T.o.N. (Theory of Nothing)

[Lloyd Gillespie]

Post cont...

Finally, this is what I mean when I say I think you joke around. You state: "Even if true absolute zero were once attainable, FS would have been required to crawl, then that friction heat would cause them to accelerate, and eventually assemble a universe most identical to ours."[Didn't you notice, it's a supposition.] And this: "The absolute frame of reference is always a static abstract, because everything is always moving, even the unmoving aspect of FS gets moved by its moving finite entities."
How can I take that seriously, Lloyd?[Try to interpret, before engaging fingers on keys.] It moves without moving?[Yeah, it's moved...No...?] No, I think that physical science gives you a false sense of physical reality,[Not hardly...] but as to explaining what that physical reality is, it comes up empty.[Metaphysical minds always come up empty about science___They possess no true fundamental science, according to the laws of physical sciences___Aristotle, remember...?] Whereas at least metaphysics offers a false sense of reality, but explains why it is false.[That's for sure___Finally, you got one right...][/quote]

I'm not trying to be mean Nobody. I'm just trying to chase you down to the sound basis of both metaphysical law systems, and physical law systems___Nothing more. Then maybe, we can start doing real science, as you do know a lot of physics, but it's simply clouded by the problem of confusing two distinct law systems, too early, in a one system mind/idea.

Hope I've helped,
Lloyd

p.s.
I kinda doubt you'll see my law points, but I keep trying, as you are very entertaining. Your physical exaggerations pushes us closer to the edge of true understanding. I sincerely hope you can see I'm only trying to clarrify our diffs. I'm not trying to invalidate your physical side of your mind, just trying to put the metaphysical side into the true perspectives it belongs... I'd also be a cripple if I didn't have my metaphysical side of the mind. I just keep the metaphysical out of my science, as most good physicists do. Einstein was one of the best, at doing just this. His god was the god of Spinoza. I also enjoy Spinoza's interpretations of the metaphysical. I respect him for the massive distance he evolved his era of hypocracy, by coyly stating hidden truths. Many were burned at the stake, in his day, for stating less___The metaphysical inquisitors___You know...?

[N0B0DY]

I'm pretty sure I woulda been burned twice back in those days, Lloyd.

So scientific mythology then?

In simplified format, going back to the beginning proposition, you have photons creating electrons and positrons. What happens to the photons? The electrons and positrons are the photons. (You really are a light being, Lloyd.) When electrons and positrons annihilate they create photons. What happens to the electrons and positrons? The photons are the electrons and positrons.

All the above are relative properties of the absolute that you attempt to dissect scientifically. I propose that to do so, they have to be classified as abstractions because there is no direction to the absolute universe - no north or south, for example. Yet, if you wish to classify them as extractions from an existent absolute, we'll go with that one. If you wish to omit the positrons, and refer to them as positively-charged electrons, that's fine too.

Imagine a universe filled to the brim with gamma-ray photons, whereby they collide to produce electrons and immediately annihilate to create more photons which collide with other photons, etc.. There is nothing to stop this process; no cooling factor allowed; and there is no time or space for photons because they propagate through empty volumetric space at top speed. Though the collisions would slow them down, but then we must invoke gravitons propagating opposite the photons or we could propose that the gravitons are the resultant electrons (more mass, more gravity) propagating at relative velocities through the photons of which their interactions would be carried through space via photons.

It seems that the photons are just aching to be well-defined in lieu of virtual probability waves. Perhaps you will be able to define them, as you refer to them as real, and explain how they are different than space itself.

They say that you can learn what to do from a wiseman or what not to do from a fool, the result is the same. So I'll be the fool, but in your explanation, avoid references to unmoving motion please. Your statement stands as being fubar, Lloyd. If the infinite, let alone the absolute, is unmoving, don't proclaim that finite things move it.

[austintorn@aol.com]

P H A N T A S M A G O R I A

Part I

Is Life But a Dream Down the Merry Stream of Consciousness?

Each morning as I awake, I can just barely remember her. Even as I rub my eyes she becomes but a shadowy recollection, although a most pleasant one, as my day begins anew. I don’t even know her name, yet I see her almost every night. All I know is that I love her dearly, for how could I not?—I’ve created her in the most perfect, loving image that I could imagine. She is a dream.

As the morning wears on she is still with me, a faint glimmer of being in my heart, a mere shadow of the love I felt at daybreak. As the day grows bright into noon my remembrance of her dims into vagueness. By late afternoon she is but a wisp of near nothingness; yet, I still can feel her presence—a joyous fulfillment—as if she had somehow snuggled into my being and merged into me. But, who is she?

Well, she seems to be every woman I’ve ever known, yet none in particular. Even now I am having trouble rebuilding her image. If only I had a clear picture—it all seems so hazy now—if only I could remember. Somehow I must see her distinctly, and more importantly, remember the vision. But how can I become alert, awake, and sober of thought in a dream?

Alas, several nights flew by and I did not dream of her; but, then, finally, on one intoxicatingly drowsy night, I saw her again—and I lived and loved with her as if tomorrow never was; however, all too soon the morrow broke, and she waned, lost to me again. Although she was so vivid, at first, she faded into evanescence. This time, though, I managed to write down her description, and by that evening her depiction was about all I had left.

Although her image had withered fast, I was now able to resurrect her, using my hasty description, even though it was made with an all too sleepy hand. For awhile I could capture her as such, but again her image faded all too soon.

Many thoughts ran through my head the next night, turning into ghostly visions and nonsensical hallucinations of the most illogical character; that is, I was dreaming, but she was not in any of the scenes. If only I could bring some order and sense into the noisy mosaic of my random and wandering thoughts. Other thoughts waited in the wings for their appearance on the stage of the absurd, and they soon tumbled and stumbled across the scene, had their moment, then passed on into oblivion, apparently never to return. Of course, I saw them all pass, but I was only a paralyzed spectator, and, since a good part of my mind was out of life, I noted nothing unusual in the chaos and therefore had believed it all to be quite real.

The weeks crawled by, and I don’t believe that I saw her, but if I did then I must have just as soon forgotten her, but somehow our love seemed to live on, but only as an idea painted in me, and so our love life was practically non existent. Then I had a great inspiration: if she wasn’t going to show up, then why couldn’t I just conjure her up! Yes! I’ve been a fool all of these days—why didn’t I think of this before?

I prepared myself well, and it took several days of practice: I went to bed relaxed, after a warm bath, and thus quite easily discarded the chaff of the day. Then I reviewed the script in my mind, going over it and over it many times. I repeated to myself one thousand times: “Control your dream. The dream images are not real, although they seem to be. You can do anything in your dream; you can control it. It is only a dream. Tell yourself therein that it is only a dream. Grasp the idea and become lucid. You can do anything iyou want—you can go anywhere, see anyone, have anything—if you can only realize that it is a dream and then direct the dream accordingly.” And so forth, I said such things, over and over and over and over.

I repeated the words while I tried to picture the most utter and complete blackness—and it was there that I etched the words rehearsed above so that they would remain there as a message to me after I slept—to be received by my normally unbelieving dream self, that drowsy mind that never questions the illogical, the mind that sees and interprets every dream literally because it all does seem so real—because the model of reality used in dreams is the same model used when we are awake.

I looked forward to the night with much anticipation. I wondered if dream images were really sharp and distinct, or if they were vague, as they seem in remembrance. Well, soon I would know.

“It is only a dream…” These were the last words that I heard before drifting off into that fabricated nether world in which I hoped to script, direct, produce, and star in any narrative that I could dream up. And there, in my dream, the etched thought “that I was dreaming” did indeed occur to me. What a revelation it was! What a realization! Still, it seemed to be so far-fetched and so amazing that I refused to believe it at the time. Damn! I was so close.

Why didn’t I believe it? Because everything in my dream was clear and sharp and colorful like a perfect image of reality itself in three dimensions—an exact match to reality itself, a genuine reconstruction, a true virtual reality!

The next night I was again haunted by the echoing thought that “I was dreaming”. I still wasn’t convinced, but at least I took some cautious control, anyway, so that I could try an experiment: I went down to the kitchen in my dream and poured some milk on the floor, much as it pained me to do so. As soon as I woke up the next morning I rushed down to the kitchen and saw that the floor was clean! This gave me confidence. I was finally making some progress in dream awareness and control. I was learning to detect the dream state.

The following night I dreamt again, realized that it was a dream, and again took control. This time I rearranged all of the wonderful items that were on my bedside table, but, of course, when I woke up, they were still untouched, having remained in their original positions.

I was getting close, for I was starting to believe. I had to be careful though, before I did crazy things in my dreams, for one must be absolutely convinced beyond certainty that a dream is indeed a dream—lest one fall into harm or become inhibited out of fear of breaking laws or passing away.

The next night in my dream I wondered again “if I was dreaming” when I was flying down the street about twenty feet in the air. At last the logical portion of my brain fully “awoke” and said to me, “You are flying down the street twenty feet off the ground; this is impossible and ridiculous; therefore this must be a dream!” So, for the first time ever I was thoroughly and utterly convinced to the core of my being that I was dreaming. Now I could begin some serious research.

Yes, I was actually there in my next dream, too, living it and observing it all at the same time. Instead of flying straight to some tropical paradise, I first wanted to inspect my surroundings—to minutely analyze the dream model and images. So, I made a conscious and definite effort to look directly at everything in the scene. As I flew through my neighborhood, I looked closely at each house, and I saw that every part was perfectly in place: every shingle and nail, every blade of grass distinct, every leaf and branch vivid; in fact, every single detail, including color, was identical to that of real life and was indistinguishable from it! What a discovery this was!

I flew high and low. The reconstruction of my street was perfect—no wonder that dreams seem so real, for they practically are. Of course, dreams may seem hazy, but that’s only because the recollection itself grows hazy over time; but, I’ve found that, if you write your dreams down upon awakening, you will find later, upon reading about them, that they will remain vivid and can be fully recalled.

And so it was, that after many months of such patience, discipline, and use of dream notes, I was able to do whatever I wished in my dreams: I traveled; I ate delicious food (and gained no calories from it); I met wonderful people; I even formed plays and movies in which each player performed totally in character (many were quite unlike my own character; yet all their performances must have from my own hidden endowments), and scene after desired scene rolled by in 3-D Cinemascope and Technicolor.

I could now do anything that a God could do; for example, I invented and ran Universes; but, now it was time to find her—the phantom woman who had initiated my dream quest in the first place. She came easily into my vision and I saw her clearly for the first time. She was the perfect woman—she was my dream girl! I saw her plainly; somehow I knew her; I loved her; for, she was made just for me. She was a composite of all the women that I had known and loved, plus all that my heart’s ideal had molded into being. Why should I ever wake?

Why indeed. Reality is harsh, and perhaps I had just stumbled onto Heaven on Earth. Well, one must wake to live—to make one’s dreams come true for real, and to gain input for further dreams, which, in turn, will give even more life upon awakening. And so it was that I found the perfect woman in real life, Cynthia, when my dreams took wing, but, that’s another story.

Yes, we all have to sleep, and we must do so every night; so why waste it? It is Heaven on earth; it is the perfect world—one in which no debts are owed, where infinite power awaits, where you can have all that the mythical afterlife has to offer. Try it.

_______________________

[austintorn@aol.com]

PHANTASMAGORIA

Part II

She awoke that morning from a dream, fresh with that free and wondrous feeling which lies at the heart of life’s exhilaration and glory; but, soon the returning waves of stifling reality swept over her like a sickness, smothering her in the dread of another hopeless day amidst the ruins of anxiety and depression.

She dragged herself out of bed. She was like a doomed ship, drifting in the storm’s aftermath under a moon pale and wan, her sails tattered and torn before the relentless wind of existence.

Her dream had seemed so real, but it, too, had wilted in the heat like a flower that had lost its precious gleam of morning dew. But the hull must drive on, musn’t it, she thought, though the mast be broken…No! No more! Tonight I will end it all Tonight I will end my life! She spent the whole day planning it.

Yes, she would scuttle her ship—her car—and sink within it to the bottom of the sea, a river, really, and drown, with a sigh and a groan, devoured by forces too large to fight against.

So, she drove her car towards the cliff near the bridge. She drove faster and faster. The waters called to her—their cool and refreshing depths invited her in. “Come to me,” some deathly voice whispered in her ear, “Come to me and find everlasting peace. Come and sleep with me in the endless night. Let me cover you with my ebon wings, in darkness, for it is eternal and complete.”

“No, no, not thee!” she cried aloud. “I cannot go with thee, not with evil!”

She drove her car up to the edge of the cliff, having stopped just short. Her mind was now drinking in and savoring the blue and green world that was reflected on the river surface. This sort of sparkling day was not the kind of day on which she could end it all. As she looked deeper and deeper into the water, she began to drift into a dream-world of her own making—a fantasy fairy world in which her ideals could live on, untainted by the reality of this mediocre world. A voice called to her. Visions of Camelot danced in her head. Mythical fantasy worlds and legends beckoned to her seemingly from all directions. An inner voice called to her, the sweet voice of someone who she could love.

She had often retreated to this storybook world, but now she would take it a bit further: she would plunge into it, live within its splendor, and live mostly therein—before all else. Yes, this dreamland would be her final refuge. The fairyland called to her daily; it would be the realization of all of the imagined perfections that she had always brought to mind when the real world had so often failed to meet her expectations.

She freed her mind from many of its real life shackles and began to daydream more freely. “I’ll breath life into you, my little voice,” she said to herself, as the noise of her consciousness slowly faded away. Her imaginary world came into focus. She could now paint it with the colors of her dreams, creating a life closer to the heart’s desire. She felt like a Goddess, being able to create life at will in her dreams. This is when she created him. This is when she brought him to life by giving him her own essence. However, his existence was his own to have, and so he knew nothing of her as his creator, but only that he was alive in a beautiful and perfect world. She had built him in her soul’s own image; she had molded him from her heart’s wishes. She fell in love with him, for she could do no other.

“Come into my dreams,” she would say to conjure him up; “Come into my dreams, and then by day I shall be well again”, for she was using lines from the romantic poets she had read.

He was a good and decent human being, for how could he be otherwise with her ideals brought to life in him. He gave fully of himself in life and love, always placing his partner’s happiness and fulfillment above his own. Their relationship was driven by love alone, and they celebrated it often in her dreams. Yes, she had, at last, found the love that the real world had so often denied her, for she had created a new and better reality.

Yes, he did feel sadness at times, too, for she could not totally submerge that part of herself, but it was subdued in him and so the sadness was only used as necessary to enhance the beauty of their love via its sheer contrast and brightness. She, too, gave all that she had to him, watching over him and loving him deeply, utterly, and completely.

Nothing could hurt him in this special world. He was impervious to pain, cold, fire, and sickness. Once he was fatally shot in a war, but he didn’t die because it was from her spirit that he drew his life principle, and of course she had willed him to live on. Another time, he was hit by lightening, but as we have seen, a dream can never die, and so it was that he arose alive and well from the smoldering embers. He never got sick and seldom had a headache. “Everyone should have the best in life,” she said to herself, “and in my world there can be no suffering.”

Each night he would come, saying, “I arise from dreams of thee.”

“Kiss me, my dearest phantasm,” she whispered, “and hold me ever dear; shelter me from the evils and the melancholy of the torturous world; show me the true meaning of love that the real world has forgotten! Come into my dreams, and then by day I shall be well again.”

Knowing not that he was her dream image, he never doubted his own existence and happiness; however, when she didn’t think of him or when she slept, he disappeared temporarily until she awoke or thought of him again. So, when she slept or daydreamed, he existed, and when she was awake and not daydreaming, then he slipped into that oblivion which he knew only as sleep and quiet slumber, the gift of Death’s kinder brother. He was the day to her night. He arose from her dreams of him—much like the mountain rises from the depths of the valley. Without her, he could not be; without him, she could not be. The circle was now complete, the link was closed—they had become two locked boxes, each of which contained the other’s key.

The fact that he only existed as a dream in her mind took nothing away from their relationship, for their love was true and the feelings were felt as deeply as they would normally have been felt in the tangible world—as anyone who has dreamt can readily attest to, for, ultimately, it is what we feel that matters, not the source that causes the feeling—for all feeling comes from within.

He did wonder, sometimes, about just how good and lucky his life was, about his having almost super powers at times; but, he concluded only that he led a charmed life which stemmed from an inner happiness that constantly poured forth visions in positive creative images that bred good fortunes. Indeed he did, for she had given him that power—a power that had come from somewhere within her. He was her twin, yet also her opposite, for somehow she had given him an enthusiasm for life which she didn’t seem to have herself. He was a reflection of her image in which his outward vision mirrored her inward hope.

Consequently, he blossomed with creativity in art, music, and writing, as she continued to maintain him as both his protector and his inspiration, although, as we have seen, he certainly did have free will, for he knew not the source of his creation nor of the tendencies that were placed into him.

They lived and loved together, allied and alloyed in a soft metallic night, blending into the golden oneness that love had always promised, but had never before delivered. He was born with the inclination of goodness—so she never had to possess him or demand from him.

Life blossomed now, and some of this exuberance did indeed surface and show itself back in the real world, but in the end she still found her waking life to be the cold harsh reality that it had always been. So, she called him back to her dreams, again and again. Here they were free to love and live fully, their chemistry sending out invitations of love which were soft, sweet, and smiling on the rising air, a spray of liquid love mystified, filling the scene with a vaporous perfume of well-being everywhere: they were up, warm, and floating on the clouds of dreams. Their passions smoldered like incense, and burned like the candle’s flame; they consumed each other often, yet continued to have endless love to give, their passions always seeming to reach new levels, then expanding even more, building, ever building.

Now and then, of course, she had to attend to events back in the true world, but it really wasn’t so bad there anymore because she knew that she had something good to look forward to in her dreams. So, she went happily through the motions in the real world, feeling better and better as the days went by, but always looking forward to the chance to dream him up again, when she would say softly to herself:

Come to me in my dreams, and then
By day I shall be well again!
For so the night will more than pay
The hopeless longing of the day.

Come, as thou cam’st a thousand times,
A messenger from radiant climes,
And smile on thy new world, and be
As kind to others as to me!

Or, as thou never cam’st in sooth,
Come now, and let me dream it truth,
And part my hair, and kiss my brow,
And say, ‘My love! Why sufferest thou?’

Come to me in my dreams, and then
By day I shall be well again!
For so the night will more than pay
The hopeless longing of the day.

(—Matthew Arnold)

[austintorn@aol.com]

PHANTASMAGORIA

Part III

She again faded off into dreamland… And there he was. Just the sight of him would bring the world to a stop, for she could only concentrate on him. When she looked at him, the birds’ song fainted on the moving air, the night breezes stopped their motion, and the moon’s radiance shone no more—for her heart had welled up within and had merged with his own. She felt herself being drawn into this dream of love in which there was only one overwhelming and all consuming feeling of glory and peace and unity.

But then, during one rainy night back in her real world, when she was driving in a storm along the cliff road around a curve, where she had once contemplated suicide, her car skidded and flew off the side of the water slicked road, falling three thousand feet below, and crashed hard and straight into the rocks below and exploded in a fiery wreck.

The flames licked at her for hours, but she felt no heat. All her bones should have been crushed in the fall, but they weren’t. She did not even bleed. There was no pain. She arose from the car’s wreck unharmed, and walked away. It was then that she realized that she, too, was a character in someone’s dream…

… She did not even bleed. There was no pain. She arose from the car’s wreck unharmed, and walked away. It was then that she realized that she too was a figment of someone else’s imagination.

“Who dreamest me?” she cried to the sky. “Reveal thyself! Who art thou? Who art thou that won’t even let me die!”

The heavens remained dumb, so she climbed back up towards the road.

Back at the top she again cried, “Who hast made me? Who?—Thy image is tainted, they DNA corrupted!”

Visions of angels appeared in the sky. “You have a question for us?” they asked.

“Yes, what sort of God made me to suffer and toil in this sad world?”

“It’s a lovely and beautiful world,” said the angels in a chorus.

“OK,” she said, “I’ll play your game. Tell me now, who made this varied and sensual world of charm and grace and color? Who gave me intellectual beauty and those rare but beautiful waves of emotions which I have known and enjoyed for their breathtaking meaning and depth?”

“A good and loving spirit,” they said. “That’s our usual answer.”

“And who gave me freedom to love and live and grow, flowering free and fragile, though beautiful, but then withering, faded and forlorn in old age, like some evanescent dream?”

“It was the Creator of all life.”

“And who gave me sadness?”

“HE did,” they answered.

“And who gave the world hunger, pain, misfortune, sickness, death, worry, and unbearable calamity which drags us suffering to the grave?”

“He reigns,” they said.

“Give me his name!” she asked. “Who is he that does not even grant me peace in the grave?—for Hell awaits me there as a further torture, does it not?”

“He rules,” the angels replied.

“His name! I ask but his name—the name of one so cruel! Who is the one that would create man as a precious vessel, though imperfect, and then destroy this lovely creation by sickness and death in rage?”

“He is the One,” they said.

“Name him and let him be known for his vengeful name—for in my own fine dreams of a man I allowed no sickness, no pain—all was love and beauty! Who is he that is the source of my everlasting pain?”

“HE does not exist,” the angels finally said, “nor does the Devil, nor do we—all simply virtually as it is and so it ever shall be. It’s the way that the world happens to work. Therefore, all is right with the world. We angels are simply manifestations of your own thoughts. All that is truly real comes from within; nothing comes from without.”

“There is no creative deity?” she asked.

“There is none; there is only an unconscious spirit which is part and parcel with the universe, co-eternal with it and embodied in it as the principle of life in all things. It is the connectedness of all things, and exists far below the level of atoms.”

She didn’t know whether she was relieved or angry at not having anyone to blame for the state of the world.

“But whose dream am I,” she wondered aloud. “Who saved me from death?”

Another voice replied—the familiar voice of the man of her dreams. “It is I who made thee, my beloved,” he said. “I dreamt of thee. You are the dream of my dreams—you are my ideal, for your love is so innocent and free!”

“No,” she said, “it cannot be, for it was I who made thee in my dreams.”

“Yes,” he said, “but my image was already in you, was it not? Who put it there? It was from that image that you gave birth to mine—but the real story is more like we have somehow made each other. I may be the day to your night, but you are the reverse to me when I dream of you. I am your opposite twin. Each of us cannot exist without the other.”

“I believe it,” she said, “although there seems to be no initial cause. Very strange though.”

“I see and dream of you, my dream woman, each night,” he whispered.

“We are indeed two souls, each of which opens the other,” she said.

“Yes, it is I who made you as you made me, from all that was already inside us. As your twin spirit I arose, given life only by your dreams. Oh please, let me live, for now I sustain you—I protect you and love you as you do the same for me. Now that I love you and want you, I need you.”

“If one of us dies,” she said, “then the other will perish also?”

“The valley cannot exist without the mountain. There can be no day without the night; there can be no beauty without sadness, no yin without the yang.”

“We are twin-opposites—as alike as dawn and dusk in our aspects; reflections, as it were of each other’s image—visions which truly exist in the mind, for all is real in the mind.”

“Day gives birth to night and then night gives birth to day. That is us and that is the cycle which created us, within which scheme it was not necessary for either part to come first, as with the chicken and the egg.”

“But we live neither here nor there. Does it matter? Now that we know that we’re just dream images how can we really live and love?”

“We can neither fully live nor completely die where we are.”

“What is deathless is also lifeless, although it is still a beautiful work of art, such as the ideals that we see in a painting.”

“I can be as real as you wish me to be, as can you to me.”

“Some say it’s crazy to try and live a dream.”

“Some say it’s crazy not to!”

“Join my real world,” she said, “and I will join yours as well.”

“But your day is my night and vice versa. How can we meet?”

“We’ll meet at twilight dawn or dusk—the only time that night and day can touch.”

“I shall come,” he said, “leaving his dreamland forever and joining hers as her real life love.

She greeted the man of her ideals, saying to him, “I have wished you into being. My thoughts of you have colored my actions and have led me to find you in the real world—it was a self-fulfilling prophecy, an example of positive creative imagery.”

“It was indeed,” he answered. “Although here I shall at last know true sadness and death. But, also, I will experience higher levels of beauty.”

She said, no longer anxious or depressed, “When you’re open to beauty, then you become vulnerable to sadness. What I have finally learned, the hard way, is that they are inseparable in life.”

“Some people lead lives in which they are fat, dumb, and fairly content.”

“Yes, they don’t live much, but then again, they don’t suffer much either. They’re immune to both beauty and sadness.”

“It’s like when you’re not with me. There is pain when I miss you, but for me, if I had no one to miss, then the pain would be greater.”

The new light of morning shone in that blessed mood that attends to the quiet intermingling of day and night in the dawn’s misty twilight. She came to him during morning twilight; he came to her at evening twilight. In between, they dreamt of each other.

Each day forward was born in quiet innocence as their human hearts tenderly touched—open, vulnerable, and exposed, yet fully alive and beating. Days turned into weeks as they grew close together in the soft glow that was neither night nor day, but was somewhere else, in that nether world of half-light dawn or dusk. The morning brimmed with the freshness of life, its beauty spreading far and wide into every root and tendril. Life took wing from their these cocoons—an ugly caterpillar having magically transformed into a beautiful butterfly. Weeks turned into months. It was a dream within a dream within a dream. Faint images from dim shadows flickered and grew brighter. High noon came and showered its brightness into life’s every chamber. Now that they had felt the glory of reality, they would seek it always. From the months a life was made. Life was a dream. The afternoon sparkled and spread its gold to every living thing. Years of contentment rolled by.

[austintorn@aol.com]

PHANTASMAGORIA

Part IV

The soft light of evening shone again, as always, in that sacred mood that attends the quiet intermingling of day and night in the twilight of dusk. He came, as usual, saying:

I arise from dreams of thee
In the first sweet sleep of night,
When the winds are breathing low,
And the stars are shining bright.

I arise from dreams of thee,
And a spirit in my feet
Has led me—who knows how?—
To thy chamber window sweet!

The wandering airs they faint
On the dark, the silent stream,—
The champak odours fail
Like sweet thoughts in a dream,

The nightingale’s complaint,
It dies upon her heart,
As I must die on thine,
O, beloved as thou art!

O, lift me from the grass!
I die, I faint, I fail!
Let thy love in kisses rain
On my lips and eyelids pale.

My cheek is cold and white, alas!
My heart beats out loud and fast
Oh! press it close to thine again,
Where it will break at last!

(—Shelley)

He awoke that morning from a dream, filled with dread, dripping with sweat, wondering whether he had gone to Heaven or to Hell, and not knowing if he was truly awake or still in the midst of a nightmare; but, soon a calming wave of peace and quiet swept over him as he turned and saw that his dream lady was lying there next to him.

“I’m alive?”

“You were sick,” she said, “something you’re not very used to in my world, but you are recovering now. I suppose it’s a sign of age, for we’ve spent many years together now.”

“We’re getting old, aren’t we,” he continued.

“Indeed, but we still have many good years left. Here, I’ll read you something from Wordsworth that he wrote in his later years:”

What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind.

(—Wordsworth)

A shade passed from between them—a door between their worlds had opened to let their dreams pass through. One shooting star after another signaled these wishful events.
They awoke that morning from another dream—or perhaps they dreamt that they awoke—on the shore where they had once discovered the Spirit of the Earth. They rubbed the sand from their eyes and opened their minds to the day, being careful not to clear from them the shadows of dreamy visions. Their night-time apparitions were soothing, calming, relaxing, real, tranquil, refreshing, restful, and peaceful—just like the water of the lake that still slept under the morning mist.

They had camped on the shore, in a mossy nook between some rocks. An overhang of trees protected them. They couldn’t see the sky, but they could see a reflection of the sky and its clouds in the water when the mist lifted. A reflected bird flew in a reflected sky. Water lilies floated in the heavenly mirror. Orange day-lilies nearby told them that that deep summer was here. Haunting visions poured forth as they looked at the image of the sky in the water. Soft winds rippled the water ever so slightly and blew the branches of the reflected trees. Dreamy visions held them still a bit sleep-eyed. Again their worlds had met at twilight. A lark rose from the water and flew into nothingness. Gossamer threads ran from rock to rock, seemingly attaching them to their dream world. Was it dawn or dusk? In the half light, it did not matter.

“Which is real and which is an illusion?” she wondered.

“Do we sleep or do we dream?” he asked.

She answered with a poem:

Some say that gleams of a remoter world
Visit the soul in sleep, —that death is slumber,
And that its shapes the busy thoughts outnumber
Of those who wake and live — (—Shelley)

Blossoms began falling from the trees and started to cover their feet. When a cushion had been formed, they sat down to prepare an imaginative breakfast of nuts and strawberries. Flowers gently cascaded onto them as their dreams took wing. They did eight impossible things like this before breakfast each and every day.

A unicorn wandered by, its existence fed only by the possibility of being. A chimera came forth and ate nuts and berries from their hands. Faeries danced between the flowers, caught only by a believing glance. Elves rode flying horses, and centaurs walked proudly down the path near them. These were the creatures who never were, all living in the land that never was.

They looked into each other’s eyes, reflecting on their thoughts.

“I’m not sure what world we’re in anymore,” she noted. “Nor does it matter very much which side of the looking glass we’re on, for we are here.”

“It’s as if some ethereal beauty has descended over our thoughts, and lent a poetic vision to us,” he added, “a shadow of some divine perfection It is rapt, although a little vague, but I can sense its presence. Hear:”

—I look on high;
Has some unknown omnipotence unfurled
The veil of life and death? or do I lie
In dream, and does the mightier world of sleep
Spread far around and inaccessibly its circles? (—Shelley)

The day soon came to life, and they saw castle builders laying stones, dream merchants giving away various unrealities, idealists realizing their ambitions, visionaries watching plans taking shape, ghosts and wraiths playing joyfully on the air, vapors forming and rising and then coalescing into forms, phantoms riding on the light hearted breezes, will-o’-the-wisps sparkling over the water, and mirages becoming real at the slightest touch.

“I am so much enjoying our world,” she said.

“Here, all things are possible—it is an oasis untouched by oblivion and regret, free from contagion, debt, worry, care, strife, and woe.”

And so they lived in the clouds, drifted into the Land of Nod, resided in Never-Land, and made a home in the world of make believe. Twilight fell and brooded awhile at the shore. They looked at the water and saw therein a reflection of the sunset. Reflected fire burned through reflected clouds. A fish swam in the reflected sky.

She walked to the water’s edge and looked into it, expecting to see her reflection there, but she was surprised and pleased to see his there instead.

“Come,” she said, “look! Come here to the shore.”

He walked down to the water and looked in, seeing not his own reflection, but a reflection of her.

“We have merged,” he said, “we are one. We will be strong now. We will survive in either world.”

[Lloyd Gillespie]

I'm pretty sure I woulda been burned twice back in those days, Lloyd.

So scientific mythology then?

In simplified format, going back to the beginning proposition, you have photons creating electrons and positrons. What happens to the photons? The electrons and positrons are the photons. (You really are a light being, Lloyd.) When electrons and positrons annihilate they create photons.[You say annihilate. I don't agree with annihilation. I think science has over-used this principle far too often. I choose fuse and de-fuse, and increased states of entropy, due to velocity changes, just as we witness in the hydrogen atom's atomic and electron structure and dynamics___high and low orbits.] What happens to the electrons and positrons? The photons are the electrons and positrons.[All agreed, they interchange characteristics, and physical content.]

All the above are relative properties of the absolute that you attempt to dissect scientifically.[I can't accept relative as a valid scientific concept. It's too confusing, linguistically. Not that I don't realize the science community has been using this concept for over a century, it's still open to too many interpretations. I choose concrete motion of mass and matter densities. I understand what you mean, but it allows too much of the metaphysical understanding to enter the conversation. I'd rather see relativity and relative statements expressed in clear Newtonian classical mechanics, as can easily be done. It avoids the meta-confusions.] I propose that to do so, they have to be classified as abstractions because there is no direction to the absolute universe - no north or south, for example.[See what I mean. When the meta enters scientific discussion, such discussion is meaningless, to me.] Yet, if you wish to classify them as extractions from an existent absolute, we'll go with that one.[Preferably...] If you wish to omit the positrons, and refer to them as positively-charged electrons, that's fine too.[No, we have no disagreement, except as stated above.]

Imagine a universe filled to the brim with gamma-ray photons,[Absolutely agreed.] whereby they collide to produce electrons and immediately annihilate[I would interject___fuse and de-fuse to respect the conservation of energy laws.] to create more photons which collide with other photons, etc..[Agreed, of all different frequencies/velocities, yet so close in velocity, our instruments only register the velocity diffs as frequencies.] There is nothing to stop this process; no cooling factor allowed;[Sorry, you can never eliminate thermal dynamics___it's absolutely infinitely eternal.] and there is no time or space for photons because they propagate through empty volumetric space at top speed.[Sorry again, the fundamental photonic substance is also absolutely eternal, yet having the infinitesimally thinnest density possible, thus influencable by the universe's thermal dynamics.] Though the collisions would slow them down, but then we must invoke[No invokations allowed, they are just reactions of photonic collisions, fusions and de-fusions.] gravitons propagating opposite the photons or we could propose that the gravitons are the resultant electrons (more mass, more gravity) propagating at relative[Real defined velocities, due to FS densities and resultant frequencies. Friction and sound also play their roles.] velocities through the photons of which their interactions would be carried through space via photons.[Perfectly agreeable.]

It seems that the photons are just aching to be well-defined in lieu of virtual[Real] probability waves. Perhaps you will be able to define them, as you refer to them as real, and explain how they are different than space itself.[They are space itself, in its infinitesimally thinnest density absolutely possible. It's just like Dave and I have referenced many scientific experiments, and you yourself, with Hau's experiments, that it is a thin density non-viscous fluidic substance. I say these experiments are close to looking at space substance. In my book of knowledge speculation, space is absolute matter substance, just as Dave first described it in his "Matter is everything in a void" post___I concur, as it's the only way possible to make sense of the entire universe. It's just him and I have diffs about changing matter states of FS and motion.]

They say that you can learn what to do from a wiseman or what not to do from a fool, the result is the same.[Agreed.] So I'll be the fool, but in your explanation, avoid references to unmoving motion please.[See other post today about the unmovingness of motion. It explains why the semantics/linguistics is seemingly contradictory, when in fact, it's not. The unmoving virtual container of infinity moves within, while not moving without, as there is no without, thus moving the unmoving.] Your statement stands as being fubar, Lloyd.[It's just our linguistic ignorance, not to recognize this little trickster, at the very center of our feeble brains. I didn't put it there, the random uncertainty of the universal evolution did. I'll keep it though, as it explains not only the mechanics of the universe, but the mind as well. I discovered this dynamic fallacy of linguistics, back in 1972, and had to accept it after years of playing with false paradoxes, as they don't really exist. Finally I realized, just as Poincare' stated, that anytime a singularity is being discussed, it is required to exhibit seeming paradoxes, to the investigating mind, even though they are not there. The mind is many, trying to understand the one, when the one, in reality, is also the many parts and motions/frequencies/velocities.] If the infinite, let alone the absolute, is unmoving, don't proclaim that finite things move it.[They move parts of it at a time, do they not...? When matter covers all distances, and moves in all distances, it moves the unmoving overall infinity, just as the butterfly moves infinity, but in truth only part of infinity, or is our mind incapable of knowing this conceited difference...?]

I realized how confusing this discussion of the one and the many was years ago, and It hasn't improved much over the years. Give me your contribution to the fundamentals of the one and the many unmoving mover___the moving unmover...? It seems the most complex of linguistics/semantics. Mabe it's like Lautszu said, we can't discuss this factor, but I say we can, as I understand its dynamics, but to relay that dynamics to another, the language may be ellusive... We'll just have to see...

Lloyd

[N0B0DY]

You'll have to forgive me, if you notice a few breaks in my response. I kept scrolling up to laugh at Austin wearing that red dress, and it was hard to type.

I had to go into super-overdrive mode to figure out your last message, Lloyd, but it seems that we are invoking a "one" unnecessarily to suit the requirements of an a priori type of aether or movable space that has not been experimentally confirmed. So, if we are allowed to include metaphysics as far as a philosophical means of logically deducing what the FS is, it makes things easier. Also, just a quick note, if we are going to use a virtual boundary for the universe with no exterior, understand that the virtual waves would propagate without impediment at absolute speed and reach unthinkable distances in no time at all. Yet, there would be no distance to reach because there is no outside.

With that said, the zero, unlike the one or any other number, cannot be literally divided and I propose it is the only number that can accurately represent the absolute. We can break up any other positive or negative number into fractional quanta, but the zero remains changeless. Then questions of why there is something instead of nothing is rendered meaningless because there are no literal things, or "one" thing either for that matter. Non existence is the epitome of your fusion, when taken literally, because it is absolute, and there is no need to invoke an eternally existent universe.

What I don't think is understood about non existence is that it simultaneously represents two abstract perspectives. Namely: expansive, in that there is no exterior boundary; and contractive, in that there is no interior. It represents both the largest and smallest, amazingly in the same changeless state, because it is beyond even the infinite.

Moving right along, without moving, we can now perhaps fathom the relative absolutes with regards to motion with more clarity. For every finite point invoked as an existent reference point, we necessarily must invoke an infinite number of finite points that essentially implies a flapping and overlapping of all points because there is nothing preventing them from overlapping. If we were to suggest that there is a literal substance preventing the points from overlapping, that substance would have to be considered as consisting of alt finite points as well. So, ultimately, even thinking as clearly as we can, there is still quite a bit of quantum cloudiness we have to account for, because literal motion would have to be based on counterintuitive circumstances whereby the same thing is moving in two directions at the same time - i.e., any quantum measurement, no matter how small, necessitates an equal measurement that absolutely opposes it. And this should be allowable because it is space that we have agreed upon is movable, and since there can be no such thing as spaces between space itself, all quantitative measurements must be absolutely negated.

I really think it easier to erase all that madness, Lloyd, and focus on positing a conscious-based model whereby the probability parameters of physics are set in time by the subconscious mind which calculates all possibilities at super-luminal velocities. This way, only what is observed is real, or can be called real, and looking into the clouds for things don't exist can be abandoned because no matter how far in or out we look we can always only find what is observable - moving at sub-luminal velocities through an observably-filled vacuum that dilates absolute time.

[austintorn@aol.com]

Noboby,

I'm still not sure if the subconscious mind is so talented to calculate and collapse the super-luminal.

Are lower species or plants doing this, too, or are they our phantasms?

And isn't the subconscious somehow hampered by being part of the "dream", as well, in what it forms?

The lady in the dress is my reflection in the mirror or the water, but I am still the one eating cake.

[Profpat]

Sorry Austin;

But your reflection is a lot better looking then you are.

Best,

Pat