I’m not a big fan of Ken Wilber-inspired \u201cIntegral Theory\u201d, as it seems to require large doses of wishful thinking in order to be \u201ctruly universal\u201d, i.e. \u201cintegral\u201d. But I recently decided to have a look at a book by Ervin Laszlo that proposes a science-based \u201cintegral theory of everything\u201d; the book is called \u201cScience and the Akashic Field\u201d. As expected, it has a lot of wishful thinking once the \u201cAkashic Field\u201d side kicks in. But when Laszlo discusses pure science, he gets down to some interesting ideas and theories (i.e., those not his own). <\/p>\n
I’m still cutting thru this book, and I just read an interesting overview that Laszlo provides of current \u201cMetaverse\u201d theories. These are serious ideas put forth by cosmologists about where the Big Bang might have come from, what might have existed before our Universe arose, what else there is out there beside our Universe, and what might eventually become of our Universe. There are many very interesting (and very speculative) theories out there, including the \u201cchaotic inflation\u201d model<\/a> of physicist Andrei Linde. Laszlo describes Linde’s theory of how our Universe and others form as somewhat akin to a bubble bath. Universes form like bubbles from a churning pool of water and soap, each one expanding and separating off from a cluster of others.<\/p>\n Very interesting. This brought back a childhood TV memory for me that has nothing at all to do with cosmology. It made me think of the Lawrence Welk Show <\/a> and the champagne bubble machine that Welk used to set the mood when his orchestra was about to do a ballroom dance number. Ah, Lawrence Welk, the complete Nemesis of the youth-driven mood of the late 1960s. Brought to you by Geritol, Welk’s undyingly loyal sponsor (i.e., a vitamin tonic meant to put off dying on the part of Welk fans). I remember watching Lawrence Welk with my mother and father as there was nothing else of interest on TV on Saturday nights. But after tuning-in to the music of the Beatles and then the Stones and the Who and Zeppelin and Hendrix, watching Lawrence Welk and his old-fogie big-band entertainment every week was like scratching your nails on a blackboard. I can still hear that ritzy-ditzy little number that Welk opened the show with each week. I recently looked up its title, and it is just as cheesy as you would expect: \u201cBubbles in the Wine\u201d<\/strong>. <\/p>\n Ah, strange memories from a strange theory. Linde was one of the inventors of the Big Bang Inflation<\/a> idea, which says that the universe has expanded from the Big Bang (and continues to expand) not because of an explosive force, as the word \u201cbang\u201d would imply; but instead because somehow, new vacuum space was created and dispersed throughout the void. At first, there was a superhot plasma of unified, generic energy particles all jammed together, but somehow space was created and got between all those particles (allowing them to \u201ccool\u201d and differentiate into the various forces and kinds of matter in the Universe). And new space is still being created somehow throughout our Universe, making it bigger and spreading it further apart. <\/p>\n That is the process that \u201cinflates the bubbles\u201d in Linde’s Metaverse generation process. Wow, that is even more strange and freaky (and cool) than the late 60’s culture that swept aside Lawrence Welk and his own bubble inflation machine. No one really knows exactly what cosmic inflation is, but there are lots of mathematics that explain how it does what it does (sort of like quantum physics; it’s very strange and counter-intuitive, but the math works). I personally speculate that inflation is a way that extra dimensions are acting in our 3D + Time universe. I wonder if that extra space is somehow being \u201cpumped in\u201d from a 4th or 5th space dimension that we otherwise do not interact with, for whatever reason. Just my Stupid Wild-Ass Guess.<\/p>\n One of the not-stupid and not-wild-ass math concepts behind inflation involves the notion of \u201cfalse vacuum\u201d<\/a>. In a nutshell, a \u201cfalse vacuum\u201d is a state of nothingness and emptiness which has a higher background energy level than the one we have in our Universe. Anyone familiar with the \u201cZero Point Energy Field<\/a>\u201d knows that even in a complete vacuum with entirely nothing going on in it, a lot of things still happen on the quantum level. Tiny particles and anti-particles form out of nothing, crash into each other, and vanish (as anti-matter obliterates matter). This just keeps on happening, a sort of \u201cquantum foam\u201d (ah, Bubbles in the Vacuum!<\/strong>). There have been all sorts of speculation on what the \u201cZero Point Field\u201d means and whether it can be exploited (some said that the Nazis hoped to use it to defy gravity). Actually, Laszlo himself cites it in order to justify his \u201cAkashic Field\u201d along with paranormal phenomenon like ESP. Again, lots of wishful thinking in his book.<\/p>\n So our own vacuum is not exactly devoid of everything; it has a base energy level that you can’t get rid of. A \u201cfalse vacuum\u201d would be a vacuum with an even higher energy level, with more \u201cbubbly\u201d activity in it. Somehow, post-Big Bang inflation and Linde’s chaotic inflation Multiverse involves false vacuums in the bubble-making process (can’t say that I’m up with the detailed math and concepts behind Linde’s work). I don’t think that anyone has yet detected a false vacuum, but it seems to fit the theoretical pictures, and nothing rules it out. <\/p>\n