i went to this crappy religious lecture about "science" and god a little while back... most of it was bunk, but some of it got me thinking...
the lecture guy mentioned extradimensions (those beyond the fourth...
a little info for anyone whos unfamiliar with this... 1st dimensions is a line... anything on that line only knows about and can experience the line but nothing else... in 1 dimension the line is all that exists, there is no space around it... suppose some 1st dimensional life form lived on that line, it could only go back and forth across the line...
2nd dimension is a plane... this is a flat surface, like a sheet of paper, but with no thickness...
like in math the x and y axis... here our 2 d organism can move back and forth, up and down, but not above or below the plane... it can also move in circles...
3rd dimension is space... like the space we live in... things can have length, width and depth... we can move in all the directions we encounter in normal life...
4th dimension is time.... we move through time but only in one direction... our physical bodies (as far as we know) cannot move back through time...
beyond the fourth dimension are prolly extra dimensions which human cant or have yet to visualize... you can understand this if you imagine our 2d organism... it can no more imagine what 3 dimensional space is like than we can imagine beyond the fourth...
so where im going with this is that god, or gods can exist beyond the fourth dimension... in this way they can look at the fourth dimension like we look at a straight line... we can seee the beginning and end, we can move to any point on the line or we can view several points or large sections at the same time...
so this is a possible reconciliation of the free will vs. destiny/fate argument...
now, what im thinking is that our consciousness is a small piece of divinity...
i believe that god isnt a person or thing, but like an extra dimensional ocean of energy or consciousness or spirit or, more likely, somthing undefinable, but familiar to us all...
now, while our physical bodies are only able to move through time in one direction, our minds and consciousness can do more...
when we remember somthing our consciousness travels back through time... we keep a record of all the time weve experienced to date and are able to travel across it at will... through belief and faith we can even change the past within the confines of our minds... sometimes even in other peoples minds...
while everyone can travel backward in time, some are also able to move forward... indeed, i think everyone has this ability, only some are more in touch with it than others...
weve all had flashes or premonitions of somthing that was going to happen... if you believe this then our consciousness is able to move "freely" thru time...
this supports the idea that each of us has a piece of divinity instilled in us at the moment of birth... we are givin consciousness to use for our lifetime, at the end, our cup is emptied back into the extradimensional ocean and we become a part of everything all over again...
from this line of thinking also stems my belief in reincarnation...
all living things contain a piece of a higher energy and this energy flows thru us all... thru all living things and unites us in a more intimate way than i think most people realize...
the main problem that i had with this was that the ocean idea sounded too remote...
i dont like the idea of it being so far away and out of touch... then i realized that this isnt necessarily the case...
we exist in 3 dimensional space and additionally in time... but we are not necessarily separate from a 2d universe... there could be an infinite number of 2d universes within our 3d space... so it can be with an extradimensional existance... it can surround and flow through our universe as well as spanning beyond it...
thats about all the conclusion i have for now, but i think this realization is very very comforting...
it also ties in well with eastern philsophy and bhuddism where we each have a primordial bhudda spirit in us, its our job to find it and become enlightened...
im sure ill add to this in time... (no pun intended)