Programmed Reality

 

 

By now you have no doubt heard that according to astronomers and anthropologists, December 21, 2012 correlates to the “end” of the Mayancalendar. And, despite having repeatedly heard about this for many, many years now, it is also very probable that you still have no idea exactly what this means.The reason is because it’s very complicated. To even begin to understand it youneed to look to the Mayan myths of the Sacred Tree and understand theirincredibly complex Long Count calendar of tuns, k’atuns, and b’aktuns as wellas their concepts of the Great Cycle, the Great Great Cycle, and cycles withincycles. You’d also need to understand astronomical occurrences involving the precession of the equinoxes and the conjunction of the sun at the intersection of the plane of the ecliptic and the Milky Way. You can do all that, or, youcan simply read my interpretation of this summer’s Green Lantern movie, which shares the same message as the Mayan mythology.

 If you’re unlike most people, you actually saw Green Lantern, the critics’ least favorite of this summer’s slew of superhero movies that included Thor, Captain America: TheFirst Avenger, and X-Men: First Class.Going in with really low expectations, I actually enjoyed the film, but was abit disappointed on how little of Green Lantern’s abilities were explored.Unlike every other superhero, Green Lantern must rely on his mind to conjure uphis powers. For this reason, he is only as powerful as his imagination. He isthe superhero of creativity, but the film only touched on this briefly towardsthe end, choosing instead to focus on fearlessness as the source of his power.

 On the face of it, the film was pretty standard superhero fare,but looking deeper, I really dug the film’s unintended, subconscious message,channeled by the movie’s shamanic writers. In The Myth ofLost and previouscolumns, I wrote how I believe today’s writers, musicians, artists, andpoets are modern day shaman, translating the messages of the collectiveunconscious to the masses—even if they themselves are unaware that they aredoing so. There are many messages out there, and different groups of writersand artists are in tune with different channels, or frequencies. It’s likethere is a giant universal radio playing and the shaman have the volume tunedup louder than most people but are all listening to different stations. I’vesuspected that I have been listening to the same station as Damon Lindelof, J. J. Abrams, and M. Night Shyamalanbecause their stories often share the same mythological messages as whateverI’d been working on at the time of their release. It’s also the same stationthat Matt Stone and Trey Parker of South Park listen to. In fact, this week’s episode focused ona spoof of Thor and The HistoryChannel involving pilgrims, Native Americans and a space portal while mytranslation of the same message (which hit me back in June) involves Green Lantern, The History Channel, thenative Latin Americans and an energy portal from space. It’s the same coremessage for different audiences. This particular message is also the same asthat of the Mayan legends relating to 2012, since we are approaching the end ofthe same cycle that they are based upon.

 To begin with, let’s get something out of the way. To theMayans, the end of their calendar had nothing to do with the end of the world.In fact, they made prophesiesabout dates that would occur well after the December 2012 end date (correlatingto their calendar’s K’atun 4 Ahau). The end just marks the end of a Great Cycle(5,125 years). Upon its completion, it simply begins again, with events, lifelessons, and growing experiences occurring in a similar fashion to the way theyhad when the cycle was run through previous times. Only now, with societieshaving grown since then, these events would play out differently. It’s justlike a vertical spiral where each point plays out similarly to the correspondingpoint directly below it but in a slightly elevated way.

So if this is the case, why all the focus on world disasters,crashed economies, and world upheaval? We’ve seen major uprisings in the MiddleEast, devastating tsunamis in Japan, floods in the Mid-West and earthquakes allover the place. In New York City this year alone I’ve experienced a hurricane,earthquake, and massive blizzards, not to mention a major Nor’easter inOctober! What gives? Well, since we are reaching the end of a cycle, we arecoming to a checkpoint that allows us to continue up the spiral. If we had beenproactive and grown enough on our own, it would’ve been smooth sailing.However, we have not done this and so must experience challenges that will helpus to grow. Government upheavals are happening to help rid the world of corruptdictators, crippling tsunamis to push us away from our reliance on nuclearenergy (since the station in Japan was flooded), a major oil leak to encourageus to move away from our reliance on fossil fuels, global economy crashes totry to get us to move towards a more equal system, and natural disasters tohelp us to work together to solve many our current problems including watershortages, crumbling infrastructures, and bankrupt cities. We are not beingpunished; we are being pushed to growbecause we did not do enough on our own. The world is about to evolve and if weare going to stay here we must evolve with it.

So, what does any of this have to do with Green Lantern and how does that film in any way resemble Mayanmythology? As described in Kenneth Johnson’s Parabola article, “TheShape of History: Time and the Mayan Calendar,” the final segment of theMayans’ Great Cycle calendar is known as K’atun 4 Ahau, representing a roughlytwenty year period that began (in its most recent appearance) on April 6, 1993and ends on December 21, 2012. Each of these k’atuns last about twenty yearsand has its own set of prophecies expressed in poetic metaphors. The mostrepeated prophesy for this k’atun is: “Hulom kuk, hulom yaxum,” translated as“Come is the quetzal, come is the blue-green bird.” The quetzal is a bird thatis symbolic of the Mesoamerican god Quetzalcoatal—theFeathered Serpent whose spirit was believed to return during each repetition ofK’atun 4 Ahau. If you know mythology, or at least mywritings about it, you probably know that snakes (most likely because theyshed their skin) often represent the illusion of time in the physical realm (asopposed to the spiritual realm where time does not exist as we know it). To me,a feathered serpent would be a portalbetween the material world of time and the spiritual world (spirit is light asa feather, and feathers allow creatures to fly high, where the spiritual realmis thought to exist).

 

According to Johnson, “the reference to the ‘blue-green bird’ ispuzzling when applied to the quetzalwhich is in fact bright green in color”—green, much like our superhero friendand the ring that is the source of his power (which I’ll get to soon). Johnsongoes on to write that, “In Mayan thinking, the center of the universe isblue-green” and the word used to describe it, “yax” is also often used to referto “beginnings or to the center point.”

So during this final k’atun, which we are quickly approachingthe final year of, the Mayans believed that the spiritual energy of theFeathered Serpent will reach our world from the very center of creation. Whileit may bring about massive growing pains, this energy is in fact meant to liftus higher so that we can exist on the next, higher plane of existence, just asit did the last time it came around. Since the Mayan Great Cycle is theequivalent of 5,125 years, that is how often each of these k’atuns repeat andhow long it takes for the Great Cycle to go full circle and begin again. Thelast time humanity experienced the end of a Great Cycle was in 3,114 BCE (thescientific equivalent of B.C.), which corresponds to the beginnings ofcivilization in Egypt and Mesopotamia and with it the start of urbanization,writing, and the spread of metallurgical technologies. Before that the GreatCycle came full circle in 8,239 BCE, which marked the transition from huntingto agriculture, allowing humans to settle down and build societies. Since 1993when our current k’atun began, we’ve seen the rise of the Internet, which hashelped unite the world and push technology along faster than any other time inhistory. We are now at a point however, where we must grow to be responsiblefor the effects of this technology on ourselves and our world. That, will mostlikely be the theme as we enter the next Great Cycle beginning December 21 ofnext year.

Interestingly, there is an incredibly rareastronomical event that coincides with December 21, 2012.  This event is foretold in Mayanmythology and has remnants in our own mythology involving the snake in the Garden of Eden and the Tree of Life. Onthat day, our sun will align at the exact intersection between the plane of theecliptic (the path that the Sun, Moon, planets, and stars appear to travel,from east to west, as seen from Earth) and our Milky Way galaxy. This cosmiccross was known as the SacredTree (Tree of Life) to the Maya with the north-south band of the Milky Waybeing the trunk of the tree and the main branch intersecting the tree being theplane of the ecliptic. The ecliptic intersects the Milky Way at a 60 degreeangle near the constellation Sagittarius where there is a 13th constellationthat crosses the ecliptic known as Ophiuchus. It is representedas a man (humanity) grasping a snake (the illusion of time) and is oftenconsidered the mysterious 13th sign of the zodiac. According to Mayanmythology, when the sun crosses at the center of the Sacred Tree (the center ofthe Milky Way where there is said to be a massive black hole), an energy portalis created between the earth and the world beyond so that we can interact withthe spiritual realm. Many spiritualtypes today believe that the alignment will open a channel for cosmicenergy to flow to Earth, raising us to a higher vibration.

 

 

Due to a phenomenon known as the precession ofthe equinoxes caused by a slight spinning top-like wobble of the Earth, theposition of the stars as seen from our perspective slip a little from year toyear (one degree every 71.5 years), becoming more noticeable over long periods.For this reason, the apparent location of the Winter Solstice (December 21st)sunrise has been inching towards the galactic center. Because ofthe Earth’s wobble, a true alignment takes even longer than a Great Cycle of5,125 years. In fact, the sun has not aligned this precisely with the galacticcenter in 25,800 years—long before the Mayans even existed. So December 21,2012 not only marks the end of the Mayan’s Great Cycle, but also the end of theGreat Great Cycle of 25,800 years known scientifically as a Great Year orPlatonic Year—the time it takes the precession of the equinoxes to make onecomplete rotation. This is a pretty big deal.

 

The question you may be wondering then is how did the Mayansknow all this? Did they learn it from a more advanced civilization thatpredated their own? Was it gleaned using an ability to mind-meld with theplanet? Did ancient alien visitors clue them in? While I am open to any ofthese possibilities, the real answer is probably more feasible. As a societythat lived much more directly off of the land, they were far more in tune withits cycles than we are today. Having a simpler way of life also made it easierto recognize repeating patterns, and having a far clearer sky not polluted bysmog or lights made it possible for the average person to see the stars andcalculate their movements fin order to chart crop cycles and other importantrituals. Like many civilizations of its time, Mayans also relied on shamans tointerpret events and make predictions. While shamanism is making a comebacktoday, for the most part our modern society has lost a way to get in tune withthe natural pulse of the planet and the heavens.

Ancient shamans were gifted with the ability to hear thefrequencies of the world and their people, and they used the fresh, naturalplants all around them to enhance these abilities further. These medicines werea more natural mix of plants than the synthetic, enhanced, pesticide-rich, nutrient-poordrugs of today and were used by skilled shaman who either took them themselvesor guided others on how to properly do so. Ancient drugs used by Mayans,Egyptians, Greeks, and others allowed shaman to connect with consciousness, orwhat they would consider their gods. When Christianity came around, it banneddrug use because why should anyone need the church to interpret what God wantswhen drugs allowed you to do it on your own. Being illegal and then synthesizedinto increasingly potent combinations, drugs than led to abuse, which is why wehave such a negative connotation of them today. Truth is, the banning ofnatural mind-enhancing drugs has effectively slowed our evolutionary processand losing our connection to relevant rituals, shamans, and a connection to therhythms of life have practically brought it to a standstill. This is whyancient man could build gigantic pyramids, predict the movement of the heavenswithout telescopes, and move gigantic stones on top of one another while theaverage modern man wouldn’t last a week in the wilderness without anytechnological toys. 

Thankfully, due to the incredible challenges mankind hasovercome over the past 5,000 years, we have grown to the point that we canconnect to universal wisdom without the use of drugs, and many artists,inventors, and game-changers have used them anyway to help fill in the gaps.The problem is that modern man no longer recognizes the messages of artists andstorytellers for what they are—clues to where we are and where we are headed.I’m sure that few people walked out of GreenLantern with a message that ties in with Quetzalcoatl the Feathered Serpent,the galactic alignment, and the new era we are entering in 2012. For whateverreason, I did.

Green Lantern is our Quetzalcoatl. In our modern mythology, herepresents the same archetype of the Feathered Serpent. Green Lantern is abright green, just like quetzal, the symbolic bird representation ofQuetzalcoatl. He is able to travel though portals like Quetzalcoatl, and infact, the ring, which is the source of his power, took him through one of theseportals to receive his initial training after he stated the oath.  That oath is:

In brightest day, in blackest night,

No evil shall escape my sight

Let those who worship evil's might,

Beware my power... Green Lantern's

 

 Interestingly, since the Earth will align with the sun and the Galactic Center on December 21st, I assume that it is also in relative alignment six months later on June 21st 2013, albeit, on the other side of the sun. These two dates are, of course, the Winter and Summer Solstice when we have the blackest night and brightest day on Earth. The oath also alludes to Green Lantern’s light—much like the blue-green light that emits from the center of the galaxy, the Mayan word for which also denotes a beginning or center point.

 

 

This brings us to the symbol of Green Lantern’s ring that healso bears on his chest—a glowing circle between two horizontal lines inanother circle. Viewing the symbol through the lens of Mayan culture, itinitially reminded me of the hoop for one of their games called pok-a-tok that issimilar to our basketball and that I first learned about on a History Channelspecial about 2012. According to the special, the Mayan’s goal of gettingthe ball into the hoop represented the alignment of the sun with the galacticcenter. The victor of the game would be decapitated allowing him to passdirectly to the spiritual realms without having to take the usual 13 steps toget there (correlating to the 13 constellations perhaps?). For the record, theloser would be killed as well, but without the express ticket to heaven.

 

 The symbol of Green Lantern could also represent the galacticalignment itself. The glowing center would be the center of the galaxy with thelines above and below it representing the straight band of the Milky Way. Allof this occurs behind the spherical sun represented by the bigger circle that surrounds the two parallel lines and the smaller, glowing circle. Put it together and the symbol represents the galactic alignment as it would appearfrom Earth

If these similarities weren’t enough, even the plot of Green Lantern can be seen to representthe galactic alignment. It involves an evil entity known as Parallax—adark, shapeless creature that sucks up all in its path—much like a black hole(such as the one at the center of our galaxy) would. Interestingly, theDecember 2012 alignment also occurs with the Dark Rift—a dark band thatruns along the Milky Way, parallel (sounding like Parallax?) within it from itsgalactic center northward. The Mayans called this Dark Rift the Black Road. Soin a sense, on December 21, 2012, we will be aligned with our sun at thecrossroads of dark and light.

 

At the conclusion of the film (spoiler alert), Green Lanterndefeats Parallax by using its own immense gravity against itself, causing it tosuck into the sun. To do this Green Lantern, representing the Earth, alignshimself with Parallax (the Dark Rift black hole) and the sun and must keep fromgetting sucked into either as the sun pulls Parallax into its fiery core. Byproving himself, Green Lantern elevates all of humanity which is now acceptedamong the Guardians of the Universe as an elevated species worthy ofprotection. And what initially chose Earth for this honor? The alignment-shapedring, representing the galactic alignment of 2012. It is interesting to notethat while Green Lantern was created way back in 1940, the same year Batmanappeared in his own comic book, it took until 2011—the year before the galacticalignment—before he would star in a motion picture. Why? I’d say because onlynow are we ready for the mythological message that the character represents.Its the same message that Quetzalcoatl represented for the Mayans: that we areentering a new era and are on the verge of being ready to enter it. To bedeemed worthy, we must successfully overcome challenges we have never facedbefore. Challenges that will force us to grow so that we can handle the higherenergy of this new era. Successfully doing so will earn us the respect of otherentities and perhaps even other beings of this universe which may revealthemselves to us during this next Great Cycle.

As I mentioned earlier, we have many modern shaman and it isn’tjust Green Lantern that is giving us this message. I also recognized it in thisSummer’s J.J. Abrams/Spielberg film, Super 8. The film is about a group of children in 1979who discover a dangerous monster that adults are unaware of (due to agovernment cover-up) and are initially belittled for their belief that itexists. They use their childlike innocence, inner spirit, and imagination torepel the monster (which represents adult fear, superficiality, materialism)and send it away from our world. On a metaphorical level, the movie speaks tohow people today have become disillusioned by government, big business, andmaterialism and believe we are headed for certain doom. Only those who are tunewith a higher vision will be able to steer our world away from devastation(those who were kids in the 1970s perhaps?). Both Green Lantern and Super 8share a hero who is courageous and creative and an otherworldly villain thatthreatens mankind by consuming it. They also both feature governing bodies thatinitially are hindrances to mankind (the Guardians in Green Lantern and U.S. government in Super 8) because they don’tview them as mature enough to handle the real-world challenges.

  

Getting away from movies,someone else who was preaching a similar elevation message is the recentlyridiculed Harold Campingwho made the failed predictions of a worldwide rapture/judgment for May 21,2011 and the end of the world for October 21, 2011. While his predictionsdidn’t come to pass, I think he may have been onto something. Perhaps we arecurrently going through a judgment of sorts. One where we are tested withday-to-day challenges—some even seemingly trivial like a handicapped personasking for help or a homeless person angrily threatening you. Your response maydetermine the level of challenges you will need to undergo in order to handlethe world to come.

I may be wrong, but just incase, I’ll be keeping my eyes open for strange encountersand tests from now until at leastDecember of next year and really make an effort to growout of my comfort zone. And you might want to do the same. Because even ifnothing out of the ordinary happens on December 21, 2012, the world we live innow already requires us to tap into inner strengths we didn’t know we had. Andchallenging yourself is the best way to get them to rise to the surface.

May your inner spark grow to light your way,

Marc

 

Marc Oromaner is a New York City writer whose book, The Myth of Lost offers an alternativesolution to Lost and uncovers its hidden insight into the mysteries of life. Hecan be contacted on the wall of The Mythof Lost Facebook page or on his blogThe Layman’s Answers to Everything.

The Myth of Lost is available on Amazon and barnesandnoble.com. 

Tags: oromaner, 2012, green lantern, super 8, maya, mayan calendar, shaman
Categories: Philosophy

 

 

 

As mentioned in last quarter’s column, there have been a lot of “life-as-illusion” themed movies coming out lately. While I suspect that the success of Avatar and Lost are partly responsible for this trend, I think people’s fascination with 2012, drastic world changes, and a surge in our search for meaning are also fueling the recent string of films about alternate realities and simulated worlds. When airplanes are crashing into buildings, cities are submerged underwater, the Middle East is revolting, and the world economy is collapsing, real life almost seems more fantastical than our dreams. Jon Stewart summed it up perfectly at the 2008 Academy Awards: “Normally, when you see a black man or a woman president, an asteroid is about to hit the Statue of Liberty.” Yes, we are now officially living in the future, and we all know what kind of stuff happens in the future—exactly the kind of stuff that’s happening right now. But at least, thanks to Hollywood, we’ve been warned. And Hollywood’s heads up may even go much deeper than prophesies of events to come. They may help explain the reality we all find ourselves in.

 

 

 

Living in these times is very surreal. Our current lives were the stuff of science-fiction just a generation ago. Shows like The Jetsons, couldn’t even imagine the concept of email, so the space-age family received their paper mail by pneumatic tubes instead; Dick Tracy had a phone in his watch; James Bond gave audiences their first look at remote controls, pagers, and pocket-sized voice recorders; and nanobot technology explored in such sci-fi as the X-Files is is currently being tested for medical applications and more. So if Hollywood was pretty close or even dead-on in bringing up these seemingly far-fetched ideas, what are we to make of the most recent string of films that demonstrate how we will be able to zap ourselves into other realities? Films like Avatar, TRON: Legacy, and Source Code illustrate some fascinating uses for technology.  And they also bring up some interesting questions about what, if anything, is really real?

 

 

 

If a baby spends it’s entire life as an avatar of a being on another planet, was that experience real? What if you were downloaded into a videogame world, or plugged into an alternate reality to help prevent a terrorist attack? Which aspect of you is real, if either? While these concepts make great fodder for philosophers and futurists, for me, I am most intrigued by what they seem to be telling us about our world right now. In addition to the films listed above, Hollywood has provided a plethora of movies such as Inception, The Adjustment Bureau, Sucker Punch, and Limitless that allude to other realities that are going on behind the scenes. Much like Inception, these myth-movies can be deciphered on a bunch of different levels.

 

 I can watch Limitless and initially be entertained by a story about a struggling writer who takes a pill to increase his brain function and winds up becoming one of the most powerful people in the world. If I look deeper I may see it as hint to our brains’ hidden potentials. Looking deeper still, I may see it as a warning about the abuse of technology and class. According to the brilliant inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil, in the near future, we may all need to get brain upgrades or implants just to be able to keep up with the rapidly changing world. Of course, not everyone will have access to this technology. Those who aren’t among the privileged therefore will fall even further behind as the gap between the classes stretches to epic proportions. The “Haves” will get the brain upgrades and be able to successfully compete in society. The “Have Nots” won’t, and will eventually be relegated to the status of workers, slaves, or even animals. (Both X-Men and The Planet of the Apes also work off of this theme, and interestingly, the prequels to both films will be out this summer).

 

 

 

In The Adjustment Bureau, Matt Damon’s character discovers that life on earth is manipulated by a clandestine group of agents following an overall plan of their executive and chief. Is this a story about God and angels? About the programmers of our simulated world? About the secret societies that manipulate oil prices and provoke wars? About your life and the series of coincidences that seem to guide you to some predetermined destiny? The answer to all these questions, is “yes.” The movie applies to many truths of our world just as most myths do. These truths all seem to fit into some kind of general rule or template, with the difference only being in the details. It’s almost as if every event in our world is a take on an overall grand theme—different versions of the same story again and again. Not only does this repetition of themes happen in our world, it happens in our stories as well. (For a darker take on the exact same theme as The Adjustment Bureau—including the mysterious men in Fedora hats—I highly recommend Dark City.) In truth, most myths are simply updates of stories that came before, just as the events of our world are updates of previous events that happened before: the collapse of the banks that were too big to fail was an update of the sinking of the unsinkable Titanic which was an update of the fall of the mighty Tower of Babel. Once you realize that the series of steps that make up a movie also make up much of our lives, you can begin to use this information to help you on your journey. This wisdom in and of itself is demonstrated in another recent life-as-illusion movie, Sucker Punch.

 

 

 

In Sucker Punch, a young girl is institutionalized by her abusive stepfather, and begins to have delusions of living in an alternate reality as a coping mechanism. The mechanism helps her to do more than cope, but work out an escape from the corrupt mental institution. So her dreams can be thought of as the movies, and her life as your life. One of the messages of the movie therefore, is that you can use the wisdom found in films to help you in your life. And that the specific movies you choose to see, are designed to work sequentially to help you through what you are going through in the moment you view them. The movie I saw before Sucker Punch just happened to be The Runaways, about Joan Jett’s rocker grrrl band she was in before going solo. The theme of kick ass chicks definitely fits into both films, but the real connection for me came in the name of a plane in Sucker Punch—Cherry Bomb—the first hit for The Runaways. After I noticed that during the film, I whispered to my fiancée that there would probably be a link between Sucker Punch and the next film we were about to see—Limitless. Shortly after Limitless began, she noticed that both films shared the same actress. Despite looking very different in the two films, Abbie Cornish kept the connection going. My takeaway was that all these stories fit together into some kind of personal instruction manual. Show me the exact order of movies and stories that someone has experienced over the course of their life, I’ll show you that person’s destiny and the challenges and successes they had on their path towards achieving it.

 

At the start of my first film class during my freshman year in college, the professor warned us that we would never again be able to simply just watch and enjoy a movie. Obviously, I didn’t heed his warning, but I definitely prefer the insights that the class and the school of life have given me. These insights apply not just to the way movies can be interpreted, but all stories—including those of the Bible. As I wrote in one of my Lost In Myth columns, there are four different perspectives from which the Bible (particularly, of the Old Testament or Torah) is traditionally studied and interpreted. These four levels are the literal, metaphoric/parabolic, searching, and hidden/secret level. To demonstrate how much mythological meat a typical life-as-illusion film can provide, let’s examine one of this year’s better movies with this theme using these four levels.

 

From a literal perspective, Source Code is an action flick about a soldier who finds himself in another man’s body as part of a secret government mission to uncover the bomber of a Chicago commuter train. We quickly come to learn that the train has already been destroyed but that the soldier, Colter Stevens played by Jake Gyllenhaal, can be continually downloaded into an alternate reality before the train exploded in order to find clues as to the identity of the bomber. The majority of movie critic reviews focus on this level—the plot, story, characters, etc. Also, the majority of Evangelicals interpret the Bible from this perspective. In my opinion, they are missing three-quarters of the message. 

 

From a metaphoric or parabolic (allegorical) perspective, the movie brings up all kinds of interesting questions about the morality of technology, messing with people’s lives and free will, as well as questions about fate and the possibilities of alternate versions of our reality. Looking deeper into this perspective, a train can be seen as representing time, our lifetime, or our destiny. It chugs along a certain path, continually moving forward. And along the way, certain people get on and off—coming in and out of your life. Those in closest proximity to you will likely have the biggest effect on your personal voyage, while the hidden elements of your ride—the engineer, the system that assigned your seat, those who designed, built, and maintained the tracks, have the greatest impact on your overall journey.

 

In the film, Stevens is told to try and ignore the distractions of the people on the train in order to fulfill his mission. This is a metaphor for how we often get caught up in the trivial elements of life and miss the big picture of our life’s purpose. Often times, it seems as though these day-to-day distractions are put in our way to give us something to overcome—a challenge to rise above so that we may grow and do what our soul truly wants us to do. Our destiny is the ultimate result of us overcoming these obstacles, giving us the strength we need to fulfill our final mission. The fact that it’s a lot like a videogame, where you must overcome obstacles to defeat the toughest opponent at the end of the level, is no accident. Even our videogames are full of useful wisdom. In fact, instead of these life challenges being for the good of our soul, perhaps we were put into a simulated world so that our real-world selves could grow in a controlled environment. Different details, same overall message—one that’s illustrated in a way we can understand, at least subconsciously, thanks to this movie.

 

 

 

Once you are open to viewing our world as some sort of simulation, created to help us work past our challenges, millions of other possibilities arise. What if the myth of angels is actually about avatars of beings from outside the game who help guide us through it? I’ve had many experiences that have had me wondering about this. Recently, I saw a homeless man downtown that I usually see by the subway station near my Upper East Side apartment. Most homeless people are pretty territorial, so I thought it a bit strange. I was all the way by Wall Street and he just happened to be at the subway exit I was getting out from. I said “hello,” since we sometimes talk but he didn’t seem to recognize me. An hour later, I was returning to the station on the other side of the street to go home, and the same man was on the platform on that side now. We had a brief conversation and he now remembered me. In those brief minutes, he brought up some perspectives I hadn’t thought of before and then I took the train to go to work. That was at 11AM. At 7:30PM, I was heading home. I had just made the local train as the doors were closing at 33^rd Street and slipped out through its closing doors again at 42^nd Street just as the express train pulled into the station. I got on the train and moved to the corner and looked down. There, in front of me, was David—the homeless man I’d seen twice earlier. He was sleeping but I tapped on his knee. He slowly opened his eyes and upon seeing me, gave a knowing smile. He got off at the same station as me and we went our separate ways. I offered to buy him a hot dog but he had declined. Since becoming homeless, I’d say he’s gained about fifty pounds. Perhaps I should’ve offered a salad.

 

In a related story, just yesterday a handicapped man in a wheelchair stopped me as I was jogging to the park. He asked if I could wheel him there. I did. His name was Dan and he told me he had a Ph.D. in psychology and was working on an autobiography, which, he added, was a very interesting story. He reminded me of physicist Stephen Hawking and with his two hearing aids, slurred speech, and arms awkwardly bent, seemed to be suffering from a similar, debilitating disease. When I got him to the park, I wheeled him over to a section near the park benches. As I stretched out, I kept an eye on him, wondering what he was going to do. He was pretty much just sitting there, slightly moving back in forth to the best of his ability. I began to wonder if I had possibly just inadvertently kidnapped this man. Perhaps he was making a break from his caretaker or nurse. I thought I’d walk over and ask him his plans. But when I looked over again, he was gone! I quickly scanned the area. Had some volunteer offered to push him around the outer path? I looked on the path, but he wasn’t there. I’d only looked away for a minute at most! There was no way he could’ve stopped someone, explained the situation, gotten them to push him off of the dirt area and onto the path, and be out of range in that time. Had he just vanished? Was it a test? How did I do? I keep expecting to see missing posters of the guy on mailboxes in my area. Either that, or some report about how the guy had actually died a week before I’d met him. Perhaps I’ve watched too many Twilight Zones. I prefer to believe he was an avatar or angel, sent to give me a little nudge—a slight correction to help me get out of my me-zone and reach out to someone else. Sometimes, a slight turn of the wheel is all it takes to avoid hitting an iceberg. Assuming you do it early enough.

 

One more story to add. Just this morning, I was awoken at 8:21AM by an Angel. Angel Rodriquez apologized for having the wrong number, but I don’t believe in accidents. Having written most of this column the night before, perhaps it’s just the universe, the powers that be, or the beings outside of the simulation having a bit of fun, or providing some sort of confirmation. Of course, all these strange events could be originating from me somehow, and being that they usually fit my quirky sense of humor, I’ve suspected as much. In last quarter’s column, I wrote that, “We are subconsciously giving ourselves the clues that are sprinkled throughout our lives because our souls—or future versions of ourselves—already know the path we are meant to follow.” Plug in the metaphor of a simulated world, and the clues can be originating from the program itself, the programmers, or our own subconscious minds as they exist outside of the program. If we are in this program against our will, perhaps we are attempting to wake ourselves up. If we are there by choice, perhaps we are attempting to help ourselves succeed. Either way, so far, these clues have helped me on my path so I will continue to pay attention to them. The more I do, the more I seem to get. If nothing else, I feel that they make life more interesting—kind of like a fun puzzle or mystery we’re meant to solve. As part of the Scooby-Doo, Encyclopedia Brown, Choose Your Own Adventure, Myst, and Lost generation, somehow, I bet there are many others who enjoy solving the clues too.

 

 

 

Getting back to the four perspectives, we come to the third one—the searching perspective. This view requires outside references. In Source Code, there’s a line about how sometimes it’s easier to rebuild from rubble than to fix problems that have gotten too severe. And of course, to get the rubble, you have to destroy what you have. The scary thing is when it’s society you’re talking about, and scarier still when you can see the logic in this perspective. There is a lot of talk of end times and apocalypse lately. Personally, I’m not in the camp of world destruction for 2012 or anytime soon. However, I do feel like we are going through a major change, and that many people aren’t going to be able to adapt. My feeling is that those who value themselves based on what that own, rather than who they are, are going to have a hard go of it during the upcoming years. While I don’t think society or the world will be destroyed, I think the way of life we’ve gotten used to will be. But then, in its place, a much more productive one will arise. Mythology is full of the theme of things breaking down only to become stronger. There’s the phoenix, Jesus Christ, just about every hero’s journey including superheroes, the rebuilding of the Holy Temples, etc. It’s a theme that makes up the story of humanity, and one that I think we’ll see repeating for our society very soon. Source Code shows us how we are all traveling on this journey together, and our journeys may be cut short. We may see what seems like needless destruction, but it may turn out to be for a greater good. Even if you or I don’t survive the changeover.

 

 

 

The name of the film itself is also a tipoff. Source Code reminds me of the Bible code—the word search-like system of hidden messages in the Bible that contain messages related to the stories from where they are found. Some mystics believe that the sequence of letters in the Hebrew Bible is a literal code for the program of this world. If a binary code of 1s and 0s can reproduce every movie you’ve ever seen, what could a code of 22 Hebrew letters create? Perhaps the reality we find ourselves in, with its repeating themes and cycles within cycles. In many ways, Source Code can be seen as the story of our entire reality—a game with a program that allows for any action as long as it has been written into the code. So we live in the reality we notice, but every time we make a decision, we leap into another where everything is exactly the same except for the one aspect we changed and the repercussions that result from it—repercussions that could have effects we aren’t even aware of. This idea is the stuff of quantum physics and applies in theories about many worlds and mutiverses that I’ve discussed in other columns. But the fact that these relatively deep concepts are now showing up in mainstream movies, is telling of how we are evolving and the level of information we are growing to be able to handle. Whether you are conscious of it or not, shows like Lost and movies like Avatar, Inception, and Source Code are all helping us to understand how the world may really work.

 

Finally, we reach the fourth level of interpretation: the hidden/secret level that is derived from mystical, kabbalistic techniques. Unfortunately, I am not learned enough in the wisdom of kabbalah to do this movie justice from this level. But one area of the teachings that I am familiar with is the idea of “as above, so below.” This relates to the belief that everything that happens in our realm, is reflected in a realm beyond this one. Call it heaven, an alternate reality, the code of this programmed world, or whatever, but nothing can happen here, that doesn’t also happen there, and vice-versa. For a movie like Source Code, you could have a field day with plugging this movie into that perspective. The basic premise alone is chock-full of implications, but especially the film’s takeaway. Sort of like kabbalah, I can’t talk much about this level of the film because it requires giving away some spoilers, but once you’ve seen it, I’m sure its overall concept will give you much to think about…or not, if you just watch movies to be entertained. Considering that you made it this far into the column, somehow, I doubt that is usually the case.

 

So, once you become like me, and can no longer simply enjoy movies without looking at their deeper meaning, can you ever go back to the bliss of ignorance? The answer is no. Much like the hobbits at the end of The Lord of the Rings, the adventure changes you, and you begin to hear a greater calling. One that is no longer satisfied with just the trappings of the material world, and instead, longs for deeper meaning. Of course, the higher your potential, the harder the challenges will be needed to take you where you need to go. And if you haven’t fully let go of your old life, your new one will be challenging indeed—much like society as a whole in the years ahead.

 

 

 

In M. Night Shyamalan’s The Last Airbender, the character of Aang (the last airbender) runs away after learning that to fulfill his destiny he must give up ever having a family or even any kind of love. It’s a story similar to most superhero myths, and often, the story for those who chose to sacrifice themselves for the greater good. On a more personal scale, it’s our story when we sacrifice having a family for our passions, a career for our kids, more money for more fulfillment, our ego for our instincts, and our holiday weekends for what we believe to be our calling.

 

May your inner spark grow to light your way,

Marc

 

 

Marc Oromaner is a New York City writer whose book, The Myth of Lost offers an alternative solution to Lost and uncovers its hidden insight into the mysteries of life. He can be contacted in the discussion section of The Myth of Lost Facebook page or on his blog The Layman’s Answers to Everything.

 

The Myth of Lost is available on Amazon and barnesandnoble.com.

 

 

Tags: oromaner, illusion, source code, the adjustment bureau, limitless, sucker punch, inception
Categories: Future Tech | Gaming | General | Life | Nanotech | Philosophy | Programmed Reality | Quantum Mechanics

 

 

There have been a lot of “life-as-illusion” themed movies coming out lately. We’ve had Avatar, Inception, and TRON: Legacy, and this month alone there’s The Adjustment Bureau, Limitless, Sucker Punch and Source Code. All these films share themes of alternate realities, questions about what is reality, and insight into powers that might be manipulating the reality we live in. While I hope to discuss the most recent batch of these films in an upcoming column, for now I’d like to bring up one that slipped past the radar of many moviegoers. This film actually gave me goose bumps when it revealed an angle that I’ve only recently adopted, and have never before seen in any other movie. That film is Disney’s Tangled.

 

While there aren’t really any huge revelations in this film, I must unfortunately reveal a small one to describe the scene that made such an impression on me. It’s actually not even a revelation, since the audience has been aware all along of what finally gets revealed to the main character. Still, how the protagonist learns of this certain fact could be considered a bit of a spoiler. So, I have to recommend that you see the film before reading any further, or else the scene’s impact will be dampened.

 

Based on the classic Rapunzel fairytale collected by The Brother’s Grimm, Tangled is the story of a young girl who is locked in a tower by Mother Gothel in order to take advantage of the girl’s magical hair. When Rapunzel sings an incantation, the hair’s healing properties restores the youth of the aging woman. Trapped in the tower, Rapunzel leads a sheltered existence playing with her pet chameleon Pascal and painting a mural of floating lights that she sees outside her window every year on her birthday. Things remain the same, until one day, a charming thief named Flynn Ryder breaks into her tower.  After being captured by her, he agrees to take her to the place where the floating lights come from. Once outside the tower, Rapunzel has the adventure of her life and discovers who she truly is.

 

So, what’s the big deal? It’s all pretty much typical Disney-fare. In fact, this was another thing I liked about the film—that it returned to its classic Disney roots (pun intention not disclosed). While a 3-D version of this film was available, I preferred to watch the film through my mythology 4-D glasses instead, and I assure you, it made the movie that much better.

 

 

 

Rapunzel represents us, confined within the constraints of life and forced to make the best of it. Sure, there are all kinds of distractions to keep us occupied: chores, family obligations, playing dress-up with different costumes, but what Rapunzel really longs for, is to explore the outside world. Unfortunately, based on the stories of Mother Gothel (aka, society), she is too scared to take a leap of faith outside her tower and embrace her destiny. From her window, she can see these beautiful floating lamps that look like stars across the nighttime sky. They inspire her to create a mural on the wall of her room, and help her to mentally escape the dreariness of her existence. Only upon meeting the thief does she gain the courage to disobey her captor and go with her gut. And the two of them set out to find the origin of the lamps.

 

 

 

The scene that really resonated with me happened near the end of the film when Rapunzel realizes who she really is. Staring at one of the murals she’s painted on her wall, she realizes that it has been embedded with a symbol that she’d subconsciously hidden for herself. She quickly realizes that the symbol is present throughout the mural and all the others she’s painted in her room. The symbol is that of a sun, and it is the symbol of the kingdom from where she was a princess until she was kidnapped as a baby. It is this very kingdom that releases floating lamps every year on her birthday in the hope that she will one day return to them. Rapunzel had remembered the symbol because it was at the center of a mobile that had been above her crib as an infant. Pretty deep for a Disney film, eh? Even deeper is how this scene relates to our lives.

 

 

 

Many of us experience serendipitous occurrences, hints, or hidden messages on occasion. Up until recently, I have interpreted these as clues provided by the universe that we are meant to follow in order to fulfill our destiny. There has been no doubt for me that these clues exist, or that they contain messages meant for me. What I have been more unsure about however, is where the clues come from. If life is a videogame of sorts, could they be written into the program to help us on our journey? Or, perhaps spirit guides or the ghosts of loved ones deliver them to us. Lately however, I’ve been leaning more towards another theory: that the clues are being provided by us. We are subconsciously giving ourselves the clues that are sprinkled throughout our lives because our souls—or future versions of ourselves—already know the path we are meant to follow. Just as Rapunzel subconsciously knew that she was from the kingdom of the sun, we too know—on some level—that we really exist on a level beyond this illusionary realm. And every once in awhile, we give ourselves a clue to help us uncover the truth.

 

For most of us, life is about dealing with all the BS of being stuck in the tower. And truth is, this is all just a distraction from what we are really supposed to be doing. The tower obstacle is put in our way so that we can grow ourselves to rise above it, or escape from it—whatever metaphor you prefer. The point of life then, is not to make more money, get a better job, a bigger home, a faster car, or a better body, it is to follow our bliss, which may or may not involve achieving any of these things.

 

 

 

The other day, I finally got around to watching another animated film Coraline. In this movie, the “life-as-illusion” theme is apparent in the story (as opposed to Tangled which requires some mythological interpretation). Lying in bed that night, a thought struck me that might have been influenced by the movie: if life is a game, what if the object is to leave it with the least amount of material attachments. The twist however, is that we must learn to be happy without any of them. Of course, this is by no means an original idea, it’s pretty much the theme of every major world religion. But I don’t think it’s just money and materialistic attachments that we must let go of, but any physical item or idea that we hold onto to help us get through life. I think it’s no accident that there are many shows out today about hoarding or picking, or pawning our personal sacred treasures. But what would happen if we were to let all of these things go? How many of them do we really need? As I begin to clean out my childhood home and my current apartment in anticipation of a move, I’ve been asking myself this question quite a bit. Why do we feel a need to hold onto these things?  And it’s not just things either, it’s beliefs—religious or society-influenced.

 

Personally, I believe that this “letting go” is a theme that we are being invited to embrace lately. And if we don’t embrace it ourselves, the world is going to do it for us—either with a crashed economy that keeps us from buying all the distractions we feel we need, an earthquake or tsunami that causes us to lose everything we own, an upheaval of the leaders of our nation, or a toppling of beliefs that we’ve held onto for so long. The word “apocalypse” actually means, “to reveal.” A revelation of what this world really is, who we really are and what we are really meant to do. The illusion is crumbling, the curtain is being pulled back, and the veil is lifting to show us that we’ve all just been trapped in a tower, and that there is an incredible world out there just waiting to be explored. All you have to do is to let go of your fears and explore them.

Easier said then done, I know, but the universe does seem to be trying to help, and by universe, I mean us. We all subconsciously know what we are meant to do, so we are creating the events to help us do it and the clues to show us the path beyond all the ridiculous distractions and entanglements of modern life.

 

Several months ago, I began seeing a message popping up in various places all around my Upper East Side neighborhood. The message said:

 

BECOME YOUR DREAM

 

Sometimes it was scrawled on the sidewalk in chalk, other times it was written in marker or paint on an old dirty mattress or some other garbage that was being “let go” of. Sometimes it was accompanied by an image of a walking fish (having escaped the confines of his bowl) and sometimes it was written in Spanish. Every time, however, it always seemed to be speaking directly to me, as it probably seems to every person who notices it. Today, as I jogged around the Central Park loop, I saw the message written at least one hundred times on the asphalt, so it got me curious as to who is writing them.

 

 

 

Turns out that the messages were started by a New York City artist, James De La Vega, who painted a mural featuring the message along with a fish jumping out of its bowl on East 95th Street between 1st and 2nd Avenue—a mere eight blocks from my apartment. Now, considering the similarities between De La Vega’s mural, and Rapunzel’s mural and the idea of escaping from a fishbowl and escaping from a tower, you’d think that I had noticed this connection and planned on writing about it for this column. But the truth is, I had no idea that I was going to mention the De La Vega mural or the messages until I began writing this. It just kind of flowed out—from my subconscious self. The self that has been guiding me this whole time with many messages that have included: “Nothing Is Real,” “Follow Your Bliss,” and now “”Become Your Dream.” All have three words, the first with two syllables and the second and third with one each. Repeat it out loud and you get: da-da da da, which sounds like the opening of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. Is this rhythm some kind of chant to inspire artists and writers? Is it an incantation to awaken our inner powers? Is it soul-speak light language to channel spirit guide upgrades into our chakras? I dunno. Once again, all this is coming to me as I write. I have no idea where I’m going with this. Consciously anyway, but perhaps you do.

 

It would seem that only a select few are meant to read this message. There’s a small portion who receive my columns to begin with, an even smaller portion who read them, and a teeny-tiny portion of those who have seen Tangled and read this particular one, or didn’t see it and decided to risk it anyway. I think the point is that we are coming to a stage in our evolution where the current confines of society no longer serve us. Letting go of everything we have ever known is very challenging indeed. But if we are not proactive about it, we are going to be pushed to experience these things whether we like it or not. As the Reverend Michael Beckwith has said, “Pain pushes you until the vision pulls you.” And as James De La Vega and those inspired by him are encouraging, “Become Your Dream.” The dream of the sun symbol that Rapunzel subconsciously remembered from her youth translates mythologically into the idea that we are all children of the sun—beings of the light—and as this illusionary existence breaks down, we shouldn’t be afraid. We are only letting go of what no longer serves us.

 

In the Hebrew Midrash, there is a section that talks about the panic that will ensue during the end of days where the Israelites (mythologically speaking, the spiritual people of this world) will hysterically cry, “Where will we come and go? Where will we come and go?” God comes to them and says, “Do not fear my children, do not fear. All that I have done I did only for you. Why are you afraid? The time for your Redemption has come!” I remember hearing this long ago and it still gives me the chills. To me, this section is describing what happens when we lose all our material possessions—all the things we have held onto physically, mentally, and emotionally. And once we no longer have them, we are in a panic and don’t know what to do. This will be a time of transition and like any drastic change, it will be scary as we try to adapt. But where will we come and go? To help us deal with the severity of the situation, my suggestion would be to go within. But this inner-world is something we have to work on now, and the more we build it up and let go of our creature comforts and imagined needs, the smoother the transition will be.

 

We must all discover our inner passion, and live it. Doing so strengthens our connection to the purest part of our souls and allows us to see beyond the illusionary world we live in today. Mediate, do yoga, let go of societal paradigms and materialistic trappings. Become your dream. In addition to that message, “Follow Your Bliss,” and “Nothing Is Real,” there is another one that has been following me around since I was fifteen. It is the number 42, and according the The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, it is supposedly the answer to everything. The number popped up again as Fox Mulder’s apartment number in The X-Files and again as one of the sequence of numbers in the TV show Lost. If, like all these other clues, I created this for the current version of my life experience (as you have created your clues for yours), then what could it mean? I’m not sure, but I will be 42 in the year 2013. Perhaps, in the year after 2012, we will finally have the answers we’ve been seeking. Or, perhaps it won’t be revealed until 2042…or, perhaps it’s all just the musings of a raving lunatic. I’ll leave it up to you to decide. But regardless of your choice, I still suggest you get inspired by art, escape your tower, and become your dream, just in case.

 

 

Marc Oromaner is a New York City writer whose book, The Myth of Lost offers an alternative solution to Lost and uncovers its hidden insight into the mysteries of life. He can be contacted in the discussion section of The Myth of Lost Facebook page or on his blog The Layman’s Answers to Everything.

 

The Myth of Lost is available on Amazon and barnesandnoble.com.

Tags: the layman, tron, avatar, inception, the adjustment bureau, limitless, sucker punch, source code, tangled, illusion, fairytale, clues, subconscious, coraline, letting go, become your dream, god,
Categories: Gaming | Life | Philosophy | Programmed Reality

 

When I first saw The Matrix back in 1999, I instantly became fascinated with its “virtual reality world” concept. At the time, and for many years afterwards, I saw the theme as a metaphor for the illusionary material world we live in—a world of time, space, and the assumption that we are all separate individuals. My belief, in line with what I had taken from kabbalah, was that in reality, we were all one united energy force. Call it God, the light, Buddha, Allah, the universe, sentient energy, whatever. The point was that this energy created our illusionary world in order to experience itself. After all, since it was an all-knowing, all-powerful energy, existence was pretty boring. This energy wanted to experience the one thing it couldn’t know: what it was like to not be it. So, it created an imaginary world of time and space and separated itself there into different material elements that eventually evolved into human beings.

 

The reason The Matrix worked so well, I felt, was because its alternate reality storyline fit so perfectly with this illusionary world concept. Being connected through the world wide web in the computer world was a metaphor for how we are all part of one energy. The glitches of this simulation is just like the déjà vu we experience in our world, which, I’ve always thought of as our mind recalling pieces of our predetermined destiny. The signs and clues in the programming of this simulation are just like the clues the universe gives us to fulfill our destiny. Everything fit quite uncannily into place. A computer simulation was the perfect metaphor for the world we lived in! More recently however, I’ve got to thinking if it is actually a metaphor after all.

 

Besides The Matrix, there are a number of mind-expanding movies that share the “simulated world” theme: everything from Tron and Total Recall (pre-Matrix) to The Thirteenth Floor and eXistenZ (which both came out around the same time as The Matrix). These latter two films are particularly good at making us question what reality truly is. They make us wonder if it’s even possible to know whether the world we live in is actually real or not. While I first heard about it many years ago, I finally got a chance to see eXistenZ (pronounced eggs-a-stenz) in April when a co-worker lent me her copy on DVD. Funny how that always happens. Even though I was already well acquainted with the alternate reality concept (having written about it thoroughly for my book, The Myth of Lost), the film still managed to blow my mind. The reason, I think, is because it got me wondering whether the alternate-reality theme is simply a metaphor for how the universe actually works, as I had always assumed, or, if we quite literally all do live in a computer simulated world. A short time later, I got my answer. Funny how that always happens.

 

A friend of mine invited me to the Tribeca Film Festival and we picked out two movies to see. Unfortunately, she became sick but I went anyway. One of the films was Transcendent Man, a documentary about the beliefs of the brilliant inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil. The film presents what Kurzweil’s calls, the singularity: “a point in the near future when technology will be changing so rapidly, we will have to enhance ourselves with artificial intelligence to keep up.” One of the themes of the film is that once the singularity arrives (which Ray predicts will happen as early as 2045) in addition to our ability to live virtually forever and cure world hunger and poverty, there will be “no clear distinction between human and machine, real reality and virtual reality.” Of course, critics point out The Matrix and Terminator themes of not being able to control machines once this happens, but that’s a discussion for another day. The point I want to bring up here is the epiphany I had while watching Transcendent Man, and the question I asked Mr. Kurzweil who was at the showing.

 

In the film, technology is referred to as evolving exponentially because new technologies are continually used to create the next generation of technology. Looking at how much the world has changed in the last 25 years alone, there’s really no arguing this point. The film also brought up alternate reality Internet games such as Second Life. Now, since technology evolves exponentially, it is very probable to assume, as Mr. Kurzweil does, that within just a few short decades such virtual worlds will be so realistic, they will be indistinguishable from the real world. My question began my making these points and then one more. Once these alternate reality worlds get to this stage, isn’t it very likely that new alternate reality worlds will be created within these worlds. In fact, this has already happened. I’ve played many video games where there were other games within these games. (Final Fantasy VII for example had an entire arcade where you could play games within the game.)

 

With me so far? Good, because here was the kicker. Since technology evolves exponentially, and alternate reality games will eventually create other realities inside of themselves, isn’t it highly unlikely that the reality we live in is the very first, original world? Isn’t it much more probable that The Matrix got it right and that we too live in a simulation? Isn’t it a bit egocentric to believe that we are the very first reality in existence in the history of creation? Seems like the same odds of us being the only planet with intelligent life out of the billions upon billions of galaxies that exist out there, each one with billions of planets. Kurzweil agreed with my point about the virtual reality worlds becoming indistinguishable from reality, but stopped short of agreeing that our world was already a simulation.

 

Several days later however, someone on my Myth of Lost Facebook page serendipitously directed me to a website by someone who wrote an entire book (The Universe Solved) filled with tons of evidence supporting the very same conclusion I’d just reached. (Funny how that always happens.) I contacted the author of the book, Jim Elvidge, and he replied with the following: “Your argument is exactly the argument that philosopher Nick Bostrom made in his paper “Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?”

 

Considering that his paper was presented to the department of philosophy at Oxford, I felt like I was in good company. Still, I haven’t had a chance to read it yet, possibly because I noticed it contains formulas like this:

 

 

 

Now, I’m not saying that these endorsements from two very smart guys (Jim got his masters in electrical engineering from Cornell) prove anything, but it does give the theory a lot of weight. The question I had next however, is that assuming we are actually all in a simulation, why are we here? I whittled the possibilities down to the three that made the most sense.

 

1.    Through pollution, war, or overpopulation, the first generation of humans made the planet they were living too unbearable for any decent standard of living. Their solution was to create a simulated world filled with characters created in their own image and to plug themselves into it and live their lives within this realm.

2.    The humans that exist in the outside world live in a very advanced society. Those who do not fit within it, either because they have committed crimes or simply can’t cope, are hooked up to a correctional simulation program designed to help rehabilitate them to re-enter society.

3.    Much like The Matrix, humans have been put into the simulation program against their will either by our own machines uprising against us, aliens, or a sect of humans who overpowered the rest of us.

 

While I’m sure all this sounds completely fantastical and close to impossible, if you really start to think about it, you realize that the world we believe ourselves to live in is no less improbable. I don’t know about you, but I have absolutely noticed bizarre serendipitous occurrences in my life that lead me on my path. This includes everything from getting messages from the radio and strangers on the street to chance meetings and “coincidences” with such impossible odds of occurring you have to laugh. After noticing these occurrences in your own life, ask yourself which is more likely: that we are all part of an artificial reality, programmed to direct us on a certain path, or, that everything we see around us happened either completely by accident or was created by an almighty being who micro-manages the lives of every creature in the universe. I’m going with simulation.

 

The other cool thing about the simulation theory of our world, is that it plugs so neatly into the beliefs of most world religions. The Judeo-Christian idea that God created us in His own image is just that the creators of this program made us look just like them. The Hindu concept of reincarnation translates to dying as one computer character and then coming back as another. The Buddhist concept of us all being connected just means that we are all literally plugged in to the game. Most religions believe in destiny, which simply relates to the programming code of the simulation we are in. Even the beliefs of quantum physicists come into play since they believe time is an illusion. Yes, because everything that has happened, is happening or could happen is already programmed, existing all in one moment (think of a computer game that takes months for you to clear all existing on a CD-Rom or DVD that you can hold in your hand.) Then there are concepts that exist within the real world or our mythology that have similar metaphors in the virtual world. Viruses that make us sick and computer viruses are almost the exact same thing. An avatar is a god that takes some form in our world, not unlike an avatar that represents you in the online world. And coming soon, just as we update our computer files, we’ll probably be able to plug into something that’ll update us. Imagine being able to update your brain’s memory or processing speed. This is all part of the singularity that Ray Kurzweil is talking about.

 

So, there is definitely a lot of evidence that we may be living in a simulation. Now, once you accept that, there’s another question which may pop up and nag at you so ruthlessly that it forces you to write a 2,000 page book called The Layman’s Answers to Everything which you are hoping to one day get out into the world. Or maybe it’s just me. Anyway, this question originally hit me in regards to the illusionary nature of the world more so than it specifically being a computer simulation, but it works either way. The question is, if our world is an illusion/simulation, is it more like The Matrix, and we’re all in it together in an interactive game so to speak, or, is it more like The Truman Show, and you are actually the only real being and everything else is simply part of the illusion designed to help you on your path? In other words, are we all playing together on the Internet, or solo at home…by ourselves…with no one else in existence at all? The sad truth is that there is actually no way to prove whether or not you are the only real consciousness within this simulated world. Imagine if after you die you find out that YOU were God and you just created this illusion because you were lonely. So if you think that the world sucks, really, you have no one to blame but yourself.

 

So, what’s to be made of all this? Does any of it matter? Whether this world is real or not, it seems pretty real to us so we might as well make the best of it. Yet, if we knew that it wasn’t real, perhaps we could take advantage of that fact. Perhaps we could use our minds to impact our characters’ realities. Maybe we could take advantage of some kind of glitch and win the lottery or in Las Vegas. Or, maybe we could find a hidden Easter Egg or secret cheat code that enables us to make this world our bitch and do whatever we please with it—time travel, reading minds, turning invisible, flying. I don’t know about you, but I’m going to be on the lookout for that secret cheat code. According to The Thirteenth Floor, the first place to look is the last place you’d ever go. Hmmm, perhaps there is an accountant’s convention coming up…in Mongolia. I might have to look into that.

 

Marc Oromaner is a New York City writer whose book, The Myth of Lost offers an alternative solution to Lost and uncovers its hidden insight into the mysteries of life. He can be contacted in the discussion section of The Myth of Lost Facebook page or on his blog The Layman’s Answers to Everything.

 

The Myth of Lost is available on Amazon and barnesandnoble.com.

 

 

Tags: the matrix, illusion, tron, total recall, the 13th floor, existenz, the myth of lost, ray kurzweil, transcendent man, singularity, video games, jim elvidge, nick bostrom, simulation, the truman show, the layman
Categories: Future Tech | Gaming | Life | Philosophy | Programmed Reality | Quantum Mechanics