What Are Parallel Realities? by John Cali

Many years ago when I first moved to Wyoming, I became good friends with Jim, my next-door neighbor. After a couple years I moved out of the neighborhood and we lost track of each other.

I ran into Jim again at a party about four years ago. We were having a friendly chat when I mentioned the time we were next-door neighbors. A blank look came over his face. He said he’d never lived in that house. In fact, he said, he didn’t even know me back then. I was stunned and speechless.

Seth, as channelled by Jane Roberts, talks about our multidimensional selves. That is, we live in parallel realities, not just the one we’re currently aware of. Seth even encourages us to play with switching our awareness, focusing among our various selves and realities.

That doesn’t fully explain to me what happened at that party four years ago. Obviously I’d experienced two parallel realities—two realities that were virtually identical except for one difference. In one reality Jim and I lived next door to each other, and in the other we did not.

I’m not sure how or why that happened. But it doesn’t really matter to me now. As my spirit guides often say, just be in the present moment. Just experience all the joy, peace, and power of this now-moment. It’s all we have.

Related article: Can We Travel to Other Dimensions?

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Have you ever had similar experiences? Please share your thoughts with us below.

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46 Responses

  1. anonymous

    You said you didn’t understand what I mean. What I meant is that I don’t think there were anything unusual in this situation, I guess if Jim didn’t know you back then, then he’d also not chat with you in the party, If he did know you, that means there was just a misunderstanding from your part. Maybe Jim didn’t really live near you at that time and you mistakenly thought he was your neighboor.

  2. aeodos

    LOL, there’s a gap in this story. If there were indeed “two realities” one where “Jim” lived next to you and the other where he doesn’t, that would mean the “Jim” you ran into the party couldn’t possibly know you, since he wouldn’t be the “Jim” that lived next to you, which is the Jim you met and become friends to begin with. Therefore creating a contradiction and a paradox in your story. Either you’re just mistaken, and Jim didn’t really live next to you or Jim lived far away but still took ride in your neighborhood sometimes and you thought he lived next to you. I could simply as you how you met Jim, and that would answer the question. It’s unlikely that this has anything to do with “two different realities”. In fact, if you think about it, how would that even make sense to begin with, you claim people have copies of themselves, how are we even agreeing on who is who at this point in your theory? Btw, I’m not dismissing the whole “Seth” thing btw, but just giving fair points.

    • John Cali

      Thank you for your comment. Unfortunately, I found it difficult to follow your words. Perhaps you could redo it, to make your meaning clearer.

    • John Cali

      Your comments are confusing. Perhaps you could rewrite them so they are easier to understand.

      • aeodos

        What I mean is that it’s unlikely that there were two different realities because if this was the case, the Jim you met at the part wouldn’t have known you, and wouldn’t chat with you as if you were his friend, since this would be the Jim that didn’t know you back then. You assume there was another Jim, one that you knew and the other that you didn’t. So I assume, you were mistaken, and Jim probably didn’t live near you but would often walk by your house and that’s how you became friends, and you thought he lived near you.

  3. ron

    Enjoy and most of all be grateful for that enjoyment. I often get the idea that there are entities whose job is to encourage us to be grateful.

  4. Elaine Joe

    Dear John, and all the folks who commented on this blog back in 2012,

    Fascinating, SOOO grateful for your sharing because — can you guess it? — I’d just been pondering why it is that my memories of past conversations and incidences sometimes diverge with others’. Voila! Your post and your experiences and insights…..I needed these conversations to regain my equilibrium. Thank you ever so much.

    Elaine

  5. karynn

    The agreement I feel with some of these posts feels so so so good! What I’ve learned for myself is that everything in my proximity is a direct reflection/manifestation of the mix of vibrational tones I’ve been emitting. So as beachdrifter has said, life will “show” me evidence of any truth I believe, whether that “truth” feels good to me or not! Good to know, right?

    Good to know because by being more disciplined with my thinking, by being more deliberate with my thoughts, the subsequent and resonant feelings will always follow. By paying attention to how I feel, and by caring about how I feel, I can direct my life experience to please me more and more and more. It’s also good to know that my words are not as important as the vibrational tone behind the words. I can say, “I love you” and not be feeling loving in that moment so what I’m actually emitting is not love but something else like perhaps annoyance or impatience. And it’s those tones that resonate with the next somethings that will show up in my life.

    What is in my life experience is constantly mirroring back to me this mix, this up and down of vibration that I’m giving off, like a radio signal. So I can always see what’s there, right before me. And if I take the time, again like beachdrifter has offered, to check in with how I’m feeling, I can get a true pulse of the direction I’m headed: toward more of what makes me feel good or toward things that make me feel less good.

    And I love knowing these things. My life keeps feeling better day after day as I apply deliberate thought to my “now.”

    • John Cali

      Thank you, Karynn. I completely agree with you. I recently read an article by Deepak Chopra. I don’t recall his exact words, but he said if we want to know the state of our consciousness, we just have to look around us.

  6. L

    I spent some time at a friend’s house about 3 years ago. She showed me a camera that she had installed to film the front door. It was important to her to know who came knocking so that she could decide whether she would open the door or not.
    She also has caller ID so that she can decide whether to take the call or not.
    I SAW the camera and I SAW the images of what was being filmed on the monitor!
    A couple of months ago we spoke on the telephone and I mentioned the camera.
    I was stunned when she flatout denied ever installing a camera to film the entrance to their home. She was adamant that I was wrong.
    I was just as adamant that I was right, but I didn’t press the issue and and thought to myself her memory is maybe starting to fade a little.
    After reading all this, I am wondering if it was a parallel reality …….
    Before it would never have occured to me. I don’t really understand it either, hard to wrap my head around it.

  7. Joseph

    Either there was something funny in the water at that party or in that place you lived
    Or we’re all tripping out
    I’d like to show this to a psychiatrist ,their head would probably explode !
    or they’d come up with multiple realities disorder
    But maybe it’s to do with perceptions and we really only hear and see what we want to selectively
    And we are selecting limited data out of and infinity of pure potential and realities
    Yes the seth books and quantum physics say a lot about this kind of stuff
    ‘The Seth material’ book itself touches on a lot of this kind of thing
    The world we see and perceive is limited
    The ultimate reality is infinite boundless and mind boggling trying to conceptualise in our human terms
    But good luck on trying to figure it all out!

  8. Chuck

    So i have this feeling after reading a lot since a year about “Law of attraction”, “Thoughts becoming things”, “Ask and Its Given”, “We are like Gods and can create like Gods”, there is something that don’t seem to add up in some situations example:
    1) Athletes compete to win Wimbledon 2012 lets say. ONly one can win even if the rest also want to win assuming each is aligned to Source and there is no resistance from each.
    2) Wife wants her marriage to continue and envisions that but husband wants out.
    I mean for me if we are God-like and Anything i ask is given, then i were the wife my marriage should continue. And if i were the husband i should be able to get out. And if i were the athlete then i should be able to win the Wimbledon 2012. Isn’t it?

    i wonder if parallel Universes/realities would answer that if you had the intention and its pure w/o resistance then it shall be!?? Then there is no free will of one being usurped etc. then in one Universe wife has her relationship with her husband while in another husband is out. And also in different Universes a different player wins the wimbledon.

    I also liked the idea of a Subjective Universe where its only you and your thoughts and the rest of the Universe is created by you meaning all other objects and people are from your own thoughts and don’t actually exist in reality. So your intention is not clashing with any others. In this scenario a wife wanting to continue the relationship, she is not really forcing her will on the husband so to speak since its her creation in her own mind.

    I wonder what the Spirit would answer to these views.
    Thanks!

    • beachdrifter

      Some ideas about the 2 scenarios you brought up:

      1) The one most aligned during the match would win the trophy. This would vary during the match, since there would be swings and “runs” either way. Even if both entered the match with a similar expectation to win it, they would still both observe what’s happening, and be influenced by it to some degree. Neither one’s vibration would be without resistance, and you can tell that just by looking at their reactions etc.during the game.

      Also keep in mind that Wimbledon happens every year, and there are other Grand Slam titles to be won, and other tournaments, and other things that would give you the satisfaction that you’re looking for, and, and, and.

      2) The wife, if aligned with what she wants, may be able to influence her husband to stay, because what both ultimately want is a satisfying relationship, and that can still happen no matter what happened before.

      If her husband is not a match to that, he would leave, but someone else would be drawn into her life that would satisfy all of her intentions, if she’s aligned with them.

      But you cannot hold anyone against their will in your life. Everything is co-creation, and you cannot control other creators. You can only rendezvous with those who are a match to your point of attraction.

      • Chuck

        Thx beachdrifter. But your answer is based on there being only 1 reality and that there are no other parallel realities. Then yes whoever wins wimbledon specifically 2012 has been most aligned. same with husband or wife whatever happens.

        To me if there are parallel realities it means each parallel reality has slightly different outcome, right?

        • beachdrifter

          Chuck, you mentioned two book titles from my favourite authors, and seemed to suggest that what you read could not quite explain what happens in those 2 scenarios you suggested.

          So I just offered how I think they would explain it.

          As for parallel realities in the way you mean it, you can subscribe to all sorts of theories and beliefs, or just make up new ones, and LOA will deliver to you thoughts, ideas and experiences that match them. That’s the beauty of LOA!

          • Chuck

            yea before a year back i never knew about Law of attraction and i am amazed there are 1000s of authors writing about it. I can’t believe i never knew or heard about it. I feel like i am in a different world suddenly.
            Then i had some interest in Parallel Universes and at least i found handful of authors saying there are parallel universes with different outcomes!
            thanks for your inputs.

  9. beachdrifter

    Pay attention to the way you’re feeling when you ponder the subject of “parallel realities”. Your emotions are your guidance that tell you whether what you’re thinking about is in accordance to what the larger part of you, Source, knows to be.

    It’s a very rare occurence on this site (maybe even the first time), but the way the subject is presented here feels pretty off to me. It just doesn’t resonate. And by that I mean the various explanations for it, not the events themselves.

    I’d love to know how you guys feel about it. Not if it sounds “logical”, but if it feels really good to you think about it in the way that people have explained it. A gut check, if you will. Thank you!

        • karynn

          Hi beachdrifter. Would you care to elaborate about something feeling off to you in the way people are explaining their experiences. It’s my feeling/belief that each of us lives our own unique reality(ies); therefore, our reality and our explanation of our reality is true to us. Not “off.” Does that resonate with you and your own beliefs about multiple realities?

          • beachdrifter

            Hi karynn,

            I agree that everyone is the creator of his (or her) own experience. So there are as many realities as there are perceivers of them. You are not the creator of someone else’s reality however.

            You can explain reality in many ways, and some of these explanations feel “on”, some feel “off” to you when you ponder them – regardless of personal beliefs you may or may not have about something.

            The emotional feedback you receive is not about how your personal beliefs mesh with what you may be reading right now, but about how what you’re focusing on in this moment meshes with what the Source within you knows about the same subject. So you can even get immediate, accurate feedback about things you may not ever have considered before in your life.

            You said: “our reality and our explanation of our reality is true to us. Not “off.””

            What often happens is that people accept something as “true”, and Law of Attraction will deliver to them evidence of that “truth”, while they are ignoring the negative emotional feedback they receive while thinking of those “truths”.

            And that’s because there are some basic truths beyond those thoughts that you’re making “true” in your experience. And when you come up with explanations that you think are “true”, but that don’t feel good when you think about them, they don’t serve you. So I’m just sayin’ – pay attention to the way those explanations FEEL, rather than just “sound”. And if they don’t feel *really* good to you, keep looking for better explanations, because they are out there, and they will serve you extremely well!

    • John Cali

      My spirit guides often say if something doesn’t resonate with you, doesn’t feel right for you, then reject it. So if that’s what you’re doing, I support you.

      As I said in this blog post:
      “That doesn’t fully explain to me what happened at that party four years ago. Obviously I’d experienced two parallel realities—two realities that were virtually identical except for one difference. In one reality Jim and I lived next door to each other, and in the other we did not.

      “I’m not sure how or why that happened. But it doesn’t really matter to me now. As my spirit guides often say, just be in the present moment. Just experience all the joy, peace, and power of this now-moment. It’s all we have.”

      The primary point I wanted to make was just be here in this present moment, which is all we have. For me, that’s what feels best — just be here now. And, from that place, I don’t need to explain anything. I just need to BE.

    • Rado

      Well ultimatey there is only one reality, so you could say that those parallel realities are just different aspects of that reality,and those aspects we experience are those we’re vibrationally aligned with, Seth used the analogy of our consciouness being like a flashlight in the dark – if we focus it in different directions, we’ll see different things. Move the focus and what you saw dissappears, while other things you didn’t see before suddenly appear. But in reality all the things are there all the time. And as your awareness grows and expands, you become able to comprehend more and more of the whole. Which is really beyond anything words can explain.

      I recall a story about some people visiting a place where they hadn’t been before. They checked in at some old inn or something, and ate and slept there etc. Then they left again Later they discovered that that old inn had not existed for many years, and the landscape sorrounding that place looked completely different from what they had seen, at “the time” they were there. They had literally gone back in time and visited that place as it was many years ago.

      That reminds me of something Seth said. He talked about how things were back in 1959 (or some time back then), and that that reality still exist just like the one we experience now, it has just changed in different ways.

      I think the point is that human consciousness normally has a very limited scope, so whereever it it focused, it only sees a fraction of the whole. So you’re either here or there, and not both places at the same time, though on a higher level where your scope is broader, you actually are.

  10. Patience

    What an interesting topic. Perhaps that explains some of the differences that come up when talking to old friends and family about past events. Perhaps that also explains some things people say that other’ people dismiss as ‘crazy’ and also the ‘reality’ of folks that society views as being in a state of dementia, perhaps they are just able to more easily experience the various realities.
    And of course the differences in remembered ‘history’ or witnesses to a crime, etc.
    I will give this some thought and work to remember it when speaking with my elderly mom whose memories differ from mine on a daily basis. 😉

  11. Chuck

    this is kind of co-incindence for me. I have never asked you (John Cali) any question in an email so far. i had opened an email to write and ask you about Subjective reality an article by Steve Pavlina – http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/08/the-law-of-attraction/
    I was going to ask you whether Parallel Universe exist and that might also be an answer?
    I typed the question but never sent it – its still open on my computer as i write this since few days and NOW you actually posted blog about it!! I am totally amazed that this happened.
    Maybe in another reality i sent you the question and you answered it because of that??? lol
    Anyway i find this is cool.
    Thanks John for posting.

    • John Cali

      Thanks very much, Chuck. It’s entirely possible that you sent me the question in another reality. 🙂

    • Rado

      This has happened numerous times to me – I’ve been focusing a lot on a particular subject and the next newsletter from John/CJ/Spirit is about precisely that subject. It’s also happening in different other contexts of course. 🙂

  12. Rado

    I’ve often heard the phrase “Ask for whatever you want, and know it’s already there” (think it’s originally from the Bible? – not sure), but never really understood what it meant. But the one day I was thinking of all this stuff about parallel realities, it suddenly made sense. Whatever situation we can imagine exists in some parallel reality (“it’s already there”). Attracting a situation (which contains what we want, whatever it may be) simply means that our mind moves to that parallel reality where that situation exists.

    In that sense we don’t really create anything, but just choose among that infinite amount of different situations which already exist somewhere in all these parallel realities. That also means that we’re not really responsible for anything. If we feel responsible for anything we do, we’ve just chosen a reality or perspective where we feel that way, or believe in that illusion if you like.

    Anyway, that’s how I see it. It does explain a lot of things and experiences I’ve had myself, which otherwise makes no sense.

    • John Cali

      Thanks very much, Rado. I agree with you — we don’t really create anything. We simply draw into our experience what we focus on. As many teachers, including my spirit guides, have said, linear time is an illusion. Everything that has ever existed, does exist, and will exist is all here in this present moment.

  13. Cristina

    I believe we live parallel lives, but do we go to these other lives with our bodies? It is only our spirit that makes thisbtrip, isn’t it?
    Thank you.

    • John Cali

      Yes, Cristina, that’s what I believe. Our bodies are just temporary vessels for our spirits.

  14. Mikala

    My sister and I, born of the same parents, raised in the same homes and various environments, sharing the same extended family, and raised together (she is three years older) lived in parallel realities. It took me many years to understand this. Her experiences were so different than mine. Even at family gatherings her reality varies from mine, and this is not simply the way people remember things differently. There are different people in her reality than there were in mine, different events and conversations. Periodically I check with my cousins just to verify occurrences. Although the differences were not each moment of every day, they are significant in the way they have shaped our lives.

    I finally understood this when I first understood that we create our own reality.

    There is so very much more to this topic. So glad to see it here, John. Thanks.

    • John Cali

      Thanks very much, Mikala. Like you, I did not fully understand this until I understood we all create our own realities.

      As you said, there is so very much more to this topic. Here today we’ve barely touched the surface of it.

  15. karynn

    I adore this subject! I’ve had many similar experiences and over time have come to be comfortable with them. What’s interesting is that the parallel realities happen all the time “behind the scenes” and usually only come to my awareness via conversations with others.

    I’ll say with complete confidence and authority, “I was thinking about our road trip and that story you told me about sneaking into the grade school when you were young . . .” and my beau gives me a look like, “What in the world are you talking about?” I’ll then begin to tell him about HIS reality of sneaking into the school (speaking with the utmost confidence and authority!), which, of course, was not his reality but the reality of a parallel him in one of my parallel lives. Trippy, right?

    For a while now I’ve also had the experience of parallel lives via my mirror gazing meditations. Once I relax and enter a higher vibration, images appear in my mirror and gaze back at me. These images at first look similar to how I view myself, but then morph into male images, other ethnicities, and then completely different “people” than myself. Again, trippy, right? And so so so exciting to me.

    I’m eager to hear of other people’s experiences of parallel lives. For now, enjoy this beautiful day.

    • dxoutkast

      Hey Karynn, just a thought, could it be that you were imagining it? Considering your experience with ‘parallel visions in front of a mirror,’ perhaps the story about your husband’s parallel self was also a product of your imagination. How can you be sure about his ‘parallel self’ (if he even has one), especially if you can’t see through it and confirm it’s truly a parallel self in a parallel dimension during the mirror thing?

  16. Marlene

    Oh boy, have I ever! I used to walk home from work years ago. It was about a 20 minute walk. One evening my teenage daughter met me at work and walked home with me, wanting to talk to me privately about an experience she had had. This desire to share was very out of character for her, never happened previously, and never happened again since. I distinctly remember that as we walked home from my place of work my daughter told me about a rather private incident that I won’t relate here.

    About 12 years have passed. Recently I mentioned how amazed I was at that time that she had shared such personal information with me. She now claims she absolutely never told me anything at all about it. Believe me, the nature of the conversation back then had been such that I can’t imagine either of us ever forgetting!….and yet somehow I can relate to her some details that I could not possibly know unless she herself had actually told me about them!

    My daughter so strongly believes that she never told me any such thing that I decided to just drop the subject and never mention it again. I’ve chalked it up to alternate realities.

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