‘You can visualize all this as follows,’ he continued. ‘The surging emotional pressure inside the tangle forced it to bulge out or herniate at its weakest spot, in the form of new, tightly packed cognitive associations. This small, compact but complex bulge, hernia or protrusion—the first cluster—sprouted in layers of cognition above the tangle. In the language of your science, the event corresponded to the flourishing of the first biological organism. Indeed, you can visualize clusters as the flowers of the tangle, growing right above it. In other words, living beings are like the flowers of the inanimate universe that underlies and gives rise to them.’
I was mesmerized by this narrative, for it made much more sense to me than the mechanistic mainstream cosmology of our culture…
‘Naturally, the release of pressure achieved with the popping of the first cluster into existence—that is, the inception of the first living organism—provided only temporary relief. Mental energy continued to accumulate in the tangle because mind-at-large was still increasingly captivated by its own imaginings. This is where biological reproduction came in: by multiplying themselves within the dream, organisms enabled a continual release of emotional pressure and, with it, a kind of dynamic equilibrium. Indeed, nature’s drive to create life wherever and whenever possible is a reflection of this ongoing need to release the emotional charge that mind-at-large constantly pumps into its imaginings.’
‘So the origin of life,’ I managed to ask, ‘was essentially a result of the same kind of mental energy build-up that had originally caused the laws of classical physics to congeal, correct?’
‘Correct. There are two singular but analogous moments in the cosmological history of any universe: the first is when surging mental energy circulating in a self-referential loop forces it to blossom out into a tangle. The second is when surging mental energy circulating in the tangle forces it to blossom out into life.’
‘The symmetry is fascinating,’ I muttered. ‘It means that life isn’t an accident but an inevitability implied by the very nature of reality…’
‘Now a key point,’ he continued, without giving me a chance to enjoy my insight. ‘Clusters form by budding out of a tangle, like a flower from a branch. In the same way that the flower remains connected to the branch by a stalk, clusters remain connected to the tangle by interlinking cognitive associations. Through these interlinking associations, a cluster can receive an influx of mental contents from the neighboring regions of the tangle immediately below it. Most of this influx you call “sense perception:” vision, hearing, touch, taste and smell. Sense perception is thus enabled by local cognitive associations between cluster and underlying tangle.’
It all added up. I did remember that there were vertical interconnect lines linking knots to underlying tangles across cognitive layers. Most of these vertical lines were the interlinks of sense perception the Other was talking about.
‘Before mind-at-large penetrated its own imaginings,’ he continued, ‘there was thus no sense perception: no visions, sounds, textures, flavors or scents. Mind-at-large’s imagination consisted of purely abstract ideas—largely about symmetries of a rather mathematical nature—with accompanying feelings.’
Although this was a brief remark, its significance wasn’t lost on me. Before the origin of life, mind-at-large could thus only imagine in terms of abstract ideas! It didn’t have the extraordinarily evocative images we derive from our sense perception to use as building blocks of our own imagination: the shape of snowflakes, the smell of flowers, the texture of sand, the sound of birds, the taste of strawberries, etc. It also didn’t have the particular emotions these images evoke in us, like the feeling of beauty and dynamic harmony we derive from contemplating nature, or the feeling of companionship we derive from the presence of other people or animals. Insofar as this implies that living beings are capable of something that the rest of mind-at-large originally wasn’t, it imbues life with tremendous significance, which the Other would elaborate further upon shortly.
‘Finally,’ he concluded, ‘as we’ve discussed before, the dense cognitive associations within a cluster draw and focus its attention, thereby obfuscating all the rest of what’s going on in mind-at-large. Only through the cognitive influx entering the cluster from the tangle—that is, mostly sense perception—can the cluster gain some awareness of what’s happening outside. The cluster isn’t aware of the broader, deeper cognitive activity—including universal beliefs and will—that set the universe in motion. It feels that it has no control or influence over it. For these reasons, the cluster begins to think of itself as an entity separate from the rest of the tangle and the rest of mind-at-large. It perceives the universe as an external, autonomous entity. It acquires a localized, confined and ultimately illusory sense of identity. Are you still with me?’
An extra dimension of experience and insight
‘Yes,’ I replied. I was near mental collapse but still fully with him, thanks to the sheer force of his elucidations.
‘OK,’ he acknowledged. ‘Now notice that the formation of a cluster is akin to a cognitive collapse of a segment of mind-at-large. Instead of contemplating its imaginings broadly from without, it collapses within them, losing its broader sense of identity in the process. It becomes immersed in its dream, surrounded by it.’
‘I understand it,’ I commented, ‘but you already explained this before.’
‘I just need to add one more thing: the cognitive collapse not only changes the context of the experience from conceiving to dreaming, but also its contents.’
‘Isn’t a change of contents always implied by a change in context?’ I asked, making a tremendous effort to concentrate.
‘Not necessarily. Let’s take an example: you can both conceive and dream of a walk on the beach. In the first case, you know that the beach is in your imagination, while in the second case you feel as though you were at the beach. But in both cases the beach can be the same: the same sun, the same waves, the same feeling of wet sand under your feet, etc. The context of the experience is different but not the contents. Do you see what I mean?’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘Good. Now, the cognitive collapse changes both the context—from conceiving to dreaming—and the contents: the beach won’t look and feel the same after the collapse. Fundamentally, it will still be the same beach, but experienced from a different, previously hidden angle or perspective: from the inside out.’
‘Now you’ve lost me…’ I had no intuition about what he meant by ‘inside out.’
‘An analogy will clarify it. Try to remain focused just a little longer, for we’re very nearly there. This is the last step in our journey today.’
I breathed an imaginary sigh of relief, since I was running on fumes now. After a brief pause, the Other continued:
‘When you look at a satellite photograph of a city, you have a broad, comprehensive view of the entire city from the outside in. But when you stand on a street in the city, you gain a localized perspective from the inside out. The very same street can be seen in the satellite picture, but from a different angle. The contents of the experience of standing on the street are different than those of looking at the satellite picture, despite it being the same street. And the difference is not only a matter of scale: for instance, by standing on the street you can experience the facades of buildings, which aren’t accessible from the satellite’s angle.
‘Although the outside-in perspective is the only one that can provide a comprehensible overview of what’s going on,’ he elaborated, ‘the localized inside-out perspective adds a previously hidden and rich dimension. This previously hidden dimension is what you call sense perception. Sense perception is the view from the inside out that isn’t available before the cognitive collapse.
‘The way the non-collapsed segment of mind-at-large experiences a universe is somewhat analogous to looking at the satellite picture of the city. The experience of a living being, on the other hand, is analogous to that of walking do
wn a street: it’s limited, localized and confined, but it does open up a previously hidden dimension. Mind-at-large’s drive to gain this view from within is due to its innate desire to experience and explore new angles of itself. When you perceive the world around you through your five senses, you witness the mental activity of what your mythology calls God from an angle that isn’t accessible to God Himself.’
These elucidations added the last piece of the jigsaw puzzle. Once again, a flood of insights assaulted me, even more strongly than before. All the pieces began falling in place at light speed. For instance, in a previous visit to the Dome the Other had implicitly suggested that I had overlooked certain nuances of the meaning of life. Now I could see what he meant! The meaning of life wasn’t just about lighting up the Other’s matchstick of knowledge in order to understand existence. It was equally about experiencing existence, in all its angles and glory, for the sheer and pure sake of experience itself! We don’t eat a nice meal, make love or travel to beautiful locations just to understand or make sense of something. We do these things because the experiences themselves imbue our lives with a kind of timeless meaning, independent of comprehension. We are the vehicles through which God both experiences and understands Itself.
The myths of the ancients—who would have guessed?—were surprisingly valid when seen through the lens of the heart. Let us take the Christian myth as an example: Is it incorrect to describe the penetration of the universal dream by a segment of mind-at-large as the incarnation of a soul? Is it inaccurate to highlight the kinship between biology and mind-at-large by speaking of the Christ as God incarnate? Is it wrong to suggest—through the doctrine of the descent of the Holy Spirit, or Pentecost—that this same kinship applies to all humans? For the first time in my life I had understood religion. How foolish and dense of me to have dismissed it for so long!
Insights were lighting up in my mind like ten thousand firecrackers. I thought I was becoming literally insane… Connections were everywhere, every thought led to an epiphany… It was too much. I could no longer take it. My mind began to short-circuit in a kind of numbing seizure. My awareness began to drift away from the Dome and enter a dense white fog. With the felt presence of the Other becoming increasingly remote and abstract, I still heard him say:
‘There are myriad tangles in mind-at-large, myriad cognitive realms, universes. Yours is but one among countless others. The truths you take for granted—the laws of classical physics, the rules of classical logic—aren’t fundamental, but reflect one among many circular belief systems… The most fundamental reality is a form of emptiness pregnant with infinite potential…’
The rest was garbled. I was now seemingly stuck in some kind of limbo or transition zone between the Dome and my ordinary reality. The only adjectives I could use to describe it are: silent and milky white. Panic began to set in. Though I couldn’t think straight anymore, a part of me worried that something had gone terribly wrong with the Recipe. This was my last recollection. Then, a blank.
Emergency exit
The next thing I knew, I was being slapped on the face. ‘What the heck?’ I thought, completely disoriented. Only very slowly, things began to come into focus again. One of the Trilobite doctors, who I knew well, was shining a light straight into my eyes. He had been the one who slapped me. ‘Wake up, buddy, stay with me!’ he shouted. I noticed he seemed to be walking as he talked to me. And I, too, was moving, lying on a stretcher being pushed across a corridor. Nurses were all around. One of them was squeezing a bag of I.V. fluid into my veins. ‘How peculiar all this is,’ I thought, with strange detachment. And then another slap, quite heavy-handed this time. ‘Stay with us!’ shouted the doctor again, as fury replaced my lethargy.
They parked me in the small emergency care center set up by Trilobite as a precaution. It was right across the corridor from the laboratory and had never been used before, to my knowledge. I came round in time to witness the nurses hook me up to all kinds of beeping machines. Sophie had come down to see me. Sitting by my side, she tried to reassure and calm me down. ‘I am not worried,’ I told her. And indeed I wasn’t. I was just confused. So she gently helped me resituate myself by reminding me of where I was, what I had been doing, etc. One of Trilobite’s staff psychologists was also in the room, but for some reason, he let Sophie do all the talking.
After a little while, the doctor that had slapped me—Twice!—came back in. My first impulse was to punch him, but I controlled myself. He probably saw the frustration in my eyes, because the first thing he did was to apologize. Only then did he begin to tell me what had happened.
Apparently, while in the Dome, my blood pressure and heart rate had dropped suddenly and significantly, well below safety limits. Automated alarms had gone off and they’d had to disconnect the A.I. to manually bring me back. More detailed analysis of what exactly had gone wrong was still ongoing, so he couldn’t tell me much more. Moreover, ‘You are the resident specialist when it comes to the A.I., so you tell me!’ he remarked with a giggle and a little tap on my shoulder, as if to dispel the tension still in the air.
‘The A.I. should not have allowed me to stay under for so long,’ I pointed out.
‘What do you mean?’ he asked. ‘You were under for less than a minute before we had to pull you out!’
I felt Sophie squeeze my hand, as if sensing my shock. Less than a minute?! The richest dialogue I’d ever had with the Other lasted less than a minute? My previous trips had all been timed between 30 and 45 minutes. How could this one have been so short? Lifetimes of insight and understanding; a whole movie of our universe’s cosmological history, from the Big Bang to the origin of life, complete with narration; all that in less than a minute?! I was flabbergasted but had no reason to doubt what I was being told.
‘Remember: time and space are just imaginary cognitive devices,’ I heard the Other whisper in my mind. Somehow, he was still with me, though just barely. ‘You were never in real danger,’ he claimed, before fading away.
Chapter 11
Happy hour in the Dome
Here is what apparently happened: by recalibrating the A.I. to give the Other more latitude and autonomy, we caused neural activity in my brain’s default mode network to decrease too much. This not only made it difficult for me to take more initiative during the dialogue—which then turned into a long monologue by the Other—but also made it impossible for me to exit the journey on my own. Indeed, it didn’t even occur to me, during the trip, to intone the re-entry mantra once I noticed my exhaustion. The Light Show was consistently inhibiting the neural activity that would have allowed me to remain critical of my mental state, anticipate the corresponding risks and take appropriate corrective actions. In short, the Recipe placed me fully at the mercy of the Other. As for the accompanying physiological effects—the drop in my heart rate and blood pressure—they remained unexplained. We could only surmise that they were somehow connected with my loss of subjective control of the trip.
Secretly, I was happy it happened. It gave me the experience of a lifetime. Nothing else came even close to it. I was a changed man, with a new, fresher, much more spacious outlook. In comparison to my life prior to that point, it was as if, for the first time, I could breath properly. I was profoundly grateful for this, whatever risks it might have entailed.
But Trilobite had stringent safety protocols. The last thing the Club wanted was a casualty in their hands, which would have brought outside scrutiny upon the project. This would have ruined the whole effort and had to be prevented at all costs. Largely for this reason, I was removed from the team responsible for developing the Recipe. Project staff thought I was willing to take too many risks for the sake of the experience. In other words, they thought I had become a bit of a reckless cowboy. I did remain as technical advisor, but the focus of my participation in Trilobite turned to my role as Explorer. Surprisingly, this didn’t bother me: all the key challenges that had been preventing the Recipe from delivering results had already been solv
ed. Only further fine-tuning remained. Moreover, since my first trip, my key interest was in journeying, not in the engineering side of things anymore. The Recipe became a mere tool, not the meaning of my life.
Many of the Recipe adjustments we had implemented just prior to my last trip were reversed. A more conservative setup was largely reinstated, which gave the Explorer more control. All Explorers were briefed in person about what had happened to me, and a new protocol was developed with guidelines for aborting a journey before cognitive overload. Steps backward, if you ask me, but I understood the rationale and continued to cooperate. In all honesty, a large part of my motivation to remain fully cooperative was that I didn’t want to risk my next opportunity to visit the Dome.
Sure enough, the chance to trip again came a few months later. By then, hundreds of new journeys had been logged by other Explorers, under more cautious Recipe setups. No emergencies had been reported: everything had gone smoothly and Trilobite was again running like clockwork. Without my old responsibilities in Recipe development, I no longer had access to the full set of trip reports of others. But it didn’t really matter: my relationship with the Other had become quite personal to me, so I was only interested in what he had to say to me.
The mysteries of Quantum Mechanics
‘You people don’t seem to trust me anymore!’ he opened with irony, as soon as I landed in the Dome.
‘Protocols must be followed,’ I explained, feeling a little guilty.
‘Sure,’ he mumbled sarcastically.
Then silence.
Of course! He was waiting for me to take initiative. Because of my previous experience, I was expecting to be bombarded with his insights on life, the universe and everything. But the dynamics of the conversation were quite different under this new Recipe setup. It would take some getting-used-to.
More Than Allegory Page 20
