If you are aware in the dream, you can experience many things within the dream state.

It is
easier to develop your practices in a dream than in the daytime. In the daytime we are
limited by our material body, but in a dream our function of mind and our consciousness of
the senses are unhindered. We can have more clarity. Thus there are more possibilities. For
example, it is possible to practice advanced Dzogchen practices of togel and the Dzogchen
longde17. If you practice these in the daytime you can certainly have meditative
experiences, but in a dream you can have experiences beyond the limitation of the material
body. That is why the practice is very important. In the daytime all experiences we have are
very much conditioned by our attachment and tension. We feel that everything is concrete. In
a dream we may initially feel that everything is concrete, but then suddenly remember that it
is a dream. When you are aware in a dream, you know you are dreaming and that it is
unreal. You know you are in a state of unreality. Once you have this experience, you can
also make discoveries about your daily life such as about your major attachments. The
ultimate result is to diminish your tension. For those people who find it difficult to have the
kind of presence I’ve described, the practice of the dark retreat18 is very useful. After two
days or three days in the dark, you lose your sense of day and night. Your sleep becomes
lighter and lighter. You sleep and wake up, sleep and wake up. Such a retreat offers a good
opportunity to develop your presence and clarity. In this environment you can more easily
discover what it means to have presence when you are sleeping. Your waking and sleeping
states thus become integrated. Normally, for a practitioner, one of the principal ways that
signs of progress manifest is in dreams. Sometimes there occurs, in dream, an intervention
on behalf of the practitioner. For example, if I am doing something wrong, I may have a
communication through a dream. This may come by way of transmission of the teaching. It
may also come through the protectors of the teaching, or the dakinis.
You didn't get that parking ticket that irked you so much. Or you, unfortunately, never met
your wife. [music playing] NARRATOR: Anything that is physically possible actually does
occur in some other parallel universe. [music playing] It means that in one universe, Elvis
Presley is still alive. In a different universe, George W.
Bush is the baseball commissioner. Or perhaps, we don't exist at all in some of these
universes. The implications are staggering. And if the universe is infinite and there really are
all these level one universes in the infinite multiverse, all those other possibilities did
somewhere happen. NARRATOR: Technically, there are a couple of ways mathematically for
the universe to be truly infinite.
But essentially, it must be shown to be flat. The universe seems to be perfectly flat, which
means either the universe is flat or is curved so slightly that we can't see it. NARRATOR: In
this case, the universe would eventually curve back in on itself and form a hypersphere. It
would then be finite in size and volume and not flat and infinite.
Another way to look at this is that the universe may have inflated so quickly and so
enormously, that it only looks flat. Think of a bug walking on a gigantic balloon. The larger
the balloon, the flatter things get. The bug walks in any direction and the bug says, well, the
universe seems perfectly flat to me.
But from a distance, we see that the bug is walking on a gigantic balloon. [music playing]
NARRATOR: But now, an amazing new tool-- the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe, or
WMAP, is changing everything. Some say the remarkable images reveal the true shape of
the universe. What we have here are baby pictures of the universe.
What it looked like when it was only 400,000 years old. We're looking so far back in time that
the galaxies hadn't even formed, yet. We just had this dead, diffused gas, which gradually,
over time, clumped into galaxies, stars, planets. NARRATOR: The WMAP is catching the
very earliest signs of creation.
Officially, it is tasked with measuring radiation left over from the Big Bang. But now, some
scientists have devised an experiment to calculate the overall shape of the universe. If I
send light rays through space and make a gigantic triangle, going from us, here, out to the
farthest edges of what we can see and then back, the angles of that triangle should add up
to exactly 180 degrees.
NARRATOR: If the universe is curved like a balloon, the angles of the giant triangle would
add up to more than 180 degrees. To find out of the universe is flat or curved, they shot laser
beams deep into space and made a giant light triangle. Now we can tell. And the
measurement is in and the answer is, it works beautifully.
The angles add up to exactly 180 degrees. That the universe is flat. [music playing]
NARRATOR: The WMAP seems to show that the universe is flat. For some, however, the
jury is still out on the flat universe question. I tend to think that the universe is, in fact, a soap
bubble of some sort, but it is bent so slightly, that we can't see it.
[music playing] NARRATOR: Some experts say that there are other, even more
mind-boggling kinds of parallel universes out there. A level two type parallel universe made
up of giant cosmic soap bubbles that float in hyperspace. Each independent bubble has
within it, an entire universe. The question is, do we all really live in a giant cosmic bubble?
[music playing] Could our universe be just one mega bubble in a cosmic crowd of mega
bubbles? If the sensational level two type parallel universe idea is right, then the true nature
of the cosmos
could be even more astonishing than ever imagined. [music playing] The amazing concept is
that in the instance of creation, our universe rapidly suddenly and massively inflated,
creating a giant cosmic soap bubble. Our unique universe floats in a seething sea of other
super bubbles, where bubbles can clash and spawn baby brother and sister universes.
It's happening all the time. Universes are inflating, popping out, and then blowing up to these
huge sizes of universes. NARRATOR: The medium these level two bubbles are floating in is
what some call the bulk and others call hyperspace. In this new paradigm, soap bubbles can
form, reform. They can split.
It's dynamic. Universes being created out of nothing. Universes budding off other universes.
NARRATOR: Altogether, these bubbles form the level two type parallel universe. And within
it, there are an infinite number of level one type parallel universes. The level one and level
two universes are all in our same one space.
There's only one space. Then there are these different regions, which we call level one and
level two parallel universes. NARRATOR: A flyby through the level two parallel universe, or
what some also called the multiverse, would be a terrifying and spectacular experience. A
multiverse of universes, each one popping into existence, popping out of existence, perhaps
colliding with each other.
NARRATOR: Out of calamity comes existence. What we call the level two multiverse is
really, best thought of as a tree or a fractal structure where you have a region of space
expanding like crazy and sprouting off other regions, which then expand, sprouting off other
regions. And other ones can bud off of that.
So you can get this chaotic, eternally branching set of universes budding off from their
predecessors. [music playing] An infinite set of universes in this multiverse. NARRATOR:
The big term for this monumental process is bubble nucleation. Bubble nucleation is the
geek speak phrase for the process where you have this inflating strange material.
And then a little piece of it stops inflating and causes a bubble-shaped region expanding
around it to also stop inflating. And then you create, in this bubble, a nice, calm region of
space where you will eventually form galaxies, stars, planets and even people like us. So we
are the children of the bubble.
NARRATOR: For the first time in human history, children of the bubble are peering out and
seeing on the horizon, parallel universes. Determined physicists believe they are now on the
brink of uncovering the ultimate mysteries of the universe. Why look for these parallel
universes that we can't touch? Because they hold the secret of secrets.
They hold the secret of the origin of everything there is. For the first time, we can imagine
where our universe itself came from. Perhaps when our universe popped into existence,
colliding with another parallel universe, perhaps budding from another universe. These are
the stuff of modern research today-- pre-Big Bang physics.
Physics before Genesis. NARRATOR: But there is a problem. For decades, scientists have
been searching for one cohesive theory of everything. One to unite Einstein's theory of
general relativity, which explains how gravity works over large scales, with quantum
physics-- the science of the tiniest matter.
Together, these two great theories explain everything humanity knows so far about the
cosmos. But like a cartoon cat and mouse-- They are at war with one another. These two
theories hate each other. They're completely inconsistent, incompatible. No way to
understand, in today's world, a quantum version of general relativity.
How can we get a shotgun marriage between these two theories that don't like each other?
Bringing those together would give you a theory of everything, in the sense that those are
the ingredients you would need, I think, to understand the Big Bang. To understand the origin
of the universe. NARRATOR: When in the 1980s, scientists came up with a lyrical-sounding
idea-- string theory-- it promised to solve all the mysteries of the universe, including whether
or not parallel universes are real.
The idea is that all particles are not solid points or dots, as science said they were. Instead, if
you could see up close, particles are, in fact, tiny string-like objects that individually vibrate in
various ways. String theory starts out by taking the idea of a string which vibrates, giving rise
to different particles and doing physics with that.
That's rather, musical, in a way. It's like using guitar and bass in a band to generate different
notes from vibrations of string. [music playing] NARRATOR: As scientists explored string
theory more closely, they made a remarkable discovery. We found that it wasn't just strings
that were involved in the physics, but also membranes and other extended objects which
could vibrate.
And that's rather like enlarging the band to have drums and other instruments, which enrich
the sound and really broaden the repertoire of things that could be played. NARRATOR:
String theory has now evolved into what is called M, or membrane, theory. So now we
realize that the particles we see in nature-- the universe itself-- consists of vibrating
membranes and vibrating strings.
[music playing] NARRATOR: The crowning achievement of M-theory came when scientists
realized that to make sense of everything, you need to think of the universe as existing in 11
dimensions. If you're sitting on a mountaintop and you look down, you can see all the
separate little villages that are not unified at all.
But from a mountaintop, you look at a coherent, whole, beautiful picture. And that's M-theory.
NARRATOR: M-theory explains how the tiniest, as well as the biggest, things in the cosmos
work. It also proposes that we all live on a giant and energetic membrane. Our universe is
tethered to this wall by invisible extra dimensions.
To make matters crazier, M-theory proposes that six or seven of these dimensions-- the
extra ones we don't sense every day-- are tiny and right in front of your nose. At every point
of any one of these people walking by, you pick a point, at that point there will be an
incredibly tiny curled up either six or seven dimensions that you just don't perceive.
NARRATOR: These membranes are also very close to each other. You could have one of
these membranes being a universe and then moving sideways, you have another membrane
being a separate universe. And they may be just a millimeter or two away. NARRATOR: The
giant walls of energetic matter float side by, side like humongous sheets in the bulk or in
hyperspace.
An entire universe may be attached to a brain or a universe can occupy the whole of another
one. Our own universe sits on the skin of one of these giant brains. That, in turn, is adrift in
the cosmic sea of space. And it's floating around in a bigger structure called the bulk. Our
three dimensional universe is like a membrane floating around within this larger structure.
NARRATOR: Believing that invisible extra dimensions that, like an umbilical cord, connect us
to a hyper or bulk space where giant membranes live demands a huge leap of faith. Where
are these membranes that we're stuck to? And why can't we see these extra dimensions that
connect us? I'm floating around here on this kayak, on the surface of the ocean.
And you can think of this as a two dimensional surface. [music playing] But below me,
there's a whole other dimension. There's the down dimension, where all the fish live. You
can think of that as the bulk. I'm on a membrane floating around and the bulk is the other
dimension. The fish down below the surface of the water are in a different dimension than I
am.
They don't even know that I'm here, unless I happen to splash around and hit one on the
head or something like that. So they might be completely oblivious to my existence. And I
could be oblivious to their existence because we're in different dimensions. NARRATOR: But
can a fleeting thought send you into an extra dimension and onto a parallel universe? [music
playing] According to the latest M-theory, in less than an instant, in the first trillionth of a
trillionth of a second, membranes in a pre-universe cosmos,
like gigantic cosmic cymbals, smash together and produced the Big Bang. Over almost 13.7
billion years, a huge expanding bubble of primordial matter evolved into the universe we now
know and love. Can crashing membranes create parallel universes, too? If it happened
once, it could happen again and again and again.
So it's possible that there's a continuous cycle of brains smashing together to produce
universes and that it never stops. NARRATOR: If this is true, level two parallel universes
must exist. Time goes on forever. And there's a continual process of birth of universes
through cosmic catastrophes. NARRATOR: In the level three type, there is an even more
fantastic way parallel universes can form.
Here's how it works. In both the level one and level two kinds, there are replica universes
separated from us in the here and now by time and space. But in the level three parallel
universe, these copies of us are right here, right now. Living in the exact same space and
time. They are separated from us because they're in a different dimension of this same
space.
And to bend our minds more, there are an infinite number of them. If true, this controversial
many worlds concept has monumental consequences. Parallel universes don't exist. They're
nonsense. They're something out of a "Twilight Zone" episode. A bad "Star Trek" rerun. But
you forget one thing.
One small quantum difference could separate me from an entirely different universe, where I
have multiple copies of myself leading multiple different lives. This is shocking. This even
affects morals. Why should I obey the law, knowing that in some universe, if I commit a
crime, I'm going to get away with it? [music playing] NARRATOR: The outrageous idea
comes from the strange world of quantum mechanics-- the science of the atom.
In the bizarre atomic world, we have electrons that literally disappear, reappear someplace
else. Electrons that could be multiple places at the same time. NARRATOR: This staggering
quantum mechanical phenomenon is enshrined in the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. As
crazy as it sounds, not only does quantum physics tell you that a little particle can be in two
places at once, but the so-called Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle tells you that sometime,
the particle even must be in two places at once.
[music playing] NARRATOR: With a laser light and a glass apple, it can be seen how light
particles, or photons, do this. This shows that photons-- the little particles of light coming out
of my laser-- can end up in several places at once. And since we are made up of little
particles, that means if they can be in several places at once so can we.
NARRATOR: In other words, in the instant that you have a fleeting thought, your whole body
makes a quantum leap into another dimension and into a parallel universe. And what it
means is that if I am walking down the pavement and make a snap decision as to whether
I'm going to go left to right, if my decision depends on what some little particle in my brain
was doing, then I will actually end up doing both.
And the life of mine effectively splits into two parallel realities. NARRATOR: In a level three
type parallel universe, even a cat has many more than nine lives. The trouble is, in some of
these worlds, the cat could be dead and at the same time, in other parallel universes, the
same cat can be alive and kicking.
But how? How can you have a dead cat and a live cat simultaneously? Because the
universe splits in half. In one universe, we have a dead cat. In the other universe, we have a
live cat. Get used to it. [music playing] NARRATOR: What is even more shocking is that in
some of these many worlds, a tiny quantum difference in thought can change the whole
world.
It's like the butterfly that flaps its wing and makes the hurricane. Tiny microscopic events
would changed the course of history. So every historical event actually happened in every
possible way, in some branch of this ever-splitting many worlds universe. NARRATOR: In
one, the Nazi's won World War II.
In which case, I'm now speaking German. And there's a swastika behind me. NARRATOR:
In another world, none of the horror ever happened. In one universe, there's no World War II
and 50 or so million people didn't have to die. NARRATOR: Like the endless rolls of the dice,
all possible numbers and all possible kinds of universes and outcomes will eventually turn up
and occur in one of these many worlds.
In fact, all our wishes, too, can come true in a parallel universe. [music playing] If the many
worlds idea is right, then there's a branch of the universe in which the Chicago Cubs won the
World Series last year. You could imagine that the USA was still a colony of the British, for
example. NARRATOR: Even the impossible is probable in some parallel universe.
There could even be creatures coming into our world from these mysterious extra
dimensions. [music playing] As mind-boggling as it sounds, when it comes to the amazing
world of parallel universes, anything that can happen has happened or will happen in some
other universe, in some other dimension, space, and time.
Quantum differences can rewrite history, creating multiple universes. Each with wildly
different outcomes, where anything and everything is possible. Some wars never happened.
Others we never imagined did. A slight change means a comet missed. And even dinosaurs
still roam some Earth somewhere. All and every one of these fantastic parallel universes
occupy the same space, but are in a different dimension and so, invisible to us.
Even as you peacefully watch TV, whole other invisible worlds could be raging all around
you. These parallel universes are in your living room. This means that in your living room,
there are dinosaurs. You can't hear them. You can't see the dinosaurs that are rampaging
throughout your living room, but they're there.
NARRATOR: The quantum principle that creates many versions of each person can also
create entire universes. The universe, at one point, was actually smaller than an electron. If
that's true and if electrons are described by being many places at the same time in parallel
states, this means that the universe also exists in parallel states.
You inevitably get parallel universes. There's no choice. NARRATOR: But that's not all.
Scientists recently have shocked the world, again. And claimed that there could be one more
kind of parallel universe. [music playing] These level four type are created either by quantum
fluctuations or by brains clashing.
What is created is radically different. In this type of parallel universe, all the rules are out the
window. It could be, in fact, that the mathematics and physics describing reality differs from
what we're used to in our universe. NARRATOR: If the laws of physics are different in a level
four parallel universe, space could just consist of gas and particles.
Galaxies, stars, and planets would not have formed. And life as we know it would not exist.
To show that any type of parallel universe-- level one, two, three, or four-- truly exists,
experts must find the evidence. Be they big, tiny, or invisible, scientists must find physical
indications of the extra dimensions that supposedly connect us to these other worlds.
To do it, today physicists at Fermilab in Illinois are conducting extraordinary experiments.
Hoping to prove that any kind, even the wildest type, of parallel universe is really out there.
For the first time ever, real and remarkable experiments are taking place at particle colliders,
like the Tevatron at Fermilab.
Right now, this detector is looking for evidence of extra dimensions. If there are extra
dimensions of a certain size and shape, this experiment will find that. NARRATOR: Their
best chance of exposing extra dimensions comes from smashing microscopic particles
together at super speeds. The smoking gun in the hunt is gravity.
It has been found to be a uniquely weak force. So the Fermilab physicists are looking for the
particle that carries gravity. It is called a graviton. It's the particle that carries gravity, which
we think knows about all of the extra dimensions of space. So we think the gravitons, if you
can produce them in high energies, should actually move off into the extra dimensions.
NARRATOR: But finding a graviton, or at least a sign of one, is a huge challenge. It's tricky
and complicated because you're looking for nothing. You're looking for something that has
disappeared. What the rate now? It's very, very rare that you make a really exotic particle.
So we literally have to collide them billions of times in order to find the very rare event, where
you make something like a particle that disappears into extra dimensions.
NARRATOR: The Tevatron collider shoots minuscule protons and anti-protons at terrific
speeds, just short of the speed of light, around a 4 mile long, super-enforced steel-encased
ring. To protect the sensitive experiments from surface noise and for safety reasons, the
collision ring lies deep underground. We take beams of high energy protons going one way
around a big ring and a beam of high energy anti-protons going the other way around the
ring.
And then at two places in the ring, we smash them together. NARRATOR: The mighty
collision annihilates the particles and produces an intense ball of pure energy. The idea
being that perhaps, we can make new particles that disappear into the extra dimensions.
NARRATOR: If nothing happens, how will the scientists know that a graviton has moved off
into an extra dimension? The way that you tell that is by reconstructing everything else that
happened in this messy collision and then saying, oops.
There is some energy and momentum that's missing here. So we call this a missing energy
search. NARRATOR: It could take years and billions of collisions before history happens and
higher dimensions are found. If extra dimensions are there, it means the universe is a much
bigger and much stranger place than we had ever imagined.
NARRATOR: But if it does happen, it would be proof positive that parallel worlds exist. The
question then will be, how do we get there? Faced with extinction in the far-flung future, can
humankind open a portal to a parallel universe? [music playing] Parallel universes are not
just a crazy idea dreamed up by physicists to marry science fiction.
If finally proven to exist, they could have an important practical purpose in the far off future.
Finding a tunnel to another world could one day save humanity. Billions of years from now,
our Earth will meet its inevitable demise. Experts say that it will all end either in a big crunch
or big freeze. If other universes are shown to exist, some say they could serve as a kind of
cosmic lifeboat.
For a future generation, a passage or gateway to another world could be their only hope for
survival. The question is, can we find a way to get there? One cool way of theoretically going
from our universe to another one is to go through what's called a wormhole-- a bridge
connecting two universes. Kind of like getting on a train or a subway.
Like a subway system in the city, going through this tunnel to a different place. Think of two
sheets of paper that are stacked parallel to each other. But then think of a gateway, a
shortcut, a porthole connecting these two universes. NARRATOR: This extreme idea was
first proposed back in 1935, by the inevitable Albert Einstein and his student Nathan Rosen.
A throat with two conjoined black holes theoretically allow someone, like a passenger on a
subway train, to quickly travel to another space and time. This could work if the universe is
really an infinite multiverse. Certainly, it's a theoretical possibility. A sort of shortcut, if you
like. And it allows the possibility of traveling between distant parts of the universe or
perhaps, between different universes.
NARRATOR: There are all sorts of problems with trying to traverse a wormhole, but one
challenge above all seems insurmountable. When Einstein introduced the wormhole into his
equations, he didn't think that anyone could ever walk through one of these things. Because
after all, you die in the process. NARRATOR: Impossible as it may sound, experts think there
may be a way to travel through a wormhole and live to tell about it.
In principle, you can go right through to another parallel universe. If you go through, again,
you wind up on yet, another parallel universe. And if you go again and again and again, you
wind up on repeated parallel universes. It's like going into an elevator and hitting the Up
button. Each floor looks like a universe.
NARRATOR: Once again, however, there is a major drawback. One problem is you don't
know where you're going to wind up. You'll wind up in the middle of a star. Wind up in the
middle of a planet. NARRATOR: It may ultimately prove impossible for individuals to pass
through a portal to a parallel universe.
But there may be another way to save humankind. If the gateway is very small, like, for
example, atomic in size, perhaps what we should do is send a seed, a nanobot, a
microscopic robot through the gateway containing the DNA, containing all the information
necessary to create a new civilization on the other side of the universe.
Where do we see that in nature? Think of a tree. A tree creates a seed. The seed contains
the DNA that it shoots out in all directions, capable of creating a new tree. NARRATOR: The
idea is that if an advanced civilization in the future could assemble enough high energy laser
beams, they could, in theory, burn a hole in the fabric of space time.
It is very difficult, but we, physicists, have calculated that if you concentrate enormous
energy at a single point to attain something called the Planck energy-- the ultimate energy--
space and time itself become unstable. Little bubbles begin to form. Little bubbles that are,
perhaps, portholes. Gateways to another universe.
NARRATOR: In this way, a microscopic pod or nanobot containing humanity's DNA and the
cosmic code of our world can be transported into a parallel universe. Faced with extinction,
this could be humanity's last great hope. If we can't do it, it means the death of the universe.
NARRATOR: But if this incredible feat is m our entire universe would be resurrected and, like
a Phoenix, rise from the ashes.
In other words, you are playing God. NARRATOR: This fantastic idea, like the Replay button
on the universal iPod, could reset that cosmic concerto of human history back to the
beginning. At least some kinds almost certainly exist. Maybe the other kinds exist, as well.
We just don't know. NARRATOR: Only then, perhaps, will we be certain that there are
parallel universes.