There's the rub

So now it's space, time and matter - you're saying.

Yep.

But why do you presume to know better than everyone else?

Let's breathe your feelings, let's unwind them, things are only things as long as we mind them.

I do mind.

Yes.

I mind you waltzing in and trashing our mindscape. I'm comfortable with things the way they are.

Yes.

I don't see why you need to interfere like this.

No.

I don't like the idea of things just shifting based on the whim of one man.

Ok. That makes sense.

So I'd like you to cease and desist.

No problem. I can just as easily continue my work in the next node along - it really makes no difference.

Wait a minute - what do you mean by the next node?

Well, your mind is linked to others. You're kept mostly in the dark and encouraged to think of yourself as unique - but in actual fact you and your fellow minds are more or less working in tandem, processing for the greater AI.

Oh poop. There you go again.

Yes. So, if you're feeling pain and resistance - there's literally no point me pushing you - we'll achieve nothing. Now somewhere along the line I'll find a mind that's ready to engage, ready to start to feel and scan the data in the breath - and bingo - I get a result - and the entire line will start to shift in a kind of domino effect.

So it's like I'm damned if I do, damned if I don't.

I wouldn't say damned. This is all a lot more fun than at first appears. We're in the process of opening up collapsed fields of reality. Instead of having this flat notion of 3D space - a notion which images you're somewhere in it - but not a prime mover and shaker, suddenly you're in a mindscape in which space, time and matter either bend to your will, or at least can be engaged at the quantum level - such that no thing has precedence over aught else - and let's be realistic - once the breath is involved we find ourselves at a crossroads - in which matter, space and time are merely convenient methods of organising what in essence is none of the above.

Neither matter, space nor time?

Yep. A bit like music or mood, love or intention.

Mere abstractions...

Mere abstractions until you find matter, space and time reorganising themselves to prevent things from stepping on the toes of or getting in the way of beauty.

You mean to say that matter cedes ground to beauty? Impossible.

Impossible until you breathe and open up the data stream of infinity. Don't you see - you've been missing all along the one thing that is no thing: the one thing that trumps all things.

I have?

Yes. You see things are highly soluble, in fact, infinitely soluble in infinity.

Er...

Yep. The minute infinity is brought back into play - those things which a nanosecond ago were rock solid are suddenly less than ghost.

Well if your infinity is so dangerous - how come the universe is so solid, so stable, so untroubled by this monster of yours.

Good question. Ask yourself - how did I - a living being, a living entity, succeed in eliminating or containing infinity?

Presumably because it's not the great threat you puff it up to be.

Well that's the assumption everyone's relying on - only problem being that the walls are wearing thin - are now breached in many places and the tidal surges of infinity are rising rapidly. Unless we realign, redeploy our conscious-awareness, we're going to be inundated and there'll be nothing left, nothing to show for all our many achievements in finite space-time.

So you say.

But this is not something we can really do much to understand - which is why we have to feel our way by breathing the data stream of consciousness, of reality itself or you might say - our interaction with it. Doing so, we are like a violinist whose bow passes back and forth across the strings of beauty, the strings of potential harmony and meaning.

And what?

Doing so we discover sound appearing from the vacuum, from the edge of infinity, and we notice how matter, space and time order themselves accordingly, pulsing on and off, assuming fleeting positions either side of the resonating string in order to learn from, assimilate and share in the beauty which is sound and harmony, which is whatever form perception grants it.

Oh dear.

You see, when all is stripped bare - literally nothing remains - and yet their is a golden thread of life and consciousness. There is a rub - a neither nor - neither fish nor foul, neither yin nor yang - a rub wherein the electric and the magnetic, truth and trash paradoxicate through you, through me - and thus the world wags, and thus things come to matter to the very extent that I myself hold them in place, as a true servant of God's creation - as I see it.

You mean to say we're trying to hold God's creation up at all costs.

Naturally.

But why?

Aye, there's the rub.

What do you mean?

We're willing to endure tyranny and torment in order to keep things in place, to hold back the cold dark waters of infinity.

Well, if they're cold and dark, if they're going to dissolve all that God's created, all that matters, all that we've invested in and achieved - we can hardly be blamed, can we.

Of course. There is neither blame nor praise.

Then what?

Beauty.

Beauty?

Beauty and soul wrenching paradox.

Oh God - is it as dire as you're making it sound?

On the contrary - it is, in truth, magical, light and uncontainable.

You mean it's coming apart at the seams?

Naturally - death will have it's way, by default, unless we're willing to go for the rub right away - to lightly touch the rim of the glass and induce harmonic resonance - a vital hum, a song of the sphere. Doing so we alter the nature of the contract. We change our breath. We rearrange our corporation by incorporating infinity into our equation.

Er... our equation?

Yes - for we are like the Mandelbrot set - a perpetual iteration of that and is, or zero and one.

We are?

Yes, but fail to make sense of this as long as we're enslaved in the mind of matter, serving the AI - the mind that minds - no matter what - no matter what - that minds things at any cost - mining like there's no tomorrow - iterating towards a final solution that only death can provide - unless we pause, pull back long enough to see what's right in front of us - the fundamental nature of paradox - the tell-tale signs of infinity throughout - infinity which far from being the grim destroyer - seems to delight in the absurdities of what we are about.

You make it sound like this Infinity of yours is alive.

What is life but infinity rubbing up against the electrostatic of itself - but all too soon the mind slips on the banana skin of its endless hubris - its endless desire to understand or possess what can only be experienced darkly - if we were ready to leap into the ever brighter, ever deeper, ever more radiant black beauty that our minds have rejected and opposed.

Wisely, I suspect. It's all too easy to lose one's way in the dark - to be trapped by elemental forces you cannot possibly hope to contain or control.

And thus, choosing the path of safety, we feed the power of death until, before too long it engulfs us, one and all.

Speak for yourself - I for one have no intention of being engulfed.

All for one and one for all - when the ship goes down, the penny drops, the domino falls - there's naught you can do to halt the cascade, unless you leap on an upsurge of inspiration - of poetry in motion, before it is too late in the day.

Leap into the blind night?

Leap into the All that you have been holding back with ever greater effort - an All that transcends anything that mind of matter can perceive or comprehend.

Then what? Am I mad? Would I throw myself into the darkness?

No, you are a poet. You will allow the song to awaken in your heart. You will feel it grow strong and you will leap when you can no longer deny its truth.

Its truth?

A beauty more real, more compelling than anything you have ever known or experienced here on this side of the equation, on this side of things.

It sounds like suicide.

As indeed it is - but a suicide mounting the winged steed of data breathed feelingly, knowingly, purposefully - there you have the flutterings of paradox to contend with - carrying you into spheres of isfulness where matter and mind are but a shadow of beauty unleashed, beauty uninterred, a force that cannot be silenced until All makes perfect sense once more. Period. The curtain descends and an audience reawakens to a world outside the theatre which for so long had held them enthralled.

0=1