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?
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.
You and I, we’re not human beings you know. Get over that notion. Why cling to your ethnicity, race, tribe or nationality? Borders don’t exist in the real world. Species are not ring-fenced. There are no aliens to fear. When all is said and done, we’re jabberwockies: four-dimensional worm-like bodies with flukes for arms and legs, a zygote-sized snout and a somewhat shrunken seventy- or eighty-year-old tail that is rudely truncated (sooner and blunter, if you are cut down accidentally in the prime of life).
Our entirety exists outside of time like a statue in a blurred time-lapse photograph. Life, as we know it, at any instant, is simply a cross-section of the jabberwocky. The spark that does the cutting dances up and down its spine from head bone to toe bone. As it plucks here, there and everywhere it defines the present where we find ourselves at that moment.
But actually there is no present. Neither is there a past nor a future. There is only the subjective present, the one which we’re forever unwrapping.
Judge for yourself. Let’s run a little thought experiment. Are you ready? Just sit back and close your eyes. Right then, try to feel time pass. See if you can feel it slip through your fingers. Are you able to?
I certainly can’t. You say that you can follow the second hand of the clock on the wall? That doesn’t count. You opened your eyes. And even if you didn’t, it’s just a physical event. It is an external action that you don’t experience within yourself.
What I’m saying is that everyone experiences the present only as an instant, albeit an instant with duration. And, like the principle behind motion pictures, those separate instances link up to generate an illusion of time passing fluidly. In actual fact, though, it doesn’t. It is made of granules, quanta, or instants. Life jiggles instantaneously.
As a diversion, try that same thought experiment out for the other dimensions. You’ll get a similar result. No dimension is really real. When you travel any distance north, south, east, west, up or down, it doesn't matter how far you go. You’re always 'here'. It feels like the same place as you were before. You remain at the middle of the universe, not its edge. Whether you walk, drive or fly, your consciousness stays put. The scissoring of your legs doesn’t propel you across the landscape. It pulls it towards you.
But that the fourth dimension doesn’t exist at all . . . isn’t that ludicrous? We needn’t go down that route, surely. Without time, what are we left with? Where would we be? When? What chance is there for us to grow? How could we hope for a change in the weather or in our situation? How could evolution occur (if it is still on the curriculum)?
We’re not just fooling around. You and I are having a serious discussion about eternity and total unity. It’s not an idle dreamer’s toy, this notion of a jabberwocky stretching out in four dimensions. Neither is it a means whereby we snuggle up to the important, the famous, or the well-known.
There’s just the one of us, you see. You and I are one, the one-and-only. Of course, by “you and I” you’ll understand that it’s not just the two of us, right? This is not a private conversation. ‘You and I’ includes the thousands of millions sitting on the other side of the monitor (well, maybe a dozen). Everyone in the world is connected. There is just the single spark alighting randomly along every moment of the superwocky rat king of intertwined lives that every creature ever and to come is a part of.
There’s no ‘I’ that one can isolate. There’s no ‘you’ that one can extract. There’s no ‘he’, ‘she’ or any other. Forget about six degrees of separation; we’ve all got our hands in each other’s pockets. Alive, dead, or as yet unborn, we’re all inextricably linked, wrapped up and pounded upon by that same, single spark.
No wonder that each one of us feels special. No wonder we feel we’re at the centre of the universe. It’s hardly surprising that deep down none of us really believes that we’ll ever die.
The grand truth of the matter is that Theo is our shared name. Instead of, "I think, therefore I am," try, "I are, therefore we am”? I’ve told you before that ‘I’, the guy nominally responsible for these words, does not exist. Not for you now as you’re reading these words (and especially if you are reading them fifty years hence). In terms of what’s going on in your head right now, there is only you. You’re the man, dude (or duchess). You’re the (wo)man with the wand.
Think of me as you (you’d already been invited). Imagine that you had somehow jumped into another environment, zipped yourself into other garments, experienced what was there to be experienced, and then returned to your own body. Did you get myour postcard?
“Hey, I’m having a wonderful holiday. It’s good to get away from myself (no offense). I’ll be back by the time that you read this.” Can you grok that? Astral travel or what!
No one is telling you that they are God. Don’t let them. Don’t allow anyone else to set you up for that pratfall. Just tell them from me that you are. You are, in actual fact, God. I’ll give you a few pointers how to cope, but how you deal with that knowledge is entirely up to you.
