Measure All Things Together

Previous posts (this is meant to be continuous): - Rebooting the Notes at the End of the Deconstructed Universe - Breaking Probability Waves - Within the Paradox of Time - Heretic Papers II- Beyond the End of the Universe - Blackouts and Multidimensionalism: Lenses, Interruptions and Shadows

         "My life really began again at the time of "Measure All Things Together" and it is to that chapter 2 years back now I look to compass where I have come from and how I got here. Though my memories run back much further and around many corners, as I said at the end of the notes, "2 years in the twilight zone," in a sense I see myself in how I am now as 2 years old, and rapidly growing. I hate the term born again, but much of the lyrics of "Rocky Mountain High" by John Denver I can relate to, as well as near death experiences. I don't see that time, 2 years ago, as any more crucial than any other, and don't believe in making any breaks with the past, but my perceptions and identity continue to evolve, and some points seem to have lead to newer tracks or jumps of greater distance more than others. 


         Why add on now to this? I found a note made in the margins of "Measure All Things Together" I thought was worth adding, since like I said, everything all goes back to that point in time to me somehow anyway, and the Notes Part II also ended with a reference to that chapter. The note was made on 4/24/04 at the end of the paragraph which ended with "No definitive line of sight or organizational factor is any more true or definite than any other."

NOTE 3 It added, "Every cork ALWAYS at some surface from some point of view. Spinning frame of reference around."

January 2005 Note added to Deconstructing the Universe

Measure All Things Together

No one is ahead of anyone and
no one is behind. No one is leading and

 no one is following. We are all pulling

 each other along. What's behind, beneath, 

or coming up supports us. What is ahead, 

above, or past us is a way to go forward. 

Beyond those and that around us, the 

Universe might not as well exist at all.

         I have written on this before but still find need to further clarify the concept. Our capacity to exist or to have existed always exists even if we do not, nor never have, nor necessarily in any one given timeline, ever will. The potential for ones existence or creation must be present in every single moment prior to ones actual existence for it to occur. In that sense, all that has yet to be has a reality or state I refer to as pre-existent. Likewise any given reality beyond and during your actual existence must include your having existed if they spring from or run concurrent with that given timeline or reality in which you did occur or exist within.

        What is actually occurring at any given time in any given reality is but a small plane of existence. To attempt to further define this plane I will liken it to corks floating on the ocean. The ocean, so large in relation to a small cork, though finite in size appears to reach infinity to our little cork both in breath and in depth.

        Out of this ocean of potentiality our corks form and attempt to rise to the surface. (multiple surfaces?). (This is limited in seemingly stating that corks know or care about what we believe to be THE surface.) Most corks never do. Some get nearer to the surface than others and sink back down. Compared to the surfaces order, beneath the surface there are corks everywhere with the added dimension of depth, at least, in this case, one dimension more than appears on the surface where our given corks of actuality at any one moment in time float. Beneath the surface there are corks everywhere. Pick any line of sight, 360 degrees times 360 degrees and any one cork is just one in a possible chain with others beneath it and above it in no particular order. Beside it from one view might be another that won't reach the surface for millions of years, or had millions of years ago, or never will. No one definitive line of sight or organizational factor is more true or definite than any other.

        At the surface it is quite a different story. Less dimensions, not more. At least with one less dimension, the surface shows an order, a reality. With the added dimension of depth, compared to the surface, corks can occupy the same space, one directly below or above each other in relation to the surface plane. This added depth is unfamiliar to the surface plane. With the addition of the surface plane and that empty space above it, so necessary for defining that plane of existence, the empty space, one cork floating cannot share its place with another. The act of floating on the surface means that point in space and time is occupied by that one cork. It now has actual existence which precludes other existences in that spot, at least at that given time while it is floating on the surface.

        Across the surface there are now many patterns to be found. This new dimension, actually as I said, a lacking of dimension, breeds a new way of seeing the ocean across one common plane between the sea and the sky, between seemingly infinite potential of existence and between non-existence of potential, that thin line or crust or crest between the two where the water touches the air. For the corks floating on the surface, this limited lack of dimension creates a new reality, or a new way of seeing things. Other corks exist around you floating too. They define with you this new plane or way of seeing things with you concurrently. Some around you will sink back down. Others will pop up around you, coming and going from the surface, from what the surface defines as actuality. I don't mean by this analogy to imply that the cork is still the same beneath the surface as above, only that it has the same capacity or potential when it is in actual existence, as it had before or can be thought to have had after it sinks below again. The surface corks as I said because of the more limited dimensions of the surface, have a dimension of actuality, taking up that one given space at that surface at a time elbowing out itself a place at the table so to speak which other corks for the moments of its existence cannot share without pushing it aside, save for existing beside it.

        Though all the corks currently bobbing along the surface of the ocean exist in a sense side by side, each defining and confirming its little place upon its surface, they share a common top down perspective, if you will. Though their actual vision is limited to the other corks and miscellaneous floating debris around them, they are capable of imagining a common top down perspective (from within or from the point of view or perspective of the potential of non-existence), how silly or beautiful they must all look floating beside each other on the ocean where seemingly infinite potential (the water) meets seemingly infinite non-existence (the air). Along with this imagined or deduced perspective they watch the patterns where these two meet, of corks and other things reaching the surface, touching the definition plane where existence or potential brushes against non- existence or a severe limiting of potential down to narrower surface actualities. (You need that negative space perspective of what is not anything or cannot happen, or what is not happening to define something to be actual or actually happening.) The non-existence plane where no corks can go nonetheless makes the corks, in this case, be corks. It provides a definition standing out beside or in relation to non-existence, or between infinite potential and total non-existence, and each cork occupies for its time on the surface, at least at one point, the defining line between the two. Without that added definition or lack of dimension we call non-existence, or all that is not, you cannot envision that view or plane so dear to us surface corks, that of where the two meet, infinite existence and infinite non-existence into that view or experience we call limited existence.

        All of the corks which happen to be floating together at any one given moment in time share a limited reality in a very intimate way. They are what is that reality at that given point in time, defining and sustaining it together as one. They are also sharing in its history, both the past and the future. They have one common history or timeline of the entire Universe up to that point which they share between them all, such a small room of a seemingly infinite sized mansion of what could be or could have been to co-exist within. They also have the ability to interact with each other with a level of reality more real, in a sense, than any other within that reality and at that point in time, at least to them at that time. What they choose to do with that potential to make these interactions, these shared experiences, to become more real than any others that might have been at that time, that is the question each must and will decide for themselves.

        When you know and understand it, you can't help but want these experiences to be positive, pleasurable, and fun. If not for others, the highest ideal or goal, then at least for yourself. When you can achieve both, any other reality you might envision, call it Heaven, Nirvana, or whatever, cannot compare as being better than this unless there too you are making the experiences, the lives, the realities, better for others as well as for yourself. That is the power we have in this reality, to shape it not only for ourselves but for others however we choose, to cause them pleasure or give them joy, or to cause pain, to experience these for ourselves too, and to decide which should be inflicted and which withheld, savage justice or higher compassion, and which makes the most sense for whom and to which others.

(It originally ended there. Shortly after combined with this written at same time on, seemingly at first, sort of a different train of thought.)

        But the worst possible timelines potential by any given individual's point of view occurs I believe as often as the best regardless of what occurs in any given timeline. You can't change or eliminate one over the other and neither becomes more real simply because it was experienced again, or if possible, more often. Indeed the worst possible outcomes need to be and will be experienced, and everything else in-between, equally necessary to have been lived through. As pointless indulgences go, existence is merely the most elaborate, not the most true. Truth is best read between the lines, or in existence's case, between the timelines, not your own, everyone's.

        The patterns between them endlessly repeat but even they are not truth, just more and more convoluted interpretations hidden to be found by beings with every more complex and complicated intelligences capable of seeing what isn't necessarily there and creating ever more complex situations and problems to solve. The desire to be lurks behind every turn, in every shadow. To be what, to be when, to be how, that is all.

        To understand it is to add yet another layer away from knowing it. To experience it fully is to know it and know it for the only truth it possesses, the experience or effect of the desire to be in yet another of endless variations it will manifest itself as, and yet another of endless ways to superimpose that upon whatever else, in any and all manners and contexts, through any and all possible circumstances and realities. One is always equally the master of this circus of frivolity and the slave of its never-ending wish to set everything in motion to see how they collide.

        Get a view of it all from every possible angle, every possible perspective, and still you are left with nothing. Be what you have to be as often as you have to be it and take from it as much joy as you can while you can. It may be pointless, never-ending, and never any more real at any one time or life or way more than any other, but it need not be dull, for that if anything, is pretty much the driving point above all else.

        Grab the moment, any moment, and hold onto it forever and you will see in that moment is every other and everyone. Pick the best circumstances that will make you the most happy or contented or at peace the most times if you can but know that you will only know them as such for and by the sense of having experienced and known the worst. Everything cannot help but be judged by and in relation to everything else. Everything else is the only true measure of what it means to be anything. Without either there is no set scale to measure anything by, never mind a true one. What everything else is though, is as indefinite and as changeable as what you are, and any change in one is reflected instantaneously in the other. 


        Also I thought I would add something which I think is nearly as good as the Introduction in defining how the 1.8 (In Wonder) version began to grow alongside the original, and what sets it apart. The following was written immediately after "Measure All Things Together", and that Introduction and is about maintaining that same sense of wonder.

        "It is foolish to think that we know significantly more about the world or ourselves at 30 or 60 or 90 than we did at 3 or 6 or 9 for what we are and what it is, is always changed and always new. Socrates claimed wisdom only for the fact that he knew how little he knew. Most of what we learn as we age is far more misconceptions than universal truths."
         "To think that we are or become more as we age or evolve by having greater influence over or greater power to destroy, break, subjegate, and oppress others, than those who have not nor care not for such "power" shows the limitations of our current cultures' (most all peoples' cultures) "wisdom". To believe you know absolutely nothing for sure, to wonder at the wonder of it all, is to begin to cast the potential for anything, understanding, happiness, contentment, peace, wide open again for the concrete worlds in which we build and concrete mindsets depend upon believing this has already been done to satisfaction and further input or inquiry is neither necessary nor tolerated. It keeps the future pre-determined, as nothing more than a continuation of the past set in stone."
        "Such questioning may not be necessary for existence but it is necessary to live. Remember in comparison to the age of the rest of the Universe and any potentially older species, everyone you meet is but a babe in the woods, kind and aware of that fact or self-righteous and eager to have everyone else think and do as they say, namely a brat (brat means a spoiled, mean, or obstinate child)."

        That about winds up this retro. Back in 2005 now, things seem pretty undefined and pretty bleak when looking at them only from the present. Yet hope springs eternal and travels out from behind and beyond whatever you can see or know. I think I said it best in the notes after the Introduction, the last time I ended it, so I will repeat that here.

        "To see simultaneously and equally both with and without expectations at once is the only way to experience the Universe beyond your expectations or limits of just being yourself, or outside that bubble of reality you create around yourself to move into and inhabit. More simply put, never give up the wonder for what you will soon enough find you only thought you knew or understood. It is never a wise trade."

January 2005 Note (again) added to Deconstructing the Universe

Blackouts and Multidimensionalism: Lenses, Interruptions and Shadows

Previous posts (this is meant to be continuous): - Rebooting the Notes at the End of the Deconstructed Universe - Breaking Probability Waves - Within the Paradox of Time - Heretic Papers II- Beyond the End of the Universe

        ... GEO600 has stumbled upon the fundamental limit of space-time - the point where space-time stops behaving like the smooth continuum Einstein described and instead dissolves into "grains", just as a newspaper photograph dissolves into dots as you zoom in. "It looks like GEO600 is being buffeted by the microscopic quantum convulsions of space-time," says Hogan.
        If this doesn't blow your socks off, then Hogan, who has just been appointed director of Fermilab's Center for Particle Astrophysics, has an even bigger shock in store: "If the GEO600 result is what I suspect it is, then we are all living in a giant cosmic hologram."
        The idea that we live in a hologram probably sounds absurd, but it is a natural extension of our best understanding of black holes, and something with a pretty firm theoretical footing. It has also been surprisingly helpful for physicists wrestling with theories of how the universe works at its most fundamental level.
        The holograms you find on credit cards and banknotes are etched on two-dimensional plastic films. When light bounces off them, it recreates the appearance of a 3D image. ...

Our world may be a giant hologram, by Marcus Chown
January 15, 2009, Newscientist.com

        This next post starts off covering the year 2003 and was written in the first week of January. It was thought of due to a power outage in my neighborhood which happened in the evening and left me in the dark for a few hours. After using my laptop for light for awhile, I decided to switch to traditional candles.

        Then I did what many have done since time immemorial. I put my hand in front of the candle and observed a shadow of it on the wall. I had been thinking about the concept of multiple levels of dimensions but perceiving only 3 and the candle got me thinking about 3 dimensional "shadows" of higher realities, or our perceptions being only that of a more dimensional Universe "flatted down" to a few which we could understand. After observing, thinking, pondering, and playing around with shadow puppets for awhile, the lights came back on.

        The candle however was still lit, and therefore the shadows I was or had been making were still just as potentially there. It was just with the added brighter lights, there was no way to make out a shadow from a single light source as weak as a candle anymore. Yet it was still there, however faint. I moved my hand in front of the still burning candle a few times to make the point to myself, yes, the shadow must still be there, only I can't make it out anymore.

        The 'single star' analogy which I used for the essay/example "Breaking Probability Waves" several days earlier (which I would use again in the Yashoe/Yashomee story) to 'filter down' an explanation of existence to the most minimal levels, one existence vs. all else, I thought of now again in terms of the candle and the lights, suddenly on again. Thinking in terms of lots of people being separate lives, separate lights, was complex, but thinking that there might be a single source of life, or single beam which makes matter or life exist, like a single candle, then there could be a metaphorical lens or prism which would break that single light into different colors, different existences, different "shadows" of existence, of which we were one of, dancing around on a 3 dimensional Universe equivalent of my 2 dimensional wall I had been making shadow puppets on.

        This was not the first time I used that example (in what I was about to write at that point) of a "prism" creating "a multitude of individualizations." The poem "Prismic" from my collection, Quadranine from 1989 (20 years ago around now) made similar observations / suppositions. I am putting it here below as an example or reference.

An indomitable ray of hope and fulfillment
passes through the prism of time
spreading wide a multitude of individualizations
painting the mural of life in its prime

Colors which are pleasing to the heart
stand contrasting and complementing those that unnerve
for each part's beauty never seeks to overpower
the incomprehensibly vast mosaic they serve

Images of all that we know of or dream
float fancifully reflected in a panorama of space
playing nightly to a captive audience unseen
trying their best to savor a feast they cannot taste

The brilliance of the light cannot be known
as it far surpasses that which can be seen
and the mysterious refractor defies definitions,
not to diminish the wondrous pictures that gleam

        While there are many similarities to that poem, with what I was thinking about then when the lights came back on, it was more like the thought of life itself as a beam animating and creating not only matter but each person's life as well. Again, also referencing the recently written essay at that time, "Breaking Probability Waves", in the sense of how it began, in that first few sentences...

        "...Life consumes and expends energy. We, living beings, consume far more energy than can be quantified than merely from the foods we eat, the water we drink, and the air we breathe. Life draws energy to itself. It draws upon it and builds itself up from it. Food, matter, they are required only as a catalyst. Once the process is begun it is almost self-perpetuating.

         So in this sense, the "lens" I was trying to define or imagine was the source of life or consciousness, and trying to play around with that concept more than just the "shadows", and trying to understand life "flowing into" each person from a higher dimensional viewpoint, or outside of the 3 dimensions we perceive point of view. Probably before the rest, then I wrote the poem's lines that summed it up at what ended up at the beginning, then most likely began the rest. I may have written it the other way around, but its not really that important which came first.



Multidimensionalism: Lenses, Interruptions and Shadows

One light can cast a single shadow on the wall 

with many lights one hardly sees any shadow at all 

but ever more lights breed ever more shadows to see 

more shapes, more perspectives fleshing out what can be

        Using the star analogy to potential, one can perceive of existence as taking place on another level. As the star spreads its light ever outwards into space until it hits something which absorbs that light into itself, it also creates an absence of that light in the direction beyond itself, a shadow. If one substitutes light for potential, or energy, or life spreading out into the Universe in all directions beyond three dimensions and time, but like light creating breaks or stoppages as it hits “things” which catch some of that potential or energy into itself causing interruptions in the design or pattern which would otherwise occur, a shadow of events in time. One could speculate such a disruption’s effect could be envisioned as a world, a universe, or an entity. For this example I will choose a particular entity or single being.

        If one follows the analogy of life emanating from a single source such as energy or light emanates from a star, and that life or potential of events can take a myriad of forms, just being potential, none more definite or definitive than any other, such as light containing all colors. When we think of this world as being where life hits something or is actualized from potential into existence, striking some “thing” to break down the multiple potential colored “light” or energy into individual existences, one is looking at the effects and not necessarily the cause. If you in turn step beyond that to conceptualize that just as life flows into us and our Universe from an indistinguishable unchartable point from our current existence's points of view, the actual diffusing of potential into actual, from all that can be into what is, is taking place between us, our world, and the light / life source, whatever it is that creates or sustains what it is that we are and use to build up some concepts of ourselves. Imagine your body or your world as a three-dimensional shadow created by the interruption of infinite time and infinite space emanating outwards from some central point. Though that point would not be in actuality, from our points of view, in any one place and time, using a star as an analogy one can conceive of it as such.

        So using that limited analogy of life or potential coming from a definitive pin-pointable place in space and time such as a star, though this whole analogy is not accurate limiting it in space and time, imagine you or consciousness as something in-between the source of existence and the physical Universe able to absorb some of that essence of potential into itself, causing a disruption, a shadow of what could occur, and from that shadow creates what will occur, at least from that line of sight (timeline) between the source, and the effect, existence. Moving your hand in front of a light, if there is another source for the light to hit beyond your hand, and the light source sufficiently bright or all other sources of light are sufficiently dim, you will see a shadow of your hand upon another surface. You can see how the rest of the light would hit and the disruption you can move or control, and how this reacts with that area. If life emanates into ourselves from an outside source and we are capable of capturing or transmuting that energy, life, or potential into ourselves creating effects or events across time which we choose, it is possible to imagine that we stand in-between the source of this potential, and the effects which play out upon the background, in our case not a two-dimensional wall, merely a three-dimensional universe plus time.

        Since I have stressed this analogy is flawed, to imagine the source of all life or potential as existing in one single point of space and time, I will try to expand upon it a little. Even if one does believe in one god as the source of all life, it is still quite a stretch to envision it as existing in a single point in space and time. This is just an analogy to illustrate a point, a lens, an obstruction in potential and time, and the effects that would appear across a static world, a shadow of events with that potential, from a single viewpoint or line of sight.

        As difficult as this can be to imagine, I will now make it even more so. Imagine not a single source of life or potential emanating from a single direction but instead a multitude of different lights or potential sources around the inside of a giant ball and the obstruction or refractor absorbing that energy into itself casting many shadows simultaneously upon many surfaces at the same time. It shows one shape on one surface, a different one upon another surface from a different angle. Likewise any movement or intended effects upon one surface shows as different, backward, or opposite on another surface. This example is at the heart of understanding both multidimensionalism and different realities of time. For time, imagine all the lights around the inside of the ball firing in a particular order, one at a time. What creates the shadow or effect would control to some degree its shape or movements but so too would the differing lights firing create a movement to and across differing backgrounds opposite that source.

        To imagine multidimensionalism, imagine all the lights on at once, all shadows would always be present all at the same time, though not visible since each would be obscuring its visibility coming from so many different light sources, but each shadow would still be there. Each movement, each action taking place against one background is simultaneously taking place, having a seemingly different effect as it is being seen from a different angle or plane upon all other lines of sight. Use the ball to represent time and imagine one light seemingly stronger at one point in time, at each moment in time. Though there would be visual or conceptual movement through time, a shadow appearing to be moving across different frames, yet at that same moment differing versions of other shadows not as bright would be telling different perspectives upon other lines of sight. And since as I said for this example, each line of sight represents a different time, not a different dimension per se, each event or moment happening at any time would also be casting a different shadow back upon itself at every other time.

        Now change the inside of the ball casting shadows of potential, not to represent time, but instead three-dimensional space. Each breakage or disruption within the potential can be occurring or disrupting multiple points in space at the same time, appearing as one form from one perspective, having one type of intended effect upon one reality, and having a quite different impression by that motion or disruptive patterns simultaneously occurring in other points in space at the same time.

        Now imagine the inside of the ball to represent consciousness. Each idea, each thought, each notion would be occurring in a different way, affecting multiple shadow consciousnesses simultaneously. The intended effect upon one thinking that one at that moment is the current or real one, as if one moment was more real in the time analogy because one light seemed brighter or the others appeared dimmer, that same idea, notion, or abstraction can appear quite differently to another consciousness simultaneously as a direct consequence of that intended action upon another line of sight, with each thought being seen by all shadow consciousnesses differently all at once all the time.

        Now imagine the inside of the ball to represent all of these, time, consciousness, and three-dimensional space, all lights on all the time, every action or intention affecting every other event, time, and place, in every consciousness' potential perception in every possible dimension and timeline. Everything done at every time by anyone ever anywhere any when casting a faint shadow upon everything else also always occurring. The key to understanding it may not be in the source from where or how existence originates but in-between that primal primordial cause and every possible effect, every shadow, every stoppage of all possibilities into single occurrences of single realities. Most think time is this fulcrum, that something in time, in each moments present, regulates each occurrence from what did not occur but time is not thought to be a consciousness, merely a regulator of what appears as actuality to one given perspective, one line of sight, one given timeline. And if from a different perspective time itself can be thought to be multiply occurring in different ways at once, what may exist in the center appearing simultaneously yet differently across every moment in time to every possible consciousness in every possible reality may be even more elusive to understanding time or life itself.