Dear Thom Hartmann,
May I say what a pleasure it was to read a couple of your books: The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight, your account of global energy consumption, and The Greatest Spiritual Secret of the Century. Great titles by the way. Comparing the two, I have to say that I prefer your nonfiction over your fiction (I’m speaking of the style, you realize).
But rarely do I read books purely for their literary value, and I never worry about a book’s condition, age et cetera. For me, those come a distant second to the content, and so when I started to struggle with the structure of your story, I persisted. I just had to find out your ‘secret’.
My patience paid dividends. On page 222, I read: "The Greatest Spiritual Secret of the Century, of every Century, is 'We Are All One.'" And then, a few pages later, you wrote that time and space do not exist. “Right on!” I thought, “Thom rocks!”
But Thom, you failed to take it further. You didn't build upon that theme or follow where it led. I was expecting a conclusion; you were on the verge. You had a hold of the dragon’s tail, but then you let it go. You let the big one get away, my friend. Puff petered out.
Elsewhere in the book you state that there are six billion (and counting) answers. One of those, therefore, is mine. And, if I may say, my answer works better for me than yours does—well, I guess that’s only natural. But look, let me make you a deal. Just as I pressed on with your book, I suggest that you keep a-reading here . . .
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.
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.
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!
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.
