“I don’t know if these alt-lives exist in some multiverse, with angels and jinn visiting from them now and then.”
Wednesday, 21 May 2025 01:35
Written by Eric Walberg
Эрик Вальберг / Уолберг | إيريك والبرغ
How can a cat be alive and dead at the same time?
I love how science has rediscovered religion. Leaving aside the Big Bang theory, the universe itself is conscious. In the beginning was consciousness—inner light. Then came outer light, and so on. It took billions of years, but what’s that in divine reckoning?
Religion was the first ‘science,’ followed by astrology—both now despised. How times have changed.
The scientific method, induction, deduction, math/physics, Darwin—all are latecomers. Darwin marks the beginning of the return to metaphysics. His theory was turned into a mindless, machine-like Nature—deconstructed, dissected (gruesomely, for billions of guinea pigs). But a careful reading shows he was not as scientistic as the Darwinian Establishment that followed. He admitted we’ll never understand the peacock. Beauty.
Henri Bergson started there and developed a more lively creative evolution, mostly ignored by science—though the Nobel Committee awarded him the literature prize in 1927 “in recognition of his rich and vitalizing ideas and the brilliant skill with which they have been presented.”
To exist as a conscious being is to change, to mature—to go on creating oneself endlessly. Bergson asked: is it the same for existence in general? Nature is the epitome of creative change, leading to a dazzling, even outrageous, variety and beauty.
Is beauty the end goal of a divine process that started with pure consciousness? We bemoan species extinction (rightly so—we are stewards of Nature), but already 99% of species over time have gone extinct, replaced by others better adapted to the changing environment—at least until humans began wiping them out like a house on fire.
I’m okay with antimatter, dark matter, dark energy, quantum theory, time slowing down at high speeds, and even people “marching to their own tune.” But multiverses and Schrodinger’s cat? I’d given up—until I finished The Midnight Library(2020) by Matt Haig.
Who was that? Oh, just someone I knew in another life.
It starts with Nora’s countdown to her suicide. Everything she wanted or tried to do seemed to fail. She backed out of her marriage, got fired, then her cat died (outside in the rain, by the road, retrieved and buried by Ash). No one answered her texts or calls. Alone in a dank flat in dreary Bedford, she swallowed sleeping pills and passed out.
Nora enters a twilight zone: a library run by her high school librarian Mrs. Elm, a soulmate who helped her through the loss of her parents and her own depression. Mrs. Elm gives her The Book of Regrets—a catalog of missed opportunities. Nora begins her adventures, seeking out her one “true” happy life, each missed opportunity now an alternate universe in the multiverse.
Haig puts meat on Schrodinger’s bones. Nora wants a life where she took better care of her rescue cat Voltaire so he would live longer. Suddenly she wakes up in bed again, calls for Volts, and finds him cold and dead under the bed. He’s still dead! Not the life she wants—so she’s spirited back to the library to try again.
Mrs. Elm explains Volts had a weak heart, likely knew his time was near, and asked to die alone. “Some regrets,” the prim librarian says, “are a load of bullshit. The only way to learn that is to live.” One regret down, many to go. In another life, Voltaire—aka Schrodinger’s Cat—is alive, a healthy Siamese.
The novel really describes Nora’s final minutes as an out-of-body event—well-documented in near- or after-death experiences (NDEs). People often describe an alternate reality where they choose to stay or return to the “real” world—though that return can be painful.
Coppola’s Youth Without Youth (1976), based on Mircea Eliade’s novel, also explores time, consciousness, and the fantastic foundations of reality. Protagonist Dominic lives several alternate realities after being struck by lightning. A take on Nietzsche’s eternal recurrence. I like Haig’s variation—because consciousness alone is a miracle.
So, Voltaire is dead in one universe and alive in another. Nora standing up her fiancé turns out to have been a very wise decision—as were most of her alternate lives, where she is happily married to Ash… but—
You are the library card.
No spoilers—but it’s no surprise that she feels like she’s joined the movie halfway in each life. The prison wasn’t the place—it was the perspective. The bluebird of happiness? It’s inside you. Most of these lives reflected what others thought Nora should do—not her “root life,” not who she truly was.
I’ve been doing this sort of musing for a few years, as I get closer to the end. I like the pro-activeness of The Book of Regrets. You work through each alternate universe in your mind, fantasizing happier outcomes—realizing they wouldn’t “be me.” I wouldn’t be who I am if I had become a musician, sportsman, or teacher. Probably no books written. No extreme travels. No polyglot. No polymath (even if half-assed).
I don’t know if these alt-lives exist in some multiverse, with angels and jinn visiting from them now and then. But like much of science, they’re useful constructs to explain consciousness. You don’t exist because of the library—the library exists because of you.
This is your brain translating something profound. I remember the feeling of a new beginning after a near-death experience. I wasn’t in a library, but when I recovered, I had my blank book to write in. And now I’m slowly burning up my Book of Regrets. That’s freedom.
In old age, you must learn to travel and have adventures in your mind. You’re limited only by imagination. You don’t need booze or drugs like in your salad days. The real world is often too much work and disappointing. Your time is short. Precious.
Suicide? A poor second. Nora thinks she wants to die—but you don’t go to death. Death comes to you.
You are the library card.
So long as there are books on the shelves, you are never trapped.
Every book is a possible escape.
That’s what NDEs are all about.
Coming back from one is like finding the only book left in your library—
a book with blank pages.
Mrs. Elm: “That’s the beauty, isn’t it? You just never know how it ends.”
About the Author
Eric Walberg is a Canadian Muslim journalist specializing in the Middle East, Central Asia, and Russia. A graduate of the University of Toronto and Cambridge in economics, he’s written on East-West relations since the 1980s. Having lived in the Soviet Union, Russia, and Uzbekistan, he has worked as a UN adviser, writer, translator, and lecturer. He is currently a columnist for Egypt’s Al Ahram, and contributes to CounterPunch, Dissident Voice, Global Research, Al-Jazeerah, and Turkish Weekly.