I slept in on the Hawaiian mountain top the next morning, snug in the temperate climate and balmy breezes, while Alice of wonderland took the motorcycle to an interview at CDC Corp. I walked down to the fort, rather like flew there, and had the Army’s free lunch, my first poem in my pocket. I’d typed on a keypunch machine and had printed by running a program containing mostly Print statements. I marveled at the wonders wrought from just 1’s and 0’s, or was it “there” and “not there”?
I used my smaller motorcycle to ride over to headquarters and pick up the computer tapes that soon sat in the first-class seat beside me enroute to a layover in Tokyo due to the 11 PM curfew in Korea. The International Date Line went by and so I time-traveled into the past, arriving in Japan before I had left Honolulu, or maybe it was the other way around, but I’d left a day early just in case. The day’s length was now stretching from 24 to 30 hours and it so would be easy to fall asleep later. I thought about time as being the rotation of the earth.
I still missed the curfew and had to stay in a bed and breakfast near the DMZ, then rode a train south for a few hundred miles and made the last primitive way with the Army’s Update to its Supply System riding with me in an oxcart. Saw some old friends and vacationed a few days, trying not to fall into the open sewers at night, while the tapes checked out, which they usually did. Saw someone riding a bicycle with 7 crates stacked atop the back of it and wondered if gravity was as strong over here.
Flew back, breezing through immigration in sultry Guam on my Army ID card, crossing the date line again, into the future, and landing in Oahu, whose airport terminal walls were always open to the elements and flowers and waterfalls. I wondered if there was an easier way, not even realizing that Al Gore was probably already thinking about inventing the internet.
Back on the mountaintop for a few days of recuperation from my “vacation”, I wondered, like Nobody, how the universe could even be here, finally assuming something like “it had to be”.
After waking from a dream that was as real as real, I entertained the thought life was but a dream that was taking us merrily down the stream of consciousness, but I got stuck at the point of 1) wondering how illusions could actually function and be manipulated—not assuming any trickery of, say, all the intricacies of nature’s organisms just being there for show, such as in a night dream, and 2) why the brain, while probably not creating the dream stuff, shouldn’t be real enough to at least interpret it—while at the same time being part of the illusion itself, like everything else.
I turned over and went back to sleep’s virtual reality.
Speaking of dreams, I often lose my high school schedule and miss weeks of algebra class until I get a new one—and then when I look up my homeroom, I find that its number changes each time I look at the paper. This is the point at which I realize that I am dreaming and can relax and have some fun with the dream.
When I look at a book in my dreams, the words move around and some digits are interspersed with the letters. Once I read the true Theory of Everything but had no way to print it out—and forgot its contents (just a joke). Another time I examined a wooden porch railing in minute detail trying to see how many dots-per-inch of resolution it had—but it was perfect, just as when we are awake. Some bugs were in the shape of triangles—a dream flaw, among many others, and I could fly, and so forth, but those types of things gave me more clues that all wasn’t really real—but the real question now is, Nobody or anybody, how can we detect the hallucinations of our waking life and is there anything we should do differently if we come to deduce our unreality?
We differ in that non-existence is not a phenomenon that can exist as a fundamental functioning factor of existence. Reality is what Austin refers us to as a possibility, but that it never "becomes" real because the absolute universe is non-existent and can never change. Real things cannot be superimposed over that(?) which isn't there!
It is all a matter of words, Nobody. Therefore I have to invite you to replace some of your words with other, similar words to see what's going on. I suggest replacing the words real, is, and exists with the word function. As I have been trying to say, your ideas that you are trying to deliver are fine with me, but the way you are using the frameworks is not allowed in logic. Your words are not correctly used.
When stating that the universe functions it becomes obvious that the opposite — that the universe does not function — is an empty shell. Because when stating that the universe does not function, no valid delivery has been given. The latter simply has no meaning to it. The functioning universe contains the possibilities Austin refers to. I can write the non-functioning universe but it is just a non-word.
By using the word 'function' in the two other frameworks of abstract and fantasy I am trying to make the point hopefully very obvious: abstracts can be said to function as well as that they do not function. Money has a function, but ^-``-^-` does not have a function (even when it is as abstract as one can imagine). Words are abstracts, but okay is an easy to understand word, containing a function, while yako is not. Fantasies — as the last part of three — do not function, they merely entertain (and of course that can be seen as a function, but the fantasy itself does not function). A Picasso painting may entertain, but the fantasy figure will never walk). Naturally, familiar functions can be part of the fantasy; inclusion of well-known functions tend to improve the quality of the fantasy.
Same three frameworks, once more, but now using the word organization. The universe can be seen as an organization of some kind. It cannot be seen as a non-organization of some kind. An abstract can be seen as an organization of some kind, but also as not being an organization of any kind. Examples are money and god. Lastly, a fantasy cannot be seen as an organization of any kind, even though the fantasy may contain organizations of many kinds, and improve the quality of the fantasy.
The phenomenon of nothing allows abstracts to be formulated, and fantasies to be invented. Yet the importance of my delivery — that the phenomenon of nothing is always present in overall deliveries — has its most profound meaning in our universe. It means we find a variety of functions in our universe, a variety of organizations of some kind. Each is based on its absolute self, they are self-grounded and are showing us the results of that self-grounded state. The question can be posed whether we are dealing with just two absolute positions or that there are three absolute positions (or more). Naturally, there would be a relationship between the absolute positions (and their parts), creating relativity, but it would not undermine their absoluteness. There is no singular absolute framework, but the separate frameworks that do exist are absolute.
To state that the absolute does not (ever) exist, is an absolute remark, and thus false in itself.
My last words may be the worst, Nobody. The Theory of Nothing as you deliver it is not a theory, because theories are based at least on known facts. When I read you words correctly, I cannot read any logic ground to your delivery. It hangs ten feet in the air. Theories are rejected when they are not consistent in logic. You have nothing to stand on (and, no, nothing is not an option for standing; it cannot be used to start building a castle). Only after having started to build do we then find/discover (the phenomenon of) nothing.
Fantasies are part of our universe. We create them in our own minds. The best fantasies are the ones that contain the largest possible amounts of reality.
We have very, very similar ideas, but I insist you use correct frameworks.
__________________ The difference between a structure based on unification and a structure without unification hinges on the question if nothing is just plain nothing or if nothing is mighty fundamental. Read In Search of a Cyclops with titillating mathematical evidence (see homepage) to find out if separation belongs to the fundamental basics of our universe - or not.
Those who couldn’t learn goodness get put away for crimes for the protection of the rest of us—a punishment, yes, but also on the off chance they may see the light, although it’s not their fault to have had brain chemical imbalances, no capacity to learn, or poor teachings and role models. Unfortunately, we are not all created equally or nurtured equally. That’s life as it is.
I mentioned to Michael a while back that the absolute doesn't contextually refer to absolute remarks, nor does it refer to absolute values of the sciences which is what your reference to separate frameworks pertains to. It refers to the single undifferentiable framework, that we both agree doesn't exist, and that is all. So it's true that you will not read any logic ground to my delivery, because logic ceases when there is no possible to the absolute state of the universe.
Logical laws can be infinitely extended and naturally will remain logical, but once we invoke the "grand unification" of all systems, there is no logic and no possible delivery to accurately express non-existence in words.
The functioning that we speak of is the result of the illusion of relativity, that requires an infinite number of superimposed systems and correlated mediums with which to transmit their effects, and it isn't absolutely real because the whole does not and cannot exist - it transcends logical and meaningful functioning because there is no possible differentiation to give it existence.
We're not talking about a static ball representing the whole with separate systems and particles within it, but about the synonymity and non-existence of absolute solidity and absolute vacuity - what is commonly labelled as the "one" and the "void."
To try to be clearer about this point, if the whole is absolutely still, literal motion of literal parts within it is impossible because that would mean that the whole is partially moving. So the possibility, fantasy, of relative functioning is deemed real by abstract minds based on the illusory time it takes to process information at "c."
Information that travels through systems is real to you, but to the absolute universe all information is as inexpressible as the delivery is in trying to express what the absolute universe is/isn't - there is no absolute framework to work with, so all deliveries and theories must then remain based on relative frameworks.
(In which, as happenstance would have it,
I run into some current ToeQuest members
back in their youth, some thirty years ago,
as well as two Lamas half a world apart.)
It was the in-between time of the trips of delivering the Army’s Supply System, and so I finally came down from the Hawaiian mountain top to do some real work—and busied myself writing computer programs, surfing, taking a graduate course in stuff I already knew, selling seashells by the beach, and starting to seriously study the toe, as well as the ankle and the knee.
It was the early 70’s, still of the counterculture era, and I was in my early 20’s, although it is now the 00’s as I write this and I’m wondering what kind of name the future will use to refer to this 00 decade. During the coming 10’s (or the Teens perhaps), yet another problem decade, they might say: Back in the noughts (too old fashioned), um, I mean the double oh’s—nope, it was the zero’s (maybe)… the TOE was solved in the ToeQuest forums.
I’ve settled on the uh-ohs as a name since it is a time of unease, but I will have to get Profpat to work on it, for meanwhile, in this story back then, he was starting on the road towards a grand professorship by taking Accounting 101—the abacus.
I was as free as a quark in the Army’s nucleus when I was drafted into it, which wasn’t too bad since the strong force weakens near the quarks and lets them roam a bit; but soon I was promoted and projected into an electron, as Profpat figures, and much freer to roam the world on the Army trips.
Also, at about this time, Graybeard was heading for India, smartly taking his retirement early—before he had to work for the rest of his life, at a time when he was the most able. Now he runs Australia’s electrical system.
(Note that we are all Cain’s children, not Abel’s, and have to have extra fun sometimes, although we have long since been tempered by goodness, but still retain the beast in us as a zest for life.)
Fredrick and Nobody were on their way to a peace conference (but not their own, for their dispute was but a minor disagreement about “nothing”) to resolve a battle between a country’s north and south. We will get into that later. (Why does a country’s east hardly ever go to war with its west?)
Well, the weeks went by—the seashells selling briskly and the punched cards not having any hanging chads, and so I picked up the computer tapes to deliver to Vietnam, which not my favorite destination. I decided to spice up the trip by taking a vacation from life in Hawaii afterwards (who would do that? But they gave me a month every year.) by side-tripping to India, Pakistan, and Tibet, hoping to visit the mother of all mountain tops, the Himalayas.
Around this time, Profpat began his 30-year experiments towards the theory that 3 interwoven superstrings were the quarks of the proton that gave rise to all the sights and sounds of the Twilight Zone in which we live.
Meanwhile, Mkirkpatrick was beginning his search for the One of Consciousness, having found that two is one too many and that three’s a crowd. Michael is often born-again, although his mother(s) never really enjoy this—and he did once find the secret of the One in a past life, but forgot it upon rebirth, for he was always very young when he was born. Currently his house in England is flooding and floating away (lucky that he mostly lives on a floatable lounge chair) and he may have to flee to Turkey’s hot climate to avoid these serious effects of global warming.
Now, as I write this, I must warn you that the true mid-summer’s day is at hand(except for Graybeard), that there is a full moon out, and that it is 12:34 PM—so, if I were you, which I could never be, I’d not read this story, but it’s too late since you’ve already begun.
I bid adieu to the archipelago and to my sweetheart, thanking her for kicking off my TOE research, and saying “I’ll be back!” (long before Arnold made it popular), then flew into the setting sun, but knew I wouldn’t get burned since it would soon be night; however, the sun, which plummets like a stone in the tropics, soon came back up again, rising in the west. I should have gotten off while the world had stopped, but I did throw my whisky bottle out the window.
It turns out that Nobody had just finished his investigation of the “Guardian of Forever”, a megalithic monument found in the Star Trek episode “City on the Edge of Forever”. It was a device placed by who knows who that revealed all of history at near universal speed. Luckily, Mr. Spock recorded some of it on a tricorder that was built of subconscious neurons that could slow down time from its all-at-once superposition of all the possible pasts and futures. Dr. McCoy had stepped into the past and had changed the future by not letting a pacifist leader, Joan Collins, die—and so Hitler had time to complete his heavy water experiments and to develop the atom bomb—and eventually rule the world. Such are the whims of fate that our world is subject to.
This encounter was to send Nobody on the most super toe quest that any of us have attempted, going where no man has gone before (no, not to the ladies room), a quest that to me and others is really quite amazing to follow. While the “Guardian” was the answer to our own galactic history, it was not the ultimate answer, but its workings were a good start.
I landed in Japan and took a commuter plane to Osaka, near an air force base. There was no first class seat from here on out, just a kind of “chair” in a cargo jet, one that carried tanks in the rear. It was so noisy that I wouldn’t have been able to hear my PHD if it had been invented then.
Long Binh’s air strip was crowded and I maneuvered between many whirling tail rotors to a helicopter leaving for the nearby base. That night, some rockets landed at the other end of the base, and so someone fearlessly nicknamed Rascal Puff, an actual combat soldier, was sent out to quell the attack. He was rather impervious to injury since he mostly resided in the 4th, 5th, and 6th dimensions—places that bullets usually missed by a mile or infinity. I remembered seeing posters back in New York saying that “Gravity is the Fourth Dimension” and so now I know it had to be him.
Having made my first delivery of tapes that morning, a Warrant Officer then flew me a hundred miles over the jungle to a more remote base, noting that a previous courier's helicopter had been shot down.
“I know,” I replied, “that was one of my predecessors. I fly all the routes now. Even before that incident, the civil service workers hadn’t really want this delivery job, for they had families or had gotten tired of it, and, of course, after the incident, didn’t want any part of it, but I saw it as adventure and still do.”
In Saigon’s airport, I ran into who I now realize must have been Fredrick being whisked away to the Peace Conference in a limo. I booked a flight to India for the next day and watched the conference on TV at my hotel. Fredrick was showing a map of North and South Vietnam and was making great headway with the delegates, but had to be honest and tell them that the north and south were forever oppositional and that the twain could meet only as east meets west in transition. Hopes dimmed, but then Nobody appeared out of thin air, having ridden waves of time displacement from the “Guardian” that were dilated by the delay of all the superpositions, and told the Vietnamese of both sides how they as north and south could get very close, infinity close, (and that they were much alike, as well) by meeting at the equator, but, alas, their animosities were too deep and the peace table collapsed as all the mad dogs went off howling into the night.
Now in India, I came across Greg Issac Newton, who I now see was really Graybeard, one who lived by his wits there. He was talking to the Monkey Man about anything and everything (the theory of). (His time there is a remarkable story that is in his blog.)
Lloyd was busy helping the Irish fight the British while r.p.bibra, living back in his wild days, was shooting at him.
I rode on the roof of a train towards Pakistan and observed Graybeard buying some things at the duty free shop while I waited to fly toward the mountains of Tibet.
I climbed the Himalayas and complained to the wise Lama up there that life was hell. He said “Get lost! Go make a heaven of hell and then me tell. The door is never shut on the prison cell, so, why would you ever stay inside it when the door is always so wide open.”
He also gave me a piece of paper that had “All is THREE” written on it, which I couldn’t figure out—he wouldn’t tell me—and just came across the other day, realizing that it meant Matter in Motion through Space.
A week passed, then a month, and then 30 years—and I found myself at a Buddhist-run cafe and decided to sit there most of the summer, having just retired from IBM and becoming as free as a neutrino in every other way.
The Cafe was run by the Buddha Girls from the monastery on Shafe Road, New Hamburg, NY, home to the only Lama in the United States. The Cafe was called “Himalayas on the Hudson” and the Lama often came to eat there, with his entourage of higher-ups and bodyguards.
Because I was there so often, I got to know the Lama, his bodyguards soon retreating, and I taught him how to do high fives and low fives and such and so we we began to talk about the connectedness that underlies all things, the reaching of which state through the removal of all thoughts during meditation is the very heart of Buddhism.
In addition, I always gave him the weather for the rest of the day and for the next day, always saying that it would become sunny if it was raining, and that it would be still sunny if it was already sunny. And if it was really raining forever, we both knew that it was sunny on the inside.
My times in the real Himalayas came rushing back to me. I had always wanted to go back to the mountain of the first Lama that I’d met, telling him of the tales of heaven on earth, and of my new lady friend, in whose fragrance I was now drenched—one who could even tell Life how to live, the one who lives in a cottage near a small pond with three beautiful children—where I go to visit, drawn there, often, to hear of the wonder of wonders of her recovery from past abuses. But, now the mountain had come to me in the form of this second Lama and so we continued to talk about all things.
I remember now, thinking back upon first meeting him that “here he is”, the great one, and so I have a chance to ask a deep question of him without having to go over to Tibet or India and climb up a mountain, so, I pointed to an article in the newspaper that said “We may never know who won the Presidential election, Bush or Gore” and I asked him for his wisdom on the matter. Well, he thought for only a second or two and said “Who cares!”, and such it sunk into me later that this was a great wisdom, indeed.
The Cafe workers, the Buddha girls, didn’t wear the flowing gold and reddish robes that the visiting Buddhists wore, but wore regular clothes and had long hair. Many of the hectic type customers, unknowing of the workers’ way of life, wondered at the peace and joy that the workers radiated—like some sort of serenity field.
I talked with them about “String” theory, the theory that the differing vibrations of really small “strings” give rise to all of the elementary particles and forces, and so we related this to all that is absolute and fundamental beneath this possible projection of reality in which we live out our life-dream. Buddhism is not a religion, but a way of life, and they can still have friends, outside jobs, sex, and whatnot, although many of them spend a lot of time on the inner world which, as in meditation, can only be described as “not what you think”.
Summer soon died in his sleep one night and Time hurled its waves ever onward until even Old Autumn had passed on. The cafe was sold and had become an American-Korean restaurant run by Sin-Ha and Su-Nee, although still owned by the Buddhists. Winter snowed us in.
In the spring, the Cafe, my “office”, announced that it was closing right away, for it could talk, although its Garden of Peace and Serenity, surrounded on three sides by 30-foot rocks, the “Himalayas”, was still open, and so I figured that it was time to move my “office” outdoors, not that I would ever do any W-O-R-K there, for that is a four-letter word to a retired person.
After saying good-bye to the Koreans at the Cafe and taking home 50 eggs and many bags of chocolate chip cookies, I went to the Cafe garden to sit under an umbrella table in the rain, and, miracle of miracles, there was the old Lama himself, just sitting there alone, having just shown the building to someone who might lease it.
I hadn’t seen him for 6 months, since he had been off to other continents. He gave me a medium high five and I told him that the sun would be out tomorrow, and that it was always sunny on the inside. Then I told the Lama about the one who had recently sprung into another level of being, literally by “dying into life” and saying to him:
She blossoms, so colorfully,
like a spring flower,
because the energy was in the bulb
all along, deep within her,
life’s music wanting to sing through her,
and, so, now it has begun.
I continued:
There, on some remoter shore of human soul
To which I helped restore life and spirit,
I learned that love was the only flame that lit
This life—for she had taught me how to give it.
And that, furthermore,
What once I was has dimmed, physically,
But, I am a star, still bright in the night,
Though, when the sun rises, I disappear into her.
For, no one looks for the stars when the sun is out.
No, I did not just disappear—
I am just completely soaked in her qualities.
The drop has become the ocean—
Now I drink from her spring of eternal youth.
And to think that she once hid inside her coat.
Do I feel some memory of elsewhere?
Do I dare to look into the setting sun?
No, I’ll pretend that it’s coming up.
It shines through me, illuminating me.
I am re-energized.
I am glowing bright.
I am becoming a supernova.
There is a longing,
Between Body and Soul,
That reassures us
When we go with the flow,
And tugs at us when we don’t. . .
That is the mind within the mind.
I drink the very wine that moves me.
I freely let life’s spirit play through me.
I live its rhythm and music.
Life, though anguishing sometimes,
Must be lived fully,
For that is all we have.
The world crashes, out there,
But the flowers grow, in here.
For, I am the garden.
And the Lama said to me “You’ve been rumi-nating; Rumi lives.”
“Yes,” I answered, “Rumi lives again in the heart of his friend. I just read a book on him.”
“He never left—it is him, and you, too.”
“His spirit wanders ‘long the Milky Way,
With an houri, life’s moments drank away
In some sweet wood far from the noise of day—
Where with her he yet lives, sings, laughs, and plays.”
“What do we seek?”
“We long for the source—the human soul turns inward to find its way home.”
“Why do we wander around in the middle of the night?”
“Well, if I knew the answer to that, I would have been home hours ago.”
“Where would that be?”
“I don’t know. Whoever brought me here will have to take me home.”
“How do we see this “home”?”
“Close both eyes, to see with the other eye.”
“How do we hear of it?”
“Listen—the blossoms drop their blessings all around.”
“What quenches our thirst?”
“Break the wineglass, and fall toward the glassblower’s breath.”
“Why?”
“We are the sweet cold water and the jar that pours it. Plus more—we are even that which makes the drink taste so refreshing.”
“Where is the Light?”
“There is a light seed grain inside you. You fill it with yourself, or it dies.”
“Where do we go, do we climb mountains—the Himalayas?”
“A mountain is but a tiny piece of a piece of straw blown off into emptiness.”
“And what of her, your beloved?”
“There is a window open between us, mixing the night airs of our beings.”
“How’s that?”
“Out beyond the ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I meet her there.”
“And then do we see the light of day?”
“This day that I seek is outside of living and dying.”
“Do we not tire, always walking and looking?”
“At first, I did, yes, but then came a moment of feeling the wings I’d grown, lifting.
“We fly?”
“The rhythm lifts me—the living music plays through me.”
“From. . .?”
“It was fully fashioned even before it came into being, like an idea.”
“What do we feast on?”
“I am tasting the taste of eternity this minute.”
“Are we not afraid.”
“I have long since wet my robe in the shallow water. Now, I dive deeper, under, and naked under, and deeper under the surf. The drop becomes the Ocean, as the Ocean, too, becomes the drop.”
…
Some months passed, and, later, upon return, after a long time, I saw the Lama once again, the last time I was ever to see him.
“Where have you been?” asked the Lama of me.
“Well, everywhere, and nowhere. I did not cease from exploration; and the end of my exploring was to return to the place that I started from, but now I know the place for the first time.”
“The world is, as always, looking like one big wish.”
Advise for you to write a book. Then again you've already written several novellas that I know of.
Mr. Spock stepped out of the holodeck - several times - repeating, 'Fascinating'.
Clearly, visual art isn't the only thing that you excel in. IMO you are a lofty credit to this entire forum, relative to which you have become a colorful icon. Thank you for including Truly Yours in your 85.5 % rated superventure (When do I get my free cup of coffee?).
Best regards to you and yours, Austin,
- RP
__________________ (George Berkeley, 1710) ... lay the beginning in a distinct explication of what is meant by thing, reality, existence: for in vain shall we dispute concerning the real existence of things, or pretend to any knowledge thereof, so long as we have not fixed the meaning of those words.
"All things come out of the one and the one out of all things." - Heraclitus "Reality is an illusion - albeit a persistent one." - Einstein "Particles give me a headache." - Ibid
"What is really out there I suppose, are just waves and fields".
I cannot thank you enough, Austin, for that particular -unforgettable - contribution to this forum.
I fully intend to filll every small and large breadbox - and monolith - with that eloquently delivered axiom...
Gee. I wish I'da said that.
(Tha, tha, that's all folks...)
Tanquem ex unque, leonum.
And it's all Robert's fault?
Incidentally, Robert, your trailer of yourself at work, is priceless.
- Best regards to you and yours.
- RP
__________________ (George Berkeley, 1710) ... lay the beginning in a distinct explication of what is meant by thing, reality, existence: for in vain shall we dispute concerning the real existence of things, or pretend to any knowledge thereof, so long as we have not fixed the meaning of those words.
"All things come out of the one and the one out of all things." - Heraclitus "Reality is an illusion - albeit a persistent one." - Einstein "Particles give me a headache." - Ibid
Linear Mode
