Everything everywhere at the same time. This is the name of a new movie. Although it has been compared to one of my favorite movies, The Matrix, I don’t cherish them at the same degree and I am not very keen to watch it, I was intrigued by the title so I did some research. A movie set in multiple universes, about the protagonist’s personality in one universe taking over her body in another universe. She explains that there are an infinite number of universes and that you can jump between universes.
A few decades ago, such a movie plot would probably not have occurred to anyone even as science fiction. But you think it might not even be science fiction anymore. I don’t know exactly what the movie is about or what it wants to say because I haven’t seen it. But this name has many connotations for me. We can’t even imagine eternity. Maybe the fact that we live here and now in eternity as who we are prevents us from thinking about or realizing the possibility that we exist simultaneously as a mere soul in another universe.
Many people debate whether there is life after death, death being the the only certain fact of life. Some believe it, some don’t. Could it be that the life and universe that we think will exist after death, or it actually exists right now? The fact that everything exists everywhere and at the same time seems to mean that there is no multiplicity, there is only the One. When you think about this sentence, you feel that time is a single moment, that destiny is written and determined from beginning to end, that our lives, which feel so long to us, consist of this single moment. That’s when the fights are meaningless, even funny, when everything we are attached to is really just a fiction of our own making. At a time when we think we are so technologically advanced, could we be living Plato’s allegory of the cave in this era? We cannot free ourselves from our chains and get out of our caves, thinking that the material world is real, when in fact it is only a dream. But outside our caves there is a shining sun and truth.
In one scene of the movie, the mother and daughter in the lead roles are in an alternate universe as stones, quietly chatting and discussing how small humans really are. For many years, human beings, who thought themselves extremely intelligent, thought the shadows in the cave were real, thought their world was the center of the universe, thought they had made the greatest discoveries. But when we think of infinity, we are smaller than a dot. We are only nothingness in the face of infinity. When we realize that everything exists everywhere and at the same time, we can move from nothingness to unity, to Oneness. Only then we can exist.
Can we boast of our intelligence if we are smaller than a dot?
Can a piece of cloth be worth more than another piece of cloth only because of a name written on it? Will there be color, race, difference? Will there be color, race, difference?
Those who think differently, look differently, dress differently, live differently are all united in the same point when viewed from infinity. And from there, there is no difference. Then maybe all we need to do is to beautify our own tiny dot as much as we can, to blend into eternity with our beauty and disappear into it.
I would like to quote a part of Barış Özcan’s review of the movie that I find very meaningful. Commenting on the title of the film, he says that technology has turned us all into multiverse travelers, swiping screens to experience universe jumps between other people’s lives, and in this way we experience everything everywhere and at the same time:
“Joy is the name of the girl in the movie who starts to see all realities in all universes at the same time. In English it means joy and happiness, but in Chinese it means disaster. Experiencing everything everywhere and at the same time can have two consequences. Either we can enjoy whatever we are doing, whatever it is, and have joy and happiness. Or we can become individuals who can’t focus on anything, who can’t live in the moment, whose ego is inflated because they think they have seen everything in their short lives, who confuse knowledge with wisdom, which brings disaster, not happiness. It turns us into people who feel as if they are tumbling off a cliff, drifting towards disaster because they don’t appreciate what they have.”
The comment about confusing knowledge with wisdom describes the human condition very well. Isn’t it quite thought-provoking that we are drifting into a world where wisdom has abandoned us to such an extent, while access to knowledge is getting easier every day and our knowledge is increasing rapidly?
In fact, despite all our new knowledge, we have forgotten the realities of today’s world. But if we look a little deeper, if we try to see with our heart a little more, we have the chance to have eyes that can see the beauty that all children and wise people can see. Our world needs people like the father character in the movie who takes the middle path, who says “all I know is that we have to be kind”. We need hearts that can say “You” and “We”, not just “I”.
Mevlana says:
“Who can see me as I am?
I have neither color nor a mark.
You’re gonna tell me there are secrets I know,
I am both those secrets and the keeper of those secrets
Here is someone who speaks without lips,
I walk without feet in poverty like the moon in the sky
Look at me, I am in the open and yet I am hidden.
You see me, see the real me.”
We need to be able to see the reality of the universe as it is.
We need to combine knowledge with wisdom, to be Nothing, to be One.
Humanity needs to pass on the wisdom that realizes that everything exists everywhere and at the same time to young people who get lost in their virtual worlds and think that they live everything everywhere and at the same time, but whose delusions lead them to disaster.
Let us close our eyes that look at the dark wall of the cave and mistake shadows for real beings, let us look within, open the eyes of our hearts, break our chains and step into the real world outside the cave…
