God's Bathroom Mirrors
Parallel universes are now a mathematical probability, and concepts like quantum overlap, digital delay, and dejavu are becoming, more and more, the curious object of our attention.
While concrescense and novelty are knitting the global flow of digital information tighter and tighter, we often experiece personal moments of digital delay or overlap. We typically call these experiences synchronicities, head trips, or dejavus. Regardless of what we call them, these experiences are unmistakeable. It feels, suddenly, like we're standing in a double mirrored bathroom, sharing in one unified space and time, in one very particular ontology, one that has always been happening and always will be happening--like an absurd reverb of truer identity.
New research suggests that these moments are caused because of mirror neurons in the brain. Mirror neurons have been the recent subject of neurological and psychological research and may explain the way in which human beings learn and share in physical behavior and possibly pathology. The idea is that small neurons in our brain fire identically in observing as in performing.
At the most basic level, this informs our understanding of how we learn. At advanced levels research with mirror neurons might inform complex understandings of neurological disorders in small children, disorders like autism. And at the most grandiose, the mirror neurons are helpful in explaining why it is that we all experience mystical moments of synchronicity: there is a shared space of union between observer and observed, self and other.
Here's a cool audio interview with mirror neuron scientist Daniel Glasser.
Tweet- 5-16-07
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As Above, So Below
synchronicity
mirror neurons are really only mirrors
mirror neurons get a lot of interest, but are actually a bit more mundane (to many). they found that when you do something (like touch your nose), a bunch of neurons fire. when you see someone do it (like they touch their nose) some of the same neurons fire. apparently these "mirror neurons" fire no matter who does it.
But think of it like this: in your head, you have an imaginary construct of your environment. this is necesary to comprehend the chaotic jumble of sensory input from all over your body, to determine how you move, to decide where you are and why, etc. this is what kids spend the first few years developing, this inner vcersion of the world.
when mirror neurons fire, it is not unreasonable to just say they are updating something in that world. if they detect ball throwing, they need to construct ball throwing in that world.
what complicatesd matters, and how this could seem to relate to parallel universes, is that everyone develops very individual inner world models. yours will not be like george washington's. his will not be like a member of a bushman tribe. These inner worlds, though initially the designs are in DNA, diverge and are informed by and large by our environment. They change with experience over time.
our perception of our environment is really just the sum total of our mental habits. we expect to see our walls every day when we wake up. we do. so our expectation is strengthened. the congealing of neuroplasticity is actually just the "deep ruts" of mental habits we form as we get older. younger folks haven't formed as deep of these ruts yet, so they are easier to change.
But what you are describing as deja-vu is not the same as what others describe as synchronicity.
But you're right, that isn't happening. But what you are aware of, appears to your consciousness long (sometimes seconds, sometimes years) after it gets processed in your pre-conscious. Sometimes that scheduling gets mixed up (as in deja-vu) and quite possibly the pre-conscious has already taken into account things the mirror neurons told it, though the consciousness should lag behind. Only sometimes, it gets ahead of the pre-conscious.
however, if there is an a priori universe out there, there's no indication these mirror neurons are actually effecting it. They only seem to be effect our perception of that universe.
good stuff
Good stuff---I find these terms and semantical objections to be very easily blurred--just like science and spirit, intellect and experience, etc.