Ideas About Reality

This book found me at a Salvation Army. I split her down the middle and took until I was satisfied. Here are some of her most interesting parts:

Not only do we influence our reality, but, in some degree, we actually create it.

We cannot eliminate ourselves from the picture. We are a part of nature, and when we study nature there is no way around the fact that nature is studying itself.

Quantum mechanics views subatomic particles as "tendencies to exist" or "tendencies to happen."

The mind is such that it deals only with ideas. It is not possible for the mind to relate to anything other than ideas. Therefore, it is not correct to think that the mind actually can ponder reality. All that the mind can ponder is its ideas about reality.

The subjective experience of wonder is a message to the rational mind that the object of wonder is being perceived and understood in ways other than the rational. The next time you are awed by something, let the feeling flow freely through you and do not try to "understand" it. You will find that you do understand, but in a way that you will not be able to put into words.

We cannot establish clearly that we are different from inorganic substances. That means that, logically, we must admit that we may not be alive. Since this is absurd, the only alternative is to admit that "inanimate" objects may be living. The distinction between organic and inorganic is a conceptual prejudice.

The philosophical implication of quantum mechanics is that all of the things in our universe (including us) that appear to exist independently are actually parts of one all-encompassing organic pattern, and that no parts of that pattern are ever really separate from it or from each other.

Some physicists, like E. H. Walker, speculate that photons may be conscious!

In short, the physical world, according to quantum mechanics, is not a structure built out of independently existing unanalyzable entities, but rather a web of relationships between elements whose meanings arise wholly from their relationships to the whole.

Our experience tells us that the physical world is solid, real, and independent of us. Quantum mechanics says, simply, that this is not so.

We are actualizing the universe. Since we are part of the universe, that makes the universe (and us) self-actualizing.

Since the wave function is thought to be a complete description of physical reality and since that which the wave function describes is idea-like as well as matter-like, then physical reality must be both idea-like and matter-like. In other words, the world cannot be as it appears.

The Cogs in the Machine have become the Creators of the Universe. If the new physics has led us anywhere, it is back to ourselves, which, of course, is the only place that we could go.

The world of matter is a relative world, and an illusory one: illusory not in the sense that it does not exist, but illusory in the sense that we do not see it as it really is.

The law of the conservation of mass-energy says that the total amount of mass-energy in the universe always has been and always will be the same. Mass may be converted into energy and energy may be converted into mass, but the total amount of mass-energy in the universe does not change.

If we could see the geography (the geometry) of the space-time continuum, we would see that, similarly, it, and not "forces between objects," is the reason that planets move in the ways that they do.

"Matter" is actually a series of patterns out of focus. The search for the ultimate stuff of the universe ends with the discovery that there isn't any. If there is any ultimate stuff of the universe, it is pure energy, but subatomic particles are not "made of" energy, they are energy. Subatomic interactions, therefore, are interactions of energy with energy.

According to particle physics, the world is fundamentally dancing energy; energy that is everywhere and incessantly assuming first this form and then that. What we have been calling matter (particles) constantly is being created, annihilated, and created again. This happens as particles interact and it also happens, literally, out of nowhere.

The world view of particle physics is a picture of chaos beneath order.

The world view of particle physics is that of a world without "stuff," where what is = what happens, and where an unending tumultuous dance of creation, annihilation, and transformation runs unabated within a framework of conservation laws and probability.

If, at the quantum level, the flow of time has no meaning, and if consciousness is fundamentally a similar process, and if we can become aware of these processes within ourselves, then it also is conceivable that we can experience timelessness. For this reason, reports of time distortion and timelessness from gurus in the East and psychotropic drug users in the West ought not, perhaps, to be discarded peremptorily.

According to Buddhist theory, reality is "virtual" in nature. What appear to be "real" objects in it, like trees and people, actually are transient illusions which result from a limited mode of awareness. The illusion is that parts of an overall virtual process are "real" (permanent) "things." "Enlightenment" is the experience that "things," including "I," are transient, virtual states devoid of separate existences, momentary links between illusions of the past and illusions of the future unfolding in the illusion of time.

The history of scientific thought, if it teaches us anything at all, teaches us the folly of clutching ideas too closely. To this extent it is an echo of eastern wisdom which teaches us the folly of clutching anything.

That which is is that which is. That which is not is that which is. There is nothing which is not that which is. There is nothing other than that which is. Everything is that which is. We are a part of that which is. In fact, we are that which is.

What happens here is intimately and immediately connected to what happens elsewhere in the universe, which, in turn, is intimately and immediately connected to what happens elsewhere in the universe, and so on, simply because the "separate parts" of the universe are not separate parts.

"Reality" is what we take to be true. What we take to be true is what we believe. What we believe is based upon our perceptions. What we perceive depends upon what we look for. What we look for depends upon what we think. What we think depends upon what we perceive. What we perceive determines what we believe. What we believe determines what we take to be true. What we take to be true is our reality.

Concerning the Business of Death

This five disc DVD set on consciousness is what I'm currently watching. I only have disc five left to watch and I can already say that I highly recommend it.

It's from 2005, so not completely up to date but still worth watching. Anyone who consistently thinks about life, consciousness, dreams, the brain, etc. should enjoy this. The series isn't biased one way or another so you are free to explore different possibilities of why we have consciousness.

For instance, is this thing we call consciousness something that is produced by our evolved brain? Many scientists are currently researching this. This would seem to imply that we essentially are our brains, and it produces this almost illusory state for us. Or perhaps, consciousness is a preexisting state or being which our evolved brains happen to tap into.

My view falls in between these two sides. I can't help but think of consciousness/spirit as something that underlies the universe. A cosmological constant, if you will. It would seem to be infinite and unending, but who knows, really. And the material world is a sort of virtual reality for consciousness to play in. Remember how the T1000 terminator could melt down and become anything? Now imagine he is consciousness when in this melted blob-like state. But instead of becoming one thing, he becomes all things. Each person, plant, animal, planet, galaxy, etc. Isn't this akin to what most mystics say? That I am you and you are me?

A scientist in the What the Bleep do we Know? movie has an analogy for this that I like to use. She said it may be like consciousness is the cookie dough- the batter where we are all one being/spirit...and we materialize in the physical world of matter with the illusion that we are separate and different, when really we are all just cookies from the same dough. Looking through this lens, our bodies seem to be like clothes we try on for a while then discard.

If this were true, and I believe the evidence is piling up...then we need to retool the way we think about death. Our customs and rituals when it comes to death seem so outdated and hopelessly morbid. Think about it, it's becoming increasingly clear that we don't really die. And yet, we preserve the dead so horridly, lay them out for all to mourn over, then save the damn body! Every time I pass a cemetery, I'm bewildered. George Carlin said that if want to be serious about recycling, we should start in these cemeteries! What are we going to do, fill the whole Earth with our shed skins?

Now let me state that I'm not saying that feelings of sadness over death are unwarranted. It would still remain a sad time when someone you love left this place before you did....we just don't have to go so nuts over it. My older sister died when I was young, and I used to be so angry and depressed over that. Our society leaves children with little else to feel. But now, I look at it like she just took an earlier train home. And I'll take that same train someday and see her again, because we are one in the same anyway.

Also, in my opinion, the "big business industry" of death needs to be torn down. Just think for a second of how fucking expensive it is to die in this country. It's so ridiculous I can't even stand it. I contemplated all of this a few years ago at my Grandfather's wake/funeral. I sat in that funeral home and watched all of the ridiculous customs while feeling so alienated. Not to mention that this society clings to these outdated/voodoo practices so fiercely that you don't dare say these thoughts aloud. You don't dare not wear black...they'll single you out and make you a target. I'll take a second here to say that if you feel even a little bit the way I do about these things, you'll probably enjoy the movie Harold and Maude. That movie changed my life.

It's Such a Good Vibration

The brain collapses consciousness about 40 times a second. Reality is like a moving picture. This makes me think of brain waves- a graph of our states of consciousness. Brain frequencies remind me that we're vibrating on a very specific level. The idea of dimensions in the universe resembling scales of music and vibration makes sense.

When we change our vibration, we'll get a different experience. Is this what the energy does in the Great Pyramid? Were they raising their vibration by lying beneath the energy beam? (If you have no idea what I'm referring to here, look into Drunvalo Melchizedek's work).

The Mer-Ka-Ba meditation also makes sense when contemplating these things. Having a spinning energy field should certainly raise our vibrations. And here's where I got "Good Vibrations" by Marky Mark stuck in my head. Ugh.

This Body Holding Me

Terrance McKenna is my newest teacher/spirit guide/hero. The first lecture of his I listened to was called "what science forgot". I'm completely hooked and I highly recommend listening to him. You can download his talks for free from pod casts on itunes. I was always given the impression that he was just some guy who liked to get loaded on mushrooms...so I wasn't interested. This however, is not the case. If you're even a little interested in culture, philosophy, language, the arts, and discovering the nature of reality...do yourself a favor and listen to McKenna. He was truly a shaman to our culture.

I wonder if we are merely consciousness with free will. If this is the case, it would be logical to assume that there is consciousness without free will. That which simply goes along for the ride. This invokes the possible perspective of the plant world, the Earth, solar systems, galaxies, universes, a cell, an atom, mushrooms, cannabis. Things different from us but equally accessing consciousness.

Maybe consciousness is something of a separate existence that we're progressively tapping into with our evolving brains. Or is consciousness in the process of coming back in on itself? Did consciousness expand out creating physical form to experience itself in an infinite number of ways...making all things connected and making possibilities infinite?

If you convince yourself enough to believe that you are NOT your body- you are what is manifesting THROUGH this human body...consciousness...things will look a lot differently to you. Goals seem to change, truths become apparent, the important things seem to correlate out of chaos and into coherency.