LIFE, THE UNIVERSE, AND EVERYTHING
(with apologies to Douglas Adams)
It’s All In Your Mind
As we enter this new age of scientific and philosophical awakening, I believe that there are a certain number of facts that we have come to agree on:
The first, and surely most important is that “I think, therefore I am”.
To put it another way: “I think, and that is all that I’m 100% certain of”
God forbid that we ever wake up in an embryonic cell plugged into some vast neural network built by evil robots… it sounds absurd. But, you have to admit, it is actually possible. If you really, really think about it… it could be true. How would we know otherwise? All the information we have is coming from our eyes, ears and other senses.
We’re already implanting Cochlear hearing aids into children with no ear drums at all. The implant is sending signals directly into their brains. Low quality signals, yes, but in a decade or so… Who knows?
You see my point.
Therefore, reality is all in our minds. We do not actually experience the real world, only the images and sensations fed to us by our senses and interpreted and reconstructed within our brain.
Yes, it’s true that this fantasy is directly influenced by the physical world, but no-one can ever know how another person sees the world (indeed research has suggested that we all perceive the world in dramatically different ways.)
Your past exists as a holographic dream imprinted in your mind - your ‘memories’. These memories, and therefore your existence right up to this very moment, are as real and valid as the dream you had last night.
In fact, as far as the universe is concerned, your mind never existed at all. It sees only atoms and movement. It sees nothing as having ‘meaning’. It is eternal, and without opinion or perspective.
So, does what we perceive exist?
My answer is that it all exists, every thought that we have is as real as the next. You see, as far as we’re concerned, the physical dimension is the one that does not exist, since we are utterly unable to conceive of it .
Is consciousness a dream? More like a memory of what our senses perceived a nanosecond ago. A story told to us by our mind to represent the physical dimension.
Death is Impossible
Death is an illusion, and something you will never have to experience because it is simply impossible for you to do so.
We cannot experience ‘nothing’.
To reiterate: We cannot experience nothing. If you are experiencing nothing, then you are not experiencing anything.
When we die our brain stops working and our consciousness ceases to exist. We cannot experience an absence of experience, therefore, technically, we cannot participate in this idea of ‘death’.
Our minds exist in the dimension of thought, and so it is therefore impossible to truly conceive of anything in the physical universe. Nothing at all. All we have is the experiences created in our own minds from the sensory input of our own bodies. This cannot be called anything but a dream.
When you wake from a dream, does the person in the dream die? Of course not, they were only an illusion created in your own mind. But, then again, so are you.
I make the argument that all human experience exists in the dimension of pure thought. Your experience of daily life is as real as your dreams, since both exist totally in your mind. Our ’spirit’, ’soul’ or ‘mind’ is who we are, and since this exists in the dimension of pure thought then we can all be said to be having a spiritual experience every moment of our lives.
To quote Dr. Wayne Dyer:
“We are not physical beings having a spiritual experience, we are spiritual beings having a physical experience.”
I’ll Be There In Spirit
Consciousness does not exist in an objective universe of simple atoms and movement. Since our minds and souls do not exist in the physical universe, then we are already living in a spiritual plane.
Death occurs in the physical dimension. ‘Death’ describes nothingness. You cannot fear nothing, it does not exist. If something does not exist, then why should you fear it?
Since all of the atoms in your brain are replaced every twelve months, then how can you say you are the same person that you were one year ago? You can, of course, because your mind is not a physical entity, it exists on a separate plane, in another dimension to the physical world.
At One With The Universe
What separates your mind from the outside world? Why is it that your mind exists only within your brain, and not within the gel that surrounds it? Or in the bone the encases it? Or as part of the air that surrounds you? If the atoms in your brain are constantly changing and moving through this gel and bone and air… then is not your consciousness intrinsically linked with the outside physical world? The truth is that your brain tissue is as much your mind as the ground beneath your feet or the stars above. It is a part of it all, and yet entirely separate.
Your mind is your own creation, and no change in the physical world can ever take that away from you. Your mind can never ‘die’ since death is restricted to the physical world, and not the dimension of thought. The physical universe sees no difference between life and death since it is merely a rearrangement of the atoms within our bodies.
It is for these reasons that no person should fear death.
Fearing death is absurd - you may as well try to conceive of infinity.
The void that surrounds our consciousness is infinite. Our mind exists in another dimension, surrounded by this nothingness. Our lives are, indeed, “a parenthesis in eternity” (to quote the wonderful Dr Dyer)
Hold That Thought
Scientists claim that they can map a human thought through the electrical and chemical activity in the brain, yet what they are mapping is nothing but matter and energy moving in space, it is not a thought.
A thought does not exist within any one moment in time. If that were so, then you could cryogenically freeze someone’s brain, pausing the electrons and chemicals in that moment, and the person would be stuck forever thinking the same thought. Yet we know that this isn’t the case.
If you take the chemicals that create the emotion of love and combine them on a Petri dish then have you created love? Of course not, all you have is a puddle of electrically-charged chemicals. But when one of these chemicals moves from one place to another and this is accompanied by an electrical charge, and all of this occurs within a human brain… then a thought is born. That thought does not exist when the atoms are stationary, rather it exists in the space between those two points of movement. It’s like music. A piece of music is not the notes on the page, rather it is the journey from one note to another that creates the song. So are our thoughts created on the path between moments frozen in time.
Our mind exists in the dimension of thought, separate from the physical dimension.
The best way to look at it is to imagine that these physical signs are like a wake left in the ocean behind a boat that we can never see. The wake is evidence of the boat, but it is not the boat itself. It shows that the boat is moving, yet if you stood on the deck and closed your eyes you would not feel as if you were moving at all. In the same way, our consciousness is gliding across an ocean of ever-changing atoms that form our brain tissue. Similarly, we do not feel that our consciousness is moving. We feel that we maintain the same mind across this ocean of time and space. The existence of our mind is proven by the wake left in our brains, the predictable movement of atoms and electrical energy. The universe sees only a transition of energy and matter from one position to another, and yet we experience consciousness. Only we experience the mind.
Pause or Eject?
Death is a chain of thought that is no longer extending. Why is the end of this chain so different to the gaps between our thoughts? To us these gaps are imperceptible, to the universe they are filled with great stretches of time and the movement of billions of atomic particles.
This connected chain of thought is what we call ‘life’ - and yet from the perspective of the universe it can barely be called a cohesive unit; spread over the continuum, and spotted with gaps of space and time.
When this chain of thought is broken, then thought cannot occur. No pain can be felt, no disappointment, nothing. Nothing is nothing, so it cannot exist, and so therefore neither can our concept of death.
Something can be said to ‘end’ only when there is something else to follow… when there is nothing, it is more like a pause.
Thank You, Come Again
I believe in reincarnation.
Impossible you say? I beg to differ… You see, if our consciousness is a chain of connected thoughts, like a string of musical notes, then there is every chance that this chain may be continued again somewhere, sometime, in the infinite possibilities of matter, energy, time and space.
You may say that the atoms may change, and this is true, but take a look at your own body. In the last year ever atom has changed within it. Who is to say that if by pure chance, your thought pattern is reconstructed a trillion years from now in another form… would this not be you?
If you disagree, then you should have a word to Captain Kirk on the Starship Enterprise… because surely this is what is happening every time Scotty beams them up. Their atoms are deconstructed, shot along a particle beam and reconstructed n a different location in space. Are they the same person? Or a copy of the original? Then are you not a copy of yourself, one year ago, when every atom in your body was different?
Who you were a year ago no longer exists. They are ‘dead’. You are a copy of that body, gradually constructed bit by bit around the old one using the proteins and enzymes that you have consumed. As they say, you are what you eat.
There’s Time Enough
The universe is not linear - nor does it move at the time and speed of our experience… this is all our own dream and unique to us (just watch a fly buzzing around some time. Do you think it is experiencing the world at the same speed as us?)
The universe does not exist exclusively in this moment, or any moment at all; rather, it exists in all moments of time. This is the revelation of Quantum mechanics.
You really do have all the time in the world, because there’s no end to speak of, only the natural progression of your own story, which is all in your mind.
How can you rush a thought? A dream? You can only work against or in harmony with it.
Work in harmony with your spirit and you will find happiness.
We try to cram as much into our lives as we can before we die. Yet, this is an illusion. As the Buddhists teach us: happiness comes from within our own minds. The world that we see and feel is all created in our own minds.
The Answer?
Happiness. Joy. Peace.
Anything that does not ultimately bring you closer to happiness is unnecessary.
Meditation and this concept of ‘enlightenment’ bring great joy and peace as they clear the mind of thought. How can this emptiness, this nothingness bring joy? Because it is our origin, our source.
The universe is not dark, it is not cold, it is simply free of meaning and desire, pain and pleasure. The universe exists in a state of pure enlightenment, without suffering, just empty space and energy… energy that occasionally forms matter… and matter that occasionally forms sentient beings… all of which eventually disassembles once again to rejoin the great river of energy. This energy is the source from which we have all emanated.
In fact, we have never left this source, and are not separate from it. We are a part of the universe. Energy swirling into form and back into energy again. This consciousness that has sprung forth from raw energy and matter is an extraordinary thing - we are a part of the universe becoming aware of itself.
I believe that if we all act from what makes us truly happy, there should be no deliberate suffering in the world. Any psychologist will tell you that hatred and violence are caused by a person’s insecurities and fears. No truly happy person would ever harm another.
Any thought that does not serve to help you live your dream in happiness is irrelevant. The idea of death is disturbing, and yet , as I hope I have shown, is not worth worrying about at all.
Enjoy this dream of “life”, and never worry about time passing and the end approaching, for this too is an illusion.
There is nothing to fear from death.
When you look at your fellow man know that we have all been created from this same field of energy, and will one day return to it; free of thoughts, emotions and attachments.
At one with the universe.
As we enter this new age of scientific and philosophical awakening, I believe that there are a certain number of facts that we have come to agree on:
The first, and surely most important is that “I think, therefore I am”.
To put it another way: “I think, and that is all that I’m 100% certain of”
God forbid that we ever wake up in an embryonic cell plugged into some vast neural network built by evil robots… it sounds absurd. But, you have to admit, it is actually possible. If you really, really think about it… it could be true. How would we know otherwise? All the information we have is coming from our eyes, ears and other senses.
We’re already implanting Cochlear hearing aids into children with no ear drums at all. The implant is sending signals directly into their brains. Low quality signals, yes, but in a decade or so… Who knows?
You see my point.
Therefore, reality is all in our minds. We do not actually experience the real world, only the images and sensations fed to us by our senses and interpreted and reconstructed within our brain.
Yes, it’s true that this fantasy is directly influenced by the physical world, but no-one can ever know how another person sees the world (indeed research has suggested that we all perceive the world in dramatically different ways.)
Your past exists as a holographic dream imprinted in your mind - your ‘memories’. These memories, and therefore your existence right up to this very moment, are as real and valid as the dream you had last night.
In fact, as far as the universe is concerned, your mind never existed at all. It sees only atoms and movement. It sees nothing as having ‘meaning’. It is eternal, and without opinion or perspective.
So, does what we perceive exist?
My answer is that it all exists, every thought that we have is as real as the next. You see, as far as we’re concerned, the physical dimension is the one that does not exist, since we are utterly unable to conceive of it .
Is consciousness a dream? More like a memory of what our senses perceived a nanosecond ago. A story told to us by our mind to represent the physical dimension.
Death is Impossible
Death is an illusion, and something you will never have to experience because it is simply impossible for you to do so.
We cannot experience ‘nothing’.
To reiterate: We cannot experience nothing. If you are experiencing nothing, then you are not experiencing anything.
When we die our brain stops working and our consciousness ceases to exist. We cannot experience an absence of experience, therefore, technically, we cannot participate in this idea of ‘death’.
Our minds exist in the dimension of thought, and so it is therefore impossible to truly conceive of anything in the physical universe. Nothing at all. All we have is the experiences created in our own minds from the sensory input of our own bodies. This cannot be called anything but a dream.
When you wake from a dream, does the person in the dream die? Of course not, they were only an illusion created in your own mind. But, then again, so are you.
I make the argument that all human experience exists in the dimension of pure thought. Your experience of daily life is as real as your dreams, since both exist totally in your mind. Our ’spirit’, ’soul’ or ‘mind’ is who we are, and since this exists in the dimension of pure thought then we can all be said to be having a spiritual experience every moment of our lives.
To quote Dr. Wayne Dyer:
“We are not physical beings having a spiritual experience, we are spiritual beings having a physical experience.”
I’ll Be There In Spirit
Consciousness does not exist in an objective universe of simple atoms and movement. Since our minds and souls do not exist in the physical universe, then we are already living in a spiritual plane.
Death occurs in the physical dimension. ‘Death’ describes nothingness. You cannot fear nothing, it does not exist. If something does not exist, then why should you fear it?
Since all of the atoms in your brain are replaced every twelve months, then how can you say you are the same person that you were one year ago? You can, of course, because your mind is not a physical entity, it exists on a separate plane, in another dimension to the physical world.
At One With The Universe
What separates your mind from the outside world? Why is it that your mind exists only within your brain, and not within the gel that surrounds it? Or in the bone the encases it? Or as part of the air that surrounds you? If the atoms in your brain are constantly changing and moving through this gel and bone and air… then is not your consciousness intrinsically linked with the outside physical world? The truth is that your brain tissue is as much your mind as the ground beneath your feet or the stars above. It is a part of it all, and yet entirely separate.
Your mind is your own creation, and no change in the physical world can ever take that away from you. Your mind can never ‘die’ since death is restricted to the physical world, and not the dimension of thought. The physical universe sees no difference between life and death since it is merely a rearrangement of the atoms within our bodies.
It is for these reasons that no person should fear death.
Fearing death is absurd - you may as well try to conceive of infinity.
The void that surrounds our consciousness is infinite. Our mind exists in another dimension, surrounded by this nothingness. Our lives are, indeed, “a parenthesis in eternity” (to quote the wonderful Dr Dyer)
Hold That Thought
Scientists claim that they can map a human thought through the electrical and chemical activity in the brain, yet what they are mapping is nothing but matter and energy moving in space, it is not a thought.
A thought does not exist within any one moment in time. If that were so, then you could cryogenically freeze someone’s brain, pausing the electrons and chemicals in that moment, and the person would be stuck forever thinking the same thought. Yet we know that this isn’t the case.
If you take the chemicals that create the emotion of love and combine them on a Petri dish then have you created love? Of course not, all you have is a puddle of electrically-charged chemicals. But when one of these chemicals moves from one place to another and this is accompanied by an electrical charge, and all of this occurs within a human brain… then a thought is born. That thought does not exist when the atoms are stationary, rather it exists in the space between those two points of movement. It’s like music. A piece of music is not the notes on the page, rather it is the journey from one note to another that creates the song. So are our thoughts created on the path between moments frozen in time.
Our mind exists in the dimension of thought, separate from the physical dimension.
The best way to look at it is to imagine that these physical signs are like a wake left in the ocean behind a boat that we can never see. The wake is evidence of the boat, but it is not the boat itself. It shows that the boat is moving, yet if you stood on the deck and closed your eyes you would not feel as if you were moving at all. In the same way, our consciousness is gliding across an ocean of ever-changing atoms that form our brain tissue. Similarly, we do not feel that our consciousness is moving. We feel that we maintain the same mind across this ocean of time and space. The existence of our mind is proven by the wake left in our brains, the predictable movement of atoms and electrical energy. The universe sees only a transition of energy and matter from one position to another, and yet we experience consciousness. Only we experience the mind.
Pause or Eject?
Death is a chain of thought that is no longer extending. Why is the end of this chain so different to the gaps between our thoughts? To us these gaps are imperceptible, to the universe they are filled with great stretches of time and the movement of billions of atomic particles.
This connected chain of thought is what we call ‘life’ - and yet from the perspective of the universe it can barely be called a cohesive unit; spread over the continuum, and spotted with gaps of space and time.
When this chain of thought is broken, then thought cannot occur. No pain can be felt, no disappointment, nothing. Nothing is nothing, so it cannot exist, and so therefore neither can our concept of death.
Something can be said to ‘end’ only when there is something else to follow… when there is nothing, it is more like a pause.
Thank You, Come Again
I believe in reincarnation.
Impossible you say? I beg to differ… You see, if our consciousness is a chain of connected thoughts, like a string of musical notes, then there is every chance that this chain may be continued again somewhere, sometime, in the infinite possibilities of matter, energy, time and space.
You may say that the atoms may change, and this is true, but take a look at your own body. In the last year ever atom has changed within it. Who is to say that if by pure chance, your thought pattern is reconstructed a trillion years from now in another form… would this not be you?
If you disagree, then you should have a word to Captain Kirk on the Starship Enterprise… because surely this is what is happening every time Scotty beams them up. Their atoms are deconstructed, shot along a particle beam and reconstructed n a different location in space. Are they the same person? Or a copy of the original? Then are you not a copy of yourself, one year ago, when every atom in your body was different?
Who you were a year ago no longer exists. They are ‘dead’. You are a copy of that body, gradually constructed bit by bit around the old one using the proteins and enzymes that you have consumed. As they say, you are what you eat.
There’s Time Enough
The universe is not linear - nor does it move at the time and speed of our experience… this is all our own dream and unique to us (just watch a fly buzzing around some time. Do you think it is experiencing the world at the same speed as us?)
The universe does not exist exclusively in this moment, or any moment at all; rather, it exists in all moments of time. This is the revelation of Quantum mechanics.
You really do have all the time in the world, because there’s no end to speak of, only the natural progression of your own story, which is all in your mind.
How can you rush a thought? A dream? You can only work against or in harmony with it.
Work in harmony with your spirit and you will find happiness.
We try to cram as much into our lives as we can before we die. Yet, this is an illusion. As the Buddhists teach us: happiness comes from within our own minds. The world that we see and feel is all created in our own minds.
The Answer?
Happiness. Joy. Peace.
Anything that does not ultimately bring you closer to happiness is unnecessary.
Meditation and this concept of ‘enlightenment’ bring great joy and peace as they clear the mind of thought. How can this emptiness, this nothingness bring joy? Because it is our origin, our source.
The universe is not dark, it is not cold, it is simply free of meaning and desire, pain and pleasure. The universe exists in a state of pure enlightenment, without suffering, just empty space and energy… energy that occasionally forms matter… and matter that occasionally forms sentient beings… all of which eventually disassembles once again to rejoin the great river of energy. This energy is the source from which we have all emanated.
In fact, we have never left this source, and are not separate from it. We are a part of the universe. Energy swirling into form and back into energy again. This consciousness that has sprung forth from raw energy and matter is an extraordinary thing - we are a part of the universe becoming aware of itself.
I believe that if we all act from what makes us truly happy, there should be no deliberate suffering in the world. Any psychologist will tell you that hatred and violence are caused by a person’s insecurities and fears. No truly happy person would ever harm another.
Any thought that does not serve to help you live your dream in happiness is irrelevant. The idea of death is disturbing, and yet , as I hope I have shown, is not worth worrying about at all.
Enjoy this dream of “life”, and never worry about time passing and the end approaching, for this too is an illusion.
There is nothing to fear from death.
When you look at your fellow man know that we have all been created from this same field of energy, and will one day return to it; free of thoughts, emotions and attachments.
At one with the universe.
No comments:
Post a Comment