I’m no Einstein. You’re probably not one either. But then, neither was he! No truly, so much nonsense has been ascribed to the myth. Look, not even Einstein floated around with his head in the clouds for twenty-four hours a day. He didn’t permanently have his brain stuffed full of formulas.
A person may be obsessed by something, but it won’t occupy his or her whole day. Like any dunderhead, Einstein had to feed the cat, mow the lawn and visit the bathroom. I don’t wish to denigrate the man, but in some respects he was not so hot. Rumor has it that some of his personal relationships were a mess.
Also, he couldn’t imagine how his discoveries might apply to everyday life. “It was always incomprehensible to me,” wrote old Albert, “why the theory of relativity, whose conceptions and problems were so far from practical life, found such a lively, even enthusiastic resonance in the broadest strata of the population.”
My point is this: there’s no sense in waiting for an Einstein to come along if there ain’t no such perfect entity. Just study the raw data. A good idea should stand on its own. In an ideal world, all of them would be given equal consideration. It should be irrelevant who holds the talking pillow. A murderer may say something inspirational. Herr Hitler might utter something noble. Even a little girl in a Rickmansworth café may have something earth-shaking to say.
The thread that runs throughout my life is thinking. I'm a thinker, and have been one for as long as I can remember. If I have to wear a label, give me the one that reads ‘Philosopher’. Or maybe ‘Adventurer-philosopher’. That’s the field where I’d probably feel most at home: applied philosophy, or maybe do-it-yourself metaphysics. Since the earliest age, I’ve been preoccupied with gaining a clearer understanding of the nature of the universe, my relationship to it, and the meaning of life. To quote Einstein, “I want to know God’s thoughts; the rest are details.”
Did you squirm a little in your seat? If someone tells you that they regard themselves as a philosopher, you want to make sure of their sanity, right. But you can’t come out and ask, ‘Are you insane?’ That’s rather gauche. It’s also rather hard to answer. I regard it as a catch-22 type of inquiry requiring a catch-22-category response.
I am insane in the sense that I don’t go along with group thinking. That would be my short reply. Because what is it to be ‘insane’? Simply, that you don't think in the way that most other people do. And in that sense I fall into that pigeonhole (you have to watch out for them).
But hang about, you answer. That reasoning is faulty. Surely, since all of us are individuals, doesn’t everyone see things in a different light? Since there are as many ways of seeing things are there are colours and sentient beings (Thom’s six billion answers), how can you claim distinction on that score?
Yes, I see what you mean. I'd go along with you, except for the the fact that everyone else does—‘go along’, that is. People follow the crowd, you can’t deny. They think not as individuals but as as a pack. Consensus thinking is what defines them. Pack mentality s what they indulge in. So, by virtue of the fact that most people hide from one another—and from themselves—what they really feel, I’d say that they are the insane ones. To defer to the group as a matter of course is really insane.
No, but hey. That's being unfair. You ought to redefine the definition. How about: If one or a few dissenters differ from the majority view, where the majority view is more-or-less accurately represented, then it’s fair—is it not?—to label them insane.
So . . . if you are the odd man out in a conscientious-objector type of situation, say as a citizen in Nazi Germany, are you then insane to resist the mob-thinking of the Jew-haters around you? And another example: if you are the first scientist to challenge a hypothesis that everyone believes in as a Law—for example, that the Earth is round and not flat—is it reasonable for others to dismiss you as insane? That would rather stimmy the spirit of scientific inquiry, wouldn’t you say, and shut down research and original thinking.
Insanity—inschmamity. When all’s said and done, there’s no such beast. Without exception, everyone acts in a manner that is rational and sensible within the context of their background, genes, world view and what have you.
Let’s take a squiz at a universally held tenet with the help of a well-known author. Recently I read Stephen King’s Cell. It’s written more along science-fiction lines than Steve’s customary horror (although the book has its share of that too). The story kicks off with a virus, one that doesn’t have a biological basis, nor is it the sort of virus that affects computers. It’s electronic, but it spreads through the human population. When someone switches on a cell phone, it emits a vibration that turns the listener insane in a suicidal and homicidal sense. Not good.
Anyway, the hero has escaped the virus. He observed someone else answer his phone and turn loony, and so he refused to answer his own. But then he gets into a tizzy. How is he going to warn his son? He can’t ring him. Desperately he tries to get home before his son becomes a raving zombie.
All around him people are going crazy—shooting one another, burning, looting. Thousands are dying, but Clayton doesn’t bother himself with that. He is totally preoccupied with returning home in time to save his son.
Think about it. Why does he do that? Why, when the whole world is dying off all around him, does feel so compelled to save the life of one particular person? Is it just me? I can’t believe that no one else seems to see it (I’m speaking now outside King’s novel). No one thinks that anything’s wrong. In fact, we expect that people will care more for their own brood than for a stranger. This is regarded as normal by the masses, whereas I see it as utterly crackers. Doesn’t anyone agree? When you think about it—when I think about it—it’s so peculiar that we expect people to care for one another to varying degrees, as if—I don’t know—there’s some sort of caste system in place.
Let’s say that an incident occurs in a coal mine. There’s an explosion and a couple of dozen miners get trapped. Just look at how the news is reported around the world. In Australia they concentrate on the Australians. In Scotland they interview the families of the Scottish workers who are missing. To me that whole scenario is totally weird.
In the same vein, an arbitrary hierarchy seems to apply across the entire animal kingdom. We say that a whale is worth more than a sheep. Cows you eat, but not horses; dogs but not pigs (different cultures have different rules). And by some additional principle, a creature of an endangered species accrues extra mana the fewer members of its species that remain. Plants too—this one is a weed, eradicate it, this one is ‘native’, protect it. This is what I mean by human idiosyncrasy. This is an example of the commonly held misconceptions that the neurotypical crowd goes along with.
Isn’t there a bit in the Bible where someone points out to someone else—somehow the name Brian rings a bell—that he forgot to acknowledge his mother, and that historical personage responds with something like, ‘Who is my mother?’. Maybe that incident relates to something like this, it’s a parable that illustrates the folly in elevating one person above another. Either everyone—and every living thing—is family, or no-one and nothing is.
I like what Einstein had to say on this—more and more I’m finding that the man had a lot of sensible stuff to say about many things. He wrote:
‘A human being is a part of a whole, called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest . . . a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.’
Thought experimentation doesn’t seem too dangerous. Nothing is likely to blow up in your face. With thought experiments, you don’t usually expose yourself to the sort of rays that cause cancer. Which is not to say that they are foolproof or that they can’t go wrong; for how long didn’t people believe that heavier object fell faster than lighter ones, or that the world was flat? But are thought experiments a legitimate modus operandi? Can they lead you anywhere?
Actually, if you want to make dramatic progress, they are your only option. Application of the scientific method has never resulted in any great leap forward. Every stride has only ever been achieved through imagination, creativity and lucid dreaming. Thought experiments are extremely powerful. Einstein is said to have arrived at his Theory of Relativity after he imagined himself riding on a beam of light. Other examples include Kekule’s benzine ring, the discovery of Velcro, television, the microwave oven, alternating current, coordinate geometry, chemical transmission of nerve impulses—eureka moments all.
You’re bound to have come across thought experiments too, but maybe in another guise—perhaps as koan, haiku, riddles, puzzles and even jokes. To some degree, these are all thought experiments. If you think about it, the act of reading is itself a thought experiment. Consider how amazing it is that the inky squiggles that your eye perceives translate into a shared experience with their author. And it's all happening right inside your head! Reach up with your hand and grasp the back of it where the entire universe fits ever so snugly.
Science fiction provides a particularly good portal in terms of thought experimentation. Riverworld, Ringworld, Foundation and Chung Kuo—every tale starts off with, and flows on from, one or more ‘suppose ifs’: po statements that we accept for the duration in order to enjoy the story. We don’t worry about how likely or believable they are. This is great training. For example, take that premise that underlies the Matrix movies. Say that everything we perceived as real by our senses is not, and that the universe as we know it an elaborately constructed virtual reality world that we’re all hooked into. If that was so, you wouldn’t know the difference. No one can prove that anything is really out there.
Yeah, but hey, you say, it's real. I can smell it. Nope, that’s just molecules tickling some nerve ends and scooting upward from there into your grey matter. But I can touch it, you protest. Again, that’s just another set of electrical impulses traveling up, this time, from your fingertips. Et cetera and so on. Stick with me, as I pick away at the warp and woof of that insight.
Get ready for another character to join the cast of—what was it again—Starry Night for Lust? Vincent is to be joined onstage by another personage from history. No less a figure than our old friend Einstein is preparing himself to step onto the stage (he’s in make-up now). He has earned a permanent spot after a number of successful guest appearances. But before he makes his entrance, I’ll risk peppering the next few paragraphs with another loaded word or two.
Maybe ‘loaded’ is too harsh, because these days terms like ‘reincarnation’ and ‘transmigration’ are quite tame. No, they probably won’t hurt. They may actually boost customer interest because of their mildly exotic flavor, just as women’s magazines sell more copies when they feature a member of royalty on their cover. Some Eastern spice may also help to moderate any mainstream hellfire. How hot can you stand your curry?
Okay, it’s time now for a change of scenery. At this point, let me welcome another character to the cast. A big hand, please, for Mr Einstein. He’s come here at my behest. I admire the man so much that I’m adding him to my chain of predecessors. How about that then? He’s going to be another forebear of mine.
I see, you say. But how would I manage that? Or rather how would Dog? Because, you see, there are certain complications.
But wait, let me finish. I haven’t properly introduced the man. What? You don’t think that I need to? Why is that? Oh I see—he’s so well known. But you’re making an assumption there, you realize.
Isn’t it strange how we jump to conclusions? There must be thousands of people who share the same surname. How did you decide that I wasn’t referring to his son, say, or his uncle? Or even someone from another family altogether? What made you home in on old Albert? Is he more important than everyone else? How so?
Let me ask you something else. When I mentioned the name Einstein, you would have visualized the man. Okay then, can you tell me how he appeared in your mind’s eye. What features stood out?
You’d probably describe Albert’s shock of white hair, his mustache and rumpled clothes. That’s amazing. Because I bet that you’ve never met him. Nope, you must be thinking of a photograph—probably one that was taken near the end of his life (the one where he sticks out his tongue at the camera is a favorite). But do you know—his hair was once cut short. It used to be black. Why not picture him as he was then? Why did you choose to picture him as an old man?
Here’s another quickie for you. Answer me this: How old is Einstein? No, not his age in the picture you chose, but in actual fact. Very well, that shouldn’t be too tough to work out. You take Einstein's birth year and you subtract it from what year it happens to be now. Hey presto, there's your answer. But are you sure? Say we have 2012 minus 1879. That makes one hundred and thirty three.
Heavens to Murgatroyd! How many 133-year old people do you know? Can you visualize someone that old? And if you can, wouldn’t that creature resemble Gollum more than Albert Einstein? It doesn't bear thinking about, does it? It doesn't sit comfortably, nor does it make sense.
If Albert (Einstein) had died at his peak in a car crash like Diana, the consensus, most likely, would be that he is about 36 years old. It doesn't compute to us that a body keeps aging after it dies (although a corpse’s fingernails and beard are said to keep growing for a few days). Someone who lived a good long innings, though, and who was memorable for several events during their lifetime—how old do you imagine them (assuming they’ve left the land of the living)? It's a weird thing to consider, don't you think?
How about you? Never mind how old you actually are, how old do you feel yourself to be? And does that perceived age change with time? By that I mean that as time passes, does your self-image age too? Does it keep pace with the clock, or by another ratio? And maybe it isn’t uniform—it speeds up or slows down according to your physical condition, health, or life circumstances.
But to continue with my story—time’s a-ticking on that 24-hour dial—you have a problem when you want to be both Van Gogh and Einstein, namely that Einstein was born whilst Van Gogh was still living. Their lives overlap. Hm, bummer.
Not only that, Einstein was still alive when I was already a toddler (not really, but we’ll imagine that this is the case). Damn! Somehow there’s got to be a way. But how could a soul wangle it so as to be alive in two places simultaneously, which is the only way that I can see it working?
I see no obvious solution, but that’s no reason to give up. There has got to be a way—remember that Dog ought not to be restricted by time (or by anything). How might that mighty beast crack this particular bone?
What I’ll do is to recycle our conspiracy notion of being reborn into another body every day—that one awakes as someone new and comes to consciousness with all the memories, attributes and inclinations of an entirely different person.
As I’ve pointed out, there’d be no way to tell you’d changed hosts. You wouldn’t know that you were no longer ‘you’. Your day would seamlessly stream forth from the background of all that had gone before. To all intents and purposes, you would ‘be’ who you had always been. Without the memories and self-awareness of a previous self, you would not miss your earlier existence one little bit.
Now, that may sound depressing. It wouldn’t surprise me if it did. Most people clutch fast to individual identity—see how they cling to life at death—and they strongly resist the idea of a collective consciousness like the plague. Therefore, I can understand how the idea of giving up one’s ghost on a daily basis would be repellant.
But not so fast. Give that po statement a little time. Try to realize—you’re not losing a daughter, you’re gaining a son. Don’t worry, you’ll soon get to be ‘you’ again, and much sooner than you imagine.
Okay, okay, just give me a minute. Is this where you’re going? Einstein and Van Gogh are a dual identity. Their personalities dither. Each is filled to the bursting point with self-awareness. Each believes himself unique and separate. Yet, for the eighteen or so years that their lives overlap, they are joined more tightly than any pair of Siamese twins. Nevertheless, they remain utterly unaware of the connection.
We could suppose that Van Gogh and Einstein (and me too, yes) comprise some sort of living strand. Should we co-opt the term ‘string theory’? Is that what we’ve got—chains of people hooked up? Am I building up to a collection of of these reincarnation threads?
No, not exactly. You haven’t quite got the cat by the tail. This isn’t a question of who gets to ‘bag’ which being – I grabbed Van Gogh and Einstein, so you get to nab Da Vinci and Tom Cruise. No, no, no! Think larger and grander. Think of the bigger picture.
Here’s what I suggest that you do. Imagine that the rate of reincarnation were increased. Turn that dial. Increase our speed up to a rate that makes it ridiculous to hang onto the term reincarnation—it’s too much of a mouthful to work properly at this velocity. From now on I’ll refer to what we’re doing as flitzing. Think of it as reincarnation on broadband.
‘But why?’ you ask, ‘For what the reason? Don’t you know that you’re giving me a headache?’
Yes, I appreciate that this isn’t easy. Think of this as a particularly tough lesson in quantum consciousness. Though it’s tough to get your brain around these concepts, a thorough understanding of the underlying principles will set you free. It will confer upon you unbelievable power.
Just as matter and energy can be broken down into the smallest of particles, wavelets, bits of string or what have you, let’s say that consciousness is also quantifiable. Fine, roll your eyes at me. I told you that I read science fiction. What possible reason could I have to take us into La-la-land territory? Hold your horses, I say. Po statements, remember?
I’m talking not just billionths of a second, but billionths of billionths. Nanos, picos and further. And at every miniscule point in time, a flitz occurs. Yes, you read me rightly. At every conceivable instant one is another person—no, I’ll expand the field—another being.
I propose that one’s soul is one spark of consciousness that leaps about the universe in quantum-sized instants—shall we call them quarks, quirks, snips or snarks? I’m open to suggestions. I want your spark of consciousness to have time to flitz a circuit of every centre of consciousness, into every creature, plant or life form, so that it seemed it had never gone missing. This arrangement would permit the illusion, in all of the life forms that it touches, that he, she or it is continuously, uniquely and separately alive.
We are digital, not analog. Life consists of infinitesimally small quanta of consciousness linked together. Continuity of being is just how it appears, and it works in the same way as vision too, with our eyes darting here and there, leaping from one object to another, assembling an entire picture, even though the area in focus is the size of a thumbnail at arm’s length. The memory of what is perceived lingers in the mind until such time that we reconfirm that, or see that it has disappeared.
Wow! Talk about existence being an illusion. This is the mother of all illusions! And just like Poincare’s idea about the universe expanding a thousand-fold overnight, you can’t prove that it’s so.
Flaming Nora! But that means . . .
Yep. You’re right. There ain’t enough room in this town for the two of us. According to the above mechanism, it’s meaningless to speak of separate entities, or even separate living threads. To think of a separate ‘me’ and ‘you’ is nonsense, when we’re combined that utterly. Van Gogh and Einstein are not doing any form of do-si-do.
Let me spell it out in plain English. Life consists of ONE spark or entity that flitzes around as instantaneously as makes no difference into every skull (I’m anthropomorphizing). One whirling dervish (the Eingo?) is all that there is. What did you think that the expression ‘We’re all one’ meant? But it gets even better.
You’ve heard, no doubt, of time being described as the fourth dimension. It’s a well-embedded item of popular culture. And just as it is possible to move physically in the other three, you’d expect a being with god-like powers to be able to roam at will in that one too. Let’s pretend that it can, and then see where that idea leads.
If it’s possible to flitz up and down the time line—the fourth dimension—then there’s no limit how many Who’s Whos from history you or I might have been. Limited beings might worry about mucking up the past and preventing their own birth, but a higher power should not be so inhibited. Go for it, Dog!
Here’s your final challenge of the day. Realize that flitzing can operate backwards in time as well as forwards. In simplistic terms, what this means is that you are not restricted to reincarnating at a later date only.
There’s a lot of traction that we’d gain from understanding that. For instance, the future and the past in such a scenario would be equally real. Just as we never worry about what ‘will happen’ in the past (oh heavens, I hope that Hannibal and his elephants win) we needn’t get uptight about the future. Que sera, sera.
At this stage I’d like to introduce an alternate way for how time operates. I’ll demonstrate that it’s a dynamic phenomenon that can be brought about through a static process. I’m not going to ram it down your throat. I just want to admit that it holds water, that it’s airtight and that it could stand firm.
We’ll begin where we left off: that time is a collection of instants. In other words, time is quantized, discrete, digital or particulate (enough synonyms already). I suggest that consciousness results when a set of memory moments is uploaded into a particular instant. Now then, if this includes the awareness of a set of other 'consciousness-quanta', together with their cqs, nestled and contained . . .
Rats, I've lost you again.
How am I going to do this? How did Einstein keep it simple?
Okay, picture this. Have you ever created your own cartoon? Maybe back at school during an especially dull lesson you might have drawn a little figure down in the corner of your exercise book. On the next page you drew it again, but slightly altered, and again on the following pages. When you reached the end, you had something to show your friends. You told them to look as you flipped through the pages. Your stick figure skipped, walked, ran, jumped and flew (you were inventive). In essence, you brought your little animus to life.
In reality, of course, our little fellow doesn’t move. It’s static. It appears to move when we bring it alive, and maybe that’s what it thinks of itself too. But before you smile indulgently at Mr Stick, consider this. Perhaps on a higher plane the same principle applies to us.
Perhaps ‘upstairs’ some mechanism is operating to flip through a book of our leaves. Perhaps a wind is blowing through the pages of our calendar. There could be a giant thumb progressing us through time. We appear to be alive, but that may only be apparent. To our selves our bodies seem fully fleshed, but on a higher level we may just appear to be transparencies.
And the way that this illusion could be brought about is through memories. They might be the driving force. Memories, as an awareness of a set of other moments of awareness, could be the key. We define that set of memory awarenesses as ‘our past’. We know they have happened. Or, more accurately, we say they have happened because we know about them. It feels as if we have lived through those moments.
To illustrate what I mean let’s look at birthdays. Mine, if you like. Shall we start with my tenth?
At that age, I hold the memories of my ninth, eighth, seventh and-so-on birthdays in my head. The memory of each of them includes the memories of all previous ones (at nine I remember 8, 7, 6 . . . at eight I remember 7, 6, 5 . . .) They come tucked inside one another like Russian nesting dolls.
What that nesting gives rise to is the passage of time. It has the effect of flipping pages without any action needing to occur. Nested memories flip without any external help. You see, whatever age you are, you see that as the latest in a chain of memory instants. This produces the illusion that you just have arrived there, as if having just stepped off bus.
Now, the flipping does not need to happen in a particular order. Imagine that you’d drawn your stick figures on a deck of cards. If then you shuffle them, you’ll witness the most amazing thing. It doesn’t alter the illusion! I’ll say it again because this is important: shuffling the deck doesn’t make a scrap of difference. In every case it will seem that life proceeds in an orderly fashion. How could that be?
And that, I believe, is basically that. We’ve come to the end of the story. It ended with a twist; did you notice? In case you did not, here, in the preamble to the ramblings that preview the following volume, I’ll lay out what you might have missed in all the excitement.
The premise that I used to kick things off did a little shimmy right where things reached their peak. You’ll remember that I began with the supposition that it was I who had the mission to locate and make contact with Theo the Other, the brother-at-a-distance to my Vincent Van Gogh. I spoke of Vee and me. I portrayed him as a version of me, and I merged the two of us into one.
But not so fast.
From your perspective, I have it all wrong. From where you sit, you’ll see the situation quite differently. What you’re going to do as the reader is to bring it all back to your vantage point. I’ve told you that you are quite entitled to rub me out. You would be absolutely correct to remove me from the picture. And you wouldn’t even have to do it by killing me. You just need to ignore me.
When all is said and done (and by now most of it has been), how do you know that you haven’t conjured me up out out of thin air? You assume that I exist(ed) based on nothing more substantial than inky marks across the page (or text on your screen). But you don’t know for sure that I exist. In fact, it’s better for you that I don’t.
This isn’t a trick of the light. There is no me here in your room, in the transit lounge where you sit waiting, or on your bench in the sun this lunch hour. There’s only you. You’re the One. You’re the God, the top Dog, the only player on the block.
What happened was this: you flitzed out of your head into mine. You uploaded (or were uploaded into) the set of attributes and skills and insights of another biology. It allowed you—as me—to postulate the Rickmansworth meme, hypothesize the Theory of Everythink, and then construct the philosophical worldview of Ism. And you’ve brought all that back home. You’ve fetched that bone and placed it at your feet. The question that remains is: Can you grok it?
