13. Impermanence

Thursday, May 9, 2024

4 a.m. Very well, gentlemen, you’re up. Strands and ultimate time lines?

Remember we said “how you may wish to think of them.” We are revolutionizing the concept, but that doesn’t mean the new view is “right” and previous views are “wrong.” It is less about truth and error than about the new light shed on any subject by changing viewpoint. In practice, your view will be a combination of new and old. We’re encouraging you to make that the theory as well as the practice.

Viewpoint is not a zero-sum game. A new view needn’t discredit an old one, but may actually reinforce it, in a way, by adding nuance and explanation.

I’m certainly seeing that in my reading. I am bingeing on histories from the newly reopened UVA library, and as always it is surprising how a new view of a subject I felt I knew will show it in an entirely new light. I have come to see that we never really know more than an approximation, a shadow, of what really happened, and how, and why.

And if that is so of 3D subjects, how much more is it likely to be when dealing with subjects for which there is little or no sensory evidence. But this is not cause for mourning; it may equally well be considered to be Rita Warren’s definition of happiness, an endless research project with no need for writing reports.

However, having pointed out that a new way of seeing is not the same as a complete overturning of what you know, still it is true that it can be a revolution. So let us continue to revolutionize.

You have come to think in terms of alternate time-lines, alternate realities, creation or discovery of new versions of the future as created by your deciding this rather than that. This is somewhat true. However, it can be improved as a model. We could not have done this beginning with the generally accepted model of time nor the generally accepted model of what human life is. But now we can build upon the intermediate platform.

The change we urge you to try on is difficult to describe. We might say, exchange time for space in your model of how there can be infinite numbers of potential universes, each one created by choice – with, of course, everyone choosing. Consider that each of these versions exists sequentially rather than simultaneously. This isn’t right either, but we probably need to use this as a halfway-house concept.

• Begin with your current situation, whatever it may be. As a result of every background situation in your life, you are where you are.
• You make some decision, or someone else does, known or unknown to you.
• If it is you making the decision, the world changes (seen sequentially) or splits off a new variant (seen as simultaneously existing). This is you guiding your life by conscious or unconscious intent.
• If it is someone else making a decision that affects you, the world still alters in the same way (and may be seen either of two ways), but this is you being affected by “the world,” by life.
• In either case, you are now in a world different from the one you were in before you or someone made a decision. Did that new place appear from nothing? Or, did you move your awareness into a place that already existed? Or maybe, is it not a place at all, but a thought?
• We have occasionally described reality as a constantly changing light show, each flickering light being someone’s decision with its instant and its longer-range consequences. You will notice, we have not described it as an uncounted number of alternative light-shows.
• The world is mind-stuff, remember, not rocks in space. When you dream, does a change in the dream split off alternate versions of the dream?

You can see perhaps what we are now doing.

You seem to be tying up a lot of loose-end concepts that never fit together very well.

They each served a purpose of explaining this or that, but they lacked the over-arching concept that would make sense of them as a system. That is what we are about now. Only, don’t assume this new series will leave no loose ends. As we have said many times, you never get to The Truth; at best you get closer to it.

Now, perhaps some will be uncomfortable with a concept of perpetual flux rather than the seemingly stable collection of alternative realities. If you are one of those, deal with that discomfort: It will teach you something. But it is in the nature of life as experienced from a 3D background to change. Change, not stasis, is the default condition. That means that a model that considers alternative universes and parallel timelines to be simultaneously existing is less true than a model that we will try to describe. You might think of it as a level of reality in which any conceivable particular universe or timeline may be found in potential, not in actual.

I think you mean, it exists if we go looking for it, or happen to be plopped into it, but not otherwise. You seem to be saying alternative universes and timelines come into existence and go out of existence depending upon choices made. We never think of alternatives disappearing.

That isn’t quite the way to put it either, but perhaps between us we have sent out the spark that will lead some to an intuitive leap. The differences are more temporal than (in effect) physical. Yet this still doesn’t quite capture it. Perhaps best to say, consider the Buddhist emphasis on impermanence. It is not confined to 3D affairs.

It sounds almost like a two-dimensional table in a spreadsheet. If you read this one way, it is sequential, read the other way, it is simultaneous.

Yes, very good. And you have no good 3D models to use to get that concept across. Isn’t it interesting that you used as model an abstract concept that can be expressed in 3D logic.

Now, we recognize that this change in concept creates as many puzzles as it solves, but that is the nature of changing base camps. Given persistence, we will get to the goal nonetheless.

People may wonder what’s the point of life if it doesn’t create anything that lasts.

Yes. What’s the point of a kiss, or a sunset, or the taste of a ham and cheese sandwich, or the working of a crossword puzzle? And, indeed, to some people that question will seem to reinforce the doubt, because they already wonder why bother doing anything, when it won’t last.

And that’s our next installment? The purpose of choosing?

It may well be. We’ll see. But it is more important to clear away the aura of certainty that may grow around a concept than to replace the concept with another that will grow the same kind of moss.

And you are just the guys to set the stone rolling. Very well, our thanks as always.