My next thought experiment was no less powerful. I’ll try to describe it, but I fear that its conclusion won’t so easily be conveyed or grasped. I think of it as ‘returning to the centre’.
Others have also expressed that they sense themselves existing midway between and a little behind my eyes. The pineal gland is often cited as a candidate. When you take the time to relax and to tune out your mind, it’s possible to sink within until you feel you’re at the centre of the universe.
I can’t remember when I first found myself there, but I do remember what I thought. “Damn! Out of all the places I might be, out of all the times, out of all those billions of bodies, Here I Am.” Well I tell you, that notion quite amazed me. How infinitesimally small were the chances? To be right here, right now as me on this miniscule patch of real estate—the odds must be virtually zilch. It felt phenomenal, and the longer I considered the phenomenon, the less I could believe it.
Does that make sense to you? Can you relate to the feeling? I felt like a king or a god to be so . . . special! I must be special, yes, to be thus ‘singled out’. But it also felt paradoxical and even dangerous, because I knew that by no means did I have it all together.
You see, the I-at-the-centre frame of reference (I am he, as you are he, as you are me, and we are all together) can induce delusions of grandeur. And grandeur is not what is wanted here. It doesn’t feel appropriate, because tied to that feeling of being unique is the certainty of limitation. ‘I am centred at this point in my head’ implied simultaneously that ‘I am confined here’. I see things from this perspective and cannot do so from another. The trick, therefore, is to somehow reconcile the two items of awareness. One may be godlike, but one is merely . . . one. One bit out of many.
So, I’m not everything that I would like to be. It’s an idea to handle with kid gloves. It’s philosophical nitroglycerine, be ultra-careful not to spill a drop.
Once I knew this, I had to live with it. I had to live with myself. I remain centred at the centre of the universe no matter where I travel, no matter how quickly I run, spin or tumble, and no matter how many decades pass by. Are other people are in that position too? If they are, I’ve seen little sign of it. No slightly dazed look on blank faces. Well heck, maybe I am the only gorilla in the room. Maybe everyone else is just a figment of my imagination. But who wants to go there?
Religion, hey? Well, I’m not going to shy away from the subject. I’ll do my (Sunday) best to address it, because I believe (pardon the word) that it’s important for you, dear reader, to know my position. Do I have a bias one way or the other? Am I from the Richard Dawkins camp, or am I a card-holder of some other Salvation Army?
As a child, my parents never dragged me along to church by, thank God. They didn’t impose that Sunday ritual on their children. In that respect, my siblings and I were left to our own devices. We enjoyed unadulterated freedom (is there a pun in that?), and it was only my school friends who would sometimes invite me along.
And I did. I went along to several encounter groups run by hip teachers in the hope of making friends—never easy for me. These were run along faintly evangelical lines, but I did my best to ignore that. I took part in what looked interesting, sat out on what looked suspicious, and endured the rest as best as I could.
But that faint biblical hiss in the background kept my hackles at the ready. Things came to a head one weekend when the teenagers’ group that I attended was ‘ushered’ into the church next door. Some sort of service going on.
Meekly I submitted with the rest. There was no time to voice a protest. As we trooped on over, I felt we’d been conned, but what can you do?
I sat there on a pew, listening critically. So we all have this personal relationship with God, do we? How to know for sure? I decided to put the sucker to the test. As others traipsed up for their sip and a nibble, I stuck fast to my seat. I socked God with an ultimatum. ‘Right man, I’ll give you one chance. Give me a sign that you’re up there. That’s all you need to do, and I’ll go along with this charade. All I ask for is a sign.’
And then I waited . . .
To me, original sin doesn’t make sense. Neither does the notion of a vengeful and jealous god. But it does make sense that everything could be predestined. Those atoms that they told us about at school ought to keep a-rolling in whichever direction they are pushed.
And yet, how was it that I was able to do as I pleased? Though their direction was determined, I seemed to be able to boss my own atoms around. I could only conclude that this was due to some sort of paradox. It probably had to do with ‘levels’. Free will probably existed on one level and not on another—something like that. Whatever, I was happy to bide my time until I could see more of the total picture, so I went away to work on my X-ray vision.
Would you believe that I once called myself a Selective-apathy-active-fatalist-ego-theist? The atoms rolling slash being rolled represented the ‘active-fatalist’ component, which I’ve already outlined.
The ‘selective-apathy part comes from my conviction that you can’t do or be everything. That’s important to who I am and how I live. If you want to do something really well and devote yourself to it, then you won’t have time for much else. Therefore, if you want to make the best use of your life, then it behooves you to choose wisely. You are going to have to practice discrimination—or apathy—so as not to become embroiled in unnecessary and diversionary activity.
You see, the more options you have, the more difficult life is. It is actually easy to live as a fanatic and be devoted to one goal. Contrast that to juggling a balance of interests, activities and pursuits. Perhaps I appear indecisive, but that’s so that I can keep my options open. I drop one thing for another only when the time is ripe.
As for the ‘ego-theist’ component, the idea of being one’s own god was an act-as-if decision. All that I could be sure of was that I existed; I wasn’t sure about anyone else, and as for God . . . well, He certainly hadn’t fronted up when challenged. And when that occurred (or didn’t) then I thought I might as well act as if I was in charge. I’d do the honors and play emcee. If and when a higher power came along, I’d gladly yield my superior the floor. Can’t say fairer than that.
When I close my eyes, I can get into a state that I’m all that there is (I’d been initiated into Transcendental Meditation as a teenager). Everything 'outside' is then a figment of my imagination. Oh sure, I knew full well that at the same time that I was also hopelessly limited as an individual being—the second of that trio of childhood thought experiments. But the bottom line is that I’ve never felt the need to install any god figure at the head of a personal ideology.
‘Do gods exist?’ is not, in my opinion, a very useful question to ask. To have a picture already in mind for what you’re looking for is similar to a biologist going off in search of a species that he has already assigned attributes. ‘Is there life on Mars that is based on carbon, oxygen-breathing and intelligent?’ is a closed question. It’s far better for the bear to go over the mountain with an open mind to see what he could see.
Nothing in my construct rests on such an insecure foundation as a pre-carved deity figure. I would suggest starting out from a position of knowledge from solid ground, from the space between your eyes and ears central of the universe. Start with what you know—yourself. Venture forth from there.
I believe that it was Socrates who told his students: “Know thyself!” but I’m not sure if he told them what came next? What do you do once you’ve found that entity? What do you do with that ‘body’ of knowledge?
From your elevated centre, do you sense other life forms coexisting? I don’t know about you, but I see zillions of them scuttling about everywhere. Isn’t it easier to ‘believe’ in them than in any of the myriad of gods and goddesses dreamed up through the ages? I’d say that there is less of a chance of their being figments of my imagination than angels and demons and the like. So why don’t we start with the natural world?
Apparently there exist various lifeforms that we don’t think of as equal (to each other, and certainly not to us). Their ‘aural envelopes’ appear to vary. Instinctively we assign the different plant and animal species grades of consciousness. So where does that lead us?
My next trick relies on the idea that is is possible to grade that level of consciousness (though it won’t be necessary to do it). If this is possible, then we would be able to rank different life forms inter and intra species. Again, we won’t do that.
Please be clear, this doesn’t imply that I consider a particular life form superior or more worthy than any other. ‘We’re all the same, yet we’re all different’ is a difficult notion to grasp only if one is addicted to dualistic thinking. If you do regard it as a two-horned dilemma, then I suggest that you set it aside as a paradox to examine later (as I had to do when I discovered myself at that all-important yet humble hub of the universe).
It follows then that, given that there’s a ranking, someone has to be the top dog, the kingpin, el supremo or yokozuna. In terms of consciousness, that being would stand above the rest. Very well then, let’s nominate—elevate—that dirty rascal to the position of King, Emperor or—why not?—God? May as well make use of that word? If God does happen to exist then that being will automatically slot right in. The point is: we’re assured that our vacancy will get filled by someone or other.
As to whether that entity is up to the task is another matter. Whether it is omniscient, omnipresent—all those other ‘Oms’—we don’t know, since we don’t know exactly who was elected (a puff of white smoke from behind closed doors). No one is in a position to say what its attributes are. And I’m not going to go there either. Until or unless it effects a self-introduction, I’m not going to worry myself about it since, by definition, it’s going to have at least as great a sense of humor and forbearance as me.
Phew, that might have knocked our some of your stuffing out. Your turn, now—have a go at running your own mind experiment. I’ll start you off with a gentle push; you just steer and balance. Let me ask you: What is the grandest thing that you can imagine? What’s the most marvelous thought that your head will contain? Whatever you propose, I assure you that I can top it.
Is that so? You’ll take me up on that? You think you can dream a dream that is larger than mine? Okay then, take a swing at it.
A room filled with fish and chips. All the ice-cream in the world . . . all the tea in China . . . a million dollars . . . a billion . . .
Come on, you can do better than that.
I want to be the very richest, the most powerful, the most attractive . . .
Really, you disappoint me.
I see myself as the ruler of all, an Emperor, the head of my own religion . . .
Peanuts my friend, peanuts.
I am the incarnation of Buddha, Mohammed, Krishna, Jesus . . .
Is that really as high as you’re able to aspire?
I can travel back in time. I am immortal—a never-ending story. I’m Superman and Batman both . . .
I tell you, you are merely scratching the surface.
I declare myself an angel . . .
So what?
I announce that I’m the Devil. I am a god . . . God Himself!
I tell you honestly, my vision for us is much, much greater than even that. Hang onto your seat. I'm about to inform you.
Well, it happened again. Did you notice? The previous paragraph was invaded. Dear old deus ex machina slipped in through the door, which we can’t permit. Someone give the bouncer the nudge. We can’t allow an alien presence. Clock his ticket, right now. Nip him in the crux before we move on.
This notion of God. You’ll remember that we’ve been there before—when I spoke of being an Ego-theist. You may have felt then that I evaded the issue, though I feel that I handled it adroitly. We’ll revisit it, but with greater resolve. Let’s see how I perform this time. First, though, to retrace our steps.
When I introduced the topic, I didn’t begin where most people begin and then immediately get stuck. Instead of trying to decide on whether or not there is a Dog, I pondered about that beast’s secret identity. I didn’t sidestep the issue through the semantic expedient of giving Him, Her or It another name: Life Force, Universal Spirit, Nature and the like. I assured you that the quandary was, in fact, simpler.
It didn’t take me more than a minute to clear the air, and then we all breathed much more easily. Remember how we backed the hairy monster into its lair? I deviate from the mainstream definition in that I do not see God as some superhuman identity looming loftily over the entire creation. So as to regain some perspective, I made a small but vital adjustment: I defined God as simply the highest form of consciousness that there was. Thereby, I conferred the title ‘God’ onto the most imposing player on the block. Sir God, arise.
And by default, if a person happens to have the notion that he or she is alone in the universe, then they were ‘It’. The onus would fall squarely upon them (and if they doubted even their own existence, then God help them.) I asked you not to worry if our chosen god didn’t appear to have the power reply to prayers, move mountains, or walk on water. I promised you that we’d get to that later on . . . and here we are now.
With a fell swoop, I sorted out several pressing issues. I did away with the one-god-or-multiple-dogs thing. Because you see, if there are more than one, then they can’t all be equal (if they were equal, exactly equal, then, by definition, they would be one). No, if there’s more than one contender, then there has Gott to be a winner. The godhead is not a lottery win that you can share. We also avoid the issue of whether God is an actual entity or else a cloud-like spiritual ether. For now, that isn’t a concern. Consciousness, in whatever shape or form, is key. It doesn’t matter where it is housed. Just as long as it exists somewhere.
So, unless there’s no consciousness anywhere, then God—as I’ve defined that being—must exist. You see that, don’t you? Well hell, God may then not be as omni- this and uber- that—as all powerful, present, knowing and so forth as you’d imagined God should be, but we’re looking for life on Mars here. Let’s take what we can get. Don’t sweat the small stuff, little man. Who are we to determine just what god can and cannot do? Anyway, you may be surprised. It remains to be seen just what implications are gonna follow. We’re nowhere near done yet.
But . . . is there a consciousness? I expect that you sometimes doubt it. I know that I do. We pay lip service to the idea that we’re all aware, and that each one of us personifies the centre of his or her universe, but that’s hard to reconcile with the way most peasants conduct their drudgery. When you look into their eyes, you can’t believe there’s someone at home. Is it any wonder that sometimes you feel as if you are an extra-terrestrial abandoned on an alien world?
You’ll recognize the spectre of a conspiracy starting to bestir itself (see how I came to dream it up?). But just hang fast, me hearties, onto the one fact that if anything at all exists, then, by definition, so does Dog. You’re sure that you at least exist, don’t you? Well, there you go then.
Anyway, I hadn’t meant to blather on about God, religion and the like. There’s nothing worse for turning people off. Pepper religious words throughout your tome, and potential readers will discard your work in droves (I tell you, I play with fire). If you’re anything like me, you’ll harbor a healthy aversion to religion in any shape, manner or form. If that is so, then please accept my apologies.
However, if I’m to present a meaningful philosophy of life then I can’t in all honesty avoid bumping shoulders with the big boys. Apart from the study of Philosophy—is that quaint subject still taught?—organized religions have more-or-less cornered the market, and so to some extend there’s a need for me to intrude on their patch and bandy swords with the bastards.
As far as religions go, I must be blunt. No more beating about the bush. This may sound shocking, but it has got to be said. Every religion is miles wide of the mark. I tell you, the Jesuses, Mohammeds and Buddhas of this world may have been well-meaning, but they were neophytes.
And in the next few lines I’ll prove it.
From a very early age I’ve had a moth-like fascination for this thing called religion. Circling at a distance so as not to singe my wings, I observed my elders. Were they addled? Why would they turn off their brains and believe such fantasies? I pondered such questions at the age of six. Now, with the benefit of hindsight, I can see that that my instincts were truly perceptive.
Religions are damnably dangerous. All of them are cults. I can say this categorically because not one of them, not a single world model addresses a couple of essential existential features, and that shortcoming shows that they are seriously deficient.
First, no religion explains the real nature of the relationship between us and God (and with each other). All that stuff about neighbors, treating each other as brothers and sisters, who is in my family and who is not, this tribe and that tribe, the chosen people, Good Samaritans, turning your cheek seven times seven . . . It may seem as is the matter is being dealt with, but this isn’t not so. There’s a far more intimate involvement between all forms of life that organized religions have no inkling of and can't hint at.
And that would be enough to damn them. However, the second deficiency is even more damning. It is this: No system of belief addresses the nature of time. None of them explains how time operates. That understanding is crucial. Unless you have it, you can’t read any meaningful pattern into the warp and woof of the universe.
Reincarnation as a concept is now quite middle-of-the-road. Pre-Shirley MacLaine, though, it was wonderfully wild and woolly. But the spread of Hatha Yoga and the ubiquitous Hare Krishna lunch has helped it to establish a market niche, so there’s no need for me to write a primer. I’ll confine myself to examining the part it has to play in my drama of fancying myself a reincarnation of Vincent Van Gogh.
To start with, reincarnation can’t involve just Vinnie and me. Everyone must be included. A tango for two does not make much sense. We have a packed house, and people are not here just to watch. We’re all whirring madly en masse, changing partners on cue. I’m going to treat reincarnation as the rule, not the exception.
Now, it follows that reincarnation must be a series of repeats. This is not about playing musical chairs. It wouldn’t make sense for the music to stop once Vincent becomes me. Nothing is likely to wear out by our continuing to leapfrog. The soul, should it exist, is undoubtedly as hardy as DNA. One reincarnation, two, or a series stretching all the way back to whenever, should not be impossible. We’re born, we live, we die and then again we are reborn. There’s a bit of ad infinitum going on.
Another feature of the process of reincarnation is that we naturally assume it to be geographically unchallenged. Should one’s rebirth involve relocation miles away, maybe in another country, we take that as a given. Those considerations don’t impede us. Would you foresee difficulties with transporting spirits across oceans and mountain ranges? Do you have a problem with being broadcast to another planet? No? Mighty! You’re my kind of alien.
Next, what about the timing? I mean, there’s usually a time lag, no? The next Dalai Lama isn’t necessarily born the instant that his predecessor snuffs it. It might take years before the right body comes along. It might be a century until the the signs are auspicious. But I suspect that this wouldn’t cause you to worry either, right? Very well, we’re motoring! Let’s move on right along.
The situation at the other end of the scale—that is, when the transition is to occur instantaneously—doesn’t faze us either. As far as we’re concerned, it can happen as quickly as it likes. Someone dies, and we don’t bat an eyelid to imagine that person reborn an instant later across the ocean.
We accept—expect—that should a reincarnation event require an astronaut’s soul to jump from a fatal accident on the moon to a baby on the dark side of the earth (Scotty, beam me up), then we wouldn’t bat an eyelid. We wouldn’t consider that as lying beyond the powers of the entity in charge. Sure, it takes light a fraction of a second to make the leap, but there’s no earthly need for souls to be so slow. Jack, flick that switch. (Hey up! For a god who we weren’t could mountains or walk on water, (s)he’s doing fine!)
Now that we’re running so hot, how about a spot of transmigration to stir the waters? You know, being demoted (or promoted) to a dolphin, because in your previous life you were so into surfing, or a pig because gluttony was your vice. Yes? You can handle that? I’m impressed. Are you up for more? We’ll just take a moment to review where we’ve got before the neck show.
Okay then, let's tally. First, we touched on the concept of God, where I’ll admit that I might have employed a certain sleight of hand (in the spirit of the means justifying the end). We established that there is one of some form or other, and we fondly nicknamed it Dog (what, you don’t name your pets?).
We established that fact quickly to erect a platform upon which to build (and then launch off from), not just for the sake of argument, mental exercise, or fun. I trust that you are satisfied that there’s some sort of power, even if that role devolves as yours. No way should you fear it—neither that Being, nor of having that mantle bestowed.
We chose to accept reincarnation as a possibility. We tossed around that concept so as to snap off a few sticks with which to build. Men at work: mental Meccano construction. Assuming that it operates, and that it is administered by man’s best friend, Dog (who better?) we’re not going to place limits on what can and can’t be done.
Reincarnation may occur as many times as it likes, without the essential DNA ever wearing out. It occurs as a series, and to everyone—not only to a select few. It doesn’t see bestiality as an issue—no, not that. You know what I mean. At death—physical death—the soul leaps merrily across time and space to take up residence in another body, geographical location not being an issue, and time not being of much concern either.
We were happy for reincarnation to suspend time for as long as it likes, and to leap periods of time ‘at a single bound’, if need be faster than light. Ah, but can it do the superman thing and spin itself backwards along the fourth dimension?
That’s a new one for you, isn’t it? Take a minute or two. Don’t snap back at me with an answer; I want you to give it some serious thought. Is it possible for someone to be reborn at an earlier hour, date, or year than that person’s death?
Tilt your head one way then the other, but hold onto your hat. We’re preparing to topple old Father Time from his throne, just as soon as we’re done with our recap. We’re going to turn the hourglass on its head and chop it into smithereens!
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.
Quantum physics, quantum mechanics, quantum electrodynamics—who could possibly keep abreast of that field? Would anyone want to? What do photons, electrons, positrons, quarks, quirks and sparks matter?
One thing, though—they say that matter and energy are fundamentally the same. That’s very interesting. Might there be a third aspect of stuff’? Maybe consciousness is an integral part of the equation. I’m curious about whatever sub-particle it is that carries consciousness on its back.
So let’s invent another science. We’ll add Quantum Consciousness to the curriculum, the science that studies consciousness by examining its quantum-sized units. If you start with a single centre of consciousness (no, I’m not volunteering to step into the cyclotron) you could smash it up into a helter-skelter of apparently discrete centres. They’d be particle-wavelet whatevers that can be assigned attributes of mass, energy and now consciousness.
Who knows?—their study might lead to an explanation of the whole shebang, and maybe rip the veil off Old Mother Maya herself. It might explain how life as we know it has resulted from the explosion of a single, original, concentrated centre of consciousness-essence. For the sake of convenience, let’s refer to that whole before-and-after conglomeration—that it/them/us assembly—as God.
So how do we get a grip on all of that? What are we then as individuals? How are we to regard ourselves? What does each of our lives consist of, and how do we fit into the overall picture? I ask, because most of us feel that we’re helplessly adrift. We’re passengers in a ship in the midst of an absolutely perfect storm. We really need a lifeboat here. Save Our Souls.
Fear not. Help is at hand. As Douglas Adams wrote (in large friendly letters), DON’T PANIC. (Arthur C. Clarke thought that this was perhaps the best advice that could be given to humanity, so it can’t hurt for me to repeat it.) I’ll follow that up with Be Here Now, a phrase that Baba Ram Das used for his book. EckhartTolle advised, “All you really need to do is accept this moment fully. You are then at ease in the here and now and at peace with yourself.” To achieve that, he imagined himself sitting at his shoulder watching himself with detached objectivity.
Now that we’ve calmed a little, we’ll sink further into Czerner’s concepts of ‘eternity’ and ‘total unity’. He claims they lie outside our direct awareness, but let’s examine them anyway.
Tolle, Richard Alpert and others state that the present is all that there is. It is the only time that we have, they say. I would like you to notice something else about it.
Don’t you sense that the present is at one and the same time nothing? It has no substance or duration. The present is gone as soon as it arrives. It lasts not an instant. It lies between the future and the past, thinner than the thinnest skin.
We might easily overlook the meniscus of the present and split time into only the past and the future, if it weren't for the fact that we skate or glide eternally across its surface. Let’s give the present moment a measure of credibility. Let us think of it as having a certain substance. We’ll give it the thickness of one quantum of consciousness.
You see where I’m headed, don’t you? I’m about to string together these nothing moments into an unbroken, unbreaking wave. Our perception of the present, our most intimate experience of being, is itself the greatest testament of, argument for and proof of quantum-mechanical-reincarnation. Ism is hidden clockwork that jerks life along by the bootstraps.
We insist on regarding ourselves as individuals with separate souls living independent lives. We act as though we are discrete—fenced off from one another by date and location. We see our lifespans as a linear progression of personally relevant events.
But I put it to you that we’re finger puppets, and that together we make up one enormous hand. Can your self-awareness stretch that ultimate octave? We’re alone, and yet we’re totally together, like tube feet on a starfish, or the cilia on a single-celled organism. We’ve got to get it all together if we want to work in concert. The question is how.
So . . . let me get this straight. What you’re saying, I think, is that there’s just us—WE—plus God, right? Us and Him—a kind of duality. But that doesn't help me understand what God wants. What is it that he wants us—ME—to do? What is my—OUR—purpose?
Ah, you still imagine yourself separate.
Whoa now! You’re not going to . . . I mean, you can’t mean . . . Are you telling me . . .?
Just what the hell is this—some unholy text? Is the writer the devil in disguise? Is that what’s going on here? Is he (or I) fooling with your mind? Or am I the Antichrist come for your soul? Danger, Will Robertson!
Who knows? It could be—I mean I could be. It depends what the people who thought up that term had in mind. Could they have seen any of this coming? Certainly the ideas contained herein could change a person’s thinking. They could make you see the world very differently. You might decide that everything you thought you knew is way off the mark. And if what I say causes you to discard your religious convictions, then I suppose that I lay myself open to the charge.
But would that be such a bad thing? Aren’t you halfway there already? Western society has already largely weaned itself away from the idea of a vengeful and jealous Dog. Come on now, really. Is there anyone who still seriously believes in hell, damnation and original sin, and a red-skinned devil with horns on his head pointing a pitchfork? The sooner we escape the clutches of such crackpot witchery the better, it seems to me.
Let me make sure that I understand. Assuredly, your worldview is and easy to grasp, and yet it is such a difficult one to absorb—I don’t know that I even wish to. Heavens, what changes in my thinking is it going to require? To say that this has come out of left field would be missing the mark. It has come from another planet!
First, I’m required to give up the worldview that billions and billions of us—both the living and the dead (and those to come)—are individual entities living separate lives. And that each of us has a unique relationship with a higher power. Instead, you ask me to accept that there is only one super-being: all of us—including god, no less—wrapped up and lumped together. Please, give this poor sod a handle on that.
Well, I’ll certainly try, but I may not be the best person for the job; I know my strengths and limitations. Visualizing and conceptualizing are what I do best, but I struggle to spin my thinking into words.
You might care to sample a more user-friendly version. Andy Weir’s short story The Egg is doing the rounds on the Internet as I write. It gets across quite nicely the idea that we’re all one (with nary a mention of Dog). You might also find it useful to peruse Neale Donald Walsch’s Conversations With God.
It’s a struggle for us all—all one of us—to conceptualize that which has emerged from the woodwork, and I definitely include myself. Just now it looks like a house of cards. One good breath . . .
But please remember. These philosophical gymnastics are not simply to indulge myself. I don’t have any delusions of grandeur. It’s not about self-gratification or self-promotion. I’m not trying to cozy up to a famous figure, or become one. No, I have a grander aim, which is to use these hypotheses and postulates to explain all the unanswered mysteries of the universe.
I know it sounds far-fetched, but we’re almost done. There are only about a dozen pages to go. I’ve a few cards left to balance, and then the whole structure will solidify into bedrock. It’ll be like a jigsaw puzzle that you throw in the air . . . and, like a coin that lands on its edge multiplied by a thousand, every piece bounces into place! That isn’t something you could mistake for anything else. You wouldn't need any extra proof to know that something extraordinary had happened.
See our little spark. Unhindered by geography, it leaps lightly around the world. It skips blithely across time, allowing us to experience ourselves in a multitude of bodies, both simultaneously and overlapping. Behold now that spark flare several orders of magnitude. I’m going to up its power (this spark is going supernova). Fasten your seat-belts. Warp infinity here we come. It’s time to tackle time travel.
To do that, we’ve got to circle around and sneak up on it. Shh . . .
I am here.
You are here.
Every single instant, we are neatly self-contained. The illusion is of a wondrous separateness—individuality, independence, autonomy, free will and choice. Life feels filled to the brim with potential. Well, it should. This is a carnival, you know.
We realize its boundaries: birth and death. We observe them when others pass across them. This knowledge serves to snip us off from one another even more sharply. Everyone occupies his or her (gender is yet a further distinction) quarter-acre patch of reality. We’re fenced off from everyone else, including God.
But dammit, we are God. We’re wrapped up in that containing consciousness. We are one another. We are one. ONE. US. I. Ism.
I wake up from a dream in which I was a butterfly. Or am I really a butterfly dreaming of being a man? I wonder, is the dream state more ‘real’ than wakeful consciousness?
After all, we only dip into wakeful waters for a matter of hours before needing to recharge our batteries. By contrast, you never become exhausted in the sleep state and just have to wake up. It's not as if you run out of oxygen.
Nevertheless, we don’t question that the waking state is higher than mere sleep. Of course it must be. Isn’t our level of consciousness greater when we’re up and about? It seems so, but maybe that’s another ‘obvious’ assertion to test.
Leave consciousness out of it for the moment. Instead, let’s do an assessment of quality of being. Specifically, let’s consider our depth of connectedness to each other, the planet, the universe and our roots. We’ll compare how we do when we’re asleep, as opposed to when we’re awake. In which of the two states are we more ‘at one’?
When you open your eyes, you take on an aura of individuality and otherness. The illusion is of being a separate entity. You’re here behind the rays that shine into your eyes. Things exist ‘out there’. Time feels real, space feels real, and the cinematography of our lives feels as if it's occurring. The reels roll, we’re mesmerized, and we enjoy the drama from the comfort of our seat.
But we slough all of that off when we sleep. At that time we’re centred. We return to our origins where it is natural to be, and we draw nourishment from being there. Don’t we feel freshest in the early part of the day just after we’ve arisen? And conversely, don’t we feel dullest at day’s end?
Since this is so, then I conclude that wakefulness is not our default state. We’re not naturally wakeful beings who sometimes need to sleep. We are the one source that dips regularly into wakefulness to enjoy the experience of those dreams, which makes us not so much a butterfly as a cocoon.
Another thing is that we assume that the adult form is more advanced than the immature version. The pupa grows not only in size but in wisdom, supposedly, as our memories accumulate. But I wonder about that. Just as I’m coming around to think that the wakeful state is inferior to the sleep state, I’m starting to hypothesize that the child is the father to the man.
In one of my dreams I go into a mall with people walking about everywhere. There’re all types, all races, and I’m struck with their variety and beauty. I look into everyone’s eyes (especially if the people are women and if their eyes are brown) and then I suddenly stagger and have to reach out for support.
I’ve just had an epiphany. Now I know what it means to be God! In every pair of eyes I see consciousness swim. This pulsing matrix of humanity is omnipresence all ready to blow. It’s like a fire that just needs a match. Am I the only one who understands? We’re only a spark away from the realization that all is one. We’re just a membrane away from grokking ourselves for what we are, will be and always were: the timeless entirety. Imagine the simultaneous smile when that light dawns!
Let’s work this model a little harder.
Okay, so a life form has access to a set of memories. We call the whole a life. And we know that memory awareness is like an arrow pointing back in time.
Now, each time moment contains within itself a nested subset, or the memory-awareness of other moments (imagine a Venn diagram with subsets that get smaller and smaller (perhaps an onion (that does not need to be of glass (or contain a walrus)))) then, within the context or paradigm of continuous expansion, growth or progress, this makes it seem that time flies forward. (Within a paradigm of shrinkage or disappearance it ought to result in the opposite: that time is progressing into the past.)
Similarly, you appear to be travelling along with it. The universe too—it seems to explode and then, after aeons, implodes back into its black hole. Whether it does so once, or else loops back on itself like a Moebius strip, or even if it oscillates repeatedly ad infinitum, doesn’t matter, since none of those cosmologies break free from the gravitational pull of the illusion of time.
Those models only seem to be kinetic, whereas from god’s point of view everything is. It is all here, complete, the alpha through to the omega. The alphabet exists as a unit. The letters don’t scroll in real time; they’re carved in stone.
All is as it is.
All particles are linked according to the laws of gravity, electromagnestism and so forth. They relate to one another as if they were separated in space and time, and though they each seem to be discrete, there is in fact no way to tell them apart.
All is indeed one.
