Monday 14 July 2003

Pic of the day: Of course, there may also be simpler alternatives, like signing up for the upcoming multiplayer superhero game, City of Heroes. (Screenshot from their official website.)

Semi-astral planes

In this entry, I will present a unified hypothesis for magic, super- powers, mythology and perhaps even some religions. All this without a shred of evidence. Break out your watercolors and color yourself amazed! Here we go!

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Have you ever wondered why some dreams are banal, like a boring day warmed over? While others are more colorful than life, glowing with magic, larger than life? Have you ever wondered why, even though magic doesn't really work, even small remote tribes have traditions of it? Have you noticed how today's superheroes resemble myths of the past, and these myths resemble each other across cultures, continents and countless generations?

Surprisingly, a key to my theory is the secret identity. In the old legends, hidden identity was a phase of life. The future hero was placed in a basket on the river, or left in the woods, or taken away to be killed by a servant who then had second thoughts and placed the child with an old shepherd without revealing his identity. Even Jesus Christ reached an age of around thirty before even his brothers started to suspect he was unusual! Oh well, that's not fair; we all know that's not a myth but a historical fact. But even so...

Modern superheroes tend to keep a secret identity even after they become aware of their own powers. They then alternate between the two identities. But what if both identities existed at the same time, just not in the same reality?

***

My grand unified theory says that parallel worlds are connected. Actually these parallel planes could be in our own universe ... traditional matter and energy seem to make up less than 10% of the universe by the latest counts. Or they could be different universes that have been separate from ours since the Big Bang. Perhaps different planes of reality, kind of like the material plane and the astral plane in some philosophies. Or a combination of the above. What they are not, however, is alternate histories that parted ways some time ago. They are fundamentally different in the laws of nature, most notably in the degree of magic and/or mind powers.

These different planes are connected, but not in a direct way. We know this because when we sleep, we are awake in the dream worlds. If we just dreamed about sleeping, it would not be very eventful! Yet we must be connected, because our lives in the dream worlds seem familiar to us. I propose therefore that the individuals on different planes of reality have different bodies (as limited by their various laws of physics) but the same fundamental life force and character. Or "spirit", to use a familiar word from Christian philosophy.

I further propose that there are multiple (possibly even myriad) such alternate planes; and each spirit manifests with greatest strength on the plane best suited for it. For a strong but absolutely mundane spirit this could even be our world, where it rises to prominence by military maneuvers, politics, or perhaps by inventing several successful operating systems ...

But others are tuned to a different frequency, so to speak. And so in this world, Clark Kent can never be more than a mild-mannered journalist. While in a different world, at the same time, he is racing across the sky in a blur of red and blue, on his way to avert some disaster or thwart the plans of some supervillain. The same spirit, but different bodies in different worlds. Perhaps in dreams at night he switches between the two, unable to decide who is the real him. Because they are both him.

Speaking of supervillains, a strong spirit need not necessarily be noble. We ought to know this; Hitler had the strength to lead one of the world's great powers into the Götterdämmerung, and certainly not for petty profit; by all account, he was rather ascetic. Yet noble? I guess there were those who considered his efforts noble; certainly it would seem he himself did so. Perhaps all supervillains do ... but I doubt it. While strength of spirit may overrule pettiness and simple greed, it is not certain to do so. Perhaps smaller villains are greedy, while greater villains are mad – or simply have goals that we abhor.

It is a fascinating thought, is it not? That the guy in the car ahead of you could be a hero on another plane of reality, or a villain, or a witch. And that even you, by the choices you make in this world, could define the spirit of a superhero or a villain or a wizard in a world far away, a world you may only visit once in your dreams ... So which would it be? Would you be on the side of the angels? Or would your depraved tastes or your thirst for revenge add you to the villain list? A fascinating angle indeed.

***

Now I am sure there are plenty of perfectly normal people who never dream about flying or teleporting or casting spells or easily outrunning horses. They come home from work, eat, watch TV, go to bed and dream that they are at work again. If they really push it, perhaps they dream about doing more than flirting with the cutie from work. But their dreams, by day or by night, are thoroughly mundane. I don't know, this could even be most people, for all I know.

But I am not one of them, and neither are you, I am sure. You must have felt the thrill of flying with your own arms, or of passing through walls, or moving things just by looking at them. The scare of letting go in your first teleportations, and the relief of seeing the world form around you in a different place. Hey, guys ... Guys? Why are you looking at me like that? And what is that nurse doing here? ^_^*

No, don't panic. I never meant any of this literally. It is all just for fun. "An astral plane that was never meant to fly." There is not a grain of truth in it, of course. Come on! I mean, parallel worlds?? Next they'll tell us the stars in the sky influence our lives ...