The Multiverse Simplified by Paul F. Eno

The Multiverse Simplified

"Death is swallowed up; victory is won! Oh death, where is thy victory? Oh death, where is thy sting?"
1 Corinthians 15:54-55

A number of listeners to our radio shows have written to ask for a simplified explanation for our ideas about the “multiverse” and how they apply to the paranormal. Fair enough.

THE SIMPLE PART

Imagine that you were born in a huge building with thousands of large, roomy apartments. You, however, have never been outside your own apartment, let alone the building. You live there with your family, and that apartment is your whole world. Everything you know is in that apartment.

But sometimes you get scared. Sometimes you hear noises on the other side of a wall. Sometimes you even think you hear voices. Maybe once or twice, through a crack in a door, you see what appear to be shadows of other people moving. You are completely unaware that there are other apartments all around yours, so you explain this “paranormal activity” as best you can from your very limited experience of reality.

For example, one of the voices you hear through a certain wall sounds just like your older brother. Your family said that he “was gone now” or “went to a better place.” You think: Maybe he left some remnant of himself behind! Maybe I'm hearing his ghost!

Once or twice, you’ve actually managed to exchange a few words with voices on the “other side” of a wall. Maybe you caught a name or a request. A few seemed just as scared as you were.

One day you’re passing a door that you’ve never seen open before. There’s a frantic scratching on the other side. You stop dead in your tracks, terrified! All of a sudden, the door bursts open and, standing in the midst of a strange light from a weird room, there is a huge, furry creature on four legs! It looks curiously at you and speaks: “WOOF!”

“Monster! Cryptid!” you scream, and run for the depths of your apartment, the only place you feel safe.

Well, I’m sure you get the point. Your brother didn’t die – he just moved to the apartment next door. You didn’t see a monster. The connecting door to a very different apartment just opened for a moment, and you saw your first dog. And you’re not hearing or talking to ghosts. You’re hearing or talking with people going about their business in adjoining apartments. You talked with one or two who seemed to know there were other apartments and other kinds of people and creatures nearby. Others seemed just as narrow and ignorant as you did when it came to the existence of other apartments.

This, of course, is a very simplistic way to explain the Reality of Realities. In fact, all the apartments (worlds) are a unified building (multiverse). Most of the tenants (except for you and people like you who “don’t know from nothin’”) interact on a regular basis. Some of the tenants are good people, some are great, some are potential axe murderers, some are sleazy con-artists who just want to prey on others. Others aren’t human at all. Some tenants are considered loved ones by other tenants.

The thing is: All the tenants are somehow connected, and many, many of them are good people who care about each other. The actions and attitudes of one tenant affect all the other tenants one way or the other. The whole building is an interactive system, whether the tenants know it or not. And all these apartments have connecting doors.

Multiply all this to infinity, and you can start to understand the multiverse. But understanding with the brain only goes so far. Start to feel, start to realize, start to visualize, the reality of this infinite, interactive community of life in your deepest depths. You’ll see not only the world but yourself and others in a whole new light. Your life will totally change. You won’t have to be afraid anymore, and, best of all, you’ll know that you don’t have to be alone anymore. Greatest of all, you’ll find God, who thought of this whole stupendous scenario, closer to you than you are to yourself.

But is there more to it than that. Do we as tenants have responsibilities to other tenants? Does this "building" need a "tenants' association"?

THE BACKGROUND

Multiverse ideas are very ancient, and they really are quite simple. What’s difficult is getting past the way we in the modern West (Europe and North America – and now just about everywhere) have been trained to look at the world.

Western thinking makes two basic mistakes. One: It assumes that reality is what it appears to be through our five physical senses: sight, hearing, taste, touch and smell. It only trusts our brains. Second, it assumes that we can understand this material world we perceive (and ourselves) by studying its components. For example, in school we study astronomy, geology, meteorology, physics, etc. separately, thinking that’s the way to understand the world. In school we also study biology, psychology, medicine, and maybe theology and philosophy, all separately, thinking that’s the way to understand ourselves. This narrow thinking fails to find the intimate connections between all people and all things, leaving our knowledge and us incomplete. As a result, most of us down deep feel that we’re missing something. Many of us feel lost, even betrayed and bitter. Down deep, without really knowing how to put our finger on it, we feel as though we’ve been lied to.

In contrast, multiverse thinking considers the whole of human experience (not just our five senses) and sees a reality that is much bigger than just the physical world. It tries to understand things not by taking them apart but by putting them together. All aspects of the world and ourselves are viewed as an interactive whole – the Big Picture. This is more like Eastern thinking – once common among “primitive” people from the Middle East through Asia, Africa and South America. Multiverse thinking amplifies this whole idea of oneness by taking into consideration the other, just as real, worlds that we live in – parallel worlds where everything that is possible really exists.

What’s that got to do with the paranormal?

It’s through experiences that we Western thinkers call paranormal (“beyond the normal” experiences of everyday life in the world of our five senses) that we touch the other worlds in the multiverse that make up what reality really is. We can do this through spirituality too. It's through the paranormal that we learn how creation really works, and what we really are within it.

But here’s where Western thinking gets in the way again. Those who acknowledge that the paranormal and spirituality are real are still prisoners of their Western education. They don’t know how to “think outside the box.” To them, everything in the paranormal and religion has to be justified in terms of Western science. For example: Ghosts must be some kind of spirits, or UFOs must be craft from other planets. God has to be “proven” to exist before we believe in He, She, It or Them. My cat died, therefore God must be evil. And so on.

Western thinking has mercilessly gutted both the paranormal and spirituality. It’s turned the life-changing realities of the paranormal into “ghost hunting” and the life-saving realities of spirituality into “religion.”
Surprising numbers of people will tell you that, once you grasp multiverse concepts, it will dawn on you that “this is it!” or “so this is what I’ve been experiencing all along!” Your life and mind will broaden, expand and change. You will see and hear farther, and you'll feel the connections. You'll realize that you don't need time machines, spaceships, or drugs once you know the real secret to success: It’s not about me. It’s about all of us.

Ben and I go much further, to what we believe is our true task in all this. As with many seekers throughout human history, we believe that this “apartment building” needs a “tenants’ association.” We believe absolutely that all life-forms of good will who dwell throughout the multiverse – humans and non-humans, our other selves, the powerful and the weak, angels, super-beings or farmers still plowing their fields in 1735, no matter how alien they might seem to us, all good creatures known and unknown, everywhere and everywhen, conceivable or inconceivable, are our brothers and sisters.

Furthermore, this brotherhood has common enemies. Ben and I, and many others in this field, know them as the paranormal “parasites” that mess with and feed off the suffering of individuals, families, and probably whole tribes, communities and nations – apparently in many worlds at once. We have seen the power of people standing together against these enemies. Imagine the power of whole worlds standing against them!

That’s why Ben and I aren’t “ghost hunters” or “UFO researchers.” We don’t “chase” demons or Bigfoot. After my 40 years in paranormal work and Ben’s five, we find ourselves nothing less than “cosmic sojourners” and, we like to think, multiversal diplomats and bridge-builders. Be assured that we have met a number of friends of various species who are trying to do the same from their own corners of the multiverse.

There are many worlds yet to visit, many doors yet to open, and many species and races yet to meet. Stay tuned. You haven’t seen anything yet.