A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Heaven (27 page)

Then again . . . maybe not.

What if I am onto something? God, could you imagine that? Could you imagine the looks on the faces of scientists, physicists, mathematicians, theorists, and geniuses around the world? They would pause, put down their chalk at the blackboard (because that is how I imagine all of them at any given time of the day), and quietly ask, “Are you telling me a brash, loud-mouthed heavy-metal singer with no actual training nor any discernible education put together a hypothesis about the existence of spirits and how it relates to energy . . . and it was right?” I can almost hear their heads exploding. I have been saying it since I threw a desk at my ninth-grade English teacher: be careful how you perceive the ones around you. Just because you are smart, that does not necessarily mean you are clever. The same people who crack the codes of the universe are still completely oblivious to how you keep brown stains out of white underwear. I figured that shit out in junior high school—simply refuse to wear underwear. But what do I know? I am just a brash, loud-mouthed heavy-metal singer and so on and so forth . . . .

Now, I am the kind of rabid bastard who immediately jumps to the extreme on things. So the possibility of me being right about these phenomena from a scientific point of view has me chasing dragons. I see myself accepting a Nobel Prize in science, getting the sash and the cash while flipping off the audience with my tongue sticking out. They could do a special on me for Nova, a wonderfully underrated, underappreciated program on PBS that I have watched for years now. I would book myself on the talk show circuit and say unbelievably inappropriate things like, “I bet Britney Spears smells like hot garbage from the waist down . . .” simply because I fucking could. I would be the toast of towns around the world if my deductions were indeed plausible and provable. I would be the one-eyed man in the blind kingdom, kicking people in the ass when they were too slow in the buffet line and tripping the guys who made fun of me in high school. I would be emperor of all.

The problem is that when I think about that shit I am reminded all too often that I am no amazing scientist. Hell, I have to be reminded to put the fucking seat down in the bathroom (one soggy butt and I am an asshole for life . . .). So I am not trying to outdo Galileo or outwit Newton and his ilk. But crazier things have been possible. I am reminded of Srinivasa Ramanujan. Ramanujan was a self-taught mathematician from India who did almost all of his research in the middle of nowhere—he once applied to a college and failed because the only course he passed was mathematics. It was only after he submitted various papers to academics in England that his genius was really discovered and fully realized. Ramanujan went on to revolutionize the medium, with breakthroughs in mathematical analysis, infinite series, continued fractions, and number theory—all of this from a man who simply taught himself and unlocked the hidden power of his mind. Think about this: Ramanujan tragically died at the very young age of thirty-two. With all that he was able to achieve in the time he had, imagine if he had lived a longer life. Think of the possibilities. This is not a story of sadness; this is a story of inspiration, with a very simple message: the only limitations in life are the ones you conjure up for yourself and, thusly, then allow to control your destiny. Without those shackles, you can be invincible.

I fear again I may have failed my mission with this book. I wanted to examine instances in which the paranormal was a factor in my already loony life. I wanted to cast the twelve-sided die on the idea of God and deal with His supposed existence. I wanted to defend my position as an atheist and yet maybe make some sense of all these wonderfully amazing mysteries that seem to descend on my habitation with alarming frequency. I wanted to put forth different ideas that had nothing to do with superstition, myth, legend, religion, or mysticism to try to explain what these spirits, spooks, ghosts, and such could possibly be when we strip away the sitcom side of things. I do not know if I accomplished any of that. I am not even sure if I answered my own questions. Christ, did I invent new questions? At the end of the day, how far did I really go with all of this? Was I meant to know the truth, if there was any to know at all? In my quest for enthralled enlightenment, I may have left the safety of the street lamps and plunged a little too close to the alleys our parents warned us away from when we were young. But of course, no one learns anything sitting on the curb—you have to cross that street to really know what is on the other side.

I have been reading recently about several fascinating studies that are going on involving writing information—really truly encoding programmed knowledge—onto energy itself. Think of that for a second. Can you understand the ramifications of that idea? It has me thrilled and intrigued. The idea that we could eventually emboss light and energy with information—to possibly be able to control that energy with intelligence—is astonishingly exciting. Could you imagine sending messages on a beam of light? Not that stuff we use today, like fiber optics and whatnot, but using beams of pure energy for communication. It is one step removed from using that same energy for transportation. The laws of physics basically state that we, as not-so-durable humans, could not endure space travel physically. Okay, but what if the secret to long-distance space travel exists in the work I just described? And more in keeping with the theme of this damn book, what if this study, as a side-effect, proves my “intelligent energy” idea? If we as humans can write or encode energy with information—more to the point, somehow program the very electrons that make up the universe—how is it not plausible that a soul (energy), over a vast period of time and with enough power of will and thought, might imprint on that energy its personality (information), and as a result, after the physical form has died, its soul can go on with all that knowledge for an incredible amount of time because energy can neither be created nor destroyed? The human body is equal parts organism, supercomputer, and high-powered battery. I refuse to believe, with all these pieces and all these clues, it is that far-fetched to assume that this may not be possible. I am not trying to convince myself of anything; I have “seen the footage,” so to speak. I may be trying to convince you that what I am saying has gravitas, but at least I am not cribbing notes from a shitty horror movie.

However, that leads me to the other revelation that I had as I was writing this book and putting this all in place. So assume for a moment that this idea of programming energy is a realistic endeavor. By all accounts and from what I have read, the progress has been slow but promising. So if we accept that as a viable component to this next equation, doing so makes this next set of ideas very interesting, even for a cynical bastard like myself. Let me explain: there have been other studies conducted that have looked at the world from the standpoint that planet Earth—from the seas to the air, from the country to the cities (yes, the cities), from the rock foundations to the humans who scamper across its face like “cells”—planet Earth might just be considered a superorganism. Yes, that is right: Earth, if you look at it as a whole, might be considered a single living being that just happens to have several species and communities clinging to it and shaping the way it “lives.” If you think about it, it is not so crazy. Cities, with all their traffic, progress, and citizens, are not that far off from how human cells work or how organs pump blood and various fluids through the body, keeping us alive. What if everyone on this planet was keeping Earth alive in the way that our assembled cells, bacteria, fluids, and energies keep us alive? Physicist Jürgen Schmidhuber says the same pattern works on an intergalactic scale as well, from galaxies to universes. It is indeed an awesome idea.

So my idea is this: what if all the energy in the known universe and beyond, way beyond and even further, was connected? If we can write information on energy, it stands to reason that there may be a way for energy to commingle and cross itself without dissecting itself. We know we can store energy and we know we can harness energy. We are on the verge of using pure energy as a communication tool. So what if all that energy is not different—it is just parts of the same “being”? Moreover, if that incredibly humongous amount of energy is the same . . . what if that being were “God”? Yeah, I told you it was going to get weird—I even surprised myself on that one. I am not proving the existence of Old Man White Beard or rewriting the modern Bible; I am just making a suggestion. What if all that energy was not bits of different energy but instead a singular intergalactic supreme energy that runs not only this world but also all the other worlds and beyond? Would that energy not trigger the semiprimitive intuitions in the Neanderthal compartments of our brains that cause us to want to pray and believe in “a higher power”? It may be this unconscious perception that fuels our belief systems when it comes to religious fervor and the like. We have always been surrounded by fields of energy—we have been since we monkeys started talking, even before we “discovered” electricity and all that jazz. Our genes are enriched with diabolical wonder for answers and hyperinstinct, whether it is a preternatural sense of danger from predators or a curiosity about the invisible connections that draw us in, leave us baffled, and ultimately promote us to explain it all or see it all for what it truly is. Maybe since before the age of reason we have known that there is one immense power in the universe, and our limited understanding translated that into a God variable. It begs the quandary: if we can literally control and program energy, what if someone else already has? What if we are receiving subliminal ideas from the energy around us that originated somewhere else entirely, and we are only now starting to comprehend the capacities? What if our discoveries are not our own? What if our knowledge came to us on preprogrammed light?

This is usually the time in the TV show when the voiceover would announce dramatically that “ancient astronaut theorists believe” blah fucking blah and all that. I know—I just stepped deep into the realms of fringe science and “holy hell, what the pure fuck is he babbling about?” I embrace the fact that many of you might not follow these strings of patchwork postulation. I might just be typing fancy-looking words onto paper in an attempt to look a little less stupid than I did when I broke my toe running up a flight of concrete stairs. I am not saying it all makes sense, and I am not saying I have any answers past what I just put together here for you. What I am saying is, “I do not know, but it could be this . . .” Maybe that is the sign of terrific intellectual hunger. Maybe it is the sign of a lazy sod who does not bother reading what has already been established in academics. But you do not find unknown locations by taking the same bus with the same passengers to the same old stops. You grab a big stick, whack at the tall grass, and make your way in the direction of the place you believe is out there. It might not make sense to everyone around you, but at least when you get there you can describe it to the people you left behind.

I have been fairly obsessed with trying to understand ghosts and haunts from a very different point of view since I could string sentences together. It is the same reason I dismissed religion when I was younger: I was not satisfied with the answers that the status quo had to offer. That applies here because I am not completely sated by what the various ghost-hunting outfits could provide. Most of them I really just dismiss out of hand anyway. They are one weird decision away from being at a Renaissance Fair, and that to me is not what this is supposed to be about. This is not about Live Action Role Playing, and I am not saying there is anything wrong with that at all. But when you are truly looking for answers, you are not going to find any within a group who may or may not believe in what they are doing and most are secretly only doing so in order to belong to a group. There is a time to play and a time to work (man, I wish more people honestly understood that). Subsequently, there is a time to guess and there is indeed a time to ask. Those two concepts are not the same. You have a better chance of reaching your destination by seeking directions than you do by bullshitting yourself into knowing where the fuck you are on the map.

In summation, class (sorry, I could not resist), this is a dissertation on knowing, believing, theory, hypothesis, and examination. I may not have changed any of your minds in doing so. I may have made some enemies in the long run (I knew I should have left out the L.A.R.P. comment . . .), but this to me has been so therapeutic for my hungry mind that I feel I have really figured some things out and put some things in their respective place. Trust me—I am not an idiot, but I am not an asshole either. These are not sweeping statements meant to allege that I may know more than I am letting on about. I am just like you, but with worse hair. I want to know certain answers if only to be able to figure out the right questions in the process. If I knew where to start, I would not be writing this book. Sometimes I feel like a guy who runs into a theater in the middle of the movie and, while the rest of the film is playing, starts screaming loudly about what he thought the first half was about. But unlike most dismissive blokes I have had the displeasure of chatting with, I have embraced the idea that I may have no fucking idea what I am going on about in the first place. That to me is the healthiest place to start, because at least then you know you are going to accept correction with a smile and not balk at being wrong with an unhealthy grimace. We cannot all be right; somebody has to be a stupid fucker sometimes. The great thing about the democracy of the human race is that everyone eventually gets to take his or her turn at being wrong.

I had an interesting conversation with a good friend of mine I will refer to as Grover. I was explaining to him the concept of this book and trying to relay what I wanted to accomplish with it. Grover listened intently, throwing in quips here and there on how he had spent some time in places that were purportedly haunted as well. But his ideas about it were even more interesting. He wondered if it had to do with time. What if time somehow was able to fold back on itself, and the spirits we ran into were flashes from lives already led in time, like a loop from a film or a tape recorder? It was an inspiring idea—I mean, space is curved and light can curve, why not time? I wanted to include it here because I would be disingenuous if I said it did not intrigue me. I love hearing other people’s concepts because it spurs me on toward real insight. Whether Grover or I are actually right is neither here nor there. What is relevant is that people are thinking about it outside the norm, and that is what this book is inevitably meant to be: a conduit that prods the reader into thinking for him or herself. I dislike references that lay down the law and render the person a slave to what is being posited. I think the best tools are the ones that leave you wondering when you are finished. The best art has always been the art that is left open to interpretation. That is what I hope you have in your hands right now.