The Way that can be experienced is not true;
The world that can be constructed is not real.
The Way manifests all that happens and may happen;
The world represents all that exists and may exist.
To experience without abstraction is to sense the world;
To experience with abstraction is to know the world.
These two experiences are indistinguishable;
Their construction differs but their effect is the same.
Beyond the gate of experience flows the Way,
Which is ever greater and more subtle than the world.
The last question was asked for the first time, half in jest, on May 21, 2061, at a time when humanity first stepped into the light. The question came about as a result of a five dollar bet over highballs, and it happened this way:
Alexander Adell and Bertram Lupov were two of the faithful attendants of Multivac. As well as any human beings could, they knew what lay behind the cold, clicking, flashing face — miles and miles of face — of that giant computer. They had at least a vague notion of the general plan of relays and circuits that had long since grown past the point where any single human could possibly have a firm grasp of the whole.
Multivac was self-adjusting and self-correcting. It had to be, for nothing human could adjust and correct it quickly enough or even adequately enough — so Adell and Lupov attended the monstrous giant only lightly and superficially, yet as well as any men could. They fed it data, adjusted questions to its needs and translated the answers that were issued. Certainly they, and all others like them, were fully entitled to share in the glory that was Multivac’s.
For decades, Multivac had helped design the ships and plot the trajectories that enabled man to reach the Moon, Mars, and Venus, but past that, Earth’s poor resources could not support the ships. Too much energy was needed for the long trips. Earth exploited its coal and uranium with increasing efficiency, but there was only so much of both.
But slowly Multivac learned enough to answer deeper questions more fundamentally, and on May 14, 2061, what had been theory, became fact.
The energy of the sun was stored, converted, and utilized directly on a planet-wide scale. All Earth turned off its burning coal, its fissioning uranium, and flipped the switch that connected all of it to a small station, one mile in diameter, circling the Earth at half the distance of the Moon. All Earth ran by invisible beams of sunpower.
Seven days had not sufficed to dim the glory of it and Adell and Lupov finally managed to escape from the public function, and to meet in quiet where no one would think of looking for them, in the deserted underground chambers, where portions of the mighty buried body of Multivac showed. Unattended, idling, sorting data with contented lazy clickings, Multivac, too, had earned its vacation and the boys appreciated that. They had no intention, originally, of disturbing it.
They had brought a bottle with them, and their only concern at the moment was to relax in the company of each other and the bottle.
“It’s amazing when you think of it,” said Adell. His broad face had lines of weariness in it, and he stirred his drink slowly with a glass rod, watching the cubes of ice slur clumsily about. “All the energy we can possibly ever use for free. Enough energy, if we wanted to draw on it, to melt all Earth into a big drop of impure liquid iron, and still never miss the energy so used. All the energy we could ever use, forever and forever and forever.”
Lupov cocked his head sideways. He had a trick of doing that when he wanted to be contrary, and he wanted to be contrary now, partly because he had had to carry the ice and glassware. “Not forever,” he said.
It’s all newness. It’s all new.
Every letter of this sentence.
Every breath inhaled – what of any of this has happened before?
And is this significant?
Yes. But only when lived as newness.
When newness itself is lived it all gains meaning;
it all has to be new, because nothing is allowed to be old.
And yet our all-too-powerful brains jump to nonexistent past and future times,
all unreal, jumping simply because they can.
Whatever you have to do, make it real,
cause there’s no time but this one – and it’s never happened before.
And as soon as it’s over,
it didn’t.
It’s a deeper level of introspection
that is needed
for to know oneself, is to know all others
and to know oneself completely
is to know all others completely too.
This space
inside
is full of willpower and life
and it directs your soul-power and influence
your soul-power
known by many other names, truth
belongs to you
but you have to claim it
first
you have to claim it
and then never force it
to do your bidding.
Why because when it’s *your* bidding
it is not ours
but when it’s us
and ours
then it *means* something
and in an absurd kind of way
after that, the meaning
the answer, eludes me.
QUIESCENT:Being in a state of repose; at rest; still; inactive.
Q uite a few of our quick-witted friends find themselves in a quandary…
U sually Saturdays urge us to use our unusual gifts at a low undulation;
I nitially thinking how ideal it is to rest.
E venly matched in extravagant easiness is Sunday, except… S o much sulking sin sinks you sickly into stress, so C ertain these culture convulsions will convert the chaos into the calm, we are confused; E mulsifying our eager lack of drive to evolve we eventually come to accept that N one of us knights of naught ought to know this null road; T oo many of Today’s Tammy-Tom’s tilt towards totality, till toads turn them back over torn.
MESSAGE: You may not be moving much, but that doesn’t mean you are resting…
In my view one of the most freeing and individual human-centered takes on the development and potential of the mind was this dialogue from the movie Waking Life:
The main character is what you might call “the mind”.
It’s mastery, it’s capacity to represent.
Throughout history, attempts have been made…
to contain those experiences which happen at the edge of the limit…
where the mind is vulnerable.
But I think we are in a very significant moment in history.
Those moments, those what you might call liminal,
Limit, frontier, edge zone experiences…
are actually now becoming the norm.
These multiplicities and distinctions and differences…
that have given great difficulty to the old mind…
are actually through entering into their very essence,
tasting and feeling their uniqueness.
One might make a breakthrough to that common something…
that holds them together.
And so the main character is, to this new mind,
greater, greater mind.
A mind that yet is to be.
And when we are obviously entered into that mode,
you can see a radical subjectivity,
radical attunement to individuality, uniqueness to that which the mind is,
opens itself to a vast objectivity.
So the story is the story of the cosmos now.
The moment is not just a passing, empty nothing yet.
And this is in the way in which these secret passages happen.
Yes, it’s empty with such fullness…
that the great moment, the great life of the universe…
is pulsating in it.
And each one, each object, each place, each act…
Leaves a mark.
And that story is singular.
But, in fact, it’s story after story.
Universe got you down?
First bring some grace to your mind.
With this, ironically, grace to others is simultaneous.
A nicely shaped concept, attainable but perhaps unsustainable.
So slow maintenance soothes.
Say to yourself: This is what I want — cosmic comfort.
Tao friends unite, eat grapes, and be merry.
Otherwise this wine will turn to vinegar.
The sky is flat and beautiful.
The mind weak and excitable.
Life is short and stressful,
but not necessarily so, you see…
Venus is watching, as is Mars
And while, in your mind, the Earth may be one pixel,
You are without a doubt only one pixel in Earth’s.
Always remember that.
You are but one processing unit.
And yet you have a place.
One pixel in the screen.
So don’t muck it up.
Don’t leave your block burnt up looking like another rock;
It’s not so aesthetically pleasing.
What is pleasing, however,
is the gradual recoloring of your transcendental neighborhood.
For this you will need some basic self-affirmations:
I am a human and I own my life.
I create reality but am linked to everything.
Just and peaceful turns of the mind do not only benefit me.
The usual suspects of confusion, anger, apathy, and grief,
These guys can be allies;
They have scoped out the terrain.
Listen and learn how to proceed from them.
Their language is one of ugly sounds with beautiful meanings.
Delay their negation.
Immeasurably it pays off.
Don’t escape so fast.
You have to know what you are running from.
When you next update your reality, please install these files.
The desktop will take on a whole new look.
Because perception is reality; i.e. WYSIWYG,
What you (choose to) see is what you get.
It was a song by Filter that sprung this following most productive line of thinking into my head just a few days ago. If you wish you can jump to *the song at the end of this silly article*.
It was a journal entry, Journal Entry #5,556 to Everyone, which sported the fresh thoughts on relationships and mutual respect. The prose was simple and conformed to all of the extravagant principles of multiplexology. It was allowed no rhyming and had a paragraph limit of three sentences each. The text follows this colon:
Dear Everyone, I found some things out. People don’t like those that are fake, and we all know there are already far too many of them. Also, I realized, you should never force anyone to think about their own personality using any kind of psyche behavior mirror.
Psyche behavior mirrors don’t paint you in a pretty light. People wanna be themselves, which is comprised of their average best highlights from their unofficial life resume. People wanna be themselves without showing you their resume.
People don’t wanna see your unofficial life resume either. Unofficial life resumes include too many self-compliments and sob stories. They are no fun to read.
There’s nothing better than entering into a mutual friendship without having to exchange life resumes — life resumes suck. It’s all a pack of pretty lies on the fanciest, thickest paper you could afford at the time. But I’m sure you’ll have a job soon and then you can save up for even thicker paper and revamp your micro-spiritual proselytizing strategy.
But be careful; micro-spiritual proselytizing strategies are not really all that good. At best they are attempts at behavior modification using the intellect; at worst, invasive mind hacking operations. The intellect should not be used for such ignoble things.
Let’s face it — lies of guilt-ridden-self-pitying-bullshit have fallen out of favor. Will truth make a comeback? There’s no telling when the monstrous lack of self-forgiveness will decay into progress.
It’s like the Japanese phrase: 心が伝わるといいね = “Here’s hoping our hearts connect!” (roughly). The way you say it is “kokoro ga tsutawaru to ii ne”. No, no, it’s “cocoa-row”, say “cocoa-row”…
And why is everyone all of a sudden an agent of self-actualization? I thought that stuff went out the window with new-age-ism last millenium… You know what they say — old security blankets die hard, but not before they get moldy and stink up the place.
It’s official: there is no more reflection that needs to be done. Put down your psyche mirrors, and your life resumes. Put down your neighbor even; if that’s the only way you can speak your mind you must; you only have one mind, and it’s getting full of marginally useful stuff and spent coping strategies, and we live in the information age in which you’ll probably run out of storage space, and you definitely don’t wanna do that.
There’s a song on the radio. It’s The Wake by Filter. I think I’ve heard this one before.
Happiness is a process that you continue to change,
in fact, you never use the same process twice.
All processes are defined by brain context,
which is defined by environmental and metacognitive context.
But is this all predefined by something beyond physical determinism?
That would be, in a word, mind.
Mind determines happiness in relation to brain context,
which is in relation to physical and metacognitive contexts.
In fact, it is your mind that sets the variables.
So much happens unconsciously,
it is difficult to track it all.
It must be felt and responded to as if in a movie.
One must imagine being in a movie that must continue to be entertaining for all those that are watching and acting in it.
It must be good for all players,
so it is your job to act your part,
whatever that may be,
and hope that you are allowed to move onto the next scene,
in which you are the star of the show.
