Levels of the Grid
Reality is not what it is. It consists of the many realities which it can be made into.
—Wallace Stevens, Opus Posthumous
The word universe is supposed to mean everything that exists. Today, we're almost certain that our universe is not all there is. There really could be parallel earths, parallel yous, and parallel mes. It's hard not to wonder what our alter egos might be like, whether they're living out our most cherished dreams. But, don't forget this possibility: You could already be living the dream of another you from a parallel universe.
—Morgan Freeman, Curiosity: Is There a Parallel Universe?
Go then. There are other worlds than these.
—Stephen King, The Gunslinger
Levels. Worlds. Universes. Are these simply the ideas of science fiction and fantasy, or is there an actual science behind a grid-like structure of reality? Descriptions of multiple and parallel worlds, alternate dimensions of space and time, and realities that lie hidden beneath the visible order of our own abound in theoretical and quantum physics. Tracking the science of the Grid is like going on a long scavenger hunt of clues and links in knowledge and revelation that comes to one stunning conclusion: There are other worlds besides our own.
One of the current pet theories of physics involves invisible strings, open and closed and straight and looped, that oscillate at different vibratory frequencies. According to string theory, this would help to explain form and matter. Initially, string theory was proposed as a means of uniting quantum mechanics and general relativity to create a ToE, or theory of everything, that would adequately and mathematically describe, well, everything. The theory posits that elementary particles such as electrons and quarks within the atom are not zero-dimensional objects, but are instead open and closed one-dimensional oscillating strings, and that these strings carry an actual gravitational force.
Strings could have a number of different resonances, or patterns of vibration, that can correspond to various mass and elementary particle charges as well as create them. Strings with a greater amplitude and wavelength would correspond to a particle with greater energy and mass, while those with a lower amplitude and wavelength correspond to particles with less energy and mass. These variations of frequency and vibration would be the basic building blocks of all we see and perceive as form and matter and energy.
One way to look at this kind of oscillation or resonance is to think of a guitar string. Imagine how when the string is plucked along a different place on the neck of a guitar it will produce a different sound or note. Groupings of notes create different chords. Now, when applied to string theory, the groupings of various oscillating strings produce different energy and matter and form in a particulate sense.
String theory has its roots in Einstein's general relativity and classical unification (although the actual theory itself eluded Einstein until his death) and was later developed in the late 1960s as a theory involving subatomic hadrons (particles that feel the strong nuclear force interaction). Supported by such noted brilliant physicists as Stephen Hawking, Leonard Susskind, and Edward Witten, the theory has also been expanded over time into several superstring theories that suggest there are objects with numerous dimensions (anywhere from zero to nine) that incorporate multiple dimensions of time. These “branes,” or membranes, may contain actual universes, and the collision of such branes may be what led to our own big bang . . . and the big bangs of other universes being born parallel to ours.
Our recognizable universe might be a “3-brane” floating in a higher dimension of space, according to Lisa Randall, Harvard physicist and author of Warped Passages: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe's Hidden Dimensions. Randall examines the brane theory as well as alternate dimensions of space and time—an integral part of the mathematics behind deconstructing the cosmos into its most basic components. In fact, our universe may be just a little fishy swimming in a virtual sea of other membranes, all encompassed within a super massive universe that we can only imagine the scale of.
In 1995, Edward Witten, one of the proponents of the existence of M-Theory, or “mother theory,” stated that the M could stand for “magic, mystery, or membrane, depending on your taste.” What is so magical is the concept that M-branes could contain hidden universes that exist alongside our own. The search for the most fundamental level of reality, whether it's the particles that make up physical objects, or the actual source field from which they spring, is the Holy Grail of physics and the object of pursuit of most scientists, metaphysicians, and spiritual teachers alike.
So, where does it all start? Is there a bottom level, a “ground floor” to the Grid? If so, that would imply that the grid-like shape of all there is has a finite quality, and that it ends somewhere. But what is beyond the end? Could there really be other dimensions beyond our own three spatial and one temporal ones, existing at the tip of our noses?
The inclusion of other dimensions, often even a suggestion of infinite dimensions, is a mainstay of theoretical physics when discussing string theory and other related theories. In order for these theories to “work” or be mathematically sound, these extra dimensions are necessary. They could be so tiny, though, as to be imperceptible, and exist entirely on a quantum scale. Or, they could be so huge and infinite as to be beyond our comprehension. No matter what, they are not just the fodder of fantasy and science fiction stories anymore.
From a young age, we are taught that our world consists of height, width, and depth—a wholly three-dimensional reality. Add the dimension of time, and we now have a fourdimensional reality. But imagine eleven or twenty-two or thirty or even an infinite number of other dimensions of space alone, and it boggles the mind. Evolution has demanded our brains perceive only a three-dimensional world around us, but perhaps one day there will be a need for the brain to open up to the perception of other dimensions that for now are barely even imaginable on a computer.
A cube is a perfect example of the three spatial dimensions to which our existence is confined. Many attempts have been made to try to describe a four-dimensional hypercube, a cube within a cube. A six-dimensional object known as the Calabi-Yau manifold (named after Eugenio Calabi and Shing-Tung Yau) is an important concept in superstring theory. And Theodor Kaluza and Oskar Klein's Kaluza-Klein theory tried to bridge the forces of gravitation and electromagnetism by suggesting there was a fifth dimension so compact it was actually imperceptible.
It could, however, only be a matter of tweaking our brains to perceive a new dimension, and once done, we would never be able to “unperceive it.” Now imagine another dimension of time, too! Could that even be possible? According to Sir Martin Reese, Astronomer Royal of the United Kingdom, if we were to find a new dimension of time we would literally have to create new words to describe more tenses than past, present, and future!
While these extra dimensions are mathematically probable, they are still very much theoretical. Yet they speak of other “realities” in the Grid that go beyond the confines of measurement and positioning of our own. What more could there be than height, depth, and width? Past, present, and future? Maybe one day we will find out.
From M-Theory we jump to parallel universes, which expands upon the idea that we are not only not alone in a planetary sense, but in a cosmic sense as well. For just as there are millions, if not billions, of other planets, there may also be millions of other universes. The notion of other universes has been a mainstay of science fiction and fantasy for hundreds of years—from the world beyond the magical wardrobe of C. S. Lewis's fantasy series the Chronicles of Narnia, and the portal-like rabbit hole of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, to the too-numerous-to-mention science fiction movies, novels, and television series that utilize the concept. But do hard science and physics buy into this idea of levels of existence, invisible yet parallel to us, and teeming with a reality all their own?
Theoretical physics adores parallel universes, even if there is no proof yet that they do exist. In his book The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos, popular physicist Brian Greene looks back to childhood memories of opening a closet door with a mirror upon it and seeing that when the mirror aligned with another mirror on his wall it created a “seemingly endless series of reflections of anything situated between them.” This fascinating image led him to think about his many reflected selves entering “an imaginary parallel world” made of both light and imagination.
Greene admits that the original definition of the word universe meant everything . . . all there is. But over time, new ideas and theories have led to a redefinition to capture a much larger, wider canvas of parallel, multiple, and alternate universes that are all part of an infinite whole. . . . Universe then actually becomes megaverse, metaverse, multiverse. We are truly not alone.
Greene also writes of the varied qualities of these many worlds: “In some, the parallel universes are separated from us by enormous stretches of space or time; in others, they're hovering millimeters away; in others still, the very notion of their location proves parochial, devoid of meaning.” Not only that, but when it comes to the actual laws that govern these universes, again we are met with such diversity. In some, the physical laws will be the same as ours, and in others the laws might be so different we wouldn't even perceive them or understand them. They might appear as magic to us.
Theoretical physicist Michio Kaku has written extensively about parallel universes and categorized them according to three distinct types:
In his books Physics of the Impossible: A Scientific Exploration into the World of Phasers, Force Fields, Teleportation and Time Travel and Parallel Worlds: A Journey through Creation, Higher Dimensions, and the Future of the Cosmos, Kaku dives into the deep physics of such possible worlds, from string theory to what happened before the big bang to the concept of bubble universes connected by wormholes (more on those in chapter 4). Of his three categorizations, different measures of reality emerge.
Is there a fourth spatial dimension? We know that we are trapped in a three-dimensional world of height, width, and length and that all possible positions can be described with these three coordinates. Hyperspace suggests that perhaps there is a fourth spatial dimension (we now call time the fourth dimension, but it is a temporal one!), something once deemed utterly impossible. Actually, this would be considered the fifth dimension, including that of time. But seriously . . . a fourth spatial dimension? Thanks to physicist Theodor Kaluza, who in 1919 hinted in a controversial scientific paper of higher dimensions, we may one day perceive what our brains, as of now, refuse to perceive. Kaluza proposed that if light is a wave, what is waving? If light, then, passes through the vacuum of space, what is waving in the vacuum? Thus the proposal that light is waves/ripples in the fifth dimension.
The term hyperspace describes something positioned in a higher dimension. Various string theories require ten or more dimensions to be mathematically sound, so a fourth dimension should be a piece of cake. But try visualizing it. It's impossible (or is it?) for our brains to grasp a new spatial dimension. In the fourth dimension, someone might be floating just above us, invisible, as written about by the famed H. G. Wells in The Invisible Man. When we hear that string theory may require eleven dimensions, our brains virtually shut down, unable to even comprehend what any of them might look like, let alone what laws may govern them.
Hyperspatial dimensions give way to the theory of bubble universes, which are connected to one another via a wormhole-type mechanism. The bubble universes can rub against each other, bang together, and split apart and then suddenly just “pop” and no longer exist. Perhaps these bubble universes even float on the membranes of M-Theory, each its own reality yet part of a higher dimensional space. Perhaps they even have their own temporal reality as well, meaning that each universe operates on its own timeline, opening the door to time travel beyond the pesky paradoxes that insist we cannot change the past without altering the present and future.
Cosmologist Stephen Hawking calls these bubbles “baby universes” and believes that they connect through a system of tiny wormholes too small for humans to ever travel through. We would not be able to communicate with other bubble or baby universes, confined to our own corner of three-dimensional reality in the Grid. In a sense, we are stuck to our own membrane and cannot unstick ourselves to jump onto another world (unless we find the mechanism by which to do so!). Gravity, however, can move between these dimensions.
There can be an infinite number of infinitesimally tiny or massively huge universes out there. Perhaps some are teeming with life; others are dead as doornails; and others are in between at all stages of evolution and growth. Because the laws of nature operating in each universe may be so vastly different, any forms of life that exist on these other levels of reality might be different too. In fact, life as we know it may not exist at all in many of these universes, with entities and forms so bizarre that we cannot even begin to envision them. These worlds may contain types of matter that look nothing like what we know of in our cosmic neck of the woods. In fact, atoms themselves might consist of stable matter we don't know about, unlike our own atoms made of protons, electrons, and neutrons.
Yet on other worlds, life may be pretty much similar to what it's like here on Earth, because no doubt there will be a number of other Earth-like planets orbiting a sun at just the right speed and distance to allow for the biological and chemical processes of life, even DNA, to emerge just as they did here.
The multiverse theory basically states that there are multiple universes that account for all that ever was, is, and will be and make up the entirety of creation—the Grid itself. The term multiverse was coined by an American psychologist, William James, in 1895, and it is sometimes mixed up with parallel universes and alternate dimensions. It is interesting that a psychologist would coin such a term, but the multiverse has become a popular concept in regards to a variety of arenas of study, including physics, cosmology, transpersonal psychology, philosophy, logic, and even metaphysics and the paranormal.
According to cosmologist Max Tegmark, one of the fathers of the parallel universe theory, it can be categorized into four levels. Tegmark proposes that Level I universes exist beyond our cosmological horizon and may contain physical constants and laws just like our own; Level II universes have different physical constants; and Level III universes encompass the many-worlds interpretation (MWI), a quantum theory of the multiverse. This MWI is the most fascinating of all concepts when it comes to potential levels of the Grid, and how they might form. Level IV universes are called the “ultimate ensemble” and consider as real all universes that are described by different mathematical structures and are the highest of the hierarchy of the multiverse.
Physicist Hugh Everett III introduced the many-worlds interpretation of quantum universes in 1957. His theory was part of a dissertation positing that reality might actually be made up of many worlds that arise each time a quantum event occurs, splitting off like branches growing on a tree. Imagine a new universe popping up every time a different choice is made at the quantum level, with an infinite and continuing number of universes springing forth in a mind-boggling array of potential realities.
In Physics of the Impossible, Michio Kaku suggests that the universe may exist in many parallel states defined by the wave function of the universe itself. The wave function refers to the ability of light to behave as both particle and wave until the act of observation or measurement “collapses the wave function” and gives fixed position to the particle(s). In this manner, the universe has many various states of potentiality and only when one reality is collapsed from the wave function into a fixed state do we get a physical manifestation of that reality. This universal wave function contains within it every possible configuration of a quantum object, thus allowing for everything that can be possible to become so.
So imagine a wave of possibilities, and each time an observer collapses that wave and fixes a possibility into position, a new universe breaks off from the original wave. This happens again and again and again to accommodate all other possible outcomes. In a sense, all possible positions and potentialities exist before they are observed into fixed form. Everything is real in a state of superposition, but not in a physical sense. Physicist David Deutsch called them “shadow universes,” suggesting that many of the universes would be similar, if not identical, to our own, with possibly over a trillion potential universes!
Once again, could we experience or contact these other worlds, realities, states, or levels of the Grid physically? Kaku believes that it certainly cannot be ruled out, but it is highly unlikely—at least at the quantum level. However, in a cosmic sense, where again these universes may be like bubbles floating around in a big cosmic “bubble bath,” it might be possible. And if we were able to somehow establish contact, perhaps they might be home to advanced civilizations. These civilizations might even be far more evolved and progressive than our own, and may have even harnessed the power of huge atom smashers, accomplished time travel, or figured out a host of other futuristic benchmarks that we now only consider the fodder of science fiction.
We now understand that there is no such thing as empty space. There is no vacuum, no nothingness out there. Instead, there is a fundamental source field of energy at the quantum level, where subatomic particles pop in and out of existence in a foaming sea of virtual realities, like the spray off a thunderous waterfall or ocean wave.
The zero-point field (ZPF) is considered by many to be the true vacuum state of existence, but where fluctuations in the field are detectable at the lowest energy state, or the temperature of absolute zero. This field teems with zero-point energy that is the closest yet to zero we have gotten in the subatomic state.
In her book The Field: The Quest for the Secret Force of the Universe, award-winning investigative journalist Lynne McTaggart documents the discovery and potential of the zeropoint field, describing it as “a repository of all fields and all ground energy states and all virtual particles—a field of fields. Every exchange of every virtual particle radiates energy.” All of these virtual particles make up the vast and inexhaustible energy source that forms the background of empty space. Put simply, it is the most fundamental, rock-bottom level of “reality” there is. Some in the metaphysical world have described the ZPF as the “field of pure potentiality,” or the “field of all possibility,” where everything and anything that has or will ever exist does so in a virtual state waiting to be made manifest.
This field is also self-regenerating, as discovered by physicist Hal Puthoff, who has extensively researched and worked with ZPF and the extraction of energy from the field. According to Puthoff's research, the field acts as a “self-regenerating feedback loop across the cosmos,” with fluctuations in the field waves driving the motion of subatomic particles. The motion of the particles in the universe in turn generate the ZPF, like a cat chasing its own tail. The field, then, can never be empty or run out of energy, for it is always feeding back into itself and creating new source energy that makes up all we know of as reality, both seen and unseen and yet to be seen.
This fundamental state of reality would also be an encoder and carrier of information that is imprinted upon the field. Hal Puthoff states, “If all subatomic matter in the world is interacting constantly with this ambient ground-state energy field, the subatomic waves of the field are constantly imprinting a record of the shape of everything . . . In a sense, the vacuum is the beginning and the end of everything in the universe.” Information includes everything that was, is, and ever will be in our universe, and possibly others, and this information is in itself a fundamental aspect of reality. We may be nothing more than an information imprint; born of the field; and one day we will go back to the field.
This is the base of the Grid.
There are possibly an infinite number of these levels in the Grid, connected to each other through various means. Each level can exist entirely on its own, with little if any contact with other levels, unless of course the right triggers and mechanisms are discovered to activate the connectors. Some of the levels may be “dead” or dying, and others filled with life beyond our wildest imaginings. Some may be invisible or have such bizarre physical properties, attributes, and laws that we would have no physical (or even psychological) means of perceiving or processing them.
Some might be just like our own level. (Déjà vu, anyone?)
In terms of a hierarchy of levels of reality, the most fundamental level would be likened to the zero-point field, where nothingness becomes somethingness, and virtual reality becomes fixed reality. This would equate with the basement or lowest parking level of our skyscraper. From this level, we might suggest that there is a sense of progression or evolution of universes or realities, depending on how long they've existed and how many factors that correspond to the emergence of life are available.
Life as we know it arose because of very specific mathematical ratios of chemicals, gasses, and elements present after the big bang, leading to a perfect scenario, or a “Goldilocks zone,” as physicist Paul Davies refers to it. Also known as the anthropic principle, this is where everything is not too hot, not too cold, but just right for life to crawl forth from the biochemical soup and evolve to higher forms. Should any of these ratios be tweaked plus or minus even the most minute of measurements, we would not be here. Or maybe we would, but we may have evolved into quite different life-forms.
Our level of the Grid appears to be finely tuned for life, but other levels may not be so accommodating. According to the cosmologist and astrophysicist Sir Martin Rees, this fine-tuning may be evidence that the multiverse does indeed exist, and that the physical constants that allow for life may or may not be present in a large number of these parallel realities. In other words, we got plumb lucky!
The zero-point energy of the field, the fluctuating virtual quantum state, and superstrings vibrating at various resonances—these are the most basic building blocks of energy that give way to all form and matter at the bottom level of the Grid. From these vibrations come solid, fixed, formed reality, depending on perhaps the observer or some predetermined blueprint that is embedded in the grand, ground state.
The “creative” level of the Grid, then, may be an energetic blueprint with infinite possibilities as to the kinds of structures that can be built upon its foundations. Each level from this point on is like a wall or door or room that adds onto the foundation, completing the master planned community that is “all there is.”
At this point, we have to give props here to one of our favorite physicists, and one of the grandfathers of quantum physics, David Bohm. A protégé of Einstein, Bohm writes in Wholeness and the Implicate Order that the nature of reality is an unbroken whole that has three specific orders that worked together to create reality. The first level is the superimplicate order, which acts as an overseeing, creative, and generative order. The second level is the implicate order, which is the invisible process by which nothing becomes something. Beneath physical reality, consciousness and matter enfold in preparation for the third level. In the third order, the explicate order, the implicate is unfolded into physical reality.
The hidden world of the implicate may work somewhat like a hologram, which is projected from a higher dimensional reality onto our lower, three-dimensional reality. Each region of space-time would contain within it the image of the whole, like a hologram, and thus also contain the “enfolded” whole of reality within it. Another way of putting it is that any independent element in our universe contains with it the sum of all elements. The One contains the All. Bohm called this process the “holomovement,” which is the ultimate reality.
Think of the film The Matrix, perhaps in a less sinister sense, and you have an idea of the invisible infrastructure of this implicate order, where the actions occur by which the unmanifest become manifest. It almost sounds religious, and certainly metaphysical, which is why Bohm has become a scientific darling of the metaphysical world. He not only helped shape quantum mechanics, but also the idea that consciousness was a driver of the implicate and the enfolding of matter into the unfoldment of objects in the physical realm of reality.
The holographic principle was first proposed in 1993 by the Dutch physicist Gerard't Hooft and the coinventor of string theory, Leonard Susskind. The principle stated that all basic information found in one region of our universe could be the equivalent of information found at our universe's boundary, similar to how our bodies project shadows onto the sidewalk.
In his book The Holographic Universe: The Revolutionary Theory of Reality, Michael Talbot examines the work that David Bohm did with Stanford University neurophysiologist Dr. Karl Pribram, who had his own similar theory about the holographic brain. The way the brain stores data through its entire volume is similar to the idea of enfoldment, and the idea that the entire universe might be contained in every small nook and cranny, even something as small as a blade of grass or grain of sand. Similarly, one region of the brain may encompass all the memory and data of the entire brain, and that memory may be “stored” elsewhere outside the brain and projected onto it. The holographic principle also posits that our universe may be nothing more than a two-dimensional projection upon our cosmological horizon, perceived as a three-dimensional reality at the macroscopic scale.
Talbot also brings the mind and consciousness into the mix, suggesting that we may be creating the holographic image of reality that is then projected onto the lower dimensional plane, or that we have something to do with how our reality is perceived and experienced. These ghostly projected images may also help to explain some of the more paranormal events people encounter, such as ghosts, UFOs, out-of-body experiences (OBEs), near-death experiences (NDEs), visions, and psychic abilities. Talbot states, “There is evidence to suggest that our world and everything in it . . . are also only ghostly images, projections from a level of reality so beyond our own it is literally beyond both space and time.”
To think you could hold a small pebble in your hand and in a way hold the entire universe in your palm is the stuff of metaphysics, religion, and spirituality, but this principle posits just such a thing. Maybe the level of the Grid we live on is really just a projected image from somewhere else, where the original image has been imprinted and enfolded. It unfolds here, before our five senses, allowing us to experience it. But what about other images being projected on other parts of the Grid? Could we somehow be getting glimpses of those in the form of anomalous or paranormal phenomena? We will examine this possibility in chapter 6.
To imagine a finite number of levels is difficult, just as it is difficult to imagine a finite length to our universe. What lies beyond the edge? Perhaps with the Grid, the topmost level circles back around to the bottommost level, like the zero-point field, where all and nothing exists, waiting to be manifested.
Believing in levels of reality is not just a scientific concept but also one that has permeated all religious belief and tradition, again suggesting a hierarchy of worlds that a human being can experience, possibly over the course of many, many lifetimes. The Grid is where science and spirit and the supernatural all come together.
Reality isn't all it seems, or all we see.