Back to Earth

I was painting deep blue thick paint, a crest of yellow highlighting two dark lined shapes that kink in the middle, pin-pricked with red markers. Apart from its abstract beauty, there was nothing ordinary about this painting, as it shimmered iridescent, becoming no longer a painting but a sea-scape of pockled sun rays and mysterious deep-sea creatures bobbling.

But it wasn't the ocean, it was a journey; a journey into space. Deep in space and time, a hyper-technology, glistening translucent mothership was coming into focus, a complex transforming vessel drifting calmly in weightless space.

Two ladies were sitting at a sleek yellow cafe table in one of the many dining spaces of this glassy magnificent space-ship reality.

“May I join you?” I approached. I felt not out of place, but as a traveller with an aversion to solitude. Her curt white-yellow hair contrasted the mahogany of the younger girl opposite. I sat down, “I.. um.. I'm from somewhere less developed than here.” She recoiled slightly, like from someone of a lower class, but then she smiled. In a flirt she caught my eye, and slid her long fingers along my inner thighs. I felt heat rushing to my face as a powerful lust swelled. She sedated my initial anxiety with deft emotional and sensual skill, and before long I was at the height of something slow, powerful and pleasurable. What was this place?

“She is using a technology that let her do that.” The mahogany girl said, a wry smile showing a pleasure at having witnessed this initiation. I looked at them both, and then down to the floating wet martini olives on the table.

Days passed. In this world, scenes seemed to change but it never seemed strange, nor did I feel the need to question this reality. One scene I would be driving my blue bubble car around the city, the next sipping sweet soma in luscious surroundings filled with girls I barely new or from my past, the next photographing fascinating creatures in mysterious lands, hoping one day I could show them to people on Earth. It was a paradise with no responsibility or hangovers, it softly caressed the dreamy mind with pleasures.

However, there was one frustrating and recurring scene. I was in school learning things I didn't understand or care about. During lessons my mind was always in another place, daydreaming of the girls or driving my bubble car this way or that. “I am concerned with your progress” the tall and slender teacher would say, “you have never attempted any homework.” Over time I began to think; What are these lessons? Why does she seem familiar? Even away from school, when I was under the spell of a lullaby union with nameless girls in pink pillowy clouds, this thinking arose, threatening the coddled sensual world of the mothership.

Then one day I saw an identical baby-blue bubble car stopped opposite at the crossroads. It struck me as peculiar, being the first like mine I'd seen, and as we pulled off in the same direction I glimpsed the driver. It was me! Or at least he looked like me. I followed behind but the lights turned red on me as he drove into the distance. Slamming the accelerator, I jumped over the crossing traffic and was back on his tail. At the edge of the floating city, the pink clouds caught the sun, my double stopped his bubble car, got out, and entered a tall, narrow building. Even though I must have been the second me to climb the stairs, figures from my past greeted me unfazed as I passed, and at the top of the stairs was a black door. Inside and in front of me was my double, sat in one of two low black leather chairs and silhouetted by the pink clouds that glistened as my deep blue painting had done what may have been lifetimes before.

“This world is not all it seems.” My double said as I sat down opposite him.

“I've been thinking...”.

“And it is intruding on your play.”

“...questions have been arising. 'Who are you?' for example”.

“I am you, you are seeing yourself for the first time since you arrived here. In this place, your mind manifests as your reality. Now that you have been thinking, you have been becoming. You have been failing at school?”

“..Yes”

“Pay attention and you will see.” he finished, and looked down at the martini on the round glass table. I walked out the door slightly anxious and entered a kaleidoscopic cathedral. I quickly conjured sweet soma and was greeted by a girl, she giggled, we kissed, and we played together. She was so cute, so wonderful, I lost myself once more, but for how long?

Before long I was back in class, me with the other me sat next to me. I noticed that all the other students also had brought their doubles too. This was different; I was ready to listen this time.

“Welcome to the second class.” The teacher began. For the first time I noticed the beam of light connecting her forehead to mine. It caressed and focussed my mind like a helmet of energy. “The first assignment was to notice yourself, I thank you for bringing yourself with you today.

“This mothership is always changing. It is the consciousness. You are slowly coming to develop thought, and along with it your world is becoming more disturbed. This will continue.

“Have you ever wondered why I am a teacher? Why do I not engage in play like you do? Have you noticed the others?” I thought hard. No, I hadn't. I had been bubbling along in my bubble car and hadn't noticed much at all, except when I encountered my self that time. “Minds are disturbed, even here on the mothership,” she continued, “and there is nothing here that can be done about it. I was once like you, here in this class, and soon I will go back to earth. When you realise how disturbed you are you will learn to love as I have, and go back to earth to begin life anew. Only on earth can one realise the truth. Only on earth do things come and go, are we constantly confronted with the truth. Here we do not have the opportunity.”

“I thought I must be in heaven.” I said.

“This place is but one of many realms. It is my duty to usher you back to Earth for you to discover the heaven you seek.” she replied, her electric blue iridescent fringe waving calmly as if under water. Would I ever be ready to leave this illusory paradise? “When you are ready, here is the door. But you are not ready yet...

“Life exists because death exists, but you cannot know life in this place. To know life is to be life, to be life is to transcend death, and to transcend death is to be pulled out from death's lure by the love that knows no death. This place is deathless, and therefore lifeless. Through the door is life, but also pain and death. But life that discovers the Love is free. Life that does not discover the Love is not truly life, and after death may return to this place, the mothership, or another realm. I can show you the way out that door and back to earth, but many, like myself, get stuck here. That is why I teach, I am learning to love enough to go through that door. Back to Earth.”

I left class with a strong desire for more soma, and allowed myself to be led to new heights of pleasures by seductive red velvet ladies and martini olives, pink fluffy dreams and baby blue bubbles, white-yellow perfume and coddled lusty embraces, like a weightless warm mothership drifting timeless in space. Liberation was a long way away – a birth squeeze, cold, pain, work, unsatisfied desires, death and perseverance – it would be a long time before I opened that door.

magical woman

'I'll grant you two wishes' said the magical woman.

'I wish to not have a second wish.'

'Very wise' said the magical woman, 'the previous person wished to know the best wish to ask for the second wish, and with the second wish made further potential best wishes only the best of a set of bad wishes.'

Suddenly magic started out from the magical woman's magical wand, accompanied by the smell that you would smell if you were a snail smelling monosodium glutamate. And then life carried on as normal.

Raoul Duke

“You can't smoke in here.”

Duke was nonchalant.  Ben sat back in the hard red leather cushion of a high sofa.  The bar was familiar, an ash tray on a round table, and Duke sat lazily back, and took a sip of his cigarette.

“Our knowledge and philosophy has been our undoing,”  Duke continued, “when you want to follow a God that you don't believe in, there is only one logical choice.  Doublethink I don't like.”

“I think life is still worth living.” Ben said, and he looked up at the night sky.  The stars were out in full, there was no moon.  He pondered a moment, vast ponderings in short moments.  No doubt he was enjoying this conversation, but there was something wrong.  This event had happened before, and Ben was fluent in it.  He stood up, and Duke looked down at the ash tray.  “I'm going to fly, as much as I like to be with you.  I miss you.”

Ben started running towards the door, widened his eyes and watched the faith in his mind as he extended his head and neck ready to pass like light through the door.

He entered a space that was like a deep breath, and paused a moment to remember what he was up to.   Jumping high into the air, he fell onto his back, and a rush preceded his fall through the ground, as if from a tree, and he stared deep into the galaxies beyond the ground he was falling through.

“Show me 'The Highest'” he prayed, and he found himself precipitated across the cosmos he had a moment prior observed.  There he found the Neosis Museum.  He struggled to engage the circuits of his brain as he saw the highest and sublime.  There was no place for the wisdom he was subjected to, and he realised he could not put into memory what is not able to be conceptualised.

“What's it like to be a person in another person's dream?”  Ben asked.  

“I don't know what you are talking about.”

from where all things end

There was a time when questions were unanswered, even when questions didn't arise. This time is called the Unrepresented; a time before there were beings to represent anything at all. Out of here slowly emerged feelings, impulses, fear, cold and hunger, as the first beings evolved. With quickening pace, feelings turned to language, and language turned to questions. Questions with no answers were given ones with Gods and lies. Words became no longer feelings, but objects of desire. The world came into being, along with money, deception and corruption, power over others, lust for wealth and wars over Gods. It was in this age that science took hold, answering increasingly more of the questions language brought, but generating more and more still. The internet happened. And it was not long after this, that the Idea happened.

The Idea changed everything overnight. As soon as it was grasped, all beings quit everything. Governments stopped arguing, lovers stopped fighting, schools stopped teaching, entire religions simply stopped everything. The whole world began the largest collaborative effort ever made, or that ever would be made.

"No isolated parts. Join all parts to the self. Relieve all of ignorance."

Like drops of water back to the sea, the world sought to unify all consciousness. But there was a problem. Some of the drops of water were immiscible, like oil, and couldn't coalesce. They joined in a second pool. Now there were two, one being much smaller than the main one. While the situation was better than before, in profound ways, this problem remained niggling. Methods of communication between the two sides improved, but while they could transmit thoughts, they could not transmit understanding. The Bigger was clearly the more expansive, coming up with the most interesting and creative uses of reality, which the Smaller was then taught to appreciate.

It eventually became realised, however, that to proceed further required a choice. It remained known but dormant in self-deception for a long time. A way was found to unify the two parts, but simultaneously it was realised that this would annihilate both. There would be no longer any consciousness. The reason for this is that consciousness needs to be able to think in order to represent things to itself, and without two parts, one cannot think. This is why brains have two parts, each controlling one half of the body. Have you ever tried writing with your left hand (or right if you are left-handed)? You can teach yourself, but the two halves can only communicate through thought. They can't share experience or understanding. Try it!

Eventually there came a time when the infinitude of what could be achieved, had been achieved. Nothing novel was left to be done ever again, except for the only one thing left to do. The last challenge was the final stage of realisation: that of neither represented nor unrepresented. This is the key that would finally unify the two parts, the bridge from ultimate representation back to the Unrepresented, to begin everything anew in an infinite cycle.

In which part of the cycle are you now :?

Love is love's virus

Susan slip-sliced her mind through the interface; the inviting, colourful and intricate view before her at her minder tips. She flisped past the countless mindless minds, and her love discovered her and they united. They were a still, cold lake under the moon, yet their hearts were ablaze with a gloryful embrace. They spread like a firework at the speed of sound, wider than space itself, and soaked the countless minds with a nudge of compassion, unbeknownst to most, but inexorably raising, by a small amount, the awareness of them all, towards the still reflection of the moon.

On his way home, Ben checked his pigeonhole. There was nothing there, except a letter explaining that a new bank card – which Ben had already gone to his local branch to pick up – had been dispatched to his local branch for him to pick up. Redundant thoughts stacked through his mind, like white plaster in a kitchen sieve. His troubled mind focussed strongly on fleeting questions, like a mailman delivering redundant letters, like a blunt knife gnashing against glass. And then as he cycled past the park, the sun caught the leaves, the people froze still in life's joy for an eternal instant, and Ben thought it was beautiful, inviting, colourful. For a moment he saw the glint of it, and then it flisped away. The knife lay motionless on the glass, the mail man went home to his children, and Ben went home to write about Susan, and himself. Love discovers more of us, bit by one.

a tree as the air moves

A gloaming cool descended over the lake, and the trees reflected purple in the still dark water. A boy and his father sat.

“When I come to the water to see my reflection, and then look up and listen closely to the trees as the air moves, I sometimes wonder if the trees have things to say, or if they recognise their own reflections in the waters.” said the boy.

“The trees have voices in the wind, and they have reflections in the water, but they know not what they say, nor what they see reflected.”

“I feel like that too sometimes.” said the boy.

When the boy grew up he was gentle and quiet, and everybody always listened closely to him, as if listening for answers to their most intimate needs.

Once Upon a Universe

The scientists had been working hard. It had been a problem for as long as man has been able to think. How is it that physical stuff can create the qualia of experience? In 2145 the scientists solved the problem, and in 2146 a scientist ran a simple proof of concept by creating the first synthetic experience. For historic reasons, experience of the colour red was chosen as the first to be created.

The monumental discovery of the true nature of experience answered age old anthropological questions. Why should it be, for example, that compassion should be such a widely adopted virtue among exactly every civilisation? In the old times, people were slaves to their egos; individuals striving to better their own experience. Their thoughts were fleeting reflections of evolutionary struggle for genetic survival, with the slightly distasteful illusion of being due to acts of some sort of localised will. It is a necessary requisite of transcendence that there be something to transcend from, which of course is that which allows evolution in the first place. Nothing perfect ever changes and therefore cannot evolve.

The key was in identification. Once the ego was seen for what is was, the great Elucidation happened. Consciousness is itself without form but manifests through sentient beings, the ego being a by-product. Only goodness knows why it took so long for people to realise that.

There is no difference between when I see red, and when you see red; the experience is indistinguishable, and such is the nature of all experience. When we are greedy, when we deceive; we are actually only harming ourselves, by taking, steeling or whatever from other bits of this ultimate self. In the deeper realms of experience, obscured from our egos, this truth has always been understood, and its manifestation has been in the virtues of the great religions.

Hence, when the scientists created the experience of red in the lab, it was the equivalent of resurrecting all people of all time who had ever had eyes to see.  Furthermore, the scientists had created the simplest version of the experience possible, and hence it was not attached to any sort of experience of time. It was timelessly vast in a see of infinity, with no past, no future, just pure contextless red.

After more months of careful calculation and dedication, they created the experiences of pleasure, of love, and of compassion. A natural progression. Finally was created the experience of infinite understanding. All was good, and the scientists were pleased. What wasn't realised was what would happen next!

The scientists kept the experiences under a close watch to observe what other phenomena might have arisen when they had been created. Synthetic experience was completely unexplored, and really it was a bit like landing on the moon. The moon could have had moon people! They had no idea of what would happen, though what was discovered was far more amazing than even moon people would have been. Between the experiences created, there were resonances that formed an extremely complex topography. It was like a holograph. Something existed in these experiences. It wasn't until a few years later, as the technology got better and the resolution with which they could see it got greater that they figured out the full extent and significance of what had been achieved.

The first observations showed that, although pure love and compassion and understanding had been created, which are considered good experiences, there seemed to be a component of negative ones coming out. Pain, anguish, guilt, humiliation, shame. This was far from what was expected. Then they took some higher resolution spectra. The first ones they extracted seemed to bare a very close resemblance to quantum gravitation, and on further investigation they discovered the correct formulations of pre-inflationary theory which had been a problem that physicists had been having no luck with at the Heavy Graviton Collider since it had gone on line. No one suspected that looking at experience would answer questions about physics! Although by the 22nd century no one really cared about physics any more.

The scientists realised the full extent of this slowly.  Some denied it at first. What had in fact been done was that within the love and compassion had been created a universe; complete unto itself and timeless. A universe with exactly the laws of physics as ours, and indeed, like ours in every way! In fact, it was, in its indistinguishable nature actually ontologically the same universe.

Love and compassion necessitate the existence of the universe, and that love and compassion are the source of all our being, from our love to our despair. Peace is upon those who practice what they know beyond the clouds of ignorance, the true light that shines from beyond form.  And ever since the existence of the universe has never been a mystery.  Welcome to Eternity.

Coming soon

I sometimes write short stories.  I will begin to post them here so watch this space!