The Shroud Codex - Jerome R. Corsi [77]
“So you don’t think my brother is crazy?” Anne asked.
“We are probably all a little bit crazy,” Silver answered with a grin. “But if your brother is crazy he reached that stage through the other side.”
“What do you mean?” Castle asked. “What other side?”
“Paul was always so brilliant that he was beyond most human beings, even at the Institute for Advanced Study,” Silver explained. “That’s why I think he had few friends and never married. It was always hard to understand Paul. He was a loner by nature, except when it came to his mother.”
“I understand,” Anne said quietly.
“Maybe I can explain it to you with one more example,” Silver said, seeing that Castle and Anne were doing their best to understand what he was talking about. “I’m not sure this will help, but what if we live in a complex reality where a person could be both dead and alive at the same time?”
“How is that possible?” Castle asked.
“Simple,” Silver answered. “The person is dead and alive at the same time because the universe has split apart into a parallel world. In one world the person is dead, but in the other world the person is very much alive. People in each world insist that their world is the only real world and that all other worlds are imaginary or made-up. Universes might split up into millions of branches. In one branch you live to be ninety years old and never marry. In another branch you die tragically young, fighting bravely in combat. In one branch you have ten children; in another branch your only child dies at childbirth and you never have another one, or at least that’s what you are led to believe.”
“What’s the point?” Anne asked.
“The point,” Silver said, “is that you would have no way of knowing which reality was real. Maybe they are all real, simultaneously. Maybe you live in all of them at the same time. How would you ever tell the difference?”
Castle and Anne thanked Dr. Silver for being so generous with his time. The professor dismissed it, saying he hoped his comments helped. Silver’s experience was that most laypeople left his office much more confused than when they arrived. He had long ago given up on being able to explain modern advanced physics to anyone but the most advanced graduate students.
On the ride back to New York, Anne and Castle were quiet for a long while.
“Dr. Castle, what do you think that was all about?” Anne finally asked.
“I’m not sure what I think,” Castle answered, “but I’m sure your brother would have understood every word.”
“It reminds me of something he said to me when we were alone in the hospital,” Anne said.
“What’s that?”
“At the time, I wasn’t sure what Paul meant,” she began slowly, wanting to be sure she explained this carefully, “but he said we were all stuck in time.”
“Stuck in time?”
“Yes, that’s what he said. And when I asked him what he meant, Paul said we live our lives like the future is ahead of us, unknown, and that the past is behind us, completely determined.”
“Did Paul see it differently?”
“Yes,” Anne said. “Paul said the truth is our destiny is determined for us when we are born. Our future draws us forward, much like a seed contains the mature tree. Paul said it’s our past that’s a fiction. We invent stories about who we were and where we came from to explain things that happen to us in life. Our memories are faulty and the stories we tell about ourselves change, often depending upon what is happening to us now. Maybe that’s why he gave up physics.”
“What do you mean?” Castle asked.
“Maybe Paul came to the conclusion that it was his destiny to find God, but that in physics he wasn’t getting there. Then our mother died. Paul said at that moment he realized he wanted to be reunited with his mother. Maybe he decided God, not physics, was his doorway to the dimensions he needed to travel to get back together with his mother. That’s why he decided to become a priest.”
“Why exactly is that?” Castle asked.
“Maybe because Paul concluded he did have a vocation all along. That’s what he told me. That he had been resisting