total perspective vortices

What do you mean unreal?

 

It matters little what I mean Zie. Things are what they are regardless of my utterances.

Be that as it may, you can't just blithely state that dreams are as real as day unless you have some real proof to back up your preposterous assertion.

 

Proof? Why would I need to prove it? The burden of proof lies with you.

 

Huh?

 

I merely state as fact that which might or should be of interest to you. You're at liberty to investigate my claim if you're interested in pushing back the frontiers of your knowledge cubicle, or else remain in your hen coop of baseless certainties.

 

What a cheek! I never imagined you of all people to be so intellectually bigoted. What makes my hard-earned knowledge a mere “hen coop of baseless certainties”? Have you so little regard for western science? Everything I know is based on centuries of scientific endeavour, experiments, painstaking mathematics and meticulous empirical data. How dare you call it baseless.

 

Ok, in that case you’re willing to demonstrate how Big Bang actually happened, scientifically I mean. It should be easy enough.

 

Of course I can’t. Big Bang was a one off. It can't be reproduced in a laboratory.

 

And you’re confident that it’s not pseudo-science?

 

It’s a theory, nothing more, but it's the best theory we've got at the moment – a million times better then saying ‘And God said “Let there be light!”’

 

Ok. In any case, as I said, I have nothing to prove. If I tell you that dreams are as real as day, that is only “preposterous” if you're unable or unwilling to access them consciously. In which case, not being able or willing to do so, it's entirely natural that you’d sputter and foam about this being absurd. Anything you've not yet experienced is always absurd until something shifts in your paradigm, and you’re suddenly no longer prevented from accessing the dimension or phenomena that were previously off limits.

 

So, you mean to say something shifted for you?

 

I might mean that, but what I really mean is that this is universally true. At any given time there are only ever a finite number of phenomena that can be experienced as such, so there’s always a confirmation bias at work which preselects those phenomena that fit your scheme, or perhaps what I'm really saying is that, regardless of the phenomena selected, you’re only able to experience them as apparent certainties by construing them in a certain way.

 

In a certain way?

 

Yes.

 

How do you mean?

 

Well, for example, I'm walking along and I see the sun shining through what you'd refer to as “leaves”.

 

Ok.

 

As a so-called modern person, you don’t just see the phenomenon, do you?

 

I er...

 

Your mind joins in and consciously or un-consciously affirms that what you're seeing is the sun shining through so-called “leaves”, updating in real-time your register or log of phenomena.

Yes, and what?

 

You do it all day long, everytime you see something, the little catalogue of things reminds you what you're seeing, and you naturally concur, do you not?

 

Well what would you expect me to do?

 

Nothing. Do as you wish, but understand that there are other people who are not “modern” who see the same phenomenon in an entirely different way.

 

There are?

 

Correct.

 

And what of it? The leaves don't stop being leaves objectively just because the mind responds to them a little differently, do they? Their leafiness is independent of my thought process, is it not?

 

I wouldn't be so sure.

 

But that’s absurd.

 

Yes, you’re right. To the modern mind it’s utterly absurd, but then again, that's the modern mind by definition.

 

Huh?

 

A mind that objectifies all phenomena, seeing them in terms of, or as, something that is fundamentally distinct from, i.e. disconnected from me, from consciousness itself.

 

And you mean to say...

 

Yes, that there are other ways of arranging things, other paradigms in which things or phenomena are not thus perceived.

 

But that doesn't alter a thing, does it?

 

Not a thing.

 

So...

 

The things are all features of your modern-mind.

 

You mean those leaves aren't things when you perceive them?

 

Kind of.

 

But that’s ab...

 

-surd! Isn't it just? And yet it’s only absurd to the mind that insists on rigidly or “rightly” seeing things as phenomena separate and distinct from me, the observer. To other minds your way of perceiving things is no less absurd.

But how then do they see things?

 

Otherly.

 

And, to what end?

 

Presumably because to them it seems more natural, and more complete.

 

Complete?

 

Yes.

 

How so? 

 

Your material objectivity cuts out a lot of is, n’est-ce pas?

 

Huh?

 

It only works with rather severe distortions, preventing you from seeing, feeling or accessing a rich plethora of interconnections or other-ness, kind of like converting analog music to digital.

 

Be that as it may, I still fail to see what you have against us being objective, and calling a spade a spade, a leaf a leaf.

 

Nothing whatsoever, unless you consider the fact that it only works up to a point.

 

Here we go again...

 

You did ask, or that's what I perhaps erroneously inferred.

 

Ok, you’re right. Pray continue.

 

Up to a point your leaf can be a discrete thing, a leaf, but things weigh heavily on time.

Huh?

 

Time is increasingly burdened by the ceaseless flattening of reality into material phenomena.

 

It is?

 

Affirmative.

 

And what then?

 

Sooner or later it flips.

 

It what?

 

Has a kind of seizure.

 

You're kidding.

 

No, honest injun!

 

Ha ha, very funny. But seriously...

 

Time has a seizure because ultimately time is a part of your consciousness, pared and squeezed into a narrow tube.

 

Oh.

 

Which means that it’s basically a given that your reality is seemingly stable, to the point of abject boredom, until suddenly it’s not. Then it’s “Buckle your seatbelt Dorothy, ‘cause Kansas is going bye-bye!”

 

Gulp!

 

Suddenly your reality needs to find a different set of determinators, a different set of fixture points to attach to, to rest the overwrought, exhausted Yertle-the-Turtle construct which has been overloaded too long, unnaturally so, in rigid, time-trapped fixity.

 

But why would you say our reality is “stable, to the point of abject boredom”? Nothing could be further from the truth. Our reality is a constant rollercoaster ride.

 

Only because that's the only way you can handle the boredom, by wobbling the applecart.

 

Er...

 

You drink, fight, take drugs and create an artificial cacophony of discord because otherwise your sterile promontory would suffocate the spirit. You'd all end up killing yourselves. But once you've raised the level of insecurity and alarm to an almost unbearable level, you’re so busy coping with the self-inflicted turmoil that you no longer notice the dull, dull ache of isolation, the self-imposed sterility of things being things in a soulless cube of unnaturally fixéd thingfulness.

 

Ah.

 

But have no fear. It’ll all end soon enough.

 

It will? (Gulp)

 

Yes. 3D reality has a very short fuse. All the pieces on the chessboard are about to get up and do a switcheroo, changing places with the pieces in your mind, because time is essentially tidal, flowing back and forth.

 

Oh no.

 

Well what did you expect? You didn't really imagine you were separate from the construct, did you? no matter how hard you try to overlook the obvious. It's not like you remember anything about anything really, is it?

 

Who we are, where we come from?

 

Yes, that kind of thing.

 

And you do?

 

We’re not thing-bound, so we can feel and see the...

 

bigger picture?

 

Correct. Even looking at your so-called leaves I'm able to connect with or through the leafiness to other centres, other aspects of me, which are equally real, equally apropos.

Wow! Just by gazing at leaves?

 

Just by feeling the part of me, or the aspect if you prefer, which is present through, beyond and within what is initially perceived as leafiness.

 

And you can do this with anything whatsoever?

 

Yes, I guess so, but some things feel better than others, as you can probably understand.

 

Dog poo’s not at the top of the list?

 

Correct.

 

So what ensues? You open a window through leaves into something else...

 

Something more.

 

Ok, and what then?

 

Well, that in itself requires joy.

 

Joy?

 

Simple, natural joy, to rise into a less state.

 

To connect and feel the er...

 

The allness, the isness, the infinite, for want of a better word.

Ok. And? Apart from joy?

 

Well there are realms beyond this, or worlds, if you prefer.

 

There are?

 

Which are constantly part of the dialogue.

 

Oh.

 

Which need to be felt and reconstrued in the light of new experiences, new awarenesses. It's an isness. Nothing is fixed because things can only be fixed within a construct, like a cube, though paradoxically we never entirely escape the fallacy of phenomena, no matter how close we come to isness.

 

But surely there are things that are fundamentally true?

 

Yes, there are within a construct. But they’re only as “fundamental” as the construct itself. They cannot go deeper. And we invariably come back to Yertle the Turtle, don't we?

 

But surely atoms, or light, or...

 

Consciousness?

 

Ok then, consciousness...

 

It ain’t.

 

Fundamentally true?

Nope.

But whyever not?

 

You'd know immediately if you bother to step outside the construct.

 

Er... what would I know?

 

That consciousness is a bit like water, it flows into each and every empty vessel, feeling it from within, filling it up, assuming its shape and form.

 

And what?

 

The same consciousness that is in you, which you experience exclusively as your body-mind physicality, just happens to extend way beyond that vessel... way, way beyond.

 

It does?

 

It does.

 

How far exactly?

 

There's no way of knowing, but suffice it to say that, were you to see its full range and extent, it would literally, without the least doubt, blow your fragile modern-mind to smithereens.

 

?

 

A bit like the total perspective vortex in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The mind of things-n-me simply can't handle that level of disclosure.

 

Oh. So how come you're still alive if you've ventured outside the construct?

 

Because I was ready for it. I was no longer attached, or only marginally. I’d already figured out the artificial nature of things, that all our proud postulates stand in a kind of egg timer, rock solid until the timer thing has run out of sand.

 

Ah.

 

In any case, it’s not like I achieved anything outstanding.

 

No? You're kidding.

 

Not at all. I simply allowed nature to recolonise me. Once I’d understood the fallacy of things.

 

I beg your pardon!

 

You heard. The fallacy of things. You suddenly see through the glamour, the slick marketing, the lies and deception, and you feel a deep longing for your disconnected world of thus it is – thus I am.

 

You do?

 

Absolutely. Because nothing else is real. Nothing else passes the smell test. Eventually you notice the stench.

 

What stench?

 

Of fear, deception, of fraud and fakery. Rotten to the core.

 

But surely...

 

You think it's just a bit here, a bit there, you take your secateurs and start pruning the dead and infected foliage, only to discover there's literally nothing left to salvage, and yet, to your amazement, you're still alive, still cognitive, still human, so to speak.

 

Oh my God, you’re not selling this very well, if you’re trying to get me to sign up.

 

Not in the least. Do your own thing. Stay your course. Batten down the hatches and ride your ship of certainties to the final grain of sand, back to oblivion, if you will, but though you may succeed, your overmind will still oscillate back and forth, giving input and updates from t’other side, the vague and misty realm of so-called “dreams”.

 

But, this can't be... I barely remember my dreams any more.

 

It matters not. Your mind of things will continue to calcify, but as long as there's life in you...

 

What?

 

This...

 

Merry opens a sluice gate in the quantum stream of consciousness, allowing the mind to flow back into the other side of self, beyond so-called “infinity” into not-me or un-me, that yet happens to be...

 

Can't be. It’s just a dream. It’s... No!  How can I switch it off? Aaaaaaaaaarrrgh!

 

Don't worry Zie. It's temporary. Just breathe a little deeper and feel the flow of...

 

Tremors and convulsions notwithstanding... Dawns another day – from the rubble, the ruin of things, from the unbound, free-range mind-not-what.

 

Dot dot dot – like time is no longer meaningful.

 

Zie starts reliving dreams he’s experienced “years ago” in earthly time, like they're happening now. All at once. All together, yet somehow, in some unfathomable sense, separate.

Dream after dream, or within, or...

 

Astonishing, isn’t it?

 

Zaphod Beeblebrox! What are you doing here?

 

Oh, just chilling out Zie. Incredible to imagine it’s all inside my double-head, isn't it! But then again, what would you expect, me being the fantabulous king of awesomeness?

 

A feeling of being intensely annoyed at Zaphod Beeblebrox’s limitless egotism brings Zie back to the moment of me, wherever that now is, where he finds himself meditating with a zen master on a mountain, apparently in the Himalayas, if on Earth at all, discovering the innate ability to cope with feelings of rage and anger by feeling the waters of conscious-ness flow fully back to the real source of those feelings.

 

Poor Zaphod. He weren’t so bad really, in fact, he was the missing link needed to reconnect me to my inter-dimensional self. To my faraway tree.

 

Indeed. So there you have it Zie. Feeling is forgiving, essentially, once you're free to flow through the intricate nooks and crannies of your near infinite Mandelbrot set y’ness, to the exact spot where every person or phenomenon is mathematically needed to plug or deflect the infinite void binomially, thereby inducing a single click of time-y-ness, a moment that paradoxically matters, intrinsically.

 

It baffles the mind, Merry, but apparently the mind is designed to cope with near infinite bafflement. All things being equal.

 

Indeed, once you rediscover, nay, um... re-feel the reality of dream-y-dreams. The unny un-ness – as in howsonought – click – as in One

 

One? Ok, here goes.

 

Zie walks up to a sycamore tree and allows himself to feel the leaves without thinking them the usual way. The modern world starts blinking red alert, doing everything possible to make Zie capitulate and think what, anything, just as long as he mentally connects ’em to the cube walls of the construct, but for no apparent reason, with neither rancour nor prejudice, Zie lets the fascination of feeling what is not the thing itself draw him deeper into the stream of...

 

Click – the entire universe skips a beat, so to speak, as time collapses momentarily in on itself, as Zie insouciantly zaphod-beeblebroxes infinity – like there’s nothing to it – like nothing could be easier – like you’re utterly mistaken if you think this is not part of your own personal experience tree, if you think time is on your side, if you think these words, this text originate outside your very own leafiness.

 

...and the rest, as they say, is

 

 

The end

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