dave_a_mbs
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central california
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Hi Lucy-
Let me try it from a different direction. It's going to require a little bit of rambling, but I think I can express the ideas in a manner that makes sense. To understand the mechanism of imagination as a "tuner" requires a specific global awareness of the nature of reality in which you can see that imagination actually moves your viewpoint to a potential parallel universe.
Your physical body has a brain in which there are circuits that ultimately make up collections of stimulii that arise from external events and presents these to your awareness in a manner in which you can "understand them" and respond to their content. The mechanisms of these brain circuits are partially learned and partially hard wired. When presented to our awareness we call these sensations "our image of reality". The actual form of the presentations has been shown to begin with a more or less one-to-one match with nervous receptors, and then become abstracted somehow.
We also have the ability to use internally generated stimulii that have, when compared in the proper manner, many or all of the properties of the outside world. The difference is that the inner stimulii draw on internal experiences stored in memory, as opposed to externally sensed events stored in the outside world. Further, because we might recall things incorrectly, or because we might group the items that we recall in patterns that actually do not occur (like remembering a school bus, remembering a pelican, and then developing the idea of a transport airplane that lands on water) we recognize that this internally generated system may differ radically from externally rooted experiences. We refer to this secondary system as "imagination".
Now, let's go back one moment before the Beginning. There is only voidness. A void has no manifesting properties by which it might be identified, neither shape, nor color nor taste nor form nor size. There is no space and no time. The size of a void is so small that it has no interior volume. At very best we can simply refer to it, so it has a sort of pseudo-exterior shell but no inside. At the same time, voidness has the nature that no matter what you dump into it, it cannot be filled. In this sense it has no exterior surface by which its interior volume is limited, so it can be said to have a potential interior surface that is infinitely huge, but no exterior. The voidness thus exists as smaller than and larger than anything else, and in between we have reality, the region in which we can equate the exterior of the minute and the interiod of the vast. Voidness can thus be regarded as one or as two, and the two-ness means that it can relate to itself as other than an identity.
Now we have two cases, one is static and the other is dynamic. In the static case everything continues to be void. End of story. The dynamic case is the statistical tendency for objects to move toward their most stable form by joining. The motivation by which this tendency occurs was called, by St Thmoas Aquinas, the "Uncaused Cause". It is the manifest nature of God.
Move now to the very instant of the Beginning. The Big Bang gang refers to this as a singularity, a single unique point projected into a self-generated spacetime. The projection has to use available materials to extend its nature, so what it does is to form combinations of various sorts from the two natures of emptiness. (In that sense, you yourself are a manifestation of the initial Oneness.) Although these have no reality, in the sense of a brick or fireplug, they have logically defined properties, usually associated with the probability of finding this or that property in abstract space. The interactions of these properties can occur only in specific ways, giving rise to the manifestation of the properties as they form new combinations with one another. These larger combinations also have rules governing their nature that define their ability to interact, giving rise to aggregates of subunits that have collective properties by which their interactions with other aggregates are defined. This is the basic nature of the material world. It's not real, but it appears to be.
At the initial instant of Creation, all these combinations and meshes of properties are extended in a series of infintely brief (Planck length time of about 10E(-44) seconds) steps. However, there is ultimately an infinite number of ways that these combinations can emerge. Since they're doing all this in emptiness, what happens is that all the different ways of arranging or sequencing these various elements of the world are fulfilled by having all the possible kinds of orders and sequences of worlds extended out of the initial instant. There's a Gold Coast saying that "Destiny is fan shaped" that tries to express the ways in which the different arrangements of the furniture of the world can occur.
All of these realities are valid spaces, and they all extend infintely, defining an infinite array of parallel spacetime universes. There is at least one of these universes that is so arranged that at some point of space and time your existence is defined. This specific universe is actually nothing but relationships of groups of relationships of clusters of relationships that happen to have the properties of interacting as if they were physical objects. As the properties define you and your physical nature, your viewpoint senses the manner in which your definition arises and continues as sensory inputs.
Experiences follow. According to learned values, your viewpoint reviews sensory data, and based on that review tends to move the point at which you identify yourself to another step along the path. This tends to take you toward unending definition independent of external supports.
Choices are made by shuffling the elements by which our natures are defined. Thus, choice means that we move from this definition of self to the next definition of self, thus moving through the defining spacetime mesh of paths available to us. Because the universe perpetually presents us with a nearly infinite array of options, choice is like wandering through a city by choosing to walk down different sidewalks that were already laid out, requiring only that each step along our way be based on the step preceeding it, and leads to the step following.
We also can move to parts of the network of parallel universes by simply putting our viewpoint at the point at which they are defined. Using memory data we assemble the idea of a spacetime location from numerous individual experiences. These experiences exist in all possible combinations, so the model we assemble actually exists somewhere in the mesh of endless potential combinations and relationships. So the viewpoint goes there and looks at it by taking on properties equivalent to its motion to the arbitrary location we cobbled up.
If that location is actually part of a real, ongoing event, then by putting our imagination there, we tap into the event, and to the degree that our viewpoint stays in alignment with that event, it occurs for us as well. If not, we say that we are dreaming, but no dreams arise. Thus, to locate an event, create a list of the properties that it has (ie: imagine its nature), see how it feels to be at a place where those porperties are present (ie: go into that space), and be aware.
Bruce mentioned a "disk" with Snidely Whiplash's face on it. That is an assemblage of properties, and there is a spacetime in which it can be sensed as real. Bruce went into that spacetime and sensed the reality of Snidely's existence, which lasted until he had reached the limit of the contingencies associated with its preservation. The way he got there was to make the choice to take on the properties of a viewpoint in interaction with Snidely. That's like walking through Manhattan until you get to Radio City. Then you experience the plaza so long as you don't pass certain limits, for example by walking over to Central Park.
When we seek the presence of others, what we do is to place our internal image maker in a very general kind of space in which we can sense those who are there doing this or that. Our selection of the properties of "I'm stuck in an earthbound reality and I can't get out" tends to direct our attention to spaces in which that might be true, a space in which others are stuck. We place awareness in those spaces, then our viewpoint takes a look. If we "lock in" by becoming fascinated by the conditions we discover, then our viewpoint will continue to point to that space and those events. (This is a regenerative feedback effect.)
To the degree that we alter our viewpoint by changing criteria, which is how we search over a range of properties, then to that degree we may move toward or away from a person who needs us. Seeking the nature of their dilemma is the manner in which we "tune" our search, and we do it by making choices of the properties to which we are to become sensitive.
As an example, a dream is a sequence of events that follow one another logically to some degree, and thus form a stable reality, althrough it might be limited in length. For the duration of the dream, we live in that parallel universe and experience it. If we choose to alter some part of the dream, so that we get a prize, succeed in overcoming a problem, or do some other thing that we introduce, then we alter the dream reality. This tampering generally makes the dream unstable, and it ends. This is exactly the way we stay focussed on a stuck soul, unless we alter the situation that we want to see, in which case we lose the contact.
Mmmm - that's a lot of words. I hope it's useful.
dave
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