complete that cycle. Remember cycles? This one, to my mind, is a real biggie. We do this one right and often, and we start being rewarded by something some of us know as “karma.” Yup.
Good game. You played well. And now the concept of a parallel universe doesn’t seem quite so foreign to you, does it? Didn’t you just breeze through it? See, quantum physics sounds a lot tougher than it actually is… ;^)
There are two quick and easy ways to suspend ourselves – temporarily – from our perceived boundaries of “time.” One is to meditate. Enough said. The other is to go fishing along a mountain river or stream, with no special intent except to be there. You’re casting across the stream, looking for a good hole, smelling the trees around you, hearing the breeze, the flies, the cows in the distance. You’re content, at peace, barely breathing, much like meditation. After a time you’re daydreaming about something, still fishing, looking up at the trees, or perhaps an eagle. Then you look back down, and suddenly the stream, for several seconds, seems to be standing still and you and the land appear to be moving upstream! Ever had that happen to you? It’s wild, because for that moment in time, it’s really happening to you… you can almost feel your own movement. Then of course, it goes away and the stream is moving past you again. But it’s so cool. I had that happen to me so much as a kid, that I actually learned how to make it happen, rather than wait for it.
I say let’s make the intangible/tangible/intangible cycle happen, Let’s make pure-intentioned real art happen. let’s learn how to make it happen rather than wait for it. You with me?? Damn, I hope so.
This is a long post. They usually won’t be nearly this long. This one took a bunch of words to try to explain. A note here… whenever a person has to use a lot of words to explain something, it’s usually a good indication that person doesn’t know a lot about the topic, and is probably trying to throw a word-filled smoke screen at us. But you don’t think that’s what I’m doing, do you??
When I first learned to meditate with the Buddhists at the Drepung Loseling Monastery in Atlanta, our teacher, Geshe Lobsang Tenzin, or “Geshe La” as we call him, asked me how it felt. I told him it felt a lot like fishing…
A couple of links here:
Freaky Physics Proves Parallel Universes from Fox News
My pals at Creative Sound Concepts, a great, full-service recording studio in Atlanta. Ask for Spencer or Bill. You’re a trouble-maker, Bill…. do you know that?
A place that changed my life…Drepung Loseling Buddhist Center
For great fishing and a good taste of the Old West, my home town,
Virginia City, Montana
For more on cycles, purity of intent and inspiration/perspiration
read my book, “Deep Into Paradise”
Thanks for hangin’ with me. I look forward to your comments,
positive or otherwise. You have an issue eating at you, maybe
we can resolve it. We’re all in this together, after all…
Steve Hulse