Nearly everyone who’s had a question has wondered why we exist. Is there a purpose? Science wants us to believe that there’s no evidence for a purpose-driven universe — and within their narrow field of purchase, they may be correct — but outside that narrow scope wonders that science cannot even detect form the very basis of its method and the arbiter of its findings.
In fact, stuff that science has no purchase upon appears to be most of what’s going on, in general. If we want a chance to pursue the really interesting questions we need something far more like those questions than science can ever become. In this case, the mind of wonder that almost any child brings as a matter of course can be more valuable than all the discoveries adults have ever made…
#! . ~ o ~ . ^^
Wh(eye)?
I suspect that the newly-formed human mind has no intrinsic way of assembling a comprehensible reality from sensory experience, and that we all tend to learn such ways rapidly just prior to and after birth. We develop a variety of methods as we grow, following the basic paradigms provided by our evolutionary acquisitions; a process subject to significant individual variation. By the time we can formulate questions, a great deal of development — much of it invisible — has already taken place. But for the most part we are taught very simple methods of questioning by those around us, and many of these methods are ‘clipped’ in that, rather than encouraging our intelligence and creativity — they limit it.
I like to imagine a question as a peculiar sort of rod with which we might tap our way along the possible branches of our minds and our relationship to experience. As a physical object, we might imagine it as a rod with a point on one end, and a rattle on the other. Move the point? The domains upon which the rattle has purchase change. Change the angle of the rod? Same result.
Science uses a similar toy, but in a much narrower way. For its specified purposes, this is reasonable, since the focus required by science is severe. The goal is to discard almost everything, in order to acquire information which appears certain – about something in particular. But outside the purposes for which this is reasonable, the result is an attack on human intelligence. The reason is simple: 99% of what exists is unavailable to science. If you decide to demand that only that which science can examine or explain is reasonable, you’ve just divested yourself of nearly the entirety of your experience and your capacity of understanding.
When you inquire about the generalities of light, you get a wave. When you press the matter, and force the question, you get a point. But light is involved in the formation and pursuit of this question — a fact which science can neither account for in experiment, nor observe. Some facets of reality can escape our inquiries in a fashion that appears willfully playful — and intelligent.
wave / particle :|: ring \ rod
+| . ~ o ~ . |'
Why do we come to human birth? It seems that endless institutional authorities are constantly competing to provide an answer forceful enough to demand our fealty. Science has dead answers formed from mechanical approaches, religions each have a variety of rather poorly crafted answers comprised of stories about beings who are to us as we are to microbes, most of which are rather hard to chew, nevermind swallow. It’s not surprising that children have difficulty with these offerings — particularly those inclined to creative thought rather than rote repetition of what they’ve been told by others.
There are exceptions to the domination dances of want-to-be-authorities. Some traditions encourage us to press the question directly, and refuse to answer to or for us. These are perhaps the most friendly to those who really want a shot at understanding.
But the question itself is problematical because it is unreasonable to believe that reasons are involved in our existence (as causes). Reasoning is a peculiarly human function, and not all humans reason, or even reason the same way1. Purpose and meaning are similar in that they require human beings to bring their peculiar perspectives in order to arise, but they are much more general than reasons, and partake of a deeper and more authentic resemblance to our experience. So while it seems relatively clear that the universe is not the result of reasons, this does not mean that it is bereft of purpose or of meaning.
Yet, if we admit that reasons are a game humans are playing, we can then pursue the question in a more honest way — and we may then assemble peculiar kinds of reasons that satisfy our own inspired questioning — to a degree — as long as we realize that reasons have less to do with the universe and more to do with how we approach it and the character and purposes of our questions in general.
In simple terms: reasons are largely the result of the approach that generates them. But questions are a bit different — they can actually cause the universe to change — sometimes dramatically. Perhaps the wave-particle duality problem is evidence of exactly this kind of change…
#! . ~ o ~ . ^^
Reasoning is a tricky thing, because where we place the point of your question tends to generate the reasons highlighted by the rattle’s agitations. Move the point? The reasons and their character change. Starting here, we can learn something profound; the angle of our approach to our questions will tend to generate the field of reasoning from which we will derive answers. This is confusing to those of us who believe in objectivity, because we are trained to believe that consensus amongst rational inquirers whose methods are sound produces the peculiar progeny we call facts.
Facts, it turns out, are one of the deadliest fictions our species ever invented.
Facts are a game.
(`. ~ o ~ . {^
Rim, Spokes, Hub
Most of us are trained to adhere to and defend methods whose severe limitations essentially cripple our capacity to form questions, and thus we largely depend upon others to do this for us. Usually our relationship with metaphor is similar: rather than crafting them, we are trapped in the role of consumer, acquiring them from culture and media.
Acquisition is not problematical in itself, unless it is our only option — in which case it becomes catastrophic, for our capacities to learn and deeply comprehend are delimited by the minds of distant others and our capacity to copy them. This comprises a form of slavery; invisible, domineering, and deadly to our relational and intellectual intelligence. In order to illustrate some common methods of questioning and angles of approach, I will use a wheel as an analogy of the processes of forming and pursuing a question.
In this analogy, the goal is understanding of the core, or point — the hub of a wheel. The angle of approach is represented by a spoke, and the point of departure by where the spoke connects to the rim.
Let’s take the common approach first. I’ll call it unispoke.
Most people are trained to approach the point (the hub) from a single direction — from a single position on the rim. This is absurd, of course, but since they are not aware there are myriads of other options, they simply cannot see them. So they begin at the rim, and they follow the only spoke they can easily locate (an angle of approach) toward the hub. Most often, this is the same spoke nearly everyone recommends. Of course, if everyone follows this spoke, nearly everyone will understand the rim, the spoke, and the hub in the same way. The obvious problem is that this approach is far too limited to provide anything like understanding. Moreover, such a wheel cannot roll. A wheel with a single spoke is useless, and a question formed and answered in such a way is not really a question at all — it’s an intelligence trap. Nonetheless, this is the most common strategy of approaching a question — from a single commonly suggested vector. This is the approach commonly taught by both religion and education.
Now let’s take a slightly more creative approach: multispoke.
Someone who is aware of the possibility of a few different approaches, might select a few spokes and try each of them, selecting in the process the one that produces the most useful or desirable result. Often, in the process, they will also identify anti-spokes for other common approaches — these represent nullifications, blocking moves, or defenses.
This is certainly a better idea and gives the appearance of sophisticated intelligence when skillfully employed. It can solve problems, defend itself adequately, and even defeat approaches which would otherwise appear proficient. This method is commonly used by con-men, lawyers and science. While vastly more powerful than its predecessor, it is still badly flawed, and produces bias in the guise of objectivity.
One problem with both of the previous methods is simple: a lot of energy is expended defending the specific spokes (angles of approach) that have been chosen to be ‘the only reasonable angles’. In almost every case this energy would be better utilized in pursuing the question, rather than in defending approaches.
Now let’s examine an approach more like that taken by intelligent beings throughout the universe, including those that have to solve a problem more rapidly than it can be properly represented: metaspoke.
Suppose we travel toward the hum from the rim in a variety of ways at the same time. Using multiple spokes as needed, and switching back and forth between them in process. This would be like highlighting portions of multiple angles of approach at once, and we can expand it dramatically such that we get an ongoing expansion of a wide range of understandings regarding the point (the hub). After all, if you want to understand the hub, why not get as many angles and positions on those angles as possible? Is one sufficient? Five? Ten? No. What is required is a kind of traveling dance, which moves amongst many different spokes in a process of acquiring deeper and deeper intimacy with the rim, the spokes themselves, and the hub. In this way we can approach questions which reject the first two approaches by their nature — and, as it turns out, most of the really good questions are precisely this species.
This is the sort of approach favored by prodigies, however each person is unique and some prodigies can select a few spokes that work amazingly well under most conditions. Nonetheless, the analogy is strong, and the approach is profound: multiple changing angles of approach at once will almost always surpass anything a simpler method can provide — if our actual goal is an ongoing process of deepening our understanding. If it is merely a functional solution to a problem or set of them, we may find more modest approaches useful.
This third method requires an uncommon set of skills, and the spokes cannot be used in a merely arbitrary fashion; when they are, the results are largely or completely incoherent. But with some training and practice this method of approach can resolve almost any form of question more rapidly and adeptly relative to the other two. There are exceptions: sometimes it is expedient and useful to adopt proven approaches rather than having to reinvent them — but it’s not always entirely clear when this is the case.
Now that we understand these three models, we can explore the question at hand a bit more skillfully, because without the third model the question of why are we come to human birth cannot even be meaningfully approached, nevermind explored.
(` . ~ o ~ . {^
ourGlass
Life is strange stuff; like a question that changes every time you ask it — in a universe that is alive and profoundly involved in this questioning activity. The situation is a bit like mirrors within mirrors — but not the kinds we are used to — they’re not dead or mechanical — these are living mirrors. They do not only reflect you, or themselves, or even what’s present — but all beings and circumstances in all positions of timeSpace — at once.
What we bring is something like a point of view — or an angle of approach. This is not a merely mechanical process, and this is part of why much of it is unavailable to the methods of inquiry science employs. What makes the whole situation really interesting is that the mirror’s surface is, in part, being dynamically assembled by the one gazing upon it (the questioner) such that, if that one should change in any way, those changes modify the character and function of mirror itself, not merely what is reflected within it2.
When we realize that our formation of a question changes the universe (not just its appearances) in a variety of ways that have purchase upon measurable reality, we begin to understand something wonderful: we are not merely observers — and we are not distinct ‘parts’ of some gigantic machine — whether Newtonian or Relativistic — or Quantum. Although physics and other hard sciences are interesting and useful, they are poorly suited as models or explanations of living phenomenon in part because they begin by attempting to essentially discard the observer. Even where this is not the case, the real goals of these ways of knowing remain in many ways at odds with those of living beings — and their worlds3.
But there is a relational analog of the force we call gravity — attraction.
And one way to begin to explore the question of why we are here is through some rather ordinary observations having to do with the lived experience of attraction — what is it that attracts one being to another? Or, less hypothetically, how are you attracted to phenomenon — living or otherwise? How are you attracted to people? To ideas? To events or natural vistas? What is it, after all, that draws us into a feeling of unity with what seems outside us — or the desire to participate directly in another’s experience?
Most of us are trained to begin such explorations with an error that guides far too many of our modern questions: accounting. Attraction then becomes a game of resource acquisition, trading, loss, gain, and pursuit. But the scope of these angles of approach is too narrow for living beings, and far too narrow to satisfy our purpose here — which is one of seeking insight, rather than descriptions or evaluations.
If you can remember being a small child deeply involved in play with others, this is an excellent place to start. If not, observe small children playing — preferably when they believe they are not being observed. What are they up to? What makes it less exciting for them to be alone than with another child? Can you remember your feelings when the time came to part company and you were not ready to stop playing? How catastrophic this could seem?
Though this is not a rule, and children can have all sorts of rich experiences when alone, it is practically universal amongst mammals that children seek playmates. Amongst humans it is axiomatic. A simple glance at any complex living ecology reveals myriads of relational networks which are not merely based upon eating, terrain, or reproduction — they are based upon relation. And it is here that the question begins to display some of its real depth and power.
As children, at least in the beginning of our lives, we didn’t have the desires that would drive our adolescent or adult lives; what we wanted was interaction. The reason for this goes far beyond ‘programming in our DNA’ and reaches into the heart of the mystery of life and the nature of consciousness. Somehow, interaction changes our ability to shape, focus, and engage our own consciousness. As children, we desire interaction as a kind of nourishment. Whereas food provides crucial resources for structural development and renewal, relation provides similar resources for consciousness — but they are not merely structural, and they are not precisely nourishment either. Through relation we learn to shape our consciousness in new ways, and we acquire methods of reshaping it and directing it into lived experience. Without these interactions, we simply do not develop methods. Raise a human child amongst dogs, and you get a strange chimera that is neither dog nor human — and as far as we know it cannot learn to become a human later, either. This is, in part, because early experiences of shaping the flow of consciousness are crucial to the development of that capacity. Where they are missing or damaged, the results tend to be relatively permanent.
)@ . ~ o ~ . ?<
unityVerse
I’m going to try to build a toy that allows me to illustrate something I’ve witnessed directly. The witnessing is so overwhelming that it’s challenging to survive a direct experience of it, but the toy is much simpler and far less dangerous. It involves twin universes that exist as polarities of each other. For the sake of simplicity, we will call them matter and spirit. They contain each other — such that the core of matter is spirit and the core of spirit is an evacuation which is matter. Matter is fast, direct, penetrating. Spirit is slow, circular, enveloping.
In the spirit universe there is a form of distinction, but it’s impossible to describe in familiar terms. All of time and position is always available, directly. All of being (each moment of every being in all of timeSpace) is always directly available. There are beings who live there, many ‘different kinds’, but their unity always has precedence over their distinction. This universe of spirit is not stasis, it is exquisite play — a dancing, bubbling, ecstatic unity.
Over here, in matter, things are a bit more complicated. Time is linear. Distinction has purchase on circumstances, experience, and beings and seems to have precedence. Distance is not a myth, although neither is it as absolute as it appears — in part because the universes are intimately connected.
The wonderful thing is this: these two universes are madly in love, and their love results not only in endless children, but endless ways of making and being children. This is the great gift of the relationship — and that’s what ‘it’s all about’.
Matter attracts spirit. Spirit reaches out with a tendril of itself and penetrates matter, quickening it, and imbuing it with (local) character. The penetration happens instantaneously and results in multiple scales or orders of effect, from universes all the way down to the tiniest organism. This quickening causes matter to begin to transform into the shared likeness of the attraction :|: penetration. Soon, various kinds of children are arising.
With each penetration, spirit learns more about itself in the mirror of matter, and matter learns more about itself in the mirror of spirit. Both are developing, in a way not entirely dissimilar to two children playing a rather magical game. Part of the game is differentiation (in matter) and reunification (in spirit). The way this functions is wonderfully amazing. Again, we have to settle for a model, and the truth is more than the sum of the models our species will ever produce — which is just how it should be.
The spirit universe strikes out across an endless kind of gap with a thread of itself. This thread crosses the gap and penetrates the matter universe, which responds by spiraling an envelope around the thread that reaches all the way back across the gap, into the source. One of the results is a living link that pulses toward matter inside and sends back waves on the outside. It’s sexual. Inside matter, some form of child begins to assemble itself. It could be the beginning of a galaxy. It could be the beginning of a virus. But let’s talk about the human scale, since that’s the most familiar one.
If the precedence is on matter, you get a girl. If spirit, a boy. There’s endless possible modulations in the whole process, so you can get a boy who’s more of a girl than most girls, and a girl who’s more of a boy than most boys. It’s all natural, and any child is totally adored — even if the humans decide otherwise. But here’s where it gets interesting. The child becomes a transport of the relationship, which can be thought of as flow. The masculine flow is penetrating, outwardly directed, and the feminine is attractive, pulling inward. This is part of why polarities attract each other. These children are the vehicles through which both universes are learning each other, ceaselessly, hungrily, joyfully. But to understand this more deeply, you have to see a kind of a strange picture.
Imagine the child as a kind of ‘smoke ring’ in matter, which encharacters and directs this flowing. The masculine polarity encharacters and directs the flow into the universe of matter, and the feminine pulls from every direction in matter, encharactering and directing the flow back across the gap into the universe of spirit. Each child is a complete instance of the marriage of both universes — and as such, comprises a complete universe, not a part, not an element — a whole. When they meet, it is as if two universes are meeting and joining — whether casually or intimately — the results are explosive and ramify throughout all of timeSpace, because back in the universe of spirit, all beings are transtemporally present. What this means is that the comparatively ‘slow’ dances of relation occurring in matter are having unbelievable ramifications in the comparatively ‘fast’ universe of spirit.
What lights the eyes of a living being is this bi-directional flow, the male’s flow can be imagined as a stream of spirit enveloped in matter, directing itself in a focused and relatively specific way into the world, and the female’s is spherical attraction with matter at its core, pulling spirit into itself. The way all of this works is profoundly sophisticated and recursive (and it can reverse across orders of instancing), but essentially what happens is that the masculine aspect is like speaking — penetrative expression, and the woman’s is like seeing — receptive transmission.
When two beings meet, whether they are both human or not, something unbelievably amazing is happening — there’s a set of linkages, time warps, multiple universes mate and meet and transform, and endless forms of relational linkage and transmissions occur. Even the most seemingly innocuous connection can have incredible ramifications, because the scale at which the connection is happening — say, an ant and a forest — says nothing at all about the ramifications as they extend into and across endless orders and instances of the containing relationship between spirit and matter. What’s really going on is a learning game of impossibly amazing (and ever-more-amazing) proportions and significance.
Each kind of child represents myriads of simultaneous methods of relation and transmission, and what we call a species can be thought of as a unique collection of modes. Each one is crucially important, because when you collect them on a planet in space, what you get is a superstructure that informs all extant children as well as all future possible modes and relations. Not in a cause-effect relationship, in a transtemporal way that is instantaneously shared amongst every living being on any planet, and even across planets. Eliminating species here, affects other worlds too, in part because of the way the flow is communicated back to the sourcePlace (spirit).
Again, there is much more at play than this absurdly simple model can communicate, but with this model we can see that there is a reason and a purpose to our lives. We are each explorers and we each have a unique mission, which is at once shared with all beings in all of timespace, and uniquely personal to the universe you are this instant. You have some capacity to shape both the meaning and the purpose, but it is entirely impossible that you can discard either. You and I are, in a manner of speaking, the children of purpose and meaning — spirit and matter.
And this is merely a single spoke — on an unbelievably amazing transdimensional wheel. Don’t stop here — find the rim, and explore the spokes, travel, if you dare...
…toward the hub!
)@ . ~ o ~ . ?<
Eyes (+hearts): Gateway to the tranSentient intraWorlds
The ‘cross’ figure so ubiquitous in many terrestrial cultures portrays the basis of transentient networks: the vertical bar is spirit descending and ascending. The horizontal bar is matter, penetrated, attracting and fixing spirit within timeSpace. The snake represents the first mode of children. The man represents the recursive rebirth which transcends and contains this trinity.
Julian Jaynes found it remarkable that nearly all of the dolls and statues from cultures around the world had eyes too large for their heads. He formed a theory that this might have been related to a form of extrinsic memory where, for example, one would look into the eyes of an authority while being given instructions, and later, when gazing into the oversized eyes of a doll or statue, one would bicamerally ‘hear’ the instructions repeated in their minds — in the voice of the original authority. He was onto something amazing, but it is not quite what he had in mind. Eyes are not merely the window to the soul, they are the window to the universe beyond distinct positions in person, time and space.
The giant eyes on our dolls and statues are enlarged because they are transports. Not merely into a person or group — into the roots of our sources and abilities — into and beyond linear time — and into mysteries so vast and brilliant that no text shall ever accomplish more than to point pitifully in their general direction.
If you examine your own eye you will find proof of the functions I have described above. The eyes of every creature display the characteristics of the marriage and the functions of attraction and penetration; but the eyes of human beings are peculiarly endowed with direct evidence. They both penetrate and absorb, and both are crucially required in our capacities as relational animals.
You were told that you are a sentient creature — but this is a lie. The nature of your immersion in and instancing of a transentient universe — grants you accessible capacities which cannot be delimited in any way whatsoever. The character and function of your ability to direct consciousness into the world and to receive and transmit relational feedback across distances that render the term absurd mean that the human stories of your nature and purpose are cages that build themselves by infecting every human child with their poison and converting them to their defense. Your innate direct participation in and with every life form on Earth and every life form in all of timeSpace activates the key that unlocks these cages — and its proof is in your own hands and eyes. It is in their shape, their character, their function and their connectivities.
Your eyes were made to connect with distinct instances of universes. You call these organisms, but they are nothing like the models of your science. Evolution is the story of recursively reinvested transentience — and this is nothing like the semi-mechanical ‘competition’ of genes within populations which is nothing more than the foam on the surface of an ocean your species refuses to glimpse.
These creatureforms around and with you are so far advanced beyond your wildest science fictions and religions that every form of media which tries to delimit them is poisonous to your own intelligence and must attack it in order to persist in you and your cultures. Organisms cannot be dissected or delimited because what you see in the physical domain is but the merest fraction of their actual bodies — bodies comprised of flows and connectivities so staggering beautiful that were you to witness them even momentarily you would perish of outright ecstacy4.
When living eyes gaze into each other, a recursively self-expanding cascade of miracles instantaneously transforms all of timeSpace: all beings throughout space and time are meeting, loving, asking the question, learning, and transmitting anciently conserved intelligence assets both between those participating directly and between all who indirectly (but significantly) join in transentient communion. The reason we do not experience these matters and their results more directly is simple: the stories we have been told — by science, religion, and the new-age — stand in the way, absorbing and deflating our capacities for relation and the direct experience of participation.
In the modern moment and over the past 300 years, a terrible catastrophe has occurred which is destroying our intelligence from the inside out: instead of looking into living eyes, we look into the mechanical representation of eyes: screens. Televisions, CRT, Video displays, and computer monitors. Like ants drawn to poisoned sugar we throng by the millions to see ‘video’ on plasma displays, computer monitors, and liquid crystal displays. This is a direct replacement for the communion of living eyes, and they must die so that these objects can propagate.
It is not possible to create a video that will release you from the traps which the damaged intelligence of our species is furiously assembling for you and every living child. But we can learn to understand both what we are carrying and what has happened to us in such a way as to create a living antidote which, rather than being something we administer — is something we become — with and for each other and our world.
You and I are the beginning of this process. If you’ve ever wanted to become a rescuer, a hero, one who saves worlds — now, together, we have that chance.
Take it.
