Tag: Einstein

Posted on

TIME MATTERS – CHAPTER 5: Der Depperte

Ray sees a stranger in the balcony of his apartment

What the f…?  A stranger in my apartment?  I grabbed a knife from the kitchen drawer, rushed to the living room and turned on the lights. The man stepped in from the balcony and said something I couldn’t grasp immediately because of his heavy German accent. He came into the light and that’s when I realized he had an uncanny resemblance to Albert Einstein.

“Zis is a fery nice fiew of zee city. It schtimulates zee creatiffe mind,” he said pointing outside with his pipe.

“How did you get in here? Who the hell are you?” I asked holding my knife in menacing fashion.

“I’m terribly zorry. I zought by now efferybody vould recognise me. Allow me to introduce myzelf. I’m Alpert Einstein und I’m here becauze you zummoned me.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” I said as the terrifying realization that I had a mentally disturbed person inside my home dawned on me.

“Listen, let’s not make a big issue out of this little incident. Here’s what we’re going to do. I’ll call building security and a good man named Alastair is going to escort you down and make the necessary arrangements with whatever mental institution is currently helping you with your condition.”

“Zure,” he replied, “do vadeffer you feel you must, but I fear you might end up looking like a… vat’s zee vord for it?  Oh ja, ‘doofus’.”

Without taking my eyes off the intruder, I pulled out my iPhone and called the security desk downstairs. Alastair answered promptly and, following protocol, proceeded to call the police.  In the meantime, the Einstein doppelganger was babbling about some nickname a maid had given him when he was a little kid.

“Did you know zat zee term ‘doofus’ comes from zee German vord ‘doof’ vich, originally meant deaf und vas uzed zen to describe schtupid people becauze in old times zey zought zee deaf vere not intelligent,” he said. “I bet you didn’t know zat ven I vas a little boy one of mein family’s maids referred to me as ‘der depperte’? It meant ‘zee dopey one’.  I didn’t find zat funny but almost efferyone elze did, und by looking at zee face you’re making right know I can understand vy. Ray you look like ‘der depperte’. Ray?”

I was frantically trying to make sense of the whole situation in my mind. Everything was so surreal and bizarre that the man’s ramblings sounded more like background noise to me. Until I heard him utter my name…

“How do you know my name?” I asked raising my knife.

“You know Ray, I understand your reaczion perfectly vell. Mein prezence here is inexplicable by your current schtandards. But, zere are two vays to liffe: you can liffe as if nothing is a miracle; or you can liffe as if efferything is a miracle. By zee vay, if you’fe heard zat before it’s becauze zat phraze has been attribuded to me by zome people, but to tell you zee truth, I don’t remember effer zaying zat undil now.”

“How do you know my name?” I asked again.

The conversation was interrupted by a knock on the door.

“Buildin’ security,” said Alastair in his colorful Scottish accent.

I turned my back on the crazy old man to go open the door. Alastair with two police agents entered my apartment and one of the officers asked me what the situation was. I pointed towards the stranger and told them the man had entered my apartment illegally while I was at work. The three of them looked confused and a second later I understood why. When I turned towards the living room the old man wasn’t there. A frantic search of the apartment ensued, but the intruder was nowhere to be found.

“Sir, is there another way in or out of this apartment?” asked one of the policemen.

“Well, in theory, he could have jumped to the balcony of the apartment below us, but that would be a hard number even for a young man. This guy must be well into his sixties and we’re on the 21st floor. I don’t think he could’ve pulled a stunt like that,” I said.

“We’ll check it out anyway,” said the second policeman.

After making sure that the uninvited visitor wasn’t in my apartment, the police left to search the floor below as well as the building’s public areas. Alastair took me through the security procedure that would ensue following the incident.  It included, among other things, examining the surveillance tapes to find out when and how the man gained access to my place.

“We’ll get tae th’ bottom ay thes, Mr. Young,” he said. “Hae a guid eening now.”

After everyone left I gave the apartment another thorough inspection and once I was absolutely sure the man was gone I collapsed on the living room couch. I wasn’t even hungry anymore; the whole incident had been very unsettling. I was just starting to doze off when it hit me like a speeding truck: the old man said I had summoned him!

 

Posted on

TIME MATTERS: CHAPTER 7: Desperately Seeking Subtitles

Einstein smiling next to his famous formula E=mc2

The Einstein lookalike was back in my apartment. That time I opted for a different approach. Instead of confronting him, I quickly shut the door and stayed outside blocking the exit while calling the security guard downstairs. The young guard came up and we entered the apartment. The old man had disappeared again!

We searched the apartment to no avail. Frustrated by the whole thing I asked the guard if he had talked to his superiors about the security tapes.

“Yes sir, I did. I was about to call you. They found nothing on the tapes sir.”

“What about today?” I asked.

“Protocol calls for our company to monitor the tapes closely for 72 hours after an incident like yesterday’s. There hasn’t been anything suspicious recorded at all today. And nobody matching your intruder’s description has entered the building while I’ve been on duty.”

At that moment it occurred to me that there might be something terribly wrong going on in my head. I had a flashback of me watching the movie A Beautiful Mind. You know, the one about the brilliant Dr. John Nash’s schizophrenia. I decided it would better to be alone for a while so, instead of pursuing the intruder matter any further, I thanked the young security guard for his help and dismissed him as politely as I could given my confusion. Once alone in the apartment I felt compelled to do something I can’t explain, even today.

I said out loud: “Ok, you can come out now.”

A dark figure in the balcony lit up a pipe and started walking towards me. The man with the uncanny resemblance to Albert Einstein was once again talking to me in my home.

“Is zat vat you zink zis is Ray? Ein schizophrenic hallucination?”

As soon as he started to speak, a funny thought crossed my mind: If I created this character, why did I give him such a hard to follow speech pattern? His heavy accent had me desperately looking for subtitles to understand him. I did catch the word Ray and asked once again how he knew my name. As soon as the words came out of my mouth I realized the question was academic. If this was indeed all happening in my mind, he would, of course, know everything about me. Duh…

I was half expecting another ‘doofus’ reference but instead ‘Einstein’ walked over to the console table were I kept my snail mail and picked up a letter.

“Ein man schould look for vat is, und not for vat he zinks schould be,” he said showing me the envelope. “I know your name becauze I zaw zeze letters addrezed to you ven I arriffed. Zee zecurity guards today und last night couldn’t zee me becauze zey vere not looking for me. You, on zee other hand, zummoned me. You vere looking for me.”

This guy had me doubting my own doubts. Was it all a figment of my imagination? The whole situation was getting weirder by the minute but I decided to roll with the punches and asked when had I summoned him.

“Ven you schtarted tapping on zee univerze’s informazion field,” he said.

The effort to understand him was giving me a headache. It reminded me of a meme about some people being so hard to understand that is was like trying to pick up a turd by the clean end.

“When the hell did I do that?” I asked wearily.

“Ven you began looking for anzers zat are not currently affailable in your vorld und you schtarted to look for zem in your head. By zee vay ven I zaid zat time is vat clocks meazure, vat I meant vas zat time is merely zomething humans uze to meazure zee days und organise zeir actiffities, it vas not ein attempt to define its nature. Anyvay, your zearch brought me here. Becauze zee door zat leads to zee anzer you zeek is E=mc2.”

“What answer? You sound like Yoda but with normal syntax… and a pretty heavy German accent,” I said.

“Funny you schould menzion zat becauze it zo happens zat zee man who dezigned zee Yoda character uzed his face und mine as models. Zo maybe I schould talk more like zis: Vat time really is, zee anzer you zeek,” he said in a lousy Yoda imitation.

I was about to ask him how he knew that, when all of a sudden the corresponding synapses in my brain came alive and I realized the relationship between the separate messages my subconscious had been sending me.

The Timekeeper’s assertion that what I sought was all about energy, and Einstein’s famous formula E=mc2, in which E stands for energy, was the way to understanding the true nature of time. I started to pace around the apartment trying to put it all together in my mind but the Timekeeper’s “future without time” element was still hanging there with no apparent connection, so I decided to ask ‘Einstein’ himself.

My unconscious pacing had taken me over to the bedroom and when I went back to the living room he was gone. Only the pipe smell lingered…

Posted on

TIME MATTERS – CHAPTER 8: Time Out… Sh*t!

Image of a bizarre dream with the Timekeeper crying time out

After searching the apartment and confirming that ‘Einstein’ was really gone I turned on my computer and started the research on the time/energy relationship I was unable to do at the office. Two hours later I found myself at a dead end so I called it quits and went to bed.

I woke up 5 hours later startled after another bizarre dream with the Timekeeper. That time I was playing basketball for an unidentified professional team against Tim Duncan and the San Antonio Spurs. To this day I haven’t found a single reason to explain that particular team’s presence in the dream. Perhaps it was because of their black uniforms… maybe because Duncan was a fellow Caribbean who had retired not that long ago… or that their coach Gregg Popovich had been in my social media feed recently… or maybe it was because they were considered the smartest team in the NBA at the time… I don’t know. Anyway, there was some sort of commotion in the dream. I couldn’t tell what was happening but the Timekeeper was frantically shouting “Time out, time out!”  The weirdness of the whole thing woke me up.

I got out of bed and went straight to the kitchen to brew myself a cup of strong Puerto Rican coffee. It was scalding hot and I burned my tongue with the first sip of the much needed morning infusion. While waiting for the coffee to cool off a bit, I pondered the idea of sharing what was happening with someone I trusted. For me the three obvious options were Gina, Bob and Professor Murdock.

I dismissed the idea of talking to Bob fairly fast. He had a tendency to overreact at times and I didn’t want him thinking his partner had lost his marbles. As for Gina, I wanted to discuss it with her, but talking about what I feared could be a schizophrenic episode with someone I hoped to have a romantic relationship with was definitely not the best approach to win her heart. The Professor was the safest route. It was still too early to call, so I sent him an email saying I had an urgent matter I wanted to run by him, and asking for a good time to stop by his office.

While I was writing, the ol’ professor was checking his email so his answer came fairly fast. He was going to be at his place all day and invited me to stop by any time. The weather forecast called for a rainy day, and dressing up for the office on a day like that was not in the cards. So I showered and put on jeans, tennis shoes and a Notre Dame sweatshirt.

When I got to the agency I ran into Gina who teased me about the attire.

“Well, good morning Mr. ND, aren’t you wearing the YO! Bowl good luck sweatshirt a little early?”

“To tell you the truth I didn’t do it on purpose, but the way they’ve been playing lately, any help is welcome. You know what they say, it’s only weird if it doesn’t work.”

“Did you know that the Michigan Wolverines’ distinctive football helmet was originally worn by the Princeton Tigers?” she asked me.

“What?” I said distractedly.

“Back in the thirties, the Princeton coach wanted his players to look like tigers so he had the helmets painted in orange and black. The unusual forehead wing and stripes were one of the reinforcement patterns used on the leather helmets of the time. He just painted them. They went undefeated and became national champions the very first year they wore them. Maybe that philosophy of ‘it’s only weird if it doesn’t work’ was the reason he took that particular paint job  to the University of Michigan when he became their head coach. Anyway, nowadays when people see the design they think of Michigan but it was Princeton who wore it first… Ray, are you feeling OK? You seem a little scrambled.”

She had this uncanny ability to see right through me. So even though I had decided not to mention anything to her, she opened a window and I jumped right  in.

“I haven’t been sleeping well lately,” I told her. “Very weird dreams,” I added while thinking how to tell her about the ‘Einstein’ visits.

“Want to talk? My 9:00 o’clock  was cancelled, why don’t you walk me to my office and tell me all about it?”

I did. I told her everything except that, in my account, Einstein’s visits occurred in my sleep just like the Timekeeper’s.

“And you think this Timekeeper character is related to Einstein?” she asked after listening the whole story.

“I think so, yes. I know it sounds weird. But it feels like my subconscious is using these characters to help me understand in my sleep the information I seek while awake.”

“The human mind has been known to do stranger things,” she said. “So, the last thing this Timekeeper guy said was ‘time-out’? What does that has to do with Einstein’s E=mc2 formula?

“I don’t know,” I said a little discouraged.

“Did he say ‘time-out’ with a hyphen or ‘time out’, two words?” she asked with a twinkle in her eyes.

“I don’t know, the dream had no captions,” I said sarcastically but apologized immediately. “Sorry, I was just trying to be funny, I know you are trying to help. The context of the dream means that it should be ‘time-out’ with a hyphen, but then this is such a odd character, created by my subconscious, who absurdly happens to be managing an NBA basketball team, so I guess it could also be time out, two words. Where are you going with this?”

“Just wondering, that maybe what the Timekeeper was trying to tell you was to take time… out of the Einstein equation,” she said signaling with her hands the separation between the words ‘time’ and ‘out’ to make it clear she meant eliminating time from the equation and not taking a break from it.

“There’s no time in E=mc2,” I said

“It’s energy equals mass multiplied by the speed of light squared,” she said. “Speed is distance over time.”

“Shit…” was all I could utter at the time.

Posted on

TIME MATTERS – CHAPTER 9: Hitting The Wall

Image of the building where the Professor lives during a rainy day

I thanked Gina for the help… and rushed out of her office. The first stop was with my creative team. I had to make sure everything regarding the presentation was on track and that, in the process, they hadn’t strayed away from the concept of the Chronologix piece being a time machine. You know, something to help you manage your time better so you can travel better through time. I checked their work, gave them my input, mentioned I was late for a meeting with Cyril Murdock, a former professor from college, and left.

On the way to the Professor’s I decided to stop by my apartment for a raincoat. It had started to sprinkle and the sky had gotten darker. It was only 10:00 AM but it looked like dusk and it sure seemed like I would be needing way more than just an umbrella to face the music.

Before entering the apartment, I noticed the strange bluish glow at the bottom of the doorway I thought I had seen the night of my first encounter with ‘Einstein’. Once inside I found myself standing in front of a wall of blue light floating in the middle of the living room. It looked like a giant computer screen with formulas, pictures and all sorts of information flowing through it at a fast pace. The wall was translucent and I quickly spotted ‘Einstein’ standing on the other side of it.

“Did you do this?” I asked him fascinated by the scene in front of me.

“I didn’t create it, if zat’s vat you mean,” he said, “but I access it constantly.”

“What is it?” I probed further. By this time I was already talking to ‘Einstein’ as if he was a real person and not a hallucination. My sentiments towards him had evolved rather quickly into those akin to a newfound friendship. Even my ears were growing accustomed to his accent; it didn’t sound so heavy anymore.

“Zis is a phyzical reprezentation of the univerze’s informazion field,” he said. “You’ve been unknovingly scratching its zurface for zee past couple of days. Now it’s time to for you to step into it zee vay I uzed to vay back ven.”

“Wow, you mean I can enter it…” was the last thing I said as I walked into the field of blue light. I woke up on the floor four hours later with a bump on my head and a note in my hand that read:

“Doofus! Don’t you know the meaning of a figure of speech? Don’t ever walk into an unknown field of energy like that. Look up the Akashic records and my gedankenexperiments. And go into E=mc2.”

I was signed simply “A.” followed by a symbol I couldn’t recognize. It looked like a weird “Z”.

I stayed on the floor for what seemed like half an hour listening absentmindedly to the rain outside. A pretty loud thunder got me out of my post-shock daze. I looked at my watch and realized I still had time to see Professor Murdock so I called and told him I was on my way.

It was raining cats and dogs and the traffic was hectic. It took me forever to reach the professor’s abode over at the university district. The place was a small apartment in a brick structure with a mansard roof and classic moldings. I rang the intercom bell and the professor let me in. When I reached his apartment he was waiting for me at the door. I was shivering from the cold rain and he was wearing a warm cardigan with Matthew perched on his shoulder.

“Come in, come in. Would you like some tea?”

“Yes please, I would love some. Hey Matthew how are you,” I said to the pet ferret extending my arm to make a bridge between the professor’s shoulder and mine. Matthew crossed over enthusiastically and decided it was time to closely examine my head of hair.

“You must have a lot in your head,” said the professor.

“Why do you say that?”

“Matthew does the same to me when I’m in a state of deep thought,” he said. “My theory is he can detect the energy we radiate when our brain is hard at work.”

“Matthew, you rascal, you’re a little mutant”, I said to the ferret while stroking the neck area under its chin.

“I wouldn’t go that far. Everything around us is energy, and animals are more in tune with that aspect of reality than we humans. Besides, if Matthew were a mutant then that would make me Professor X,” he said with a smile in obvious reference to the X-Men character from the Marvel comics and movies, “or maybe Professor M…”

The professor brought the tea, I took a sip and the blister on my tongue came ablaze. The professor noticed my grimace and asked if the tea was too hot for me.

“No it’s perfect. It’s just that I have this sore on my tongue that’s been pestering me all day,” I said.

We had tea and chitchatted for a while, literally talking about the day’s weather, before getting to business. I then proceeded to tell him everything about my encounters with ‘Einstein’ and the weird Timekeeper dreams.

“What worries me the most about the whole thing,” he said with a concerned look on his face, “is that you may be right about all this being… let’s not say schizophrenic but… an intense experience created by your mind.”

Then I showed him the note…

 

Posted on

TIME MATTERS – CHAPTER 10: The Akashic Records

Image illustrating the concept of the Akashic records

Professor Murdock looked at the handwritten note in silence for a couple of minutes, frowned, took a deep breath and finally told me:

“Raymond, I gather you don’t remember anything from the moment you stepped into the light wall until you woke up on the floor several hours later. It is possible that you might have written this note yourself, very probably while in another state of consciousness.”

“Are you kidding? That’s not even my handwriting.”

“It’s not unprecedented for a different handwriting to show up in this kind of process. I understand you might think it’s unlikely, but penning something unconsciously is not unheard of. It’s called ‘automatic writing’ or psychography and it’s mostly discussed in spiritual circles. The activity is not an accepted scientific fact, but the few scientific minds that have tackled the issue believe that it is a result of the subconscious taking over, and hence classify it as a manifestation of the ideomotor effect.”

“Ideomotor effect?” I asked confused by the technical terminology.

“That’s a psychological phenomenon wherein a person’s thought or mental image brings about a seemingly reflexive or automatic muscular reaction,” said the professor.

“Ok, I’m not sure I follow but, for the sake of argument, let’s say I wrote the note and can’t remember doing it,” I said. “What are the Akashic records and Einstein’s gedankenexperiments? And what in the world is that little Z-looking doodle next to the A in the signature?”

“Let’s start with the last question first. The doodle seems strangely familiar, like I’ve seen it before, but I rather not speculate at this time. Let me check my facts and I’ll get back to you on that one. As for the gedankenexperiments that’s just the German term for thought experiments, or in other words, experiments that are carried out in the mind only. Albert Einstein used them to work out complex ideas.”

“And the Akashic records?” I asked.

“I left that one for last on purpose. First of all you must know that there’s no scientific evidence that the Akashic records are real. They are said to exist in a different dimension and supposedly contain all the knowledge in the universe. Those who believe in them claim that one can access its information through somewhat mysterious, or shall we say, mystical means. It’s a concept present in both the Theosophical and Anthroposophical way of thinking. Interestingly enough, supporters of their existence claim that some of Einstein’s public expressions suggest he was able to tap into this invisible field of information.”

“During his thought experiments?” I asked.

“That would be a fair conclusion, yes.”

“How do believers access the Akashic records? What type of mystical means do they use?”

“They believe the records are accessible all the time,” he said. “To access them one has to enter a higher state of consciousness and clear the mind of  all distractions.”

“That sounds easier said than done.”

“Actually, it might be easier than it sounds if you use directed meditation. First you think about that which you want an answer to. Then get comfortable and ease your mind of all distractions. Focus only on your breathing. By doing so you’ll clear your mind of the stream of thoughts that we tend to entertain constantly. While focused on your breathing, feel yourself becoming one with the universe around you. Once you are fully merged you’ll be connected to the universal field of knowledge and the answer to your question will find its way to you.”

“Just like that, huh. Professor, I’m a Creative Director, my mind is an endless stream of ideas. There’s no way I can shut it down for a minute, much less for the time it would take to do all that. I don’t see how I’m ever going to access those Akashic records?”

I felt a little overwhelmed by the information and the blackout episode had drained me for the day. It was close to 7:00 o’clock in the evening so I started to wrap up my consultation. I thanked the professor for all his help and he took a picture of the note to see if he could decipher the doodle next to the ‘A’ in the signature, and then I left.

Later that night he would call me with his findings on the matter claiming that it couldn’t wait till the morning.

Posted on

TIME MATTERS – CHAPTER 11: The Professor Calling

take Image of the Professor calling Ray's iPhone

It was dinnertime, and having being unconscious through lunch I was ravenous, and a pretty nasty headache was creeping up. Before heading home I stopped at a deli near the university and proceeded to devour a hearty Reuben sandwich. I enjoyed being among college students and remember thinking that maybe the professor was right about not delaying my interest in teaching.

I stayed at the deli for a while trying to put my thoughts in order. Gina had opened my eyes regarding the E=mc2 formula.  I needed to take time out of it and see what happened. Also, I had to check out Einstein’s thought experiment approach and the possible access to the mysterious Akashic records. Since what started all this was my search for the true nature of time, my area of inquiry was pretty much defined.

I was very tired and wanted to lie down for a while so I decided to try my luck first with the directed meditation process to access the Akashic records.

Before leaving the place, and out of pure curiosity, I Googled ‘Akashic records’ on my phone. It so happens that Akashic comes from the Sanskrit word Akasha which means sky, space or aether – a term that has been interpreted in some sources as ‘primary substance’. Moreover, I found out the records could also be accessed through dreams.  I wondered if the Timekeeper episodes were a manifestation of that.

Traffic was still slow due to the heavy rains so it took me quite some time to get home. Once in the lobby I asked Alastair, the security guard, to add Gina Caulder and Cyril Murdock to my file as people to call in an emergency. I thought that, being now aware of what was going on, it would be a good idea for security to call them if the need arose.

To my surprise, ‘Einstein” had taken the night off, although I had my doubts when I entered the apartment. The pipe smell had taken residence in my place. I made a mental note to ask my distinguished visitor to refrain from smoking inside my home.

I took a warm shower, settled myself comfortably on the bed and started to go through the directed meditation steps the professor had outlined. Frankly, I couldn’t clear my mind at all. After a while I just gave up and went over to my computer to work on the E=mc2 equation. That’s when the professor’s call got through.

“Raymond, sorry to call you at this time but I felt this shouldn’t wait till morning,” he said before I could even say hello. “I did a quick research and found out the strange looking ‘Z’ in the signature is actually the way Einstein wrote the capital ‘E” when signing. But what worries me the most is that the handwriting on the note matches Einstein’s handwriting,” he said and I could detect a trace of deep concern in his tone.

“Professor, are you telling me this guy is really Einstein?” I asked him getting a little worried. Up until that point I had come to terms with the fact that this character was real somehow. But I hadn’t entertained the idea that he was Einstein himself. How could he be? I started to look for his note but couldn’t find it.

“Let’s not jump to conclusions, your mind is not out of the woods yet. First of all, there have been cases in which a person has been able to channel somebody else’s handwriting. The people who have studied this type of occurrence claim it’s a sign of spiritual channeling.”

“Oh shit, spiritual channeling as in what a medium does?” I asked with disdain.

“Yes, Raymond. The practice of channeling, where a spirit takes over a person’s body for the purpose of communication, has been around for centuries. Channelers, sometimes known as mediums, claim to use what they call ‘spirit guides’, kind life forces who assist them through the course of their spiritual journeys. Many so called mediums are charlatans, granted, but there are documented cases of people who were able to truly access that otherworldly dimension.”

“So now you’re saying I’m a channeler?”

“It’s a possibility, no doubt, but in cases like this, I like to go with the Occam’s razor approach.”

“The simplest explanation tends to be the correct one,” I said.

“That’s right, other things being equal, simpler explanations are generally better than more complex ones. In this case the simpler explanation, I’m sorry to say, is that you’re having a schizophrenic episode. But it could also be that you are channeling Albert Einstein’s spirit in your search for the true nature of time, a topic very dear to him.

“What’s more, in 1917 Albert Einstein added what he called the cosmological constant to his theory of general relativity. I’m not going to go into the details but suffice it to say that later on he abandoned the constant. He called it the ‘biggest blunder’ of his life. Recently, scientists have revived Einstein’s cosmological constant to explain a mysterious force called dark energy. One that seems to be counteracting gravity causing the universe to expand at an accelerating pace. Maybe his channeling through you has something to do with this. You say he claims you summoned him.  Well, maybe he wanted to come back and you were the open door to this dimension.”

“Wow, you’re right, the simplest explanation is that I’m a schizophrenic.”

Posted on

TIME MATTERS – CHAPTER 12: Scent of the Phantasm

Image of something resembling a phantasm in the background

It took me forever to fall asleep after the professor’s call. The prospect of suffering from schizophrenia was serious shit. First I thought that the fact I could smell the pipe scent was my way out of that scenario but then I found out that smells could be part of a schizophrenic episode. I actually learned that an olfactory hallucination is called phantosmia and I couldn’t help thinking the term was funny. I had been smelling a phantasm!

Don’t remember falling asleep but it didn’t take long for the stress caused by the professor’s news to wake me up again. The sun hadn’t come up yet, but it was useless trying to go back to sleep. I took my laptop to the balcony but just sat there sipping my coffee. My tongue still hurt, and that was pissing me off, but somehow, without even realizing it, I started a process similar to Einstein’s thought experiments.

While gazing at the still dark cityscape I asked myself how would a world without time look like. To answer that I first had to come up with a working hypothesis of what time was. That’s when I strayed from the pure mind experiment protocol and started writing. Maybe Einstein could do all this stuff in his head but I was no Einstein… obviously.  So, I wrote this down:

Time is the fourth dimension in our space-time continuum. But if time is a dimension, what does it add to the other three? With one dimension we have a line. With two dimensions we have a flat plane. And when we add depth to that plane we have three-dimensional space. What happens to that three-dimensional space when we add the fourth dimension we call time? What are we adding?

I stopped writing and sat back on my chair while the first sunrays of Thursday began to shine behind the buildings across the street. In my mind I started to answer one question after another. If there’s no time there’s no speed because speed is distance over time. If there’s no speed then movement is impossible.

The idea that what time added to the other three dimensions was movement didn’t satisfy me so I kept grilling my mind. What happens when we make movement possible in the universe? Stop, stop, stop, I thought, let’s visualize first the universe without time. A universe without movement…

The images that kept creeping into my mind were caricatures of galaxies, stars and planets just frozen in time, like still pictures. I couldn’t move past that, so I decided to go for a second cup of coffee. On my way to the kitchen I found ‘Einstein’s handwritten note on the floor. I must have dropped it the night before and that’s why I couldn’t find it when talking to the professor. I picked it up and read it again.

“Doofus! Don’t you know the meaning of a figure of speech? Don’t ever walk into a field of energy like that. Look up the Akashic records and my thought experiments. And go into E=mc2.”

The last sentence hit me like a ton of bricks. E=mc2.  Energy.  Energy has frequency.  Frequency is oscillations over time… It was time to take time out of Einstein’s famous equation. I remember seeing the face of the Timekeeper in my mind laughing.

I lost track of time while immersed in the task at hand. My trance-like concentration was interrupted by a call from the office. It was Joann, my senior copywriter, asking at what time I was going to stop by the office. The team wanted to show me the latest Chronologix materials. I told her to email them because I was going to be working from home all day. She suggested a video conference but I didn’t want to interrupt what I as doing so I came up with a lame excuse that I knew wouldn’t win me any brownie points with the team. About an hour and a half later they sent me the materials. I looked at them very quickly, didn’t catch any disasters and sent them an email saying everything looked good.

I worked non-stop until 7:00 PM that Thursday. Even forgot to eat lunch. I remember thinking that it was impossible for all that was happening to be the result of schizophrenia because people with that condition usually have a hard time organizing their thoughts, and, at the time I felt like I was intellectually “in the zone”.

Feeling suddenly famished I went to the fridge, grabbed some leftover Chinese food from like a week before, ate it cold and went to bed without showering.

I collapsed exhausted and slumbered… until the pipe smell woke me up.

Posted on

TIME MATTERS – CHAPTER 13: A Not So Silent Night

.Image of the night visitor behind the pipe smoke

The smell of the pipe tobacco smoke woke me up and I saw ‘Einstein’ in my room. He had brought with him the blue light wall again and seemed to be pondering something regarding the information flowing on it.

“Vee haffe access to zo little of vat zee unifferze has to offer,” he said. “Can you imagine zee amount of knowledge vee could acquire if efferybody had access to all zee informazion in it?”

“Could you please put out the pipe,” was the first thing that came out of my mouth.

“Oh, I’m zorry, old habit, zey didn’t haffe zee smoking concerns zey haffe now ven I vas young you know.”

“Why are you here? It’s…”, I said while looking unsuccessfully for my iPhone to check what time it was, “…whatever time it is, it’s too early. In some places being up at this time is considered uncivilized.”

“I’m an old man Ray. People mein age don’t sleep much.  Maybe it’s becauze vee are clozer to zee end of our stay in zis dimenzion and unconsciously vant to get zee most out of zee time left. But I digress; I’m here becauze I understand you haffe delved into mein equazion. Vat haffe you found zo far?”

He wasn’t going away so I rubbed my eyes and got up, being careful not to step into the blue light wall again. I opened my laptop and showed ‘Einstein’ what I had done so far.

“I started by envisioning a universe without time,” I said. “No time means that the equation for speed would be a division by zero; an operation that produces and undefined result.”

I shared with him a simple example that I had found on the internet which explained very plainly why a division by zero is considered undefined. He looked at me like I was nuts explaining such simple concepts to him but I asked him to bear with me. I actually told him that I needed to go through all that because, unlike him, I was no Einstein.  A remark he found particularly amusing. Anyway, this is what I showed him:

If  8 ÷ 4 = 2, then 8 = 2 x 4

But if we substitute 4 by zero then we would have:

8 ÷ 0 = what?  and thus 8 = 0 x what?

It’s impossible to have a number that multiplied by 0 would give a result other than 0, so the equation 8 ÷ 0 = what?  has no answer.

“After establishing that, I went to the formula for speed,” I said as I showed him what I had done next:

r = d ÷ t  where r stands for rate of speed, d stands for distance and t is time.

If time doesn’t exist, then t becomes zero and the formula produces an undefined result

r = d ÷ 0 = UNDEF

“This led me to a significant finding about time’s effect on our universe, and here’s where your equation E=mc2 comes into play. If we substitute time in the speed of light by zero,” I said as I showed him the math behind my calculations,*  “we end up with a result like this:

m = (E ÷ 1) x 0

Mass equals the amount of energy multiplied by zero, hence mass equals zero:

m = 0

In the absence of time there is no mass! Or in other words, matter needs time to exist!  That’s what time adds to the other three dimensions.”

“And if we go back to the equation and start with zero mass,” I continued, “we end up with a result that can be interpreted as an infinite amount of energy. A concept with many interesting ramifications both scientifically and philosophically.”

‘Einstein’ looked at me and smiled.

“You might be on to zomething here Ray. I vould haffe to do all zee complex math to be zure, but I like vere you’re going vith zis. It might effen haffe an impact on zee zearch for an explanazion on vy zee graffitazional forces in zee cosmos are zee vay zey are, effen though zere’s not enough phyzical mass to zupport zem.”

His words energized me and somehow I stopped feeling tired.

“I’m going to go now but I’ll leaffe zis here,” he said pointing at the blue light wall of information, “zere’s no better vay to access zee Akashic records. But pleaze don’t step into it.”

He left and I found myself alone with what amounted to the greatest source of information in the universe. I wondered if it had Google…

 

*I didn’t include the full math in this chapter but, if you’re interested, you can check all of it here as part of an essay the author wrote on the subject.

Posted on

TIME MATTERS – CHAPTER 14: A Day for the Records

Image of the blue light wall through which Ray accesses the Akashic records

I sat on my bed watching the wall of light for what seemed like half an hour. The endless stream of  information was overwhelming, and I had no idea how to use it. My bafflement was interrupted by the iPhone’s wake up alarm. It had fallen on the floor and I was about to pick it up when I noticed the blue light of the wall flickering in unison with the alarm’s rhythm. That jump-started my mind and I began to connect the dots:

“Einstein handwritten note mentioned this wall of light was an energy field. The surge of energy in my iPhone brought up by the alarm had an effect on it. Over at the Professor’s, Matthew the ferret was able to feel the energy radiating from my brain. Crap! I had to go telepathic on this thing…”

The challenge was troublesome but I decided not to throw in the towel. However, before embarking on a crash course on telepathic communication with a very slim chance of success, I thought it would be a good idea to take a leak first. Once relieved I went for a much needed cup of coffee and while waiting for the coffeemaker to finish its thing I connected some additional dots:

“The first time the blue light wall appeared in my apartment, ‘Einstein’ had said he hadn’t created it but that he accessed it constantly. A short while ago he referred to this energy field as the Akashic records, and in his note he had asked me to look up his thought experiments. Professor Murdock had told me that some of Einstein’s public expressions suggest he was able to tap into the Akashic records during those experiments. Because of their nature, thought experiments lead to an increase of brain energy. The wall of blue light reacts to surges of energy in its vicinity. Bingo! No need to go mental! Increasing my brain energy should give me access to the records. Time to go back to the thought experiment approach.”

I moved the most comfortable chair I owned to the room and sat on it. Closed my eyes and drew a picture in my mind of a universe without time.

It was an energy field that extended infinitely in all directions. The energy was completely inert for it had no frequency. This must be what existed before the big bang. The big bang then must have been the moment when time came in contact with the original three-dimensional field of primordial energy. Time allowed movement, thus the energy came alive and matter began to appear.

I felt my brain unlocking. Answers came up fast and effortlessly. I figured that was the result of accessing the Akashic records. It was exhilarating! I couldn’t stop inquiring:

“So if what time does, as the fourth dimension, is add matter to three-dimensional space, then it can no longer be considered a path through which we move into the future. The nature of time is redefined as the dimension that allows the future to materialize. It adds a whole new perspective to phrases like ‘I need time to do this’. Of course you need time! But not the way it’s been thought about before. If you’re traveling from New York to Paris you need every step of the way to materialize in order to reach Paris. The trip becomes a construction process that requires approximately seven hours to be completed. Without time, the moment of you in Paris would not materialize. This would change what we measure as time. But new units of measure are not needed; it’s a matter of using the current ones in a new way. Instead of using them to measure the amount of time, we would use them to measure the length of the materializing process. For example, the materializing process of going from New York to Paris on a plane is seven hours long.”

The way the mind works when in tune with the Akashic records turned out to be intoxicating. I couldn’t stop. I had lost track of time when Bob called around noon.

“Hi Bob,” I said trying to sound as normal as possible.

“Hey buddy, are you OK? You haven’t been at the office for the last two days and we have this big presentation on Monday… I’m starting to get worried. What’s going on?” He sounded genuinely concerned.

“I’m fine,” I said trying my best to sound convincing, “there’s really nothing to worry about. I’ve been in touch with the creative team and everything is where it should be from my creative standpoint. The materials look fantastic; everything will go great on Monday. The time machine concept will blow their minds, you’ll see.”

“The presentation is not what worries me; we have a great team. It’s you bro. I can tell a mile away when you are not well. Talk to me Ray.”

“I’ll tell you, but not now; I wouldn’t be able to give you any details now anyway. Trust me, I’m dealing with something that requires my undivided attention and it doesn’t involve anything illegal nor life-threatening.”

“Listen, whatever you’ve gotten yourself into, I’ll respect you request for privacy, but remember that I’m here for you. Whatever you need…” he said.

“Actually, there’s one thing,” I said, “please cover for me at Monday’s presentation. I don’t think I’ll be able to make it. Just tell everybody that I’ve got the flu.”

“Will do buddy,” he said. “Good luck on whatever it is you’re doing and I hope some day you’ll explain to me the whole thing.”

We hung up and a short while later I got a call from Gina.

“Hey Gina, how are you doing?”

“Fine how are you?”

“I’m OK. Have you talked to Bob?” I asked.

“No, I’ve been on meetings out of the office all day and I’m taking the afternoon off to pick up the kids at my sister’s. Why do you ask?”

“Oh nothing. It’s just that I talked to him a short while ago and asked him to tell people I had the flu… which I don’t… Anyway, I thought you were calling because of that,” I babbled.

“Raymond Young, have we met?” she said lightheartedly. “I babysit nieces and nephews, not grownup coworkers. I was calling to check your ETA tomorrow.”

As implausible as it might sound, I had completely forgotten about the BBQ get-together with Gina and her niblings. It took a couple of long seconds of awkward silence for all the forgotten information to come back so I could pull an answer out of thin air.

“I was thinking around 11:30,” I said. “Does that work for you?”

“That would be perfect. Oh and take care of that flu,” she said chuckling.

After hanging up I took a shower and went out to get all I needed for the BBQ. When I got back and saw the blue glow in my room I felt like a junkie in desperate need of a fix.

Posted on

TIME MATTERS – CHAPTER 18: The Time Travel Experiment

Holy shit!  Was that Stephen Hawking on my phone?  I played the message several times and it sure sounded like him. But why would he be calling me? What was going on? At that point, I really wanted to get moving and the traffic jam I was stuck in became even more annoying.

It took another hour to finally get home. When I entered my apartment ‘Einstein’ was sitting in front of my laptop with a silly smile on his face.

“Did you get mein mezage?” he asked.

“I got a message from somebody who sounded just like Stephen Hawking,” I said.

‘Einstein’ then typed something on my computer and the same voice I had heard on my phone repeated the message: “Raymond Young, you’re invited to look at my time travel experiment of 2009.”

“You know, zeze computers are amasing. I found zis vebzite zat reproduces vadeffer you vant to zay in ein Stephen Hawking imitazion. I zought zat vould get your attention,” he said smiling.

“You’re an asshole. You know that? And since when did you know how to use a computer? Never mind, I don’t want to know. Anyway, what’s that about a 2009 time travel experiment.”

“Zat year Hawking conducted ein experiment in vich he concluded zat time traffel vas impozible.”

While ‘Einstein’ talked I went over to my room and found the blue light wall gone.

“I zuggest you look it up,” Einstein said raising his voice so I could hear him in the bedroom.

“Hey, did you take down the information wall?” I asked while ambling back to the living room.

I got no answer; ‘Einstein’ was gone. I was really getting tired of his pop-in/pop-out routine.

Well, at least he didn’t take my computer. I made myself a cup of coffee, hurt my tongue blister again, cussed about it, and then started searching for information on Hawking’s experiment. I was expecting something fancy but instead found something so low tech, simple and downright silly that for a moment thought it was a joke.

In effect, in 2009 Dr. Stephen Hawking conducted an experiment in an attempt to prove whether time travel would exist in the future. He organized a party for time travelers and announced the time and location of the party after the event was over. The idea was that the only way to attend was to find out in the future and travel back in time to attend. Dr. Hawking concluded that time travel to the past was not possible because nobody showed up the day of the event.

After reading that I thought, “really? That was it?” But, hey, this was Dr. Hawking not some schmuck, so I checked my cynicism at the door and pondered his approach.

“If traveling outside of time is only possible in energy form,” I thought, “then the time travelers that made it to Dr. Hawking’s party could have only shown up as energy. Did anybody measured the energy level at the event? Was there any difference in the energy levels before and during the event? Would a time traveler disturb the energy level at its destination? What energy frequency should we be looking at?”

I started Googling different things until I found what I as looking for.

In his book Cosmic Evolution, Astrophysicist Eric J. Chaisson presented some interesting findings regarding our brain’s energy. According to his calculations our brain uses 75,000 times as much energy as the Sun.

The number was astonishing. That’s the amount of energy our brain uses, the organ that houses the energy universe that is our mind!

“With such an energy consumption associated to our mind,” I thought, “we should expect some type of energy signature to show up in a place where a time traveler has arrived. I mean, a ferret like Matthew seemingly perceived brain energy(1). Could that be what cats and dogs react to when there seems to be nothing there? Time travelers in energy form!”

Suddenly the absurdity of my previous doubts regarding traveling to the exclusively material past in energy form dawned on me. You may only travel in energy form but that form can exist in a material world just like all other types of energies. What can’t be done is travel to the past in material form, once you become energy you can go anywhere. I got up to get a glass of water and thought that maybe Dr. Hawking did get some guests to his party after all.

One conundrum solved, now, what about the past’s connection to dark matter?

 

(1) As seen back in Chapter 9: Hitting the Wall