Parallel universe

“ It follows that, if n states of the material universe are determinants of the material universe, then n states of a given man's mind are determinants of the whole material and mental universe—assuming, that is to say, that psycho-physical parallelism is true. ”

“ In this distant system of our universe I saw that the same plan of creation obtained. Around a majority of the stars a group of various sized worlds revolves. On many of these worlds human life abounds in endless degrees of development and in a countless variety of manifestations. I marveled anew as I saw the endlessness of the Infinite Mind, supporting not only the conscious life of this whole constellation, but also of all the constellations of our universe, and of all the universes scattered at large throughout the unending depths of space. ”

“ These would be universes, each with its own grade of unity. The universe of human experience is, by one or another of its parts, of each and all these grades. Whether or not it possibly enjoys some still more absolute grade of union does not appear upon the surface. [Pg 46]
Taken as it does appear, our universe is to a large extent chaotic. No one single type of connection runs through all the experiences that compose it. If we take space-relations, they fail to connect minds into any regular system. ”

“ This potential universe, this universe which will come into existence as soon as the complex vision discovers it and creates it, this universe across which gathers already the moving shadow of the complex vision, is not a new universe but only an extension into a further depth of the objective mystery, of the universe which we already know. ”

“ He conceived this universe as infinite, and so rejected the ancient scholastic idea of a limited nature with its distinctions and divisions of place, its here and there, its above and below, its cycles and epicycles. But the universe, which has no centre and therefore no circumference, has yet a unity for consciousness, and wherever consciousness is its unity appears. ”

“ They would form two universes each living by itself, making no difference to each other, taking no account of each other, much as the universe of your day dreams takes no account of mine. They must therefore belong together beforehand, be co-implicated already, their natures must have an inborn mutual reference each to each. ”

“ I shall trace them to the utmost limit of our conception, and try to gain thereby a clearer insight into the fact, not only that the whole Physical Universe is but a transient and Space-limited phenomenon, a thin film which our senses have erected and which divides us from the Reality, but that, if our power of introspection were fully developed, we should know that the Reality is nearer and dearer to us, and has much more to do with us, even in this life, than has the physical. ”

“ And who can affirm that, in an Infinite Being, the focus may not be everywhere? Or, since our geometry is built upon finite space-forms, who can say that it may not be without having any space-relation? If, indeed, this be a universe in which we dwell, and not a heap of isolated disjecta membra, is it not a necessity of thought that, the system of energy being totally inter-related, so also the psychic concomitants which the hypothesis requires must also have their unity? ”

“ For, whatever may be the condition of other worlds or other regions of space, the phenomena of our world and our portion of space belong to the ascending series; and whatever may be the final doom of our planet and our universe, both are now in a state of progress, and are still rejoicing in the morning of creation. ”

“ Yet have we every reason which analogy can afford to believe that even the development of a whole universe such as ours should be regarded as but a minute local phenomenon of a universe infinitely higher in order, that universe in turn but a single member of a system of such universes, and so on, even ad infinitum. ”

“ But they passed beyond that system, and beyond system after system, and infinity after infinity, until the human heart sank, and the man cried out: 'End is there none of the universe of God?' The angel strengthened the man by words of counsel and courage, and they flew on again until worlds left behind them were out of sight, and specks of light in advance were transformed, as they approached them, into rushing systems ”

“ When we conceptualize, we cut out and fix, and exclude everything but what we have fixed. A concept means a that-and-no-other. Conceptually, time excludes space; motion and rest exclude each other; approach excludes contact; presence excludes absence; unity excludes plurality; independence excludes relativity; 'mine' excludes 'yours'; this connexion excludes that connexion—and so on indefinitely; whereas in the real concrete sensible flux of life experiences compenetrate each other so that it is not easy to know just what is excluded and what not. ”

“ It becomes unified with all existence before and after; and the Force which the Universe presents falls into the same category with its Space and Time as admitting of no limitation in thought."*—First Principles, Section 190. ”

“ How calmly and genially the mind apprehends one after another the laws of physics! What noble emotions dilate the mortal as he enters into the counsels of the creation, and feels by knowledge the privilege to Be! His insight refines him. The beauty of nature shines in his ​own breast. Man is greater than he can see this, and the universe less, because Time and Space relations vanish as laws are known. ”

“ Harmonious order governing eternally continuous progress—the web and woof of matter and force interweaving by slow degrees, without a broken thread, that veil which lies between us and the Infinite—that universe which alone we know or can know; such is the picture which science draws of the world, and in proportion as any part of that picture is in unison with the rest, so may we feel sure that it is rightly painted. ”

“ The series of successive states which make up the history of a thing are the expression of the thing’s nature or structure. To understand the thing’s structure is to possess the key to the succession of its states, to know on what principle each gives way to its successor. And similarly, to have complete insight into the nature or structure of Reality as a whole would be to understand the principles according to which every transitory event in the history of the Universe, regarded as a series of events in time, is followed by its own special successor. ”

“ It now remains for us to show, in this last chapter, how, underlying all the physical structure of the Universe, there is one fundamental and primordial medium, in which all the forms of matter and motion find their ultimate unity.
The Universe literally means one ultimate whole, though that whole may be compounded of many parts, the very essence of the term embodying the idea of a complete unity which runs throughout its whole physical structure. ”

“ The enormous scheme of things, the innumerable universe is reduced to the establishing of these proportions, to the elaboration of these distances! There is no trembling of the stars that does not influence our emotions, no design woven by the harmony of the planets in which we may not be involved. ”

“ Whatever I may say, each of you will be sure to take pluralism or leave it, just as your own sense of rationality moves and inclines. The only thing I emphatically insist upon is that it is a fully co-ordinate hypothesis with monism. This world may, in the last resort, be a block-universe; but on the other hand it may be a universe only strung-along, not rounded in and closed. Reality may exist distributively just as it sensibly seems to, after all. ”

“ A noted author and scientist states essentially the same truth in the following manner: "The multiplicity of worlds in infinite space leads to the conception of a succession of worlds in infinite time. This existing universe, with all its splendors, had a beginning, and will have an end ”

“ Thus I admit, with the pure dynamist, that the material universe, or successive material universes (if such a solecism is pardonable) , as manifestations of matter and motion, are concatenated with time, are born, run their course, and fade away, as do the clouds of air. But the infinite reservoir of power wherein they occur as disturbances remains. ”

“ Beings the most varied in endowment, things the most diversified in form and function, events the most remote from each other in time and space, must all be related and connected in virtue of the ultimate and all-embracing purpose for which the universe exists. An external purpose revealed under time-relations must be an all-harmonious evolution and an orderly totality—a Cosmos. ”

“ Let me declare, only, that, as an individual, I myself feel impelled to the fancy—without daring to call it more—that there does exist a limitless succession of Universes, more or less similar to that of which we have cognizance—to that of which alone we shall ever [103] have cognizance—at the very least until the return of our own particular Universe into Unity. ”

“ Space and time are thus vehicles of continuity, by which the world's parts hang together. The practical difference to us, resultant from these forms of union, is immense. Our whole motor life is based upon them.
3. There are innumerable other paths of practical continuity among things. Lines of INFLUENCE can be traced by which they together. Following any such line you pass from one thing to another till you may have covered a good part of the universe's extent. Gravity and heat-conduction are such all-uniting influences, so far as the physical world goes. ”

“ In some respects, in fact, the essence of this view may be brought home to our ordinary consciousness, if we remember how the forms of space and of time are from moment to moment conceived by everybody as limitless and as universal, and as predetermining the constitution of the whole natural universe, while this whole infinity of both space and time is viewed as homogeneous with the space and time present at the instant to our own consciousness. ”

“ Let the Muser, for example, after well appreciating, in its breadth and depth, the unspeakable variety of each Universe, turn to those phenomena that are of the nature of homogeneities of connectedness in each ”

“ Far back as we go, the flux, both as a whole and in its parts, is that of things conjunct and separated. The great continua of time, space, and the self envelop everything, betwixt them, and flow together without interfering. The things that they envelop come as separate in some ways and as continuous in others. Some sensations coalesce with some ideas, and others are irreconcilable. Qualities compenetrate one space, or exclude each other from it. They cling together persistently in groups that move as units, or else they separate. ”

“ Of the three Universes of Experience familiar to us all, the first comprises all mere Ideas, those airy nothings to which the mind of poet, pure mathematician, or another might give local habitation and a name within that mind. Their very airy-nothingness, the fact that their Being consists in mere capability of getting thought, not in anybody's Actually thinking them, saves their Reality. The second Universe is that of the Brute Actuality of things and facts. ”

“ All intuitive cognition depends on the pure forms of the mind, space, time, substance, causality, etc., by means of which the material offered by the senses is combined into a unity. Our intuitions of space and time discover a marked advance. Our conception of the universe has been enlarged so as to embrace the notion of an infinite number of solar systems. ”

“ But this is only to affirm that every object is linked on to every other object by a multiplicity of relations—that each part is woven into the texture of a larger whole in a universe of interpenetrations. ”

“ Its marvelous and varied powers and utilities create a new epoch in scientific thought and discovery. Its study is replete with new and fascinating ideas and scientific theories. It contains the story of the universe more sublime than an epic, more wonderful than a romance. It organized the machinery of the worlds, and holds the secrets of nature and the mysteries of life in its invisible grasp. ”

“ So that by philosophical reasoning we are led to view the whole of the innumerable stars that flood interstellar space, not as so many individual and isolated units, that have no relation to each other, but rather as parts of one great system, which in its entirety may form in its ultimate unity one harmonious whole, a universe. ”

“ Every phenomenon therefore whether physical or mental, is probably connected in an indissoluble manner with some preceding phenomenon, either immediately in point of time, or remotely through some static condition, usually that of stored up power. In this sense the great principle of continuity of phenomena appears to be universal, and the present state of the Universe is said to implicitly or potentially contain all the future states of the Universe. ”

“ I would want it built in the same general style and with the same general effect as the universe, but a universe in which everything lets one alone, in which everything just goes quietly on in its great still round, letting itself be looked at—no more said about it, nothing to be done about it. ”

“ And finally it is growing more and more unified by those systems of connexion at least which human energy keeps framing as time goes on.
It is possible to imagine alternative universes to the one we know, in which the most various grades and types of union should be embodied. Thus the lowest grade of universe would be a world of mere WITHNESS, of which the parts were only strung together by the conjunction 'and.' Such a universe is even now the collection of our several inner lives. ”