A revisit

This morning, I felt the urge to fetch from my commode a book I have not read since my early to mid twenties, I believe. The book is by Elias Aslaksen, and called "Sytti veier til Himmelen" ("70 paths to Heaven", I believe would be the best English translation, but I have never seen it in English. The Christian Church at Brunstad is quite diligent about not throwing its pearls before swine, so it is probably distributed by personal contact.)

One thing I realized quickly was that I had understood amazingly little back when I was young. I am not sure how aware I was of it at the time.  Another things I realized was that I still understood very little.  Yet, some, I believe.

The first of the fairly short chapters is the Path of Humility. And I realize that these years have humbled me a little, though they have also had less positive effects.  But simply observing my own life and others could not help but humble me. When I was young, I meant to humble myself. That was my plan, but I suspect that I may have done quite the opposite. But the terrain of life, so to speak, has still showed me the difference between our potential and what we have actually achieved.  (With a few exceptions, probably, none of which are me.)

Fantasies

If perverse fantasies make us more perverse, would holy fantasies make us more holy?

In other words, is it the content of fantasy worlds that change us, or the very act of living in a fantasy world in the first place?

In Japan, they use the word "otaku" about a person who spends his free time reading comics, watching animated movies and playing computer games. This lifestyle has exploded there, and is spreading rapidly in America and Europe as well.  In Japan, "otaku" is a very negative word now, but in America it is considered neutral or positive. (They word has been borrowed from Japanese. It is more specific than "geek", which could also be obsessed with this-worldly things like science or languages.) 

I personally believe that a process of dissipation will necessarily set in if the imaginary world is lower than the real world. That is to say, if it functions as wish fulfillment, or gives a false temporary sense of being powerful or important. You will notice that higher worlds have the exact opposite effect: They fill you with awe and make you feel small, but they center you and leave a resolve when you return to daily life.

Even though I say these things, I think the content of what you immerse yourself in makes a difference too.   I do not know this for sure though.

Small note on the science of blessing

Without any contradiction, the lower is blessed by the higher.

For us who are on a similar level, it is not quite that simple.  Each of us has peaks and valleys, so to speak.  By this I mean that we may have come further in some parts of our lives, or perhaps we just have a gift for calling down a special kind of grace. From these peaks in our lives we may be able to bless people who are actually far ahead of us in most respects. If all goes well, we are also blessed by them. Of course, this requires humility. Humility is always realistic, awareness of incompleteness; there is no need to imagine ourselves at a lower level than we actually are. If it seems that way, our aspiration is far too low. Blessings are wasted if there is no room for more. If we know it all, we cannot learn.  If we are already perfect, we cannot improve. If we dwell on our peaks, we will not receive the blessings we need.

Container and content

The half-secret esoteric traditions of the great religions all have certain... techniques, I guess we may call them, to greatly strengthen the human mind, and in a more limited sense the body too. These days, this knowledge is widely available. It is often referred to as "spirituality".  By following certain principles, you can grow beyond the limits of ordinary humans not only in that primitive past, but even beyond most of what is considered humanly possible today.

This is a bad thing.

In these traditions, you strengthened the container so as to be able to carry the sacred truths, that could easily destroy an ordinary mind. As we remember, the "stuff" of higher-level worlds is harder, denser, more real than our everyday life. It is no wonder that the wineskins would burst and the wine be spilled. Due to the sheer real-ness of the content, even the greatly fortified container would seem to them a fragile piece of pottery, ugly and weak and temporary compared to the treasure they were to contain.

You want to be strong, not to carry the heavy burden but to achieve great things for yourself? You want to live a long and healthy life, not to fulfill your duty but to enjoy your senses? You want to see what is hidden, not to protect what is precious but to impress the simpleminded? Yes, you may be filled with pride by your achievements. But the treasure is hidden in plain sight. Like a small child you play with the colorful box, unaware that you have missed the gift itself.

Within its own domain

This is all true, but it is also an analogy about religion and tradition.

When I was young, I was a pretty good programmer. This was back when nobody would laugh if you studied COBOL to secure your future employment. Anyway!  I also did take an interest in microprocessors, reading about the new models, and I even wrote a little bit in assembler code as a hobby. I think most of us didn't do that, though.  And we certainly had no need to.  As long as you knew a specific high-level language and understood it deeply, you could make mighty good code without knowing what a processor was made of.  If you thought the computer was powered by magic crystals possessed by demons, you would certainly be a nut, but you could still write excellent programs as long as you stuck to the code.

With computers, the development has gone toward greater abstraction, more distance between hardware and software. The early developers needed to know their processor inside and out to squeeze the most performance out of it.  Now, you just wait a year and buy a new processor that is twice as fast.

But in the realm of mind, it is the other way around.  We learn more and more about the processors,  our brains.  This causes some people to think that traditions from before the Decade of the Brain (1990es) are worthless.  But this is not necessarily so at all.  Within their own domain, sets of knowledge are largely self-contained. You may be convinced that you are thinking with your heart and your brain is there for producing mucus, but as long as you follow the rules, you can still thoroughly rewire your brain, even to the point of causing visible physical change over a large enough number of years, as seen in Tibetan monks.

If something works, then knowing WHY it works is optional.  It is probably still a good idea to know, if you can, but it should not unduly distract you from actually doing.

Up, up and... ouch!

When we went downward into the lands of fantasy and daydreams, the grains of reality became fewer, larger and softer.  The opposite happens if we ascend into slightly higher realms, usually by way of religion in some form.  Notice that you can join a religion and hang around in the large portal courtrooms without ever setting foot on the pyramid of ascension, in which case you may not notice any of this.  But if you move ahead up, the grains of reality become smaller, harder and denser. As below, the forms may seem familiar, but they now contain more than they did before in the same space.

This may impress you: There are words up there that have stood unchanged for thousands of years, while entire civilizations rose and fell in the herebelow.  And there seems to be no reason why they should change for another thousand years, if only there are any around to heed them. There is a majesty to this unyielding durability, that provokes awe and confidence.

But there is another side to it.  Having come from a softer realm below, you yourself are soft. You will find that things do not accomodate you, do not yield or compromise.  If you bash against them, you get bruised or cut easily. There seems to be rough edges everywhere, and the garments of the realm chafe, and your feet blister.  Worse yet, those who reside habitually on this plane often seem not to care.  "That's just how it is" they will say if you complain about your fate. Worst of all, they may even hurt you themselves.  They say things that cut you deeply, and you may think: "This is a hard speech." Of course, there were plenty of people who hurt others where you came from, but you could get back at them. Here, this doesn't work. The people of this realm ignore your needles and laugh at your barbs, as if they themselves were made of living stone, impervious to mundane attacks.

This is where quite a number of people leave in a huff.  "There was no love" they say, meaning that they could not do as they pleased and still be accepted.

Others take on a discipline up there, but find it too hard.  It seems needlessly rigorous, as if made for someone more than human.  You are chafed and blistered.  The discipline does not compromise:  You may chose to make exceptions for yourself, but then you start to sink in mysterious ways.  This sinking is not easily visible to those still in the worldly realm, so you can fool them for the longest time.  But for those who still stand in the discipline you compromised, your position is clearly visible, like a hare hiding its head in the bushes.  As you hide your head in the lower realms of thought where you feel at home, your ass remains visible for the longest time until you finally disappear from sight entirely.

The only way to endure at a higher level is to absorb and be transformed into the same quality. But who is capable of that?

Down with creation

When I say that reality is more "fine-grained" higher up, and each "grain" contains the same amount of reality, it is merely an aid for the imagination. We should not try to identify such grains, of course. My point is that these "grains" only determine the amount of reality, not the FORM. If you go down about as far as a human can reach, to the level of daydream, the forms seem virtually identical to those of our own plane of being.  But they have extremely low reality: They are malleable, unstable, and transient.  A day hence you may have forgotten all of it.

If however several people share one lower "world", or if you spend a lot of time and interest in one of your own making, it will take on more reality.  It will be more permanent, less fluffy, things will stay in place etc.  Imbuing a lower world with reality is an act of creation, and this is inherently joyful for creative beings.  Since humans are "created in the image of the Creator" (in Judeo-Christian terms) this is actually a natural thing for us to do.  However, it is not without its risks.

If we neither receive more reality from above nor give any to lower worlds, then we become stagnant and, in a manner of speaking, dead.  But if we lose ourselves in the lower worlds without being replenished from above, we could be dangerously weakened.  This seems to happen to many geeks, nerds and otaku.  They lose themselves in a "fandom" or some such lower plane, and become unable to endure the harsh light of day in the "real world".  In Japan, it is estimated that a million or more otaku (fans of comics, movies and games) have become hikikomori  and shut themselves in their rooms for months or years, possibly for life. Their relatives provide them with food, while they spend all their days in imaginary worlds.

Vertical gradient of reality

Merely as an aid for imagination, not as a scientific theory, do I propose the image of a universal ether with a gradient.  Let us posit that there is another dimension in addition to our three (or foure, counting time). Let us imagine this as vertical, squashing the usual vertical dimension for the sake of this little model. Most people who would stumble on this blog would be familiar with this model anyway, otherwise I could have chosen other words.

The plane we humans inhabit is itself a bit varied in elevation, and I still speak metaphorically here. Some cultures are down in the swamps and some are up on a hill.  This may be unpopular to say in certain circles. This does not bode well for those circles, as these differences are glaringly obvious. It is in fact a good way to get familiar with the concept of elevation, since we can see it with the naked eye, so to speak.

Now the universe extends upward from here and downward as well. And it has a gradient. (Which means it is a scalar field, but that sounds too scientific for an aid to imagination, I think.) We could most easily imagine it as becoming increasingly fine-grained upward. This implies various things, such as it being harder, more durable, more solid, more real. We could also say that it becomes more energetic, vibrates with a higher frequency etc, but I am fond of the "fine grain" image. It is easy to grasp and its implications are obvious, if we see each grain as having the same amount of solitidy or content of the real. 

Conversely, further down from us reality becomes loose and porous.  Digging and shaping there is ridiculously simple - it is in fact hard to avoid even if you try.  But creations in these lower shales are less solid, whatever permanence and reality they may have is gifted on them from above, namely from us.  To take an earlier example: A daydream is very easy to fashion but collapses quickly when you leave it, and may fade entirely from memory.  Many novels are rather close to this level as well, in that they become hard to tell apart from each other and from common daydreams, and fade quickly; but they are easy to get into and so many of them sell surprisingly well. 

In the opposite direction, where the ether or "stuff of reality" is more fine-grained, digging with our bare hands is not a trivial task and does not take us very far!  Reality soon becomes harder than rock.  We are imprisoned under a glassy ceiling of stern, unyielding reality. And that would have been that, if we lived here by accident.

But there are cracks or faultlines in the stuff, which any of us could find if we remain aware. I believe this is what is commonly referred to as grace.  And there have been souls in the past with greater power and greater solidity than most men.  Whether they are actually avatars descended from a higher realm, or whether they are sages grown from below, this is beyond what I will explore today.  What seems certain is that they have lived here, and found places where they broke through into higher worlds.  Normally few were able to follow them, until structures were built, which we commonly call religions.  Be aware that the religions partly exist in our own world or plane (which is why they are so accessible) and it is possible to be very religious outwardly and yet never poke your head outside the mundane reality. 

We could think of religions as giant stairs (or step-pyramids, a kind of monument found on both sides of the Atlantic at different times).  They should allow us to ascend to a higher realm and colonize it. From below the step-pyramid seems to grow smaller and smaller and stop completely.  But the metaphorical step pyramid which they symbolize are stairs to a vast realm. Because each of the small grains is as real as each of the larger grains below, there is far more room than it looks like up there. Seen from below, those who go there will also become smaller and smaller.  Not to worry.

There is to all religions a temptation to spread ever wider into the present world and build ever more elaborate entrance portals, since these are easily seen and appreciated by everyman. The steps could fall into disuse, though I won't give any examples of that. It could happen though, that the Way could get lost.

Not blind men and an elephant after all? Or..?

In the book "A Christian Pilgrim in India" the author (not the main character) claims that the different world religions are not different descriptions of the same higher reality, but that the religions have created the universes they inhabit.  I partially disagree with this, as you can see from my earlier entries (which, of course, I wrote right before reading that.)

Rather I would say that higher worlds are different and imperfect emanations of an even higher reality.  As I said poetically, even the heavens have heavens. These worlds being imperfect follows naturally from us being able to settle them so easily. So we discover something higher and we settle it. Each of the religions has settled a different higher world, which existed only as potential until humans colonized it and "hollowed it out" from the primordial ether of potentiality. Of course the different cultures that settled these worlds made their mark on them.

More on lower & higher worlds

Lower worlds are the worlds we create. Higher worlds are the worlds that create us.

Create is not influence or change. They all do. Lower worlds drain or dissipate our energy. Higher worlds increase our energy. This does not necessarily feel good. Higher worlds are "larger than life" and tend to make us feel smaller. Lower worlds make us feel "larger than life". Higher worlds are unbearable without humility. Lower worlds do not encourage humility.

Cannot a world be both higher and lower? Worlds weave in and out of our own. This is great because we can descend or ascend on a gradual "ramp" from where we already are. A higher world may be seen as man-created by those who do not recognize it. But these worlds are not made by man, but discovered by or revealed to man. Example: Holy scriptures. A modernist theologian will point out how scriptures were assembled from different sources at certain times. These confuse the map and the terrain. By going there you will know.

Higher or Most High? A world can be higher than the ordinary world and yet not be perfect. Having recognized something as higher tempts us to label it as perfect and put all our trust in it. "Angel worship." Beware that, say angels. Even the heavens have heavens.

Higher worlds unify, simplify. Lower worlds exemplify, diversify. Simplicity in lower worlds caused by selectively omitting parts of the whole. Simplicity in higher worlds caused by including more of the whole.

The ladder of worlds

When I was young, around three decades ago, I had this recurring vision or fantasy. As far as I know, I had not picked it up from anyone else, or I would eagerly have read it where I found it. The concept was that there were layers of worlds, of which ours was one. There were several below ours, and if you descended to them, you would be more real than the world around you. This would make you more powerful, and the deeper you descended into lower and lower worlds, the more godlike your powers. But staying there, and specifically using power there, would draw on your reality and you would grow weaker, until eventually you could never return to your own world alive.  

Conversely, if you spent time in the nearest world above, you would find life there full of suffering because everything was more real than you. The heat of the sun burned you, the cold of the night froze you, and gravity crushed you. Most of all you would feel like a snail, horribly weak and exposed and painfully slow. But returning to your own world, you would find yourself now more real and stronger in all ways than those who had always stayed there.

Much to my surprise, I recently found out that all of this was real. The various computer games are examples of lower worlds. (I suppose daydreams too, but these are poorly documented.) Despite being fundamentally different from reality, they are still patterned on reality and derived from reality. Those who descend into these worlds (ironically the word "avatar" is now commonly used) are more real than the world around them, and more powerful. But as I was forewarned, there is a risk of losing one's reality if the mind descends into the lower world and stays there. Eventually severe dysfunction in the real world may ensue.

As for the world above ours, the rays of that sun do indeed burn us badly, and the gravity there makes us crawl. Just like the lower worlds are of a different nature, and yet following the same laws, so is also the higher world different and not. I am told there are different ways to poke one's head up into higher realms, but for the most part religious traditions seem to provide the most reliable tools. I don't think this is the sole purpose of religion, and there may be congregations or entire branches of faith that have no interest in people actually exploring the upper realms. Nose around if you actively seek the doorway to a higher world, it may be in a surprising place and it is  certainly not well advertised. But most importantly, if you expect your visit above to be an easy, blissful trip, prepare to be very, very surprised. Even though you will be treated gently by those who reside there, it may not feel that way because of the natural weakness of one who enter from below.

Attention is milk

Attention is milk.  I mean that almost literally:  Babies deprived of attention stop growing and many of them will sicken and die even if they get sufficient food and are kept dry and at comfortable temperature.  (Scientifically constructed orphanages in the 20th centuries drove this point home.)

Like the mother processes food on behalf of the baby's body, she also processes nourishment for the soul.  Like the baby has a rudimentary digestive tract that is made for milk, so it has a rudimentary soul digestive tract or "bootstrap loader" as we computer people call it, attuned to faces. Starting with the attention it receives, the baby begins to download the other modules of its humanity.  It is long before it can process other sources of "soul food".

Unfortunately, some people are never weaned, and depend on human attention all their lives. Even though there are vast amounts of beauty, truth and virtue intruding into the world, they are unable to process it.  Since depending on attention as an adult is unnatural, this dependency leads to bizarre and deviant / perverted behaviors, like trying to force attention by threats or by self-damage, or by promising sexual favors.

The black baby dream

Tonight I dreamed that I was a sim. A male sim, and pregnant. But I could not remember having been abducted by aliens. And when the baby was born, he was black (or very deep brown, like dark chocolate) and not green. He looked like a very ordinary black baby. But I didn't know anyone that black, nor could I remember having woohooed with anyone. Besides, I was male, we only get pregnant with alien babies. Then I got the answer from the DNA analysis. It said the only match for my baby's DNA was the Turin Shroud*. I then woke up.

(*This does not in any way indicate an acceptance of the veracity of the relic by my waking self. I am thoroughly agnostic regarding relics.)

"I have been thinking"

In fact, I have been thinking way too much. When I was young, I was quite proud of my thinking. I felt that the highest aspiration for a human must be to think as much as possible. But eventually, over a couple more decades, I realized that thinking and feeling both cloud the mind, only in different ways. They are both unavoidable, even necessary, but they get between us and the real world. If we whirl up too many of them at once, they can really make it hard to see clearly.

I call myself a "conscientious observer". This is a wordplay, but a deeply serious one, for it is my current aspiration. But it is hard. When we observe, the mind is eager to whirl up theories based on a few data points, even in those cases where we don't need to act right away. This is the nature of the mind, and rightly so, for there are times when time is essential. If a tiger attacks you, quietly observing for as long as possible is likely to remove you from the gene pool, therefore we descend from the hasty men. But this haste is not productive when observing the national economy, or even a budding human relationship. It is certainly not productive when observing our own inner life.

I have found that when we observe for a long enough time, answers often give themselves with no need for thinking. I suppose it is a form of thinking, it certainly requires a brain, but it is fundamentally different from logic. It is a kind of intuition. Like watching someone else laying a jigsaw puzzle. At some point the picture becomes impossible not to see. But it is possible if I am lost in thought.

Sometimes I see people in the main street who are clearly lost in thought (or possibly feeling). They are so unaware of their surroundings that they collide with other people or (more rarely) even with immobile objects. Actually walking into lightpoles is very rare, but bumping into things happens. The disturbing part is that most of these people probably have a car as well. Driving while thinking is like driving drunk or on drugs, except you can sober up faster. By the time you sober up, however, someone could be dead.

The ability to return to the here and now at will is a great boon, and I intend to keep practicing it. To not think because you are stupid is no great achievement and not very useful. But when the intelligent refrain from thinking too much, they can observe much, and this leads to wisdom.