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Quantum lateral reincarnation

19:44 / 02.12.03

I've been working with a new idea lately. Premise: similar to the Time Tree, but branching in 5th dimentional space for each choice you take in life. Quantum lore holds that when presented with a choice, both paths are taken, until one path collapses into the overall choice given when perceived. Reincarnation theory I add to this is that we can reincarnate into ourselves, living the same life over and over again but with the option of exploring different choices each time. The soul remains as the part of us that remembers the choices, influencing the conscious mind as best as it can from the backstage.

The magickal practice then is to attempt greater communication with the soul and alternate selves to gain insight into making better choices in life. The method I'm using is meditation upon my personal sigel. See, if I'm meditation upon my sigel and an alternate me is too, I may be able to gain some level of contact with myself when making difficult decisions. At the least, get some forewarning before crossing the street at the wrong time and getting hit by a bus, and that sort of thing.

Its similar to a technique where one practices giving advice to one's self in the past (like, "watch out for that log you alomst tripped over") until one begins to hear the future self giving the advice as a prompting to follow. Working both ends of the divination. Only, doing it with quantum parallel realities rather than through time.

Whatcha think of it? My whacked out theory of the day.

21:02 / 02.12.03

I don't see why not. I've done magickal work backwards in time. It's very counter-intuitive, because we tend to see the past as a dead thing. It makes me wonder whether one day we'll have this all figured out. Personally, I appreciate your creativity on this, it's a fascinating viewpoint. It will also probably give me a headache.... Theoretically though, it dovetails nicely into parallel universe theory. I've worked with the idea of universe shifting. The idea that it is possible to shift into a parallel universe with a slightly different causal tree. You wouldn't know that you had shifted, because the point that shifts would be the essence of consciousness. Since you would have all of the memories of that universe, you wouldn't know that a shift occurred, as it entails a shift of viewpoint from the quantum level. There is an idea that if you can shuck the ego to enough of an extent, you can see from many viewpoints. Why not be able to see from the viewpoint of a parallel universe? If I ever pull it off, I'll let you know... but I could spontaneously combust...

Bard: One-Man Humaton Hoedown

02:23 / 03.12.03

I gotta agree with Z on this one...my head hurts, lol.

However, it does raise some interesting questions, and one in particular that I just thought of that is rather dreadfully strange:

Assume that it is possible to send messages and mystical aid to ourselves backwards in time. Assume that 2012 marks this information change point where essentially we get converted into information, or ascend, or are able to contact any information instantaneously. Maybe, then, downloads originate from our future selves sending information back along the time stream.

Of course, that opens up a whole big can of worms since it means essentially that we cannot change the future to come, as its already happened to create the situation that led us to become whatever it is in the future sending the downloads.

Scary thought, that.

trouser the trouserian

04:22 / 03.12.03

cusm

do you mean something like this?

09:27 / 03.12.03

Heh. I have a finger in every pie these days ;-)

The introduction of an extra dimension to the time tree and a quantum aspect means we can try and justify free will, by disabling the determinate aspects of the Tree model.
What I mean is, considered from outside time and space the time tree is static (all motion is a function of moving through space over time) and, well, like a tree. It makes it difficult to claim freedom if our future is already set in shape.
The extra dimension ('5th' for convenience) means that at each branching of the tree we have the choice to 'switch' to another entirely different tree, a parallel world in the classic quantum sense.

I have a slightly different take on reincarnation. God as the Soul.
There is only one soul, God, who incarnates in everyone and everything.
Let's assume it happens sequentially (for ease of understanding), and take me and you as an example. God incarnates as you, lives your life and is freed on your death, then goes back to 1975 (remember ze exists outside of time and space) and incarnates as me. We all share the same soul.
To extend this, the same soul, God, also inhabits every parallel me and you, every me in every universe. If that's the case then contacting parallel mes in parallel worlds becomes metaphysically easy- my soul has either been them or will be them.

Now, considering linear time is a human illusion, something 'further back' in time or 'further forward' is a nonsense, a spatial metaphor we use. So what makes one person or thing easier or harder to access?
To use another spatial metaphor, Magickal Distance. Instead of thinking in terms of forward and back, think near and far. Near things to me are identified by Sympathy and Contagion, for example Myself five minutes ago is near, my Parallel self five minutes ago is a bit further, you are a bit further still, a rock in Australia is a bit further, the protosuns at the dawn of time in a radically different parallel world a lot further etc etc.

From this perspective, cusms statement The magickal practice then is to attempt greater communication with the soul and alternate selves to gain insight into making better choices in life. is also a communion with God, and can equally be applied to things in this world as well as parallels.

[/manifesto

]

09:40 / 03.12.03

Oh, and an interesting example from fiction, a mage borrowed some power from his future self in a tight spot. Later, his enemies waited until the right moment, then attacked as he was suddenly weakened by his past self...

14:01 / 03.12.03

Yea, somehow I knew Quantum would get this one

absence of gravitas: Interesting link. Yea, that's right along this line of thinking. Reminds me of the many dreams I had of walking through a war torn post apocolyptic disaster of a world leading up to Y2K, of the many ways in which things could have gone disasterously wrong but didn't. Only, the article on that website uses the paradox of contact with another self as a vehicle to gnosis of a sort, and in dreams.

I'm thinking this can be done also through deliberate meditation upon one's personal sigil combined with some vision journying. I want to step back, look at the tree, and chart a better course along it to where I want to go. The conditions of my life are landscape to be traversed. Change is to journey to a different perspective. Its thinking about space in an entirely different way, with the conditions of your reality as a dimention across which you can move.

Or maybe just another wacky version of divination where alternate selves assist each other by sharing of information, existing collectively across reality as a multi dimentional intelligence. The divine hive-mind of quantum me-hood, looking across the abyss to the infinity of possibility.

Jebus. Can ya tell I've been hitting the DMT lately from that last bit or what?

14:47 / 03.12.03

..but in a good way

How about this, a ritual consisting of you and your parallel selves?
"The divine hive-mind of quantum me-hood, looking across the abyss to the infinity of possibility" and cooperating to full effect.
You could do a ritual alone in conjunction with half a dozen parallels (I can't use the expression Quantum me-hood because my me-hood is Quantum in a brain twisting way, so Parallel will do) and do it half a dozen times- once for your world, then to return the favour once for each of the other participant parallels. Of course it would be quite like repeating a ritual six times, but I feel it would be more powerful (greater than the sum of the parts and all that).

15:41 / 03.12.03

Ooh, I like that idea. Favors for favors. But give first before you receive, considering it an investment in later results.

Leads me to another application across temporal, by performaing a group ritual by your selves. That is, you perform it once for each part, visualizing the other selves doing their parts each time. You save the High Priest focus role for the last, at which time you are backed up by the work you've done as your other selves in the previous iterations of the working. The neat thing about that is, the last time can be for the benefit of others, who aren't necessarily expecting you to be backed up by 6 other yous when the time comes for the mojo. Its like a form of preparation for a larger working. In this case, it is the present supporting the future, and then the past supporting the present when that time comes. I suspect temporal magicks like this would be more effective, as you're creating the ground for it first rather than by trying to retrofit the actions of your futureself to avoid paradox.

Bard: One-Man Humaton Hoedown

17:59 / 03.12.03

To digress rather slightly into my near obsessive hobby of roleplaying games, this discussion reminds me incredibly of a game called "Continuum" in which the characters are capable of traveling forwards and backwards in time and space by force of will alone. The game compounds this by the fact that, since the future has already happened, there's nothing you can do to stop it. Thus if someone tells you something about your future, you MUST do it to avoid creating a paradox. Then there's also the ability, which is what really reminded me of this conversation, called "The Gemini Effect" which allows your future self to go back in time and assist your past- or present-self in a situation (so bring you a key to a locked room, tell you the launch codes to deactivate the nuclear missile, etc.).

Food for thought, I suppose.

Incidentally, my date in my post was wrong. I meant 2017, not 2012.

12:25 / 04.12.03

a la 'Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey'? Cool. I am a Mage (the ascension) fanatic so I know where you're coming from Bard, Continuum sounds good, I shall look out for it.
cusm- I like that group selves ritual, funky- like a magic savings account, better to fill it up and then use it than use it and enter power overdraft (and as you say, less paradox, you don't want a Wrinkle-type-spirit coming to call eh)

17:01 / 04.12.03

Continuum is pretty cool. Its a massive headache of tracking to play, but its mad fun. Especially when two time travelers fight over something, employing multitudes of selves to check and countercheck eachother until there are swarms of you around, plus swarms more of bystanders watching the fun. Its entirelly topical to this thread that way.

Anyway, I've been tinkering with meditation upon contact with alternate selves. I've been building the feeling that I am a composite being existing across multitudes of dimentions, a 5th dimentional being. The sensation is most... interesting.

08:11 / 05.12.03

I think of the multiple selves as aspects of a higher self, like the fingers of a hand, each finger/self poking into each universe. The higher self would be the hand, hidden in a higher dimension, why am I thinking of Jenny Everywhere now..?

08:56 / 05.12.03

Check this out from New Scientist, about many worlds theory;

"However, many worlds is not the only interpretation of quantum theory. Physicists can choose between half a dozen interpretations, all of which predict identical outcomes for all conceivable experiments.
Deutsch dismisses them all. "Some are gibberish, like the Copenhagen interpretation," he says-and the rest are just variations on the many worlds theme.
For example, according to the Copenhagen interpretation, the act of observing is crucial. Observation forces an atom to make up its mind, and plump for being in only one place out of all the possible places it could be. But the Copenhagen interpretation is itself open to interpretation. What constitutes an observation? For some people, this only requires a large-scale object such as a particle detector. For others it means an interaction with some kind of conscious being.

Worse still, says Deutsch, is that in this type of interpretation you have to abandon the idea of reality. Before observation, the atom doesn't have a real position. To Deutsch, the whole thing is mysticism-throwing up our hands and saying there are some things we are not allowed to ask."

Heh, so we're keeping a step ahead of the scientists by saying we are abandoning the idea of 'reality', embracing mysticism AND utilising many world theory. Pooh to their excluded middle!

14:19 / 06.12.06

Three years later... the otherkin thread has got me thinking about novelty reincarnation theories like soulbonding, and this seemed the right thread for it. As far as I can gather the idea is that there are alternate universes and in those universes fictional events actually happened and the souls of characters become embodied in people in our world.
I'm not sure I can beat the weirdness of that concept, (especially the reincarnated videogame character thing) but I wonder if anyone else can? Any really strange reincarnation theories you've heard? And can anyone explain how Pac-Man has a soul? I can sort of see that many people could be the same character because videogame characters die a lot so presumably they get a new soul each time, but I wonder- do the nameless mooks get reincarnated as well? You're surely more likely to be a reincarnated Adamantoise than Cloud Strife.
For reference here's the Otakukin article from xk's post in the otherkin thread (please read Mordant's excellent summation following that post).

10:01 / 20.12.06

I've not seen this ancient thread before. I work with ideas like this one because my fundamental feeling is that reality is stranger, bigger & more dimensional than we are capable of conceiving.

Reincarnation always seemed too linear & common sense to me. So why stick with the rather newtonian (if you get my drift) concept of the soul as a kind of nucleus of identity. Billiard balls!

If we think in a more process oriented way then there is no reason why a so-called fictional character need not be as meaningful a [nexus], [wave form], [eddy], [term of reference] as we so called real people are.

Then it would be a case of deciding how to respond to that reality. Kind of carefully, I guess because it's so easy to slip into fantasy worlds any way.

That said, what would a fantasy world be if the above were taken to its logical conclusion?

Ah, paradoxes! Ambivalences! Ambiguities! Far better & more liberating than all those beliefs & certainties!

Happy dark moon solstice thing!