Our bedtime story for tonight (geez, is it that late in the day already?) is called Lust for Life, or Starry Night, depending on whether we’re in a hedonistic or romantic mood. As you might predict, it’s about Vincent Willem Van Gogh—good biographical fiction.
Not ‘Once upon a time’ but for as long as I can remember, I’ve felt a connection to that soul. I share his nationality, middle name, red beard (before mine went grey) and his socially inept manner. I savor his zest for being, his compassion for his fellow man, his overpowering creative drive, his simple tastes, his passion for life, and the way that he railed relentlessly against physical limits and limited means. I’ve read his letters (to his brother) and covered my walls with his prints. I’ve traced the history of his art and have amassed a library of books. I’ve even named my son after him. If I had been he, I couldn’t have lived a fuller life.
Maybe that’s an indication. Maybe I was once Vincent Van Gogh. Would it be so very far-fetched to imagine that he and I are one? Suppose that he is me reborn into this present body. As a thought experiment, where would that take us?
We’d need to think along the lines of reincarnation; I don’t think you can avoid it. For the sake of argument—no, not ‘argument’; who wants to argue? So, for the sake of, oh, I don’t know, mental gymnastics?—let’s suppose that reincarnation is possible. After all, the greater fraction of the world does.
Do I have any evidence—not of reincarnation in general, but of this particular instance?
Well no, I don’t have any clear memories of being him. I haven’t gone through any déjà vu moments of mixing pigments or of attacking a canvas. I haven’t an unexplained taste for tobacco and absinthe. But that’s okay. The absence of hard evidence doesn’t rule out the possibility of a common ancestry.
Still, there are documented accounts of people recalling where treasure is hidden under the floorboards of a house of a previous life. It’s been mentioned in books. Urban legends abound, so let's allow that it has happened. It's just that where Vincent is concerned, I don’t possess that power of recall.
Since it's rare for people to have memories of their previous lives, reincarnation must involve rigorous brainwashing. Otherwise we’d all be confused about our identity. That would explain my inability to demonstrate a closer connection. The exception proves the rule, so there's hope for me and Vinnie yet.
Say that I’m right. How then to explain the period of time—a half century or so—from the day Vincent shot himself (thirty hours later, actually, and possibly by a teenager) to the day on which I was born? Does that pose a problem?
I can’t see that it would. For reincarnation to be the norm, it would be quite inconvenient for the next life to have to start the instant one shuffled off one’s previous life’s mortal coil. The bookkeeping system for that would beggar belief.
My point is: time ought not to be a problem for a god. God can cope, surely. We want God to be time’s master—I mean, who is in charge here? An all-powerful god must be able to run rings around any old sundial. For souls in a state of limbo in between lives, there must be some cosmic equivalent of a capsule hotel. The Milky Way Transit Lounge Cafeteria—I can picture Douglas Adams there.
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?
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.
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.
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?
