Friday, April 29, 2016

The Mandela Effect

Are you familiar with the Mandela Effect? "The Mandela effect is a theory put forth by writer and paranormal consultant, Fiona Broome that shared false memories are in fact glimpses into parallel worlds with different timelines."

The name for the effect comes from a false, shared memory that many people have of Nelson Mandela dying in prison rather than eventually being released to become the leader of South Africa. This is not one of my false memories, but I think I do have them and I believe, in some cases, they are shared by others.  Do you remember when you were a kid reading the children's books about The Berenstein Bears?

Apparently they have always been the Berenstain Bears.

I know. I was shocked when I heard this and I swore that somewhere I actually had one of these books with "my" spelling on the cover. I am still not convinced that it was not once The Berenstein Bears. I am almost sure there has been some kind of glitch in the matrix that has caused this.

There are a number of things like this that groups of people recall differently than others. It makes me think of Winston Smith in 1984 and the changing "reality" in his world. "We have always been at war with East Asia" or "we have never been at war with East Asia". In the book, Winston works for the Ministry of Truth, altering official history and media reports to reflect the needs of Big Brother to maintain control.

As I said, there are many other things like this...like the spelling of Reba McEntire's name. Didn't she used to be Reba McIntyre?

I was also one that thought Billy Graham and Muhammad Ali were dead. I, of course stand corrected. I know that both are alive and not so well...unless they aren't.

So what would cause this if, in fact it was true?

Some have suggested that sometimes parallel universes brush up against each other and histories get changed in both realities. Others have suggested that the work being done by CERN (Conseil EuropĂ©en pour la Recherche NuclĂ©aire or  The European Organization for Nuclear Research) in Switzerland is bringing together alternate realities in unusual ways as they experiment with finding other dimensions, opening time portals and playing with the fabric of the universe. If you think I'm kidding about CERN, you need to do an internet search. Learn about what they are doing, It's some pretty weird stuff.  

Beyond that, I suppose that those in charge of world affairs could be altering our reality as needed or they could be doing it just to see if it can be done.

I don't know. I have always been one that thought seeing is believing and that our reality is rock solid and immutable. What if it's not? What if the nature of reality and history changes as time passes? Or what if what we perceive as reality is nothing more than a complex computer program projected on our conscious minds or that we do not exist in the physical sense at all except in the mind of God?

This is where science, theology and the paranormal come together in very uncomfortable ways for everyone concerned. If the human race does have a collective consciousness and it remembers, I think we will one day figure all this out.

Right now though, I still think it's "Berenstein".

Ghog Out