We have just begun to watch a new Canadian television series on Time travel. It has always been a fascinating concept to me and this series was no exception – sharing my awe of time with my family. I vividly remember watching the movie ‘Back to the future’ in my childhood, posing enormous questions to my parents on various aspects of the plot. The core of that movie plot revolved around the son traveling into the past and interfering with his mother meeting his father. This highlighted the danger of time travelers destroying their own world. Without his parents meeting, he would not come into existence. But that creates the paradox – if he does not come into existence he cannot travel back in time to interfere with his parents’ meeting in the first place.
The exploration, insight and abstractions that follow are my own travels in time. One I perhaps set out to make when I was you, one you will perhaps be fascinated in when you are me…
Science: Do you know there are three major theories of time travel?
Me: No ! But before we get into that, I thought I create my future. If travel in time is possible – both forward and backward, it would imply, time is a fixed entity like space. It is already there and anyone could travel to that time.
Science: Will you let me explain? The leading theory is called Fixed Time Theory. Here the past is already established and nothing in it can change. The Parallel dimension theory suggests that the time traveller going to the past lands in a parallel universe with an identical history till that point in time when he travels from the future. A variant to this the Divergent Dimension Theory assumes that a new universe is created by the arrival of the time traveller. The third major theory is the Replacement theory where we believe that a traveller to the past will change history, erase what was and create a new timeline.
Me: Yeah I am familiar with the fixed time theory and that is what I challenged earlier. This very concept says that our past and future is already fixed, that choice is a mere illusion. For instance suppose I wished to go back in time from today 2014 to the year 2000 to change something, I won’t be able to do it for if I did change it, today would not be possible and so the travel back in time is not possible. My past is fixed. But so is my future for on some day in 2022, I may wish to have come back to this very moment in 2014 to re-write this very article, but that moment in 2022 is not possible if I didn’t write this article today. So both past and future are fixed. That makes me feel irresponsible. If it already exists why should I even do it?
Science: Well, hear the next concept – The parallel dimension theory. There are two distinct notions about parallel universes – one that they are all identical until a time travel event interferes, and the other that they are all different due to random events altering history and compounding over time highlighting that no matter how similar the two universes are, they are not the same.
Me: But in this concept if I went back to my past and changed something in the year 2000, I actually went to a parallel universe and changed the event there. If and when I return to my own universe in 2014, nothing has actually changed, has it?
Science: And so I present yet another theory – the replacement theory. Under this theory, no one can arrive in the past, before he departs from the future. So one can travel back in time and change something there but when he arrives back in the present he will need to once again travel back in time. In other words he will have to be in a loop – at that point in the present he always has to travel back in time. If you don’t travel to the past, the revised history also gets undone. It will revert back to the original history that was created before the future came into existence.
Me: Hmmm… If I went to the year 2000 and changed my past, I will never arrive at this moment in 2014. Even if I somehow managed to arrive at this very same moment in 2014, all I am capable of doing now is travel back to the year 2000 to change my past. An infinity loop! Why would anyone remain in a loop? I think my problem is with the very concept of time.
Time is not an entity like space where it is fixed and you can visit that point in time whenever you want. Life’s experiences have made me ‘me’. If I go back to the year 2000 as the new ‘me’ I will probably make very different choices from what I had done earlier. But the same paradox would apply – if my choices were any different I will not arrive in 2014 to be this ‘me’. A parallel universe also seems unlikely for if every time I wanted to change things in my past I create a new parallel universe, I alone could have created over a million such universes. What then to say of the seven billion humans on planet earth in this one universe? Then what of all the zillion people in the zillion universes we must have already created? The replacement theory is also unacceptable for why would any one want to be in an eternal loop to keep going into the past to change it? However bad it might have been, I would rather move on and not remain stuck in that one loop for eternity.
God smiled. Now, don’t give me that knowing look. He had to come! I wanted some insight…
God: What if they were all true?
I smiled. Yeah! That just made all the sense in the world!! I don’t even understand one of the theories and here He was suggesting all might be true. Ok. So be it. Let me just explore…
The Fixed time suggested past and future events are already present like space. Everything about the universe is already there. Time is merely your consciousness of certain events and lack of consciousness of most others. Yes, this made sense. So what about choice?
Every time I execute a choice, I am actually traveling down one particular lane of time. Hypothetically, if time travel was possible and I decide to go back and revise a choice, I will be actually asking to travel down a different lane. The second theory of parallel dimension thinks we create a parallel universe or at least go to a parallel universe every time we revisit a choice. What if the parallel universe was not really a physical reality but more like the layers of a photoshop document? A transparent layer used on top of the background or foundation layer to effect just one change. What if time is just like those transparent layers for every choice we make. It is not another universe just another layer – another dimension. That would mean the first also exists along with the second, and third and so on.
That brings us to the third theory of replacement. I go back in time and re-write my past thereby re-writing my future simultaneously. But even if I did indeed change my past, then the original future too is now erased so I will not be here in the present to go back into time and change my past! That paradox again! Unless… unless the new version of myself in the altered history once again makes the same trip to the past and so becomes the cause of my own arrival. In other words if I wish to change my past – I am damned for whatever my future I will always wish to change my past. Because without that wish to change my past, I cannot go back to change it. And if I wished to change my past, I will eternally be in a loop.
Isn’t that what our mind does? We regret a choice we made and eternally keep revisiting the same situation – wishing we can change that. You keep encountering similar scenarios. You trust someone. They betray you. You decide never to trust again. You go back to a similar situation. Now you choose not to trust them. But once again you will have to go back in time to keep making that very same choice for you are now caught up in a loop. Either way – whether you trust or not, you are stuck in the infinity loop of the same lesson from life.
God how does one ever get out of this? I trust and I am damned, I don’t trust and I am damned!!! What really is the option here Father?
God: You are stuck in a loop because you are stuck at that particular point in time when you decided to change your past. However many times you travel back in time, you will remain stuck in that moment for in that moment you decided not to move forward but backward in time.
I kept thinking… But what if the second theory is also true? In this moment I go back to my past to change something but the changed me is no more me but actually you…
God: You are right my child, about the photoshop like transparent layers of time. Only every layer has a different name. The choices you executed are in the layer called ‘Gita’. The choices you wish you executed or perhaps travelled back in time to execute is in the layer called ‘X’. The choices you chose not to execute or travelled back in time to undo is in the layer called ‘Y’. But it is you! They are not parallel universes of space, but parallel universes of consciousness. At every moment in time, by executing a choice to fill your layer, you simultaneously execute the choice to fill the other layers, for everything does indeed exist.
Me: (in a whisper I asked) If everything is just me in different layers, how do I get off the loop?
God: When you stop judging yourself about every choice you ever made and realize whether it was choice A or choice B or choice infinity, the effects of that choice are reaped only by you – may be as ‘Gita’ or ‘X’ or ‘Y’ – but it is always you… Now you will no more remain stuck in your loop constantly evaluating the choice you make. In fact you don’t make choices any more for you know every choice is just another layer not another file!
I re-read what I wrote in the beginning of this article. “Suppose I wished to go back in time from today 2014 to the year 2000 to change something, I won’t be able to do it for if I did change it, today would not be possible and so the travel back in time is not possible. My past is fixed. But so is my future for on some day in 2022, I may wish to have come back to this very moment in 2014 to re-write this very article, but that moment in 2022 is not possible if I didn’t write this article today. So both past and future are fixed.” What if that person who betrays my trust is actually me in the year 2000. May be it is the Gita of 2014 who forgave that betrayal making it even possible for the Gita of 2000 to emerge as the Gita of 2014. It’s just that now that I call this ‘me’ and that ‘you’.
Hmmm… That story from the Vedas that there were never two birds, just your higher self calling out to your lower self is now a reality. I realize, every choice I make when I am you, you will understand when you are me.
Written by Gita Krishna Raj | Published in infinithoughts in July 2014
When Science met God… | Segment Six: Lost in Time | Chapter Nine: When I was You
