In 2016, I created a back story for a game I developed. It wasn’t truly a game. It was a professional development course of study that used gaming mechanics (such as back stories) to modify the behavior of the course participants. The story told was an alternative understanding of the notional environment we’ve come to refer to as cyberspace. The gist of the story is that people known as the Magi began a centuries old quest to escape their persecutors, the Sumerians, into a magical world that they begin to create; a world that gets constructed by various initiates along the way and along the ages.
These notional environments (e.g. hell, netherworld, cyberspace, etc.) have been with us for eons. They are found in the Christian tradition (heaven), the dynastic-Egyptian tradition (Field of Reeds), the Germanic/Norse tradition (Valhalla), in the Confucian tradition (Tian), etc. Since time immemorial, humans have conceived themselves as bodies of light and matter and that at some point, we decouple from our carnal selves—our body. The body just stops: no mas metabolism.
Trouble is, the carnal body can be seen by others. It is real. On the other hand, the light part, folks CAN’T see anymore. So the assumption of us moderns is that it simply ceases to exist. Therein lies just ONE of the many problems with scientific rationalism. Moderns rejoice in contentment when they are able to point to traditionalists and say “Where’s the evidence of a soul?”. The point is well-taken. Again, we can see the dead body but there ain’t no light or soul anywhere to be found.
Granted.
But take another of the tenets of the scientific rationalist set; so established by the likes of Rudlolf Clausisus, Empedocles, Gottfried Leibniz, Isaac Newton, etc…
Energy can neither be created nor destroyed
So, WHATEVER the observed experiences of motion and matter a living person is, when they die, there is a TRANSFER of energy. That potential energy we call being alive, again, thanks to the thinking of the scientific paradigm, can’t be destroyed.
So to me, the logical observation shouldn’t be that there is no such thing as soul because we can’t show evidence of such a thing. Indeed, we can. The evidence is the Law of Conservation. To be alive is to embody a coordinating energy. Once we cease being alive, that coordinating energy transfers (because again, energy cannot be destroyed).
But the fact remains, there is, incontrovertibly, a coordinating energy. If calling it that will help the scientific rationalist stay with this thread, then so be it.
Although we can observe the energy referred to as being alive, we aren’t yet able to observe or trace or connote where the energy is transferred to at the point of death.
Or, better still—when?
Dreaming Into Hyperspace
Rather than give it any lore, I’ll just refer to this place/time as Dreamland or Hyperspace. The prefix hyper means beyond: so, beyond space. Honestly, the locality of it doesn’t matter to me. All’s I needed was some proof (or at least evidence) that there was such a destination: don’t need to know exactly where/what/when the destination is.
I conceive this hyperspace as a co-existing plane—a superluminal dimension that parallels ours. I also conceive it to be a region that can be entered and exited (i.e. it’s not inaccessible).
In literature, the notion pops up in Johannes Kepler’s Somnium (1608) wherein because the author couldn’t conceive of a way for people to travel to the moon, he imagined a special, magical method for the travel—demons. Yes, demons would INSTANTLY take the warrying earthbound traveler to his lunar destination.
The whole Cubism avant-garde art movement of the early 20th century, most famously pioneered by Pablo Picasso, can be considered a pro-genitor of this hyperspace notion. The movement was firstly inspired by Cezanne’s representations of 3D forms. That, coupled with the newly invented X-Ray machine, got the French artists to consider viewpoints on topics that weren’t apparent (sort of like what happens when you shine a light on a body—you see the bones hidden beneath the skin). So the Cubist tried to show multiple perspective of a subject on the same painting; the intent being to point out to the viewer that though they are looking at a single painting, the subject can live in many differing worlds, simultaneously.
In 1913, a man named Claude Bragdon published A Primer of Higher Space wherein he beautifully discussed, with illustrations and all, the concept of the fourth dimension (hitherto, not conceived, sans the examples above).
Theodor Kaluza, the German mathematician postulated extra dimension in the early 1920s with his Kaluza-Klein Theory (the predecessor to the now defunct String Theory).
There were essay contests for high schoolers in the 1950s interested in discussing the notion of hyperspace in context of science fiction novels and short stories.
For me, it was Star Trek—warp speed. Then, it was Dune—folded space. Sci fi TV and movies laid out the notion of hyperspace for me as a tween.
Of course, I understood the concept to be just that—a concept. But then, one winter day in 1984, I recall thinking that perhaps the dream state we enter nightly was in fact our dip into hyperspace on the regular.
Sigmund Freud referred to dreams as “day residue”. He postulated that the content of a dream could be pinned down via analysis of the distortions of events that occur while awake. That is, analyzing one’s dreams could help them figure out things about themselves (i.e. what one learns in one dimension is applied while in another dimension). Was this a tautologous proposition? That is, if you reversed it, would it still stand? Could we analyze what was going on in our daily lives as a means to access our dreams more clearly?
People of the shamanic traditions hold a similar notion to be true. They contend there is a parallel continuum—a dream reality that they claim to access via various techniques. Anthropologists will tell us that the contention of shamans is that the dream state is a higher order spatial dimension. I’ve heard many a tale that our dreams our made up of bits and pieces of our experiences while awake. What if it was the other way around? What if our awakened experiences is a shadow of our dreaming experience?
The goal of the Chinese Daoyin tradition (a.k.a. Taoist Yoga), which dates back to the 2nd century BCE, is to establish an optimized and healthy vehicle for the individual to gracefully travel between states of being (e.g. living/dying, awake/asleep).
It goes on and on…
Throughout antiquity, into the middle ages, and even in our own time, the human condition can’t help but be drawn toward a new state of being; one wherein we perhaps depart the planet, overcome mortality, and transcend our corporeal state.
The analog of the caterpillar transforming into a butterfly is apropos to further describe this idea of dreaming into hyperspace. Evolutionary biologists don’t think of humans as an evolving species. We may be culturally different from our most immediate ancestors (Cro-Magnon, lived about 10,000 years ago) but as far as our anatomy—yeah, we’re pretty much the exact same. But, in most other ways, we are NOTHING alike, when you consider the epigenetic differences between us (i.e. language, social landscape, microbiomes, culture, history, technologies, etc.). We have transformed into what would be viewed as a god by our Cro-Magnon ancestors. What would be think of the human race if we could see it 10,000 years from now? Would we consider the future us to be gods?
Thus, the contention is that, contrary to the position of most scientist, humans are still in the evolutionary process. In 2012, I watched a TEDx talk delivered by Juan Enriquez (a biotech venture capitalist) in which he beautifully explicates this idea that humans are speciating at an exponential rate and when coupled with the technologies of trans-humanism (e.g. CRISPR, stem cells therapies, gene therapies, cybernetics, etc.), it appears that the primary goal of our species is to mutate. Mutate and mutate. Transform. Evolve/Devolve. He used the term Homo Evolutis, referring to our future selves as hominids who directly and deliberately control the evolution of their own and other species.
Well, I’m feelin’ that, my friends.
A few years later, he and a partner wrote a book on the matter—Evolving Ourselves: Redesigning the Future of Humanity—One Gene at a Time. It’s a fast read, perfect for those interested in further examining the intersect between science fiction, anthropology, cybernetics, biotechnology, and heredity. Can’t recommend it more highly.