The Ishmael Gradsdovic Papers, part nineteen


Part nineteen of the Ishmael Gradsdovic papers, in which dimensional theories are entertained...


Date: Wed, 8 Jun 94 11:33:49 PST

Harken back to the first time you read "Flatland" or toyed with the idea of shadows or cross-sections of N-dimensional objects cast in an (N-1)-dimensional world. Now rekindle that fire of curiosity with the kindling of fractal geometry -- dimensions not integrally spaced but occupying a real-number continuum.

Instead of a 3D being baffling denizens of a 2D world with strange behavior, imagine a 2.78-D being baffling denizens of a 2.77-D world with strange behavior - or behavior which looks almost normal but completely baffling.

Imagine the psyche of a schizophrenic being the shadow in our universe of a being which is engaging in perfectly rational behavior in the slightly dimensionally-skewed dimension in which its consciousness exists. Or, if you prefer, imagine that every consciousness on the planet occupies its own dimensional skew, and that to the extent person A's skew matches person B's, there is empathy between the two people. The schizophrenic just has a skew which is on the far reaches of the bell-curve.

When the schizophrenic catches the bus to work in his reality, in our reality he screams obscenities in a public restroom.

But the schizophrenic feels in his reality the results of unseen (to him) forces acting on him in our reality. If the police come to pick him up in our reality, in his reality he has a fine steak dinner, or catches poison ivy, or runs for governor.

Some of the things which happen to him in our reality have good effects in his reality, and some of the things have bad effects. What effects they seem to have on him in our reality may have no connection to the effects they subjectively have to him in his reality.

If these effects are strong enough in his subjective reality, he may start to pursue whatever unintuitive combinations of "moves" lead him to the most pleasant of those effects. He starts to develop a sense of "unconscious" desires and "supernatural" forces, and uses supersitious ritual to try to configure these things to give him maximum happiness.

One day he goes out jogging and every time he passes a tree he turns around completely before continuing to jog. In our reality this move is shifted so that every time he passes a passerby on the street he asks what time it is. Every time one of us tells him the time in our reality, in his reality he gets an emotional boost and an intellectual charge, seemingly for no reason.

So he keeps turning around when he comes across trees, knowing that it seems weird, but it seems to work. Maybe there is a tree god who is receiving his worship and granting him favors. He tells his friends. It works for some of them, too.

His son in that reality goes out behind the woodshed to smoke a joint; in our reality he bursts into a Burger King with a machete and screams "I'm the Son of God" before hacking three innocent hamburger-eaters into critical condition. He's put away for the good of society and given plenty of anti-psychotic medication. In our reality that medication turns him into a zombie -- we feel sorry for him but the alternative is worse. In his reality he's getting nicely stoned. Wow this is good weed.

How can we explain the Great Pyramids? The holocaust? Einstein? Bosch? But people whose reality meshed very near our own but with weird differences. Hitler in his reality wants to build the world's best coin collection; in our reality he single-mindedly tries to exterminate the Jews.

And what are our shadows doing in their reality? Maybe we're animals, maybe we're 'people' like them. Maybe our actions are as baffling to them as they are to us. What is a manic-depressive but someone whose moods do not seem to be governed by what goes on in this world but by forces outiside of his control. Maybe in a shadow-world his incarnation is getting hot in summer and cold in winter, and this is making him alternately manic and depressed in this world.

Our emotions may be nothing more than our subjective experience in this reality of things which have objective reality in another dimensional skew. We learn certain behaviors in this reality which tend to cause good emotional feedback, without knowing directly what the cause-and-effect relationship is in the other dimensional skews.

Does a born-again Christian in this world do something in a shadow world that causes them to get put away in a mental institution and pumped full of drugs? Or do they order the skew-equivalent of a chocolate shake? And is this what turns them on to "God" in our world?

What would you do if you were able to transport your consciousness to another dimensional skew? If you were able to see the people there for the first time, and speak with them directly (probably not in a language they'd understand), what would you say? What would you ask from them, and what would you give them back? What would your form be?

If they could do the same, what would they do?

Maybe they'd try to teach you the way to get the maximum brownie points in their world. Maybe they'd deliberately come into our dimension and try to show us a way of living our lives which would make our shadows more pleasing to them, and thus ensure that our shadows got good strokes. Maybe they'd come bearing mushroom spores and electric guitars.

What can we bring to their world that is of similar quality? They already stole the I Ching from Terence McKenna.

Whatever we do, we must be on our best behavior in this world, because they will follow our example.

Tangent: Another, more Hindu, twist on this is to imagine that the shadow of your subjective reality in another dimensional skew actually becomes another object in your current subjective reality. So you are reflected in each aspect of the "external" reality. The shadow of my ego in skew X is the keyboard I'm typing on. The shadow of my ego in skew Y is President Clinton. When I scratch my ear, Clinton declares National Bricklayer Day.

We're all reflections of each other in an eternal, unbroken chain of karma-samsara. Everyone's subjective consciousness, including my own, is only independent in an illusionary way... Actually we're all dependent on the enormous set of interconnections between entities for our actions. There is only one true Ego, if it can even be called that, and our actions are just reflections of its lifeplan. Or maybe it is the combination of every ego which gives rise to the big-E Ego. This smacks more of free-will. The universe is as good as our reflections in it. Make yourself good and the reflections will be good. But good isn't just some ethical thing to be defined in the narrow terms of our own subjective dimensional skew, it is more ill-defined, in fact impossible to define, it is the Tao which if spoken of is not the true Tao.

Seek a balance in which your actions flow nicely through all dimensions to the best of your abilities. You will inevitably come across contradictions and paradoxes -- karmic obstacles -- but just defuse these as well as you can and continue to flow.




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