“Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real.”
Niels Bohr, co-founder of modern physics
Bridge: Particle & Wave,Acrylic on Canvas, 36” X 36” Spottless Marxx (2012)
Greetings chosen one!
Regardless of our politics or religion, the vast majority of humanity continues to believe in and experience a reality that was shattered over 100 years ago. Specifically science proved that physical matter (as most of us continue to believe and experience it) is nothing more than an illusion of sorts… but it's a very compelling illusion that’s almost impossible for us to let go of because the underlying phenomena are very, very predictable, reliable and, most of all, comforting to naked apes. Who among us could tolerate a sun that doesn’t come up everyday and flickers when it does?
Nonetheless, any High School physics teacher (who is honest with themselves) will admit that the idea that ‘matter,’ AKA ‘particles’ are like tiny cannon balls existing in a material universe governed by space, time and gravity is 19th century thinking. It is true that the physical, mechanical model has brought us powerful technologies like the steam engine, airplane, computer and smart phone. But that still doesn’t change the inconvenient truth that there are no “particles”. Nothing is solid, there are only wave functions and fields.
I’m here to welcome you to the present! You are here now knocking on the door of the gods. As scary as it may seem, it’s a wonderful place to be. A place where real magic and real miracles are not only possible… they’re already happening!
Admittedly, the very language we use to talk about these things evolved in the shadow of… well, the shadow. Plato is perhaps the first person to discuss this subject in detail: what we might call the dichotomy between an ideal reality versus a lesser physical (but illusionary) reality. According to Plato we are prisoners in a cave that have never experienced the world outside or the real objects out there which have cast shadows onto the walls of our cave. Because it’s all we know, we believe the shadows are reality. The truth, however, is that the shadows represent a very limited & superficial version of the truth… an illusion that pales in comparison to the real thing.
By now the “fictional” matrix, holodeck or even our very own and very real virtual reality (VR), may be coming to mind. I’m here to tell you that physics, biology and philosophy are all arriving at the same place you just did. In other-words, we’re living in a time when the pendulum is swinging back (at the furthest edges of knowledge) away from physical materialism and back to the more spiritual idealism of Plato. It’s turning out that our universe isn’t a soulless machine with moving parts (that unexplainably became so complex and dynamic it generated a genie in the bottle that became consciousness of itself… aka, us) but more like an information based hologram. The biggest barriers right now to progress under this paradigm are that it’s even harder to research and test these ideas than it is to talk about them.
Currently the language being used are ANALOGIES, along the lines of “our reality is LIKE a virtual one generated by a god-like supercomputer.” This is not near as powerful and convincing as a METAPHOR stating that “our universe IS a machine with moving parts” that can be measured and tested scientifically and perfectly matches everything we believe and experience. Perhaps the most powerful “evidence” to come out of this computer generated virtual analogy is the opinion published in Scientific American on April 1st, 2021 (lol) by Fouad Khan entitled Confirmed! We Live in a Simulation. His “proof” is that even the most powerful computers ever made have a maximum processing speed. For us, that maximum processing speed is none other than the speed of light.
Now get ready for this! Beyond the computer simulation analogy, the possibility that our reality isn’t classically “real”, at least in the way we’ve all been taught and continue to believe & experience, has not only been theorized but PROVED with hard scientific EVIDENCE to back it up:
Beyond that, the most accurate thing we can say with our current language and growing but still incomplete evidence is that our reality is made up of information (think mathematics or as explained in John 1:1 in the New Testament “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”), a set of rules for how the information can be accessed and experienced (program/code), and (more on this later) a network of consciousness (aka “players/ users”) to access and experience the information according to the rule set. In other words, I’m starting to sense that our reality is the Internet in reverse. Instead of a vast, non-physical, infinitely complex and interconnected network created and managed by an army of fleshy, fearful, naked apes in a physical world, try to imagine our physical world being generated by a infinitely vast and complex social network of interconnected and interacting non-physical conscious agents. “What is the source of the information, the rules and consciousness itself” are the updated version of “where did the Universe come from, what existed before the Big Bang, etc.?
Beyond the problems I feel with the word “simulation” (which implies that our reality is a model or imitation of something else that is similar but more “real”) what these analogies lack is the organic warmth and texture of our actual existence… when we take the time and focus necessary to really experience it, that is. The idea that this is all a computer program is cold, sterile and overly analytical. It’s too precise and technical and lacks… well, magic.
Visualization of a tiny corner of the Internet by Matt Britt (2005)...
What these computer analogies DO HAVE that is lacking in our ancient spiritual beliefs and practices is the curiosity and novelty of detached scientific inquiry and rigor. Our moment demands more than the reassuring words of enlightened naked apes and invisible otherworldly gods & the ceremonial traditions that honor them. We need and want models that help us to continually scrutinize & test our assumptions. We need evidence. Proof! It’s time for our spiritual teachers and religions to acknowledge that there are frontiers of knowledge and experience sill waiting to be explored! There are genuine and exciting problems and solutions that fall within our sphere of influence and responsibility that shouldn’t just be taken for granted and/or trivialized because it’s already been covered in the teachings of ancient wisemen or revelations of the god(s).
While it is true that our separateness is an illusion, it’s not merely an evil veil designed to make us suffer who’s only merit is in it’s removal. Without separateness, there’s actually nothing to be conscious of. Exploring and understanding the veil is actually ALL THERE IS for us to do! Conscious being IS the fountain but it’s our cups that allow us to drink from it!
Without question we are undergoing a major growth-spurt in understanding our place in the cosmos but admittedly we still haven’t found the right metaphors. These will be necessary for the vast majority of us to mentally and emotionally step into and fully embrace and accept what is about to happen… and is already happening to rapidly growing numbers of us. The reward for letting go of our predictable, reliable (but ultimately illusionary) physical reality (defined and governed by the classic Newtonian laws of physics) is a giant step towards a world with incredible new technologies we now dismiss as magic or miracles. Our experience will be dramatically transformed from one dominated by a sense of separateness, scarcity, fear, endless limitations, resistance and death, to one of love, wholeness, abundance, boundless exploration and even a kind of immortality.
Since our limited beliefs and language admittedly keep us from understanding the true nature of our existence, I find myself going back to a time before our faulty language and limiting beliefs. A time before history. Back to (of all places) the CAVES!
Without question the mysterious cave painters exhibited a wide variety of intentions, motives, techniques and styles. The thread that unites them all (and them to you and I here and now) is a desire to both represent the cosmos and find our place in it. Their concerns span from our relationship to nature, community, the spiritual and the afterlife. All concerns that are just as relevant here and now (to you and me) as they were to them then.
Werner Herzog’s incredible must see documentary, Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2010) explains that "We are locked in history and they were not." Unlike us, the mysterious people of this time period were surrounded by a rich and diverse landscape dense with an infinite variety of vibrant plants and wild animals and, as theorized in the film by researcher Jean Clottes:
Paleolithic people “had probably some...two concepts which change our vision of the world. They're the concept of fluidity and the concept of permeability.
Fluidity means that the categories that we have...man, woman, horse, I don't know, tree, et cetera...can shift. A tree may speak. A man can get transformed into an animal and the other way around, given certain circumstances.
The concept of permeability is that there are no barriers, so to speak, between the world where we are and the world of the spirits. A wall can talk to us, or a wall can accept us or refuse us. A shaman, for example, can send his or her spirit to the world of the supernatural or can receive a visit, inside him or her, of supernatural spirits. If you put those two concepts together, you realize how different life must have been for those people from the way we live now.”
How different is that from:
“In the world of the very small, where particle and wave aspects of reality are equally significant, things do not behave in any way that we can understand from our experience of the everyday world… all pictures are false, and there is no physical analogy we can make to understand what goes on inside atoms. Atoms behave like atoms, nothing else.”
John Gribbin
Wall painting with reindeer, Lascaux Cave, France, 15,000 B.C.E
Was there a time when our experience of reality behaved like the inside of atoms? YES THERE WAS!
The question before us now is “how do we get back there?”
That question leads down two parallel paths; 1) Human Nature and 2) Paranormal / unexplained phenomena.
Before going down any paths I have a simple meditation for you. Imagine a billionaire came to you and let you know he had inherited two islands that were set up as a scientific experiment by his tycoon ancestors and he wants to hire you and your family to spend the rest of your lives (all expenses paid… but sight unseen) on one of the two islands and report back how the experiment is going on that island:
One hundred years ago, the inhabitants of the first island were, from a young age, taught the laws of the jungle. All life consists of winners and losers. Survival of the fittest. Not just the survival of the gene pool but even status and self-worth are directly connected to how much wealth and power one can accumulate which can and should be achieved by any means necessary. This includes the amassing and exploitation of finite and scarce resources… and of the losers themselves. In fact, the winners demonstrated superiority and strength entitle them, by the will of both God and nature, to have more than the losers.
One hundred years ago, the inhabitants of the second island were, from a young age, taught the laws of “all for one and one for all”. Life is an interdependent system where either we all win or we all lose. We should only take out as many natural resources as we sustainably replenish or life will become unbalanced. From each according to their ability and too each according to their need!
Sight unseen, what island do you choose?
Watch this epic documentary now👇
Regardless of your answer, I’ve tried this exercise out on Twitter and the vast majority of participants believe the islands will be the same, often sighting the collapse and tyranny of socialist countries and always sighting “human nature.”
As hard as it is for me to admit, this argument isn’t without merits. One of the greatest minds of the 20th Century that nobody’s ever heard of is the rhetorical theorist, poet, essayist, and novelist who gave us powerful tools to both understand and study human knowledge, Kenneth Burke. Those who have heard of him most likely know him as the guy who predicted the Holocaust… but nobody would listen. If you want to scare the shit out of yourself, check out his essay The Rhetoric of Hitler's "Battle.” You’ll be shocked and scared by how much it parallels our current moment.
For our purposes here, we’re only gonna concern ourselves with his bullseye definition of “man.” Burke's definition of (hu)man states: "Man is the symbol-using (symbol-making, symbol-misusing) animal, inventor of the negative (or moralized by the negative), separated from his natural condition by instruments of his own making, goaded by the spirit of hierarchy (or moved by the sense of order), and rotten with perfection". If I were going to write an instruction manual for this “man” I’d look no further than the now infamous The Prince written during the Renaissance by Niccolò Machiavelli on how to secure and maintain power and the much lesser known, but equally relevant, The Book of the Courtier written by Machiavelli’s neighbor, Baldassare Castiglione, on how to serve those wielding power. I’m sure you’ll have no problem predicting which island you’ll find Burke’s man on. Sadly, a great deal of human social behavior can, to this day, be distilled down to what We call “naked ape Court intrigue”. And this gets down to the central problem of the second island. If this is human nature, how can we possibly escape it?
The answer is that we (including you and me) have another, rarely used, but exceptionally powerful and influential gear. This is the gear the likes of Krishna, Buddha, Jesus, Muhammad and, most importantly, our mysterious cave painting ancestors were in.
Love ❤️ is the answer👇
A gear of magic! A gear of miracles! A gear of radical equality! A gear of love and healing and NOT fear and manipulation! A fluid, permeable existence, grounded in the present moment but reaching deep into our shared cosmic consciousness(s) that both nurture and sustains EVERYTHING!
The big questions facing the vast majority of us today are why is it so hard for us to find that gear and how do we get better at finding it?
The answer to the first question is our limiting language, beliefs and fears. From the moment most of us enter the womb we’re already exposed to a stressful world drained of nutrients and driven by the ruthless short term self interests of people indoctrinated into a harsh, but ultimately illusionary, world.
Photo by Spottless Marxx during the pandemic on La Cienega Blvd, Los Angeles
To escape this prison we need to flip the script. We need to apply the rigors of science to a new set of assumptions and questions. Instead of asking if a society driven by love and empathy is possible, we need to start asking “how do we get back there?” Instead of asking if other dimensions exist, we need to start asking why only a chosen few have been invited. Why not me? Instead of asking if mystical creatures and beings from other dimensions exist, we need to ask why others see them but not me? Instead of asking if the power to bend spoons with our mind, levitate, become invisible, manifest objects from thin air, heal by touch, teleport and use a wide range of other psychic abilities exist, we need to start asking, why can’t I do that? Why not you? Why not all of us?
As we begin to answer those questions with love, affection, confidence, excitement and faith, the language, metaphors and, YES!… science we need to accurately describe and explore our reality in miraculous new ways we can barely imagine now, will begin to emerge from the light!
Therefore, Shariputra, in emptiness, there is no form, no feeling, no perception, no formation, no consciousness; no eye, no ear, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind; no appearance, no sound, no smell, no taste, no touch, no dharmas; no eye dhatu up to no mind dhatu; no dhatu of dharmas, no mind consciousness dhatu; no ignorance, no end of ignorance up to no old age and death, no end of old age and death; no suffering, no origin of suffering, no cessation of suffering, no path, no wisdom, no attainment, and no non-attainment. Therefore, Shariputra, since the bodhisattvas have no attainment, they abide by means of prajñaparamita. Since there is no obscuration of mind, there is no fear. thIs famous excerpt from the Nalanda Translation Committee’s well-known translation of the Prajñāpāramitāhṛdaya, popularly known as the Heart Sutra, is an expression of the inexpressible, fundamental Buddhist view (if it can be called a ‘view’) born from Lord Buddha’s great compassion.
This is deep and wild and free and intelligent. I'm the only English speaker for miles around where I live. I speak French but I don't know anyone as profound as you come across man!
Like I said on Twitter, my books are my escape (reading and writing) sometimes to a better place. Sometimes into a dark void. But always seeking truth in amongst all the noise...
Thanks for connecting. And keep up the great "written" work!
Therefore, Shariputra, in emptiness, there is no form, no feeling, no perception, no formation, no consciousness; no eye, no ear, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind; no appearance, no sound, no smell, no taste, no touch, no dharmas; no eye dhatu up to no mind dhatu; no dhatu of dharmas, no mind consciousness dhatu; no ignorance, no end of ignorance up to no old age and death, no end of old age and death; no suffering, no origin of suffering, no cessation of suffering, no path, no wisdom, no attainment, and no non-attainment. Therefore, Shariputra, since the bodhisattvas have no attainment, they abide by means of prajñaparamita. Since there is no obscuration of mind, there is no fear. thIs famous excerpt from the Nalanda Translation Committee’s well-known translation of the Prajñāpāramitāhṛdaya, popularly known as the Heart Sutra, is an expression of the inexpressible, fundamental Buddhist view (if it can be called a ‘view’) born from Lord Buddha’s great compassion.
This is deep and wild and free and intelligent. I'm the only English speaker for miles around where I live. I speak French but I don't know anyone as profound as you come across man!
Like I said on Twitter, my books are my escape (reading and writing) sometimes to a better place. Sometimes into a dark void. But always seeking truth in amongst all the noise...
Thanks for connecting. And keep up the great "written" work!