141. Fate versus Free will. Part Eight.

 

We were discussing the possible explanations of prophecies

 

5.   There is a parallel world, which is an exact copy of our world, but it is ahead of us in time. Let us suppose it is 500 years ahead of us. Let us further assume that it is one hundred light years away from us (a light year is the distance light travels in one year, at the speed of 186,000 miles per second.). If the year on our earth is 2014, the year in the other world is 2514. If we had the ability to watch the events at the other world right at this minute, we would be watching what is going on in the other world in year 2414. (It took the light to reach to us a hundred years; therefore it is 2514 minus 100).

               So, if by some technique you were able to make a video film of the last 4 hundred years of the other planet; years 2014 to 2414 of the other world, and feed it to a giant computer on earth, or still better, download it in the memory center of your own brain, if you were a holy man, you would have the ability to forecast events which are going to happen on earth, in the next four hundred years,! You could have started recording in year 1614 of earth time, and be up to date, in the present year of 2014.

               However, to have all that to happen, you have to fulfill the following conditions:

 

1.  A planet which is an exact replica of our planet, like an image in the mirror.

2. The planet is ahead of our planet in time.

3. We have the ability to watch or record the events in the other planet.

 

First two are highly implausible suppositions, but the third is easy and is being routinely done by many telescopes on earth and in space.

Therefore, we cannot discard this possibility. Maybe, in the future, when the science is much more advanced, we will find the parallel world.

However, there is one consideration, which can make us reject this scenario, at least the part which deals with prophecies.

 

We were discussing the possibility of a parallel world, which is exactly similar to our world, like the image in a mirror, but is ahead of us in 500 years, away from us by 100 light years, and this is the year 2014. A man of God, or a scientist, has downloaded the film of years 2014 to 2414. What is going to happen in year 2015 is exactly, and in every single detail, recorded and can be viewed.

Let us play out the scenario of Swami Vivekananda telling Dickenson that he will receive a silver cup from his guru (blog 102). This event occurred 43 years later. Therefore, if Vivekananda foretold the event, he must have seen, in his mind’s eye, what happened in the other planet; he must have seen an image Vivekananda telling image Dickenson that he will get a silver cup, by seeing what happened in another ( third) planet.

               But there is no other (third ) planet! We assumed there were only two planets. Is there a third planet? If we proceed on this path, there has to be a fourth, and fifth planet. As a matter of fact, an infinity of mirror-image planets, ahead of each other in time. We are entering the realm of absurdity.

 

Is that the end of our theorizing? If this mote is baffled, he derives some satisfaction, that mightier minds and more advanced mystics than him have similarly accepted defeat. Listen to what St Augustine had to say in ‘Confessions’:

‘ Thou then, Ruler of Thy creation, by what way dost Thou teach souls things to come? For Thou didst teach Thy Prophets. By what way dost Thou, to whom nothing is to come, teach things to

come; or rather of the future, dost teach things present? For, what is not, neither can it be taught. Too far is this way of my ken: it is too mighty for me, I cannot attain unto it; but from Thee I can, when Thou shalt vouchsafe it, O sweet light of my hidden eyes’

 

I have another theory, which may be the correct solution, and satisfy the paradox stated in blog 139. We will call it explanation 6.

 

6. The people who prophesied, and told about future events have access to the Master screen play. In the drama of the universe, God is not the writer, and director of the play, He is more like the producer of the play. He had the idea to create the play.  Whatever, the actors will do or say on stage, how the plot will proceed, how the drama will end, is in the screen play. However, He did not write the screen play. He knows by His infinite mind what is in the screen play. He did not preordain the screen play but He has foreknowledge of the screen play.

The writer and director of the play are we, ourselves, and the Mother Nature.

The people, who tell the future, do not travel into the future. They stay in the present. They do not see the future, because the future does not yet exist. Scenes are brought to their mind’s eye, or words are wrung from their mouths without their forethought, by higher powers, which have access to the Master screen play.

 

To be continued

140. Fate versus Free Will. Part Seven.

 

 We were discussing the possible explanations of prophecies 

2. The predicted events were made to occur, when their time came, by some powerful living persons or spirits. Take the example of Mr Dickenson being told that one day his guru will give him a silver cup. Swami Vivekananda may not have seen the future; words may have been wrung out of his mouth by some unseen power, just as it happened to Sri Yogananda (blog 103):

 

“One day in my Ranchi school, a boy named Kashi, a brilliant youth of twelve, asked me “Sir, what will be my fate?”

‘You shall soon be dead’. An irresistible power forced the answer from me.

The boy died the same year. 

When Yogananda was walking in a street of Calcutta, an unseen power may have influenced his mind and made him buy a silver cup for Dickenson. Higher powers, when necessary, do influence our minds.

For instance, take the two incidents quoted in section 6 and 7 of blog 112, as Mufti Sahib’s prayers. In one instance some higher power influenced the mind of the wife of the landlord, and in the other case the mind of the person who gave Mufti Sahib money for the bus fare.

 

This argument can be invoked in some cases, but not all.  For instance, a fakir told my grandfather that he and one of his sons will be buried in one grave. To have it happen, a colossal event such as Partition of India had to take place, in which millions of people died or suffered. It could not have been done just to make the fakir right. Similarly Yogananda sister could not have attired herself in her bridal dress and later during the day kill herself to prove herself right.

 

3. The causes or signs of future start appearing in the present, from them the future can be predicted.

This argument was first made by St Augustine sixteen hundred years ago (1). For instance the sunrise from day-break. I quote:

 

‘I behold the day-break, I foreshow, that the sun, is about to rise. What I behold, is present; what I foresignify, to come; not the sun, which already is; but the sun-rising, which is not yet. And

Yet did I not in my mind imagine the sun-rising itself (as now while I speak of it), I could not foretell it. But neither is that daybreak which I discern in the sky, the sun-rising, although it goes

before it; ……… . Future things then are not yet: and if they be not yet, they are not: and if

they are not, they cannot be seen; yet foretold they may be from things present, which are already, and are seen.’

 

This argument is not valid in any of the 14 situations cited above, such as for Swami Vivekananda to see the event of the silver cup 43 years in advance

 

4. The people who prophesied had the ability to travel in the future. Travel in the future is the fodder of science fiction. Even famous physicists claim that theoretically it is possible (2). If some men of God have this ability they could go in the future for few minutes, like Chandi Das did in front of Paul Brunton, and then come back to the present, and report their findings (blog 91)

 

Let us examine what the scientists have to say:

 

‘If you want to advance through the years a little faster than the next person, you'll need to exploit space-time. Global positioning satellites pull this off every day, accruing an extra third-of-a-billionth of a second daily. Time passes faster in orbit, because satellites are farther away from the mass of the Earth. Down here on the surface, the planet's mass drags on time and slows it down in small measures. In the  super massive black hole Sagittarius A at the center of our galaxy, the mass of 4 million suns exists as a single, infinitely dense point, known as a singularity [source: NASA]. It must slow the time a lot over there.

 

We call this effect gravitational time dilation. (3) ’

 

If you were travelling on a space ship at 99.999% of the speed of light, one year on that space ship would have equaled 223 years on earth. When you came back after a year, all the people you knew before your journey would have died. One would have travelled 223 years in future.

 

The trouble about all these speculations is they do not help us one bit. Take the example of a traveler starting on his space trip in year 2014, at close to the speed of light. Let us say he has the magical ability to watch the events on earth. After a month he wants to notify all the events to somebody on the earth. Let us further suppose that he can send the message at the speed of light. The message will take another month to arrive on earth. Two months have passed since he started his journey. These two months are approximately equal to 37 years of earth time. Time travelled 223 times faster on the earth than on the space ship. It is 2051 on earth. The message cannot tell the earth inhabitants anything that they already don’t know. They have lived through it. It is their past. What the men of God supposedly do is to watch the future, which yet do not exist.

 

To be continued.

 

 

1). Confessions by St. Augustine, chapter X1                                                                                            

(2).: How to build a time machine by STEPHEN HAWKING
(3) How Time Travel Works by Kevin Bonsor and Robert Lamb