Collect 100 different coloured ribbons of varying width and length.
Find 200 different coloured lengths and sizes of string, yarn and thread.
Put them all into a tumble dryer and rotate for a few days.
The resulting would be the best description of reality that I can come up with.
Each of the lengths of string or ribbon represent a member of your family, a friend that you have met or somebody you have encountered in your life.
The lengths of each piece represent the length of a life, some long, some cruelly short.
The varied widths, represent the health of that life.
The vast ball is just your ball of “reality” – each person has a subset of connections from their ball into the greater whole.
If you were to take your own strand and follow it’s path through the tangle, your see that every few millimetres it connects with another strand; sometimes the same strand, sometimes another totally different strand. New strands turn up and entwine repeatedly, some connect and never re-connect.
If you were to take your own strand and gently tease it out of the whole. The whole wouldn’t collapse and disappear, it would look remarkably the same.
If we look at a timeline, we see that some of the strands enter into your ball of string early and leave early, some late and continue on. It’s a stringy continuum.
The Wonderful Illusion
If you enter the ball of string and go to its centre, as you look around you’ll see all the other strings all over the place.
I wonder at the nature of reality, that as we travel, we all see the same tangled web of ideas in common. It’s a wonderful illusion.
We build “this reality” together, and it seems that we are able to imagine a scenery for our lives which holds in place for other people’s experience too.
I dream a building and a town around it, that years later you are able to experience too.
There a communal creation of the story-space that will go on after I move to the next phase.
Holo-deck
In some of the Star-trek movies Gene Roddenberry imagined a Holo-deck.
Essentially just a huge white room, that a computer could project a entire world into, complete with combatants, comrades and scenery. The person using the room could experience the planet they were going to, or possible combat situations in this projected world (which seemed and sounded seamless to them) and practice strategies and combat moves.
Each of us is a stream of consciousness emanating from The One (Or whatever you like to call it) projecting our version of the world out into the communal Holo-deck, where for a while it stays steady.
In Physics we hear much about Entropy (a gradual decline into disorder)
I think that our Holodeck lives follow this pattern.
Over time our influence or imprint on the space slowly fades.
The rocks and the rivers fade and wear through the landscape, houses dissolve back into the earth.
The basic programme that humans have experienced through consciousness for two million years changes slowly. The features that we dream into existence dissolve more quickly.
When the last human draws his breath, the programme will slowly close down and existence as we see it will eventually end.
The Laboratory
We exist in a huge laboratory, set up by consciousness. Consciousness has created the “operating system” by which the Earth appears to exist. In this laboratory world consciousness lets lose eight billion instances of itself, each with a little tweak.
“What will happen if three thousand are killed in a skyscraper terrorist attack? What will the others do?”
“What happens if twenty thousand are killed in an earthquake, how will individuals and their building blocks countries respond?”
What of the mechanism by which this all seems to occur?
Awareness (God, All there is, however you wish to put it..) is the source of all consciousness.
It beams itself through the prism of you and you project the resulting out into your life’s Holo deck.
Think of the cover of the famous Pink Floyd Album – Dark Side of the Moon.
Consciousness or Awareness as seems better, is represented by the white stream of light entering the prism that is actually your mind, the rainbow of light that streams out the other side is your mind creating this human experience that we all experience.
What I experience is subtly different to that which you live through.
(We hear that everybody sees colours slightly differently to the next person, the same with sound and scent.) You apply your own filters to the life experience. We have so many commonalities that it all seems very similar to us, but the reality is that it may be very different!
Marc Leavitt
I’m inspired by author Marc Leavitt, who has spent many years examining reality from his own perspective, and has inspired me to write this.
I have (like him) had several experiences of Universal Awareness in my practice and meditation.
The most notable (which I have written of before) came during a standing meditation, whilst on retreat. In a quiet room of practitioners, the evening drew slowly in and the sun set. Over time the room became quite dark. I settled into my standing posture.
Without warning the floor below me opened and below I could see the whole of the Universe laid out. There was a rushing noise, as if somebody had opened the window of a speeding car.
I gazed in wonder out into the Universe with its planets and galaxies.
This lasted for what seemed like a few minutes.
I was no longer “I” – I was the Universe
As inevitably happens, one’s ego doesn’t like experiences like this, that it doesn’t understand.
A voice in my head shouted “what if we fall out into space!! We’ll die”
As quickly as that the experience was over!
Marc explains that we experience the future in front of us, in our vision, but if we able to look back, we’d find that everything is emerging from the void. (As with my experience in Meditation)
(I know we can look in a mirror, but we still have to look forward to see back! Part of the illusion!)
I experienced the nature of it all in that moment, and have been seeking to understand why, ever since!
He points out the universality of the Triune experience in everything.
At Christianity’s core is Father, Son and Holy Ghost – in Buddhism it’s Mano, Citta and Vinnāna, we find the same in Zoroastrianism and Judaism.
This Triune turns up in every fundamental function of our world, a seed – “agitated” (by water) becomes a plant.
This is essentially an Awareness-space, an action, a fruit –
Consciousness becomes so powerful that it bends and twists in a fractal way and in so doing is able to observe itself: Consciousness, bending, to become reality.
Thought Experiment
If often written about the thought experiment.
“How can you prove that you are NOT a brain in a jar, in a laboratory, that’s being fed all this information by a clever simulation!?” – Clue, YOU CAN’T!
If you think you see something, it’s electrical impulses through the Optic nerve, perhaps they come from a computer, same with smell and taste , touch etc..
Everything is decoded from signals in the brain. There’s no decent way to prove that any of this is “real”
What can we possibly make of all this?
Well the first point for me was that I think, if we are consciousness in a simulation, then the fact is that we can never die. We will always be consciousness.
I think that death as we know it, is just another part of the programme. Life, death, life and so the cycle goes. (Maybe if you have had a strong belief in Heaven (or Hell) then that’s the next segment of the programme that you’ll experience. If you believe in reincarnation – that’s what’ll you’ll experience next. Anything is possible in this simulation.
Like to channel spirits from another planet – yes sure!
Like to speak to the dead – why not!
Regularly see fairies, leprechauns and alien space ships – sure no problem.
Had a near-death experience and came back – go ahead, it’s all possible in this simulation.
Just don’t lose sight of the fact that nothing is real.
Why fear death? Nothing is real.
I’ll just run that again.. why would you fear dying on this basis?
If you believe this is possible – I have seen through the fabric of the illusion, and I know it’s true, then why would the whole of your life be coloured by the fear of your death!?
Don’t worry, be happy!
So this is the first opportunity for you to make yourself feel happy and free!
What about illness?
I genuinely believe that we are allowed to run though this amazing game in any way we wish, we have total free will! The problem is that your “Sim” works much better if you follow the handbook and guidelines. Few of us ever bother reading the manual, and just set off in this amazing vessel, with no idea how to look after it, or what needs to be done to maintain it!
It’s like driving a Ferrari fast and never changing the oil (or maybe not even having learned how to drive in the first place!)
Illness is essentially, not listening to the body, and blundering on!
Wellness is playing a straight game and being sensible.
The people who didn’t drink too much, and never smoked. They lived a healthy lifestyle out in nature and away from stress, taking daily exercise. They enjoyed family and friends, they wore a seatbelt and slept well: They live to a healthy old age.
The people who work stress-filled lives, medicate with alcohol and drugs, and spend long hours in front of the TV: Not so much.
Wrong? No!
Nothing is wrong – this is what consciousness had in mind. Every variation of every theme is right.
A million souls die of starvation – ok, it’s all good. The Population balloons to eight billion, that’s fine.
Nothing is ever wrong. We burn the Earth down – so be it. We reset the population to zero, no problem. (I think Consciousness would start the experiment again, maybe add a few tweaks to the system, add a few tweaks to the players..and off we go!)
The Multiverse theory of physics, I totally buy into that.
Each bubble of a Universe with billions of different players in different settings – why not?
I hope that by expressing these ideas, you might decide that it’s not impossible for you to totally change the path of your life. You can try anything, there’s no damage to be done.
There is however a chance that with the right tools, and the right mindset, that you can utterly transform your being! Why not try?
Further to that, I hope that you’ll feel the urge to truly live your life, and not fear your death.
Live in joy and hope every day! Why not!?
I leave you with Marc’s final discovery.
He spent years searching for the answer to his “vison” of the fabric of it all, and the vast grounds of consciousness and came up with his final Triune:-
“Life-learning-love
What I found was that ‘love’ does not inherently exist but rather, it ‘emerges’ from us as a result of our ‘learning.’ ‘Love’ is the fruit of ‘Life’s’ ‘learning’ process.”
Love your life people – love your life!