Schrödinger’s Restaurant

Author’s Note: This article came out of an e-mail discussion with a friend. The context: we’d both visited a charming restaurant in the Sonoma California community of Glen Ellen (a community popularized by American writer Jack London). The Napa Valley was severely ravaged by fire this week, and my friend was concerned that the restaurant had been lost – to which I replied “let’s think positive”. The following discussion (excerpted) ensued.

Friend: Um, well, not quite sure what to say to that. It’s either there, or it isn’t. Positive thinking has nothing to do with it.

Me: Hmm, you don’t think consciousness has an influence on which version of reality manifests from the enfolded potential?

Friend: Not after the fact, no. There is some truth to the idea of changing the past, but once something has happened (which in this case, either the restaurant has already burned or not), altering a past event is beyond positive thinking.

Me: Well, this is sort of like quantum physics at the macro scale. “After the fact” and “Once something has already happened” imply a fixed outcome. Yet when we don’t know what that outcome is, cannot “Schrödinger’s cat” still be both alive and dead? I guess the big question is, can our own consciousness, individual or collective, have an effect on this world-line? If no, we’re stuck with determinism, if yes, we’re approaching divinity.

Friend: The divinity is within us, but that won’t necessarily alter the physical manifestations set in motion by centuries of wrong-thinking by millions of people. Most channelers lately talk about “ascension” as creating a separate world in the 5th dimension which we inhabit even as the physical world continues on its karmic path. One says that the Anasazi learned how to do this and still live in Chaco Canyon, we just can’t see them. If you read The Mists of Avalon, that’s the same idea — “normal” humans can’t see the dimensions that exist so it’s like a misty veil that can only be lifted if one learns how.

There’s always this question of creating reality among New Thought proponents. The problem is that all of us are creating our own reality. What happens when those creations differ?

ME: ‘Ascension’ is a topic that has perplexed and intrigued me for some time now. (That’s essentially the basis of my forming “Human Ascension” project.) But not yet having emerged in a significant way, it is virtually impossible to conceive. Due to my Christian upbringing, I’m still susceptible to biblical accounts of post-resurrection Jesus – though my rational mind can’t confirm or deny it.

To the extent that the Anasazi story is true, it’s probably inaccurate to talk about “where” or “when” these people are. Locations in space and time are phenomena of the first four dimensions.

Something else intriguing: like the illusion that the sun revolves around the earth, I wonder if the perception that we all live in one common universe is not also just a useful illusion. There does have to be enough perceptual overlap that we can function with each other in a stable, consistent world. Yet many subcultures see and experience the world in some fundamentally different ways – demons, ETs, garden fairies – maybe even Liberals versus Conservatives. We tend to think it is we who are right and everyone else is crazy, but that may be just prejudice borne of ignorance.

More and more, I like the pixelated digital display model of reality. Rather than one common, static universe “out there” that we all perceive, perhaps consciousness (both individual and collective) assembles our experience of the world out of a myriad of microverses – like pixels on a computer screen, or like constructing larger components out of Lego blocks.

Again, there have to be enough common “larger components” in our perception so that we can interact meaningfully with the cosmos and with each other. But I wonder if, on the small scale, one’s individual “world-line” (Einstein’s term) might be able to deviate somewhat from those that others experience.

In that sense, I wonder if it is possible that our charming little restaurant survived the fire in some people’s reality but not others. I guess you and I will find out should we travel again to Glen Ellen.