Multiverse theorists believe that H. G. Wells was the first writer to describe this phenomenon. He has a story called "Door in the Wall" or "Green Door" - depending on the translation.
The story is about a young man who in childhood opened a secret door to another world. Everything was fine there, only in this wonderful country did he feel like a truly happy and needed person.
But time passed, and he had to return to the cold and boring reality. The boy did not tell anyone about his adventures. Throughout his life, he had a chance to open a strange and mysterious door several times. At important and fateful moments, she appeared to him unexpectedly. Another reality beckoned to itself. But he never dared to open it. He told his friend about the adventure and complained that he always wanted to change his life, that he yearns for the fairy-tale world, that life would have turned out differently if he had made up his mind. But he lost heart: now the man is forced to engage in an unloved business, speak in parliament, sign boring bills. His life is meaningless.
I read this story as a child, and then it made a huge impression on me. I, like many children of my time, was a dreamer. The lack of the Internet and hundreds of satellite TV channels forced us to invent reality, supplement it with intricate details. We could call a stick a gun and spend hours running around with this “weapon”, playing “war game”. We had a favorite word "pretend", but these conventions did not stop anyone. The world of children's fantasies was as real as the one that surrounded us.
I remember how, after reading the story, all the time I was looking for the same door in the wall. I also wanted to step into the unknown. There, where "make-believe" is already reality, not convention.
I am in no way comparing the achievements of the present time and the past years. Each generation has its own games. But for some reason it seems to me that the feeling of a fairy tale that is very close is the privilege of those who were born in another era.
After rereading the story about the "adult head", I thought - and what today. If this door really opened for me? Then, as a child, I would step into it without hesitation. But now - hardly. The older we get, the less courage we have. Note that recently psychologists of all formations have been using the worn-out phrase "get out of the comfort zone." It seems to me that this very door is the portal leading away from the notorious comfortable cocoon. Step into the unknown is the easiest and easiest way to change your life.
But there is another concern. But what if there, behind the “green door”, nobody needs us? Moreover, the place in the sun has already been taken. And there, on the other side of reality, there is already me and my environment. Who, then, will be the person who passed through the portal. Will he push his counterpart from the parallel world, or will he live peacefully nearby. Have you ever thought about this question. If we take it for granted that every step we take gives birth to a new Universe, a new probability of the development of events, then there will be no place for two in another reality. I am here and now. Another me, or you, is there, in another space. And in theory, we should never cross. Perhaps both personalities will simply die when they see each other. Remember what the mad professor from the movie Back to the Future said. He warned Marty that something Awful was going to happen. That's right - with a capital letter.
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Fans of this film, by the way, believe that it is not about time travel as such. The heroes of the picture slide along the branches of reality, and each new step in the past creates a completely different future. The notorious "butterfly effect", you know what I mean. By stepping on an insect or flower in the past, you will completely change the present.
Once in my childhood, it seemed to me that I still found this door. It was a strange sensation, and I remember exactly what happened in my dream.
I clearly saw that I was standing at the crossroads of worlds: my own and many others. A silent wind stirred the hair on his head. I was very short, I felt like a grain of sand that swayed on the waves of time. It was required to take only one decisive step and get into another space. But I suddenly felt scared. At the same second, the world began to spin around and shrink to the size of a matchbox. I myself, like Alice from Wonderland, grew up. After a few seconds, or maybe billions of years, I grew to normal size, and the Universe collapsed to a tiny state.
The numbness that gripped me seemed to have lifted. I looked around to understand where I was: the same room, the same familiar interior and objects.
In those days, we still did not know anything about trance, meditation, going out of the body and the theory of an infinite universe. The child was unable to comprehend what had just happened to him.
Until now, it seems that in an instant it was possible to decide your fate, if not for this fear of taking the first step towards the unknown!
I have no reason to believe that everything that happened that day was fiction. For many years after that, I dreamed of an alien universe. It was not even a dream, but a borderline state between the moment of falling asleep and reality. As soon as the mind was connected, the vision disappeared. The picture of the world was twisted into a spiral and again removed into a kind of matchbox.
The older I get, the less often this condition comes. Even having mastered meditation, I cannot catch the moment of the birth of a new world, let alone enter it.
What is hindering the process? Most likely, this cold mind does not allow completely surrendering to the will of Destiny.
By the way, do you remember how Wells's story ended? Tragically. The main character was found dead in the morning in an abandoned wasteland. His interlocutor believes that there he saw a ghost door and tried to enter it. But these are only his assumptions, as if no one knows what he saw in the last minutes of his life. But as Wells writes, joy was written on the hero's face. He still found himself in the world that he had been looking for since childhood.
Isn't this instructive ending stopping us from taking a decisive step through the green door. After all, in this world you will have to leave something, most likely yourself.