Saturday, April 23, 2011

21st century schizoid man

I‘m not an expert, and wouldn’t want to be, but I’ve heard that brainwashing consists of a phase of deconstruction followed by one of construction. In a sense that’s what is going one here as I take apart one world view and set up another in its stead. But I trust that you’ll trust me. I’ve only got your good in mind. This hurts you more than it hurts me—just kidding!

Seriously, though I appreciate the discomfort that this barrage of new ideas is most likely to cause. It probably makes no difference if I take you through it quick or slow, but I have taken care to break up the journey with examples, external evidence, discussions and reviews. I hope that this suffices.

Now, the previous metaphor involved film. The next point that I make is that flitzing does not need to be sequential in any way (in contrast with moving pictures, where the order of photographic images is most important). Flitzing can—and does—occur randomly, like the make-up of an electron cloud. If there’s no time then, by extension, there’s no order to follow either.

These ideas are getting way out there now, so I bring in a team of demolition men—Czerner, Feynman and Wheeler—to back me up. I slip in an essay on photons that I don’t need to edit. It’s lovely to quote stuff verbatim! I’m pleased to reveal that the single-electron universe is not just my idea. I don’t believe that it’s been taken to the hypothesis stage, but it lives on Wikipedia Street at least. 

Similarly, Matter, Energy and Consciousness coexist on approximately twenty million sites, though how reputable most of these are is up for debate. I’m surprised to see that even quantum consciousness is mentioned in a quarter of a million locations. I must take a closer look one of these days.

I’m pretty sure, though, that the idea of using a ‘metaphysical cyclotron’ to smash up a godlike super-consciousness source into smithereens is mine alone. It’s not anywhere on the world-wide web (unless, of course, they gave it another name). Still, the idea of annihilation does not exactly inspire peace of mind, and I felt that it was best to bring in another group of men—constructionists?—to calm the waters. Tolle and Alpert both refer to living in the present, which leads us to examine the interface between the past and the future. What is it?

Attempting to quantify the present leads us to an interesting idea: the possibility that its thickness is exactly the duration of the smallest quantum of consciousness. I do a lot of that sort of thing, you know. I imagine how something might work and then try it on for size. If it groks, which is to say that if it jumps into focus like those 3-D pictures that you stare at for several minutes before a solid image suddenly stands up out of the page, then I run with it.

I do something else in this last part of
Will? I Am!  I mix up the ‘person’ in which I write. I keep switching from the author’s point of view to that of the reader. This leads to conversations in which it isn’t clear who is who at any one time. I merge our identities, in part so as to personify feelings of doubt, angst, frustration, suspicion and incomprehension. I empathize, in other words.

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