THE NATURE OF EXISTENCE
INTRODUCTION
Currently there are very many beliefs about the nature and substance of existence. Christians believe one thing, Buddhists another, native Americans something else, and scientists something else yet again. All these systems of belief tend to be incompatible with one another. Each has a different belief about what life is about. Is there a god or gods? Does life have a purpose? At one extreme, scientists believe we are an accident of nature, while at the other extreme, many religions believe that some god or gods created the world for humanity.
Scientist believe that the world is real and solid, and that there are no such things as souls or spirits, or anything 'supernatural'. Some ancient religions, on the other hand, do not believe that there is any such thing as a solid, material world: it is all just a dream, that human beings are all just 'dreaming minds', but the dreams we have in daylight, while we are awake, are just stronger, more real versions of the dreams we experience while asleep. In the language of our scientific age, they believe we experience a virtual reality (currently used to train pilots and doctors etc) rather than a solid, material reality.
In our western, scientific world, this idea has been explored by philosophers, found wanting, and dismissed. Essentially, they could not see how it could possibly be true, could not rationalise it, and so threw it out. Thus we in the west chose to believe in a material world. But let me stress, it is just a belief, not in any sense a verifiable fact. Science, just as much as any religion, is founded on belief.
The most famous attempt to tease out the issue of the nature of reality, was that of Rene Descartes. He tackled the idea that life is all a dream, but could not make it work because he did not have the concepts available that would allow him to make sense of the idea. In particular, we now have experience of virtual reality, and have made inroads in attempting to understand dreams.
This work revisits the idea that life is all a dream, and, using these modern concepts, shows that, not only can the idea now be made to work, but the change in perspective that results, causes all of human experience to fall into place and form one, comprehensible whole.
As a consequence, we can now find answers to such age-old questions as: is there a god? What is the nature of good and evil? ---- and any other question you can think up!
What is more, the theory moves beyond the confines of philosophical speculation, and into the realms of the experimentally, or, more accurately, the experientially, verifiable. That is to say, it moves beyond the aegis of scientific experts, and becomes a matter for the individual. The reason for this is that we now have to view the world, as I shall show, as a living world.
The importance of this is that, unlike a dead, mechanical world, a living world responds to us. Ask it a question, and it will answer. So, the traditional difficulties associated with trying to find out and understand how the world works become trivial, and the new 'difficulty' becomes learning the language of communication with the world. However, this is no more than the difficulty we experience as children learning the language of our parents.
BASICS
All of us are minds; we have no material substance. A part of my mind is a virtual reality generator. All I experience is a virtual reality. My dreams are produced in the same way by the same part of my mind, the only difference being that they are in a weaker form.
The data that my mind uses to construct this virtual reality comes from another, bigger, mind. I call this bigger mind the Que ( pronounced like the letter 'Q'). Each of us exists in symbiosis with a Que. Dreams, too, come from the Que. Our minds do produce dreams, but these are output to the Que.
When you consider the vastness and complexity of the universe of our experience, it is obvious that the 'software' needed to generate and maintain such a universe must be unimaginably complex. In fact, such complexity can only be achieved by starting with something relatively simple, and then building in change and development through evolution. So, all we have learned about the nature of the universe remains valid, but now we can understand how the virtual universe came into existence, and why it is the way it is.
Thus our minds, too, have had to evolve, and 'in tune' with our virtual universe. Through many lives we acquire and develop the ability to use our five senses, our cognitive skills and our emotional/intuitive skills. At every stage of this development, we move up to a higher level of consciousness. So, one can imagine some primitive past in which we may only have had consciousness of a world we could touch. Then we became conscious of sound, then, perhaps, of seeing. At each step, we became conscious of a whole new dimension to existence, and our existence became richer and more complex. So we can envisage our minds rather like onions: each layer of the onion is a level of consciousness, and our development is a matter of expanding our mind into new levels of consciousness.
Most recently, our emotional and cognitive abilities have developed. Of these, language and the ability to communicate with each other is the most important. The language we use is the language of symbols. The next level up is the language of metaphor. This is the language of the Que. the language of dreams. When we achieve the ability to communicate freely in the language of the Que, we are like children who have just learned to speak. Instead of having to learn by trial and (mostly) error, we can now ask questions.
In terms of consciousness, we now enter a dimension in which the universe is alive, ie, interactive, and is meaningful. By 'meaningful, I mean this: as I said, both the data for generating our dreams and the virtual world, come from the Que. So life is just a dream. That is, life, my experience, is interpretable in exactly the same way as dreams.
IN MORE DETAIL
The best metaphor to gain an understanding of this situation is that of a game such as Dungeons and Dragons.
This is an example of a game which started small, and can still be played in 'small' form, as a video game for one player, but which has evolved into a much more complex, multi-player game which has no end. It goes on increasing in scope and complexity, always offering more variety of gaming experience to more and more players. It is crucial to the development of such a game that it does not ever end. To achieve such complexity, you start with something small and simple, and then use evolution to progress towards something ever more complex.
The minimum requirement for any individual to participate in such a Dungeons and Dragons game, is for one player to form a relationship with one dungeon master.
The Dungeon Master is someone who knows the rules, and how the game works. He can change the rules or make new rules. It is the Dungeon Master's job to create scenarios for the players. The player is someone who experiences the scenarios created by the Dungeon Master.
A successful game is one in which the Dungeon Master is able to create scenarios that are sufficiently interesting that the player wants to go on playing, and in which the player is able to give good feed-back to the Dungeon Master concerning his needs and preferences, and his assessment of the latest scenarios.
This raises the question of communication between the Ques and people.
The most straight forward and clear communication from the Ques to people is dreams. Dreams use metaphors drawn from the everyday world to create meaningful and purposeful communications. They are also a form of virtual reality. They are usually distinguishable from the waking world in that they are weaker, involving less sensory data, more like films than the full, virtual reality experience. Put it the other way round, and say: the real world is just a strong dream. The important point is this: that the real world is meaningful, and can be interpreted in exactly the same way as dreams.
This harks back to an earlier time when any unusual occurrence was interpreted as meaningful. More recently, the psychologist, Carl Jung, attempted to make sense of the significance of metaphors as they appeared, not only in dreams, but in mythology, alchemy, and parapsychology. He was stopped from fully realising his ideas by two problems: firstly, he did not properly grasp the purpose of the communications, and, secondly--- and more importantly --- he did not see, much less solve, the problem of signal-to-noise. That is, if everything one sees and experiences is a possible metaphor for communication, how does one decide what is significant, and what is just noise?
I will return to this later, but, essentially, the problem has to be dealt with in the same way as a baby deals with the problem of learning to recognise and respond to human speech.
In the other direction, the Ques also need communications from people, and they receive communications in the form of dreams. The dreams we experience are from the Que; the dreams our own minds produce are sent to the Que.
These dreams contain our hopes and fears, our questions, our reactions to our everyday experiences --- all of our experience, in fact. This is where
'ask the world a question and you will get an answer' comes in. The Que will answer
all questions, address
all problems, fulfil
all hopes etc etc.
SOME FUNDAMENTALS
As I said, we have no material existence, and there is no material world. We construct our universes for ourselves from information that is transmitted to us from the Que. In fact, we exist in a sea of information, some of which is relevant to us and some of which is relevant to the infinite number of other beings who have their own, entirely alien, universes.
The first task for my mind is to filter out only information that is relevant to my universe. That is easy, in fact, because the information from my Que to me is usable only by me, and no other mind. Likewise, information produced by other Ques for their partners is meaningless to my mind. This is the nature and purpose of the symbiosis the exists between Que/human partners.
But even after I have isolated the information that comes from my Que, there is a great deal more of it that I am currently aware, much less am currently able to use. All this excess information exists in a sort of subconscious dream world, into which I get only occasional glimpses. Some of the more startling, sometimes bizarre, glimpses we get of this world are ghosts, guardian angels, hallucinations, mystical experiences, visions, and all other forms of psychic, and psychotic experience. (I have emphasised psychotic because the problem with much of what we call 'mental illness' is not the symptoms, which, as the above suggests are quite natural and even useful, but the fear of the symptoms and of mental illness/insanity)
Although all of our experience is a virtual reality, all the objects, people, animals etc. that I see, represent something/one that has an underlying reality. This is similar to icons on a computer screen: eg, I have an image on my computer screen of a waste-paper basket, and this represents a piece of software which will dispose of any files that I want to get rid of. In the same way, everything I see in virtual reality is an accurate representation of something in the underlying reality, showing my how it functions, and how it relates to all other 'objects' in that reality.
As I rise to higher levels of consciousness, I am able to manifest (ie create a virtual representation of) more and more things, and beings in my virtual world. Just as the world experienced by a mouse is immeasurably richer than that of an amoeba, mine is immeasurably richer than that of a mouse, and as my mind evolves and develops, it will, in time, be able to manifest worlds that are immeasurably richer than I am capable of experiencing now.
This idea of the mind as a growing and developing entity is crucial to a proper understanding of human nature --- which, currently, we understand very poorly, and as a consequence, we become ill. It is crucial to understanding what constitutes healthy, as opposed to unhealthy, behaviour. At the moment, we are like infants going around stuffing anything we can get a hold of into our mouths!
The best way to illustrate essential human nature is to use another metaphor drawn from the world of video games. This time it is Final Fantasy.
Basically, this is a game in which characters are built up as they experience a series of adventures. Most of these experiences are battles. After each encounter, each character gains a number of ability points. When a character gain enough ability points, certain of their attributes increases.
There is a basic set of attributes, defined as strength, agility, defence, magic and so on. All characters possess all of these attributes, just in different relative proportions.
So, through their encounters, characters accumulate ability points( often called experience points in other, similar games), which are used to increase their attributes. Then, every so often, when they have made sufficient attribute gains, they will acquire new abilities. Mostly, within the context of the game, these are abilities suitable to warriors and battles. They include such things as: threaten, aim, cure(an ability to heal themselves and others), steal etc etc.
This, then, is the essential description of human nature: we are learning creatures who experience life, and through every experience, we enhance our skills, which leads, every so often, to completely new abilities.
The importance of appreciating the video-game nature of existence, is to understand the great importance of acquiring skills and abilities, as opposed to, say, possessions, power, status etc. When any living being does what comes naturally to it, it is happy and healthy. To behave in any other way is to go against its nature, and it will become depressed and ill.
This is not to say that possessions are not desirable. Of course they are. But they are very much secondary acquisitions. Skills and abilities are primary, and with them, possessions fall into your lap!
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
The above is a very brief and concise account to the virtual reality view of the nature of existence. To some it may seem plausible, to others not. Some may be prepared to believe it, and others not. In fact, belief would be inappropriate.
This is not a matter for belief.
This is a matter for verification from individual experience.
So where does one start?
--- get in touch with your Que. Once you have established communication with your Que, it can take care of answering all other questions.
MAKING CONTACT
There are two parts to this. First, there is the push and shove, ie, some way of just experiencing, sensing, that a Que does exist. Then, second, there is the business of establishing full, conscious, articulate communication. Needless to say, the latter is somewhat harder than the former.
The first has been happening since time began. As I said before, the whole world of spirit guides, vision quests, prayer, reading tarot or runes, interpreting omens, and other religious practices are all experiences of the push-shove variety. The traditional starting point remains the best starting point for contacting the Que.
However, one should not start from a particular, established religion, such as Christianity, because they work from belief to: this is how it should be experienced. Here we are trying to get from experience, to belief.
There is an extensive, modern literature which derives from, but updates, amalgamates and extends many ancient religious practices. These make appropriate starting points. They come under the general heading of paganism, and it is up to the individual to decide which particular approach suits them.
However, to get a foot in the door, I would recommend starting with: How to: Meet and Work with Spirit Guides, by Ted Andrews. In particular, his final chapter is a caution: it describes why you should, and how you can, home in on the authentic writers/practitioners, and avoid the con-men.
A further two recommendations:
Cosmic Ordering, by Jonathan Cainer
The Hedge Witch's Way, by Rae Beth.
The essential thing one is looking for is making contact with a spirit guide, guardian angel, or whatever.
The second part of making contact, ie achieving free, articulate communication, is somewhat more difficult --- that is why it has not happened till now. It is the language of metaphor, rather than the language of symbols, our familiar, wordy languages.
Why, one might ask, does the Que not use a simple language, plain English? As anyone who reads poetry knows, the language of metaphor is much richer and more powerful than that of symbolism. People using plain English can get by using only memory, bypassing thinking and understanding. Not so with metaphor. Metaphor breeds thinking and understanding. Thus it is a language whose use feeds the growth and development of the mind.
Having said all that, the task is very much like that of a child learning to speak: ie, you have, and will develop, all the required abilities as you go. Do not try to control it, just let it grow and develop. So, really, just start the ball rolling, stay interested, and it will happen.
'Start the ball rolling', means: get a handle on the interpretation of dreams.
Much has been written about the interpretation of dreams, some of it useful, but most of it misleading, largely because the source and purpose of dreams has not been understood. Keep in mind that dreams are a communication from a mind that exists in symbiosis with your own, and whose role is Dungeon Master to your Player.
So, for example, suppose you want to learn to interpret dreams. It is the Que's job to teach you. Thus you might get a sequence of several little dreamlets in one night, and one image you can interpret very easily, while the others baffle you. The chances are that this will be a lesson in dream interpretation, and all the images are different ways of saying the same thing. That thing you got from one image, so you can use that to work backwards with the other images.
Earlier I pointed out that acquiring skills and abilities is basic to the nature of a games player. Now add to that the need to understand the game and its rules, and to be able to keep track of where you are in the game, and here you have the key to understanding the bulk of the communications that pass between Que and partner.
We go through life shedding questions as we shed hairs and leave them scattered around. "Why did he do that? Why did I not get that job? Why did I find that so difficult? What is it that appeals to me so much about that film?" These questions are the product of a natural curiosity, and we want to know the answers. Our minds are living things, growing question by question, as the body grows cell by cell. And just as the body is composed of millions of cells, so our understanding and wisdom are composed of the answers to millions of little questions. Again, if the cells do not develop, the body will cease to grow, and if the questions do not get answered, the mind ceases to grow.
At the most fundamental level, the job of the Que is to answer all those millions of little questions. It can do so in a variety of ways, but primarily through a dream, or a life experience --- which, as I have said, is interpretable in exactly the same way as a dream.
The trick is to remember the questions you have been asking, (not easy when you have been used to shedding them like hairs!) and then to associate the question with the dream/experience. The dream will usually display the incident that provoked the question, and the particular metaphor that is uses will contain the answer to the question, or, to put it another way, will shed light on the incident.
There are two questions that need to be answered when one begins to interpret dreams:
1. what images/events do you choose to interpret?
2. how do you get at the meaning?
1. It is important to let nature take its course here. Just as we have learned to use our ears and eyes effortlessly, so that our attention is caught only by sights and sounds that are relevant to us, so we need to learn to use our sixth sense to draw our attention only to dream images or events that are relevant to us.
As far as dreams are concerned, you may be woken in the night in the middle of a dream. Most of it will evaporate rapidly, but some images and impressions will linger. Those are the ones to pay attention to. Likewise, if you wake in the morning to find some dream images lingering in memory, those are relevant.
As to events in everyday life, this is largely a matter of developing intuition. What I call intuition can take many forms: gut feeling; something just jumps out at you; you get an odd physical or emotional sensation. Basically, the Que uses a physical/emotional marker pen to highlight incidents that are relevant and contain answers to your questions.
2. How to get at the meaning:
First, always look for/choose something positive or optimistic. If you cannot see anything positive, forget it. I have stressed the evolutionary nature of existence, and that is relevant here, too. The idea is to use natural selection. In the context of the external world of plants and animals, nature selects what is good, what works, breeds that into future generations, and drops what is bad. In the context of interpreting dreams/events, you must select what is positive/optimistic, and drop anything that is negative/pessimistic.
Second, dreams deal with questions that arise naturally in the mind in response to experiences. So one must make some connection between the dream and the experience.
For example: consider what I am doing right now, ie, writing this article. I am experiencing some difficulties. I am not sure I am achieving what I wanted to achieve; I find I am getting uncomfortably anxious, and I do not understand why etc etc. Tonight I might well have a dream that is an illustration of my experience of doing this writing, and when I unpick the metaphors, they will throw light on all aspects of the experience.
Finally, the meaning. Metaphors are very personal things, so one cannot create a dream dictionary. The emphasis is less on learning the particular meaning of a particular image, (which, in any case, will change) and more on learning how to handle metaphors. Poetry is the home of metaphor, and is a good place to practise, but I will offer an illustrative example: bees.
One might have a real-life encounter with a bee, or it might occur as a dream image. It is all the same.
Bees are busy. But busy could also be represented by 'ants', or a 'city', or by lots of people milling about. So why bees in particular? Look for other attributes: bees sting, they make honey, the males are called 'drones' etc etc. So the emphasis may be on 'sting' rather than 'busy', or on 'sting' and 'busy'. Then there are expressions such as: a bee in the bonnet. If you recognise that you do have a bee in your bonnet about something, then the bee may be the clue to associating the dream with the experience.
Then there are the personal associations. For myself, I was once chased by a swarm of bees. I also have a bush in the garden that the bees love. It is very relaxing on a warm day, to sit in the sun and listen to the busy drone of the bees. So, for me, the bee might suggest a combination of busy and relaxed. So a dream with a bee might suggest, to me, that I may be very busy, but I am not stressed by it; rather, I am finding it relaxing! The dream may be responding to a worry: say, I am thinking of taking up a new hobby, but I am worried that it will make my life to busy and therefore be stressful. The dream says, "No, it will make you busy, but in relaxed, and relaxing, way."
Or, it might be that I am experiencing stress, and am blaming some activity. The dream, again, is saying, "No. That activity is making me busy, but has a relaxing effect."
